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A thaw of Greenland ice that could raise world sea levels may be the next puzzle for the UN climate panel that won the Nobel Peace Prize, a senior member of the group said. Dutch scientist Bert Metz said the risk of an accelerating melt of Greenland's ice sheet was among the unsolved issues in the U.N. reports this year that blame mankind for causing global warming and urge quick action to avert the worst impacts. "There are still questions about the behaviour of the big ice sheets, like Greenland, and the consequences of sea level rise," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a 190-nation UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. Recent studies suggested risks that vast chunks of ice could slip into the sea instead of a slow melt of surface ice tied to global warming. It was not clear how remote those risks were. "On that issue it would be feasible I think to do a report in a couple of years" if governments agreed, Metz said. Greenland stores enough ice to raise world sea levels by about 7 metres (23 ft) if it all melted, perhaps over thousands of years, swamping many coastal cities and Pacific islands. Governments are considering whether to launch a new round of studies of global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), perhaps for release around 2013. This year's overview reports followed ones in 2001 and 1995. "There are voices that say we should postpone (a global overview) a bit and in the meantime do more focused special reports," said Metz, who will be among 25 experts from the panel in Oslo next week to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10. The behaviour of ice sheets was a main candidate for a special report, along with one already likely about renewable energies, he said. Arctic summer ice this year thawed to the smallest since satellite records began in the 1970s. AL GORE Metz is a co-chair of one of three main IPCC reports. The IPCC will share the award with ex-US Vice President Al Gore. And another scientist said that so far unpublished research showed that one area of Greenland's surface melted for about two months this summer, twice the normal melt season. The IPCC projects that world sea levels will rise between 18 and 59 centimetres (7-23 inches) this century but says that does not include risks of an accelerating melt of Greenland, nor of the larger areas of Antarctic ice that are colder and considered more stable. Antarctica has enough ice to raise levels by 57 metres. A few years ago "we thought a thaw of Greenland might happen but it would take thousands and thousands of years -- 'this chunk of ice will melt gradually from the outside'," Metz said. "But now the latest information is that there may be different mechanisms, of water going down into crevasses and acting as a lubricant" beneath large areas of ice, he said. If that happened, there was a risk that ice could slip into the sea. And more fresh water entering the North Atlantic could slow the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe warm, bringing a regional cooling despite an overall warming of the climate. The latest IPCC report says that an abrupt slowdown of the Gulf Stream this century is "very unlikely" but that the risks beyond that cannot be assessed with confidence. | 0 |
US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping made common cause on Monday with other countries to stress the urgency of an agreement to slow a rise in global temperatures blamed for spurring floods, heat waves and rising sea levels. But as the leaders left Paris, negotiators from 195 countries were left to work on a draft text of more than 50 pages still riddled with disagreements. The main sticking point is how to come up with the billions of dollars needed to finance the cleaner energy sources that are badly needed if emerging countries are to develop without relying heavily on fossil fuels. Many delegates said the large turnout at the UN climate summit in Paris, weeks after attacks by Islamic State militants killed 130 people, was a sign of hope after the last summit collapsed in failure in 2009 in Copenhagen amid rancour between rich and poor nations. French President Francois Hollande said he was encouraged by the start of talks that are planned to run untilDec. 11. "It's set off well but it has to arrive too," he told reporters. He said there were "two reefs. Either we overload the vessel and it sinks or we empty it and it goes nowhere." The technical talks repeated little of Monday's grand language. Countries restated their negotiating positions with few hints of likely compromise. China's delegate Su Wei "noted with concern" what he called a lack of commitment by the rich to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and help developing nations with new finance to tackle global warming. NITTY GRITTY "It's back to the nitty gritty," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, adding the opening day was "all good but that does not resolve the crunch issues." Obama: climate change an economic, security imperative "It is still a text with many options," Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal told Reuters, adding with a shrug "but everybody has shown their commitment to have an agreement." The mood was brightened by major announcements including a plan by India and France to mobilise $1 trillion for solar power for some of the world's poorest people and a private sector initiative led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to mobilise billions of dollars for new energy research and development. "Leaders still have the scars of Copenhagen on their hearts and brains," Yvo de Boer, who was the UN's climate chief in Copenhagen, said. "The fact that so many leaders came back here on the opening day to send encouragement ... is a sign that they really want to move," he said. A deal in Paris would be by far the strongest ever agreed to bind both rich and poor nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists say have blanketed the earth, raised global temperatures and begun upending the planet's climate system. Liz Gallagher, of the London-based E3G environmental think-tank, said the opening day had "made an agreement more likely". But she said the biggest gap was over climate finance. Developing nations want the rich to pledge rising amounts beyond the current goal of $100 billion a year by 2020 to help them obtain clean energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change, such as more floods, droughts and intense storms. Other disputes concern how to define a long-term goal for phasing out fossil fuels. In June, developed nations in the Group of Seven (G7) signed up for a goal of decarbonising the world economy by 2100. China and India say they need to rely on coal to lift millions from poverty and prefer a shift to low-carbon development this century. So far, pledges made by about 170 countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020, made in the run-up to the Paris summit, are too weak to limit rising global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That is widely viewed as a threshold for dangerous and potentially catastrophic changes in the planet's climate system. | 1 |
Bankrolled by Russian owner Roman Abramovich, Mourinho led Chelsea to successive league titles in 2005 and 2006 in his previous spell with the English Premier League club.However, the financial climate has changed, with Uefa trying to force clubs to move towards breakeven or ultimately risk exclusion from competitions such as the Champions League."Every wrong move you make has an influence on the future," Mourinho said of the Financial Fair Play regulations."You need to work more closely with the board in the financial area, you have to have a different perspective and a different look at the players on loan and youth football," he added in comments on the club website (chelseafc.com).The comments chime with Mourinho's low-key news conference last week when the returning Portuguese coach seemed at pains to break with the brash image he created on his arrival in London in 2004.Chelsea last week agreed to pay a reported 18 million pounds ($28.22 million) to sign 22-year-old winger Andre Schuerrle from German club Bayer Leverkusen, their first signing since Mourinho came back.Chelsea won the Champions League in 2012, helping them to make a profit for the first time since Abramovich bought the club a decade ago.Mourinho said qualification for the lucrative Champions League was vital for the stability of Chelsea."It's important for the players, for the young players' development, for the club, for the fan base and for the economic situation which is more important with Financial Fair Play," he said. | 1 |
Rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof launched a last-ditch effort on Thursday to force Group of Eight leaders to honor aid pledges they made to Africa two years ago. The two, long involved in the campaign to help the world's poorest continent, have held private meetings with world leaders gathered in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm to discuss issues including climate change and development. U2 singer Bono described his talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hosting the summit, as tough. "We are now having a row with the Chancellor's office about their aid numbers. We agree on the goals but we are not convinced that they have a robust plan to get there," said Bono. "The Chancellor has asked us to trust her - and we are tempted, but we cannot risk being let down by the G8 again." Officials are arguing up to the last minute about how specifically to recommit to pledges made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, when leaders said they would double development aid by 2010. There, they promised to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, $25 billion of which was for Africa. Aid agency Oxfam says G8 nations risk missing their 2010 pledges by $30 billion, which they say would cost at least five million lives. Campaigners believe the final G8 declaration will include the same language agreed at Gleneagles on the headline figures. "We are really running to stand still here," said Oxfam policy adviser Max Lawson. Officials are also arguing over whether commitments for individual countries and for areas like education and AIDS treatment will be spelled out separately. "The important thing is that we continue the process we started at Gleneagles, that we reconfirm our commitments, but that we go further," said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, host of the Gleneagles summit. Canada and Italy have been blocking the inclusion of specific language or numbers, say officials and activists, although Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi signaled to Bono and Geldof late on Wednesday that he would drop his resistance. Leaders could also back away from 2005 targets to fund universal access to AIDS treatment and instead include a target of treating five million people with AIDS. "We are worried they will be setting less ambitious access targets," said Oliver Buston, European Director of campaigning group DATA. Officials are also still arguing over whether to acknowledge a funding gap in the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria or set a funding target of $6-$8 billion a year by 2010. Prodi told Bono and Geldof Italy would pay up money it owed to the Global Fund and also pay $200 million per year for the next two years, according to Global Fund spokesman Seth Amgott, who welcomed the move. | 0 |
Xi, in a recorded video message to a CEO forum on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit hosted by New Zealand, said attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds were bound to fail. "The Asia-Pacific region cannot and should not relapse into the confrontation and division of the Cold War era," Xi said. Xi's remarks were an apparent reference to US efforts with regional allies and partners including the Quad grouping with India, Japan and Australia, to blunt what they see as China's growing coercive economic and military influence. China's military said on Tuesday it conducted a combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Strait, after its Defence Ministry condemned a visit by a US congressional delegation to Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing. Combative U.S. diplomatic exchanges with China early in the Biden administration unnerved allies, and U.S. officials believe direct engagement with Xi is the best way to prevent the relationship between the world's two biggest economies from spiralling toward conflict. A date has not been announced for the Xi-Biden meeting, but a person briefed on the matter said it was expected to be as soon as next week. The week-long annual forum, culminating in a meeting of leaders from all 21 APEC economies on Friday, is being conducted entirely online by hosts New Zealand, a country with hardline pandemic control measures that has kept its borders closed to almost all travellers for 18 months. Xi has only appeared by video, and has not left China in about 21 months as the country pursues a zero-tolerance policy towards COVID-19. The Chinese president is also participating this week in a meeting of the ruling Communist Party that is expected to further cement his authority. Xi said emerging from the shadow of the pandemic and achieving steady economic recovery was the most pressing task for the region, and that countries must close the COVID-19 immunisation gap. "We should translate the consensus that vaccines are a global public good into concrete actions to ensure their fair and equitable distribution," Xi said. APEC members pledged at a special meeting in June to expand sharing and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and lift trade barriers for medicines.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at a meeting commemorating the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China October 9, 2021. REUTERS
TRADE DEALS Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at a meeting commemorating the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China October 9, 2021. REUTERS Taiwan's bid to join a regional trade pact, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), is expected raise tensions at the APEC leaders' meeting later in the week. China, which has also applied to join CPTPP, opposes Taiwan's membership and has increased military activities near the island which Beijing claims. The United States pulled out of CPTPP under former President Donald Trump. A 15-nation regional trade pact backed by China, the Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RCEP), will also take effect from Jan 1. Xi said in the lead-up to RCEP implementation and CPTPP negotiations that China would "shorten the negative list on foreign investment, promote all-round opening up of its agricultural and manufacturing sectors, expand the opening of the service sector and treat domestic and foreign businesses as equals in accordance with law." The United States has offered to host APEC in 2023 for the first time in over a decade as President Joe Biden turns resources and attention to the Asia-Pacific following the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. However, no consensus has yet been reached among APEC members on the offer. CLIMATE CHANGE Climate change has been a key item on the agenda at the summit, which is taking place in parallel with the United Nations' COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Xi said China would achieve its carbon neutrality targets within the time frame it has set and its carbon reduction action would require massive investment. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in her opening address that APEC had taken steps to wean the region's industries off fossil-fuel subsidies. | 0 |
Facebook will reduce the distribution of all posts in its news feed from a user account if it frequently shares content that has been flagged as false by one of the company's fact-checking partners, the social media giant said in a blog post. It added that it was also launching ways to inform people if they are interacting with content that has been rated by a fact-checker. False claims and conspiracies have proliferated on social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Whether it's false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we're making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps," the company said in a statement. Earlier this year, Facebook said it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December, ahead of an inspection by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce into how technology platforms are tackling misinformation. | 0 |
China will not accept binding emissions caps in any pact to tackle global warming, a European Parliament team said on Wednesday, but added the bigger obstacle was those countries who might refuse to join the fight at all. The delegation was in China for talks ahead of a meeting of world governments in Bali next month that will begin negotiations on mapping out a plan to fight global warming to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. "Unlike the European Parliament or the European Union, the Chinese believe that it will not be possible in the agreement which follows the Kyoto Protocol for China to accept any binding obligations," Guido Sacconi, chairman of the European Parliament's climate change committee, told a news conference. China's emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to overtake the United States -- the world's leading emitter of the greenhouse gas -- by 2008, putting it in the spotlight of global climate change talks. But it rejects concrete caps on its emissions, saying development must be its priority and that rich countries responsible for most of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere should do more to cut their output and transfer clean technology to poorer nations. There was broad agreement between Europe and China on the importance of fighting climate change, delegation members said, adding that at least Beijing was willing to engage. "The problem is rather that of other superpowers -- other areas of the world -- who may not wish to join in and follow the same course," Sacconi said. Neither the United States nor Australia are part of Kyoto, which obliges 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Washington and Canberra say the pact is too expensive and unfair because it excludes big developing nations such as China from binding emissions cuts. The European delegation said China's rejection of binding caps did not rule out other concrete steps that it could take. "There was some indication that would seem to me to open the possibility that ... China may not accept binding targets but that China itself would make certain commitments," said Barbara de Brun, a delegation member from Ireland. She said it was not clear what those actions would be, but they could entail voluntary -- though not binding -- steps on the part of Beijing to reduce emissions. "I would like, from the European point of view, not to rule out the possibility that China itself could take steps that would have as their primary purpose the reduction of emissions," de Brun said. "That should certainly be possible." The delegation said Beijing was elevating the importance of global warming because of what they described as the "devastating impact" climate change was already having in China. "We've seen this in agriculture, with flooding and deforestation, and we've also seen it in the high level of pollution in the cities," said Italian member Vincenzo Lavarra. "We believe this will lead China to undertake a genuine commitment to fighting against climate change." | 0 |
A thick slimy layer of the organic matter, known as marine mucilage, has spread through the sea south of Istanbul, posing a threat to marine life and the fishing industry. Harbours, shorelines and swathes of seawater have been blanketed by the viscous, greyish substance, some of which has also sunk below the waves, suffocating life on the seabed. "Hopefully, together we will protect our Marmara within the framework of a disaster management plan," Environment Minister Murat Kurum said, speaking from a marine research vessel which has been taking samples of the slimy substance. "We will take all the necessary steps within 3 years and realise the projects that will save not only the present but also the future together," Kurum said, adding that he would soon give details of the action plan. Scientists say climate change and pollution have contributed to the proliferation of the organic matter, which contains a wide variety of microorganisms and can flourish when nutrient-rich sewage flows into seawater. President Tayyip Erdogan blamed the outbreak on untreated water from cities including Istanbul, home to 16 million people, and vowed to "clear our seas from the mucilage scourge". | 0 |
Diplomats from the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters including the United States, China and India are set to take part in a forum on Monday at the U.S. State Department aimed at getting a U.N. agreement to curb global warming. The two-day meeting of so-called major economies is meant to jump-start climate talks in advance of a December deadline, when the international community meets in Copenhagen to find a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which limits climate-warming greenhouse emissions and expires in 2012. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to make opening remarks. Participants are expected to discuss technology cooperation and other issues. The major economies include Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States. Denmark, the host of the December meeting, also was invited. Environmentalists and others see U.S. commitment to fighting climate change as key to any global pact. "Without U.S. leadership, a global warming agreement in Copenhagen will be largely out of reach," said Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council activist group. President Barack Obama has stressed the link between fighting climate change and helping the struggling economy, and called the meeting to relaunch the major economies process begun by his predecessor George W. Bush. The Bush team's efforts drew skepticism from many participants and were seen as a distraction from the main U.N. negotiations on climate change. OBAMA'S CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY Obama aims to cut U.S. emissions by about 15 percent by 2020, back to 1990 levels. Bush opposed the Kyoto Protocol and any other across-the-board limits on emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, saying the agreement unfairly exempted such quickly growing economies as China and India, and would hurt the U.S. economy. By contrast, the Obama team has pushed for action on climate change, most recently by declaring that carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health and welfare, which means the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can regulate them as pollutants. No regulations have been put in place, and Obama prefers legislation to regulation on this issue. Legislation is already being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, where former Vice President Al Gore, a long-time environmental activist, on Friday urged passage of a U.S. carbon-capping law this year. Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, declined to specify what the United States needs to bring to Copenhagen in December to demonstrate U.S. leadership, but noted the Obama administration's approach differs markedly from that of the Bush team. "They were not fundamentally looking for an international agreement," Stern said. "We are looking for an international agreement, and we're looking for cooperation at a significant, we hope, transformative level." | 0 |
Dhaka June 10 (bdnews24.com) — A Saudi multi-billionaire prince was given a rare state honour as he arrived in Dhaka on a hours-long trip on Sunday and held talks with the Prime Minister and senior members of her Cabinet. Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal received Bangladesh Friendship Medal in a brief ceremony attended by Sheikh Hasina and senior ministers at Sonargaon Hotel, officials said. They said Prince Al-Waleed, who arrived around mid-morning and was to depart early afternoon, had a meeting with Hasina. bdnews24.com foreign affairs correspondent Sheikh Shahariar Zaman said he saw Deputy Leader of the Parliament Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, LGRD Minister Syed Ashraful Islam, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, Prime Minister's Advisor Gowher Rizvi, Cabinet Secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and Power Secretary Abul Kalam Azad entering the meeting venue. "They obviously discussed, among other things, investment and business opportunities in Bangladesh," one official said. A Power Point presentation highlighting the overall investment scenario in the country, opportunities for investment in the Public Private Partnership projects, and tourism and power sector, climate change challenges, was shown after the meeting. The ceremony over, they were having lunch together and the prince would then be driven to the Bangabhaban for a call-on with President Md Zillur Rahman. The Saudi royal arrived in Dhaka at 10:30am and was scheduled to depart at 3pm. Al-Waleed Bin Talal, owning $18 billion, is currently ranked 29th in the Forbes magazine's list of billionaires. He visited Bangladesh earlier in 2005. | 3 |
Colombia's Marxist rebels called a two-month unilateral ceasefire on Monday, the first truce in more than a decade, as delicate peace talks began in Cuba to try to end a half century of war. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos' government reiterated, however, that there would be no halt to military operations until a final peace deal is signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. The rebel group said it would halt all offensive military operations and acts of sabotage against infrastructure beginning at midnight on Monday and running through January 20. "This decision by the FARC is a decisive contribution to strengthen the climate of understanding needed so the parties ... can achieve the purpose desired by all Colombians," lead rebel negotiator Ivan Marquez said, standing outside a convention center for the start of talks in Havana. The gesture is a sign that the rebels may be keen to push talks to a successful end - something that was thrown into doubt by long, drawn-out speeches by its leadership calling for major changes to Colombia's political system. The warring sides arrived at the talks in black luxury cars and will meet almost daily until negotiations end. A crush of journalists surrounded the bearded, bespectacled Marquez who stood with other FARC delegates, including Dutch national Tanja Nijmeijer in Havana's plushest neighborhood. Some FARC members wore caps and T-shirts of Simon Trinidad, an official guerrilla negotiator who is in prison in the United States. Others shouted "Long Live the Army of the People." The head of the Colombian government delegation, Humberto de la Calle, smiled and waved as he entered but made no comment. Speaking from Bogota, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon doubted the sincerity of the FARC's ceasefire pledge. "Security forces have the constitutional duty to pursue all criminals that have violated the constitution," he said. "Hopefully they keep their promise, but history shows that this terrorist group never complies with anything." Colombia's war has dragged on for 50 years, taking thousands of lives, displacing millions more and causing damage to infrastructure in Latin America's longest running insurgency. A failure of the latest peace process would mean years of more fighting and further blight on the reputation of a country eager for foreign investment and regional clout, yet which has been unable to resolve its most serious domestic problem. Residents in western Cauca province, one of Colombia's most war-ravaged areas, celebrated the FARC ceasefire. "We hope it's not just two months, we hope that it's definitive," Orlando Ramos, a resident in Miranda, Cauca, said on local television. 'GRAIN OF SALT' The announcement by the FARC could be a breather for oil and mining companies, the target of many FARC attacks in recent months as the group sought to hobble Santos' main source of international revenue. The war costs Latin America's fourth-largest economy 1 to 2 percentage points of gross domestic product every year, according to the government, and makes large tracts of arable land unsafe due to combat or landmines. "A peace agreement with the FARC could entice more sectors and investors into Colombia," said Eurasia Group's Latin America analyst Heather Berkman. "The opportunities for agriculture production in particular could reshape the country's export sector, particularly as both small-scale and larger farmers could produce on land long off-limits due to security troubles." Santos wants an agreement within nine months, while the rebels say the process will likely take longer. The two sides face plenty of thorny issues in their five-point agenda, which will begin with rural development. Previous peace attempts have failed, but both the government and the FARC have expressed optimism that this time might be different. Not everyone is so upbeat though. "You have to take this announcement with a grain of salt," Felix Lafaurie, head of Colombia's National Federation of Cattle Ranchers, said on Colombian radio. "I hope this is going to be a sign of the FARC's good will and not that they'll then take swipes on substantive issues." The vast majority of Colombians support the peace process, although they think it will ultimately fail. Even so, the talks are the biggest gamble in Santos' political career and their success or failure may decide the outcome of the next election in 2014. The conflict dates back to 1964 when the FARC emerged as a communist agrarian movement intent on overturning Colombia's long history of social inequality. During the 1990s, the FARC controlled large parts of the country. In the early 2000s, billions of dollars in US aid, improved intelligence and increased mobility began to turn the tide of the war in favor of the government. The FARC has lost at least half a dozen top commanders and been pushed back into remote jungle hideouts in recent years, though the rebels are far from a spent force and still wage attacks on security forces and economic infrastructure. Violence was among the reasons previous peace talks failed. In the last attempt from 1999 to 2002, the government broke off negotiations after the FARC hijacked an airplane. "The FARC have heard the voice of many Colombians, that rightly have been skeptical about its willingness to reach an end to the war, given the past," said Juan Fernando Cristo, a senator for the Liberal Party. "The decision for a unilateral truce should fill us with optimism about what's coming at the negotiating table." | 2 |
- agreed 10 years ago. But, as expected, they offered little in the way of new resources to help the world's poorest countries. The United Nations agrees the world will meet the goals to halve global poverty and hunger by 2015 but is behind on other goals which cover improving child education, child mortality and maternal health; combating diseases including AIDS, and promoting gender equality and environmental sustainability. Rising incomes in emerging economic powers like China is the main reason for progress in tackling poverty there, while population growth has set back efforts in Africa and India. The World Bank said it would increase spending on education by $750 million over the next five years. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose government cut development aid in the face of a fiscal crisis and high unemployment, said countries were grappling with difficult decisions as they try to revive economic growth. He urged the world to consider other ways to fund programs that tackle poverty, hunger and climate changes. "We need to make more effort to look for alternative financing sources ... that aren't as vulnerable as the budgets of developed countries when faced with crises like the one we're seeing today," he said. Both he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for some form of financial tax to raise money to combat poverty, an idea already rejected by the International Monetary Fund and many Group of 20 major developed and developing nations. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said Greece's severe fiscal crisis, which prompted an IMF bailout, showed no country was immune to job losses, pandemics or the "vagaries of the financial markets." "Our recent experience has given us real insight into how one small country's problems can ricochet around the world," he said, urging donors to explore other ways to raise development funds, including through a financial tax or green bonds. ACTIONS TO MAKE AID EFFECTIVE Amid the high-minded talk about poverty and budgets, Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley proposed the addition of happiness as the ninth MDG goal. "Since happiness is the ultimate desire of every citizen it must be the purpose of development to create enabling conditions for happiness," he said. Donors demanded more work to ensure aid is not wasted on programs that do not help the poor. Anti-poverty campaigners said donors should be held accountable for the aid they have promised and failed to deliver. British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell called for a plan to track progress in meeting the poverty goals over the remaining five years of the MDGs. He argued for more transparency, better donor coordination and a special focus on helping women and infants. "We want a proper agenda for action over each of the next five years, not a load of blah-blah and big sums of money being thrown about, although big sums of money are important," he told reporters. US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Rajiv Shah told Reuters the United States would press for a new development approach that highlighted economic growth, accountability and tackling corruption. With US congressional elections on November 2 focusing on the economy and job losses, Washington is pressed to show Americans that their tax dollars are being put to good use. Vietnam and Bolivia said poverty could not be beaten as long as some countries continued to benefit from skewed international economic and trading systems. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said aid would not work unless countries were allowed to design their own anti-poverty programs tailored to local conditions. "Of course we need more money. More money matters. But aid money will not deliver concrete results unless we pay more attention to the essential idea of local ownership." | 0 |
The incoming Obama administration should forge a strong partnership with India to tackle common problems such as terrorism and the global financial crisis, an Asia Society task force said on Friday. "India matters to virtually every major foreign policy issue that will confront the United States in the years ahead," said the New York-based society, which promotes scholarship and exchanges with Asia. "A broad-based, close relationship with India will thus be necessary to solve complex global challenges, achieve security in the critical South Asian region, re-establish stability in the global economy, and overcome the threat of violent Islamic radicalism," it said. The report noted that in 1998 the United States had sanctioned India over its nuclear tests, but last year they consummated a civilian nuclear deal that will give India access to U.S. nuclear technology. More recent events -- the bloody November militant attacks in Mumbai and the global financial meltdown -- underscored the need and the opportunity for the two large democracies to work together, the report said. "The new relationship rests on a convergence of U.S. and Indian national interests, and never in our history have they been so closely aligned," it said. The task force, headed by former top diplomats and business leaders from the two countries, said the two countries could work together in areas such as expanding trade, environmental issues and climate change, nonproliferation and public health. President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, should boost governmental relations by helping secure Indian membership in multilateral institutions where global decisions are made, expanding counterterrorism cooperation and forging a bilateral investment treaty, the report said. U.S.-Indian public-private projects should be formed to help meet India's vast secondary and higher education needs, to spread HIV/AIDS awareness and to help boost agricultural output through technology, the task force recommended. | 0 |
That changed on Tuesday, when Shahana Hanif, a former City Council employee, won her election in a Brooklyn district that covers Park Slope, Kensington and parts of central Brooklyn. Hanif, who is Bangladeshi American, was the first Muslim woman elected to the Council in its history, despite the fact that the city is home to an estimated 769,000 Muslims. She was one of two history-making South Asian candidates to win as well; the other, Shekar Krishnan, won a seat representing Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens. (A third, Felicia Singh, another South Asian candidate, lost to her Republican opponent in a closely watched Queens race.) In a statement on Tuesday night, Hanif said that she was “humbled and proud” to be the first Muslim woman on the Council — and the first woman of any faith to represent District 39. She cited volunteers and endorsements from the community and progressive groups, including the left-leaning Working Families Party. “Together we are building an anti-racist, feminist city,” she said. “We deserve a city that protects its most vulnerable, a city that has equitable education, a city invested in climate solutions that are local and driven by communities, a city where our immigrant neighbours feel at home and heard and safe. This work requires all of us to keep showing up even though the election is over.” The City Council will also have its first out gay Black women serve as members next year: Kristin Richardson Jordan scored an overwhelming victory in a Harlem district, as did Crystal Hudson in a Brooklyn district that encompasses parts of Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. A number of other LGBTQ candidates clinched victories, including Tiffany Cabán in Queens. Chi Ossé in Brooklyn and Erik Bottcher in Manhattan had run in uncontested races. Lynn Schulman was expected to win a seat in Queens. The candidates are part of a larger shift in New York’s City Council, which is poised to be nearly as diverse next year as the city it represents. More than two dozen women are positioned to take a majority of the Council’s seats, for the first time ever. | 1 |
President Barack Obama challenged the world on Tuesday to act swiftly to fight global warming but offered no new proposals that could jumpstart stalled talks on a UN climate pact. Speaking shortly after Obama at a special U.N. summit on global warming, Chinese President Hu Jintau pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of his country's economic growth. In his speech, Obama said time was running out to address the problem. "Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it -- boldly, swiftly, and together -- we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe," he said. "The time we have to reverse this tide is running out." Activists hoped the United States and China would inject momentum, 2-1/2 months before 190 nations gather in Copenhagen aiming to complete a deal to slow climate change. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called the meeting, said talks were moving too slowly. "Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise," Ban said. "We cannot go down this road. If we have learned anything from the crises of the past year, it is that our fates are intertwined," he said. Talks leading to the December 7-18 meeting have put developed and developing countries at odds over how to distribute emissions curbs. Poorer nations are pressing richer ones to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars a year to help them cope with rising temperatures. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said talks are "dangerously close to deadlock" and were in danger of an "acrimonious collapse." Obama and Hu, who are scheduled to meet one-on-one after the summit, could help break the impasse. An aggressive move by China to curb its emissions, even if short of an absolute cap, could blunt criticism in Washington, where many lawmakers are reluctant to commit to U.S. emission cuts without evidence that Beijing is acting. Obama's legislative initiatives to reduce U.S. emissions have been overshadowed by his push for healthcare reform. But he said in his speech that the United States had done more over the last eight months to reduce carbon pollution than at any time in history. | 1 |
In India, thousands of workers are lining up twice a day for bread and fried vegetables to keep hunger at bay. And across Colombia, poor households are hanging red clothing and flags from their windows and balconies as a sign that they are hungry. “We don’t have any money, and now we need to survive,” said Pauline Karushi, who lost her job at a jewellery business in Nairobi and lives in two rooms with her child and four other relatives. “That means not eating much.” The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. The coronavirus has sometimes been called an equalizer because it has sickened both rich and poor, but when it comes to food, the commonality ends. It is poor people, including large segments of poorer nations, who are now going hungry and facing the prospect of starving. “The coronavirus has been anything but a great equalizer,” said Asha Jaffar, a volunteer who brought food to families in the Nairobi slum of Kibera after the fatal stampede. “It’s been the great revealer, pulling the curtain back on the class divide and exposing how deeply unequal this country is.”
FILE - People walk through Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya, April 7, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
Already, 135 million people had been facing acute food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry in 2020, said Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a U.N. agency. Altogether, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end. FILE - People walk through Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya, April 7, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times) “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Husain said. “It wasn’t a pretty picture to begin with, but this makes it truly unprecedented and uncharted territory.” The world has experienced severe hunger crises before, but those were regional and caused by one factor or another — extreme weather, economic downturns, wars or political instability. This hunger crisis, experts say, is global and caused by a multitude of factors linked to the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing interruption of the economic order: the collapse in oil prices; widespread shortages of hard currency from tourism drying up; overseas workers not having earnings to send home; and ongoing problems like climate change, violence, population dislocations and humanitarian disasters. Already, from Honduras to South Africa to India, protests and looting have broken out amid frustrations from lockdowns and worries about hunger. With classes shut down, more than 368 million children have lost the nutritious meals and snacks they normally receive in school. There is no shortage of food globally, or mass starvation from the pandemic — yet. But logistical problems in planting, harvesting and transporting food will leave poor countries exposed in the coming months, especially those reliant on imports, said Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. While the system of food distribution and retailing in rich nations is organized and automated, he said, systems in developing countries are “labor intensive,” making “these supply chains much more vulnerable to COVID-19 and social distancing regulations.” Yet even if there is no major surge in food prices, the food security situation for poor people is likely to deteriorate significantly worldwide. This is especially true for economies like Sudan and Zimbabwe that were struggling before the outbreak, or those like Iran that have increasingly used oil revenues to finance critical goods like food and medicine. In Venezuela, the pandemic could deal a devastating blow to millions already living in the world’s largest economic collapse outside wartime. In the sprawling Petare slum on the outskirts of the capital, Caracas, a nationwide lockdown has left Freddy Bastardo and five others in his household without jobs. Their government-supplied rations, which had arrived only once every two months before the crisis, have long run out. “We are already thinking of selling things that we don’t use in the house to be able to eat,” said Bastardo, 25, a security guard. “I have neighbours who don’t have food, and I’m worried that if protests start, we wouldn’t be able to get out of here.” Uncertainty over food is also building in India, where daily-wage workers with little or no social safety net face a future where hunger is a more immediate threat than the virus. As wages have dried up, half a million people are estimated to have left cities to walk home, setting off the nation’s “largest mass migration since independence,” said Amitabh Behar, the chief executive of Oxfam India. On a recent evening, hundreds of migrant workers, who have been stuck in New Delhi after a lockdown was imposed in March with little warning, sat under the shade of a bridge waiting for food to arrive. The Delhi government has set up soup kitchens, yet workers like Nihal Singh go hungry as the throngs at these centres have increased in recent days. “Instead of coronavirus, the hunger will kill us,” said Singh, who was hoping to eat his first meal in a day.
FILE - People walk through a market in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 16, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)
Migrants waiting in food lines have fought each other over a plate of rice and lentils. Singh said he was ashamed to beg for food but had no other option. FILE - People walk through a market in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 16, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times) “The lockdown has trampled on our dignity,” he said. Refugees and people living in conflict zones are likely to be hit the hardest. The curfews and restrictions on movement are already devastating the meagre incomes of displaced people in Uganda and Ethiopia, the delivery of seeds and farming tools in South Sudan and the distribution of food aid in the Central African Republic. Containment measures in Niger, which hosts almost 60,000 refugees fleeing conflict in Mali, have led to surges in the pricing of food, according to the International Rescue Committee. The effects of the restrictions “may cause more suffering than the disease itself,” said Kurt Tjossem, regional vice president for East Africa at the International Rescue Committee. Ahmad Bayoush, a construction worker who had been displaced to Idlib province in northern Syria, said that he and many others had signed up to receive food from aid groups, but that it had yet to arrive. “I am expecting real hunger if it continues like this in the north,” he said. The pandemic is also slowing efforts to deal with the historic locust plague that has been ravaging the East and Horn of Africa. The outbreak is the worst the region has seen in decades and comes on the heels of a year marked by extreme droughts and floods. But the arrival of billions of new swarms could further deepen food insecurity, said Cyril Ferrand, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s resilience team in eastern Africa. Travel bans and airport closures, Ferrand said, are interrupting the supply of pesticides that could help limit the locust population and save pastureland and crops. As many go hungry, there is concern in a number of countries that food shortages will lead to social discord. In Colombia, residents of the coastal state of La Guajira have begun blocking roads to call attention to their need for food. In South Africa, rioters have broken into neighbourhood food kiosks and faced off with police.
FILE - People wait in line to receive meals from a mobile food distribution service in New Delhi, April 10, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times)
And even charitable food giveaways can expose people to the virus when throngs appear, as happened in Nairobi’s shantytown of Kibera earlier this month. FILE - People wait in line to receive meals from a mobile food distribution service in New Delhi, April 10, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world; national lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times) “People called each other and came rushing,” said Valentine Akinyi, who works at the district government office where the food was distributed. “People have lost jobs. It showed you how hungry they are.” To assuage the impact of this crisis, some governments are fixing prices on food items, delivering free food and putting in place plans to send money transfers to the poorest households. Yet communities across the world are also taking matters into their own hands. Some are raising money through crowdfunding platforms, while others have begun programs to buy meals for needy families. On a recent afternoon, Jaffar and a group of volunteers made their way through Kibera, bringing items like sugar, flour, rice and sanitary pads to dozens of families. A native of the area herself, Jaffar said she started the food drive after hearing so many stories from families who said they and their children were going to sleep hungry. The food drive has so far reached 500 families. But with all the calls for assistance she’s getting, she said, “that’s a drop in the ocean.” c.2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Warming is still on track, however, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions."The most extreme rates of warming simulated by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely," the University of Oxford wrote about the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.The rate of global warming has slowed after strong rises in the 1980s and 1990s, even though all the 10 warmest years since reliable records began in the 1850s have been since 1998.The slowdown has been a puzzle because emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have continued to rise, led by strong industrial growth in China.Examining recent temperatures, the experts said that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial times - possible by mid-century on current trends - would push up temperatures by between 0.9 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (1.6 and 3.6F).That is below estimates made by the UN panel of climate scientists in 2007, of a rise of between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius (1.8-5.4F) as the immediate response to a doubling of carbon concentrations, known as the transient climate response.OceansThe UN panel also estimated that a doubling of carbon dioxide, after accounting for melting of ice and absorption by the oceans that it would cause over hundreds of years, would eventually lead to a temperature rise of between 2 and 4.5 C (3.6-8.1F).Findings in the new study, by experts in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and Norway, broadly matched that range for the long-term response.But for government policy makers "the transient response over the next 50-100 years is what matters," lead author Alexander Otto of Oxford University said in a statement.The oceans appear to be taking up more heat in recent years, masking a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that passed 400 parts per million this month for the first time in human history, up 40 percent from pre-industrial levels.Professor Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, one of the authors, said that the lower numbers for coming decades were welcome.But "we are still looking at warming well over the two degree goal that countries have agreed upon if current emission trends continue," he said.Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 Celsius (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution and two degrees C is widely viewed as a threshold to dangerous changes such as more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels."The oceans are sequestering heat more rapidly than expected over the last decade," said Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the study."By assuming that this behaviour will continue, (the scientists) calculate that the climate will warm about 20 percent more slowly than previously expected, although over the long term it may be just as bad, since eventually the ocean will stop taking up heat." | 0 |
Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has congratulated Trump on his election and promised to work with him to bolster trade and international security, the media has summed up the victory as a ‘stunning upset’. “Suddenly, a monkey wrench has been thrown into the works of Canada-US relations. For so long, Canadian governments worked to make sure relations would be relatively predictable. The US electorate changed that on Tuesday night,” wrote a commentator in the Globe and Mail, one of the largest-circulated dailies in Toronto. “When a US president focuses a major part of his campaign on building up borders in every sense – on trade, immigration, security – you can bet it is a danger to the nation that depends the most on dealings across the border. That’s Canada,” the commentator said. “Donald Trump, the surprise winner of the US presidential race, has promised to rip up many of the things Canada has tried to nail down,” he added. “The threat of protectionist US moves that would cut off crucial trade links? Canadian leaders signed free-trade agreements to blunt that danger – but Mr. Trump pledged to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),” the commentator went on. Canada is the biggest trade partner of the US where it exports over 75 percent of its goods and services. It also shares around 4,000 miles of territorial boundary (excluding Alaska) with America. A NAFTA break-up will change all that and put the Canadian economy in trouble. In his campaign, everything in Trump’s rhetoric - from immigration to terrorism threats to Muslim visitors, was about bigger, thicker borders – and suggested slower passage for traffic and trade, which Canada cannot afford. “I am going to bring our jobs back to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Michigan and all of America and I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences,” Trump had said in the campaign. He also described the North American free-trade agreement as a “disaster” and said he would renegotiate or even “break” it. However, some economists and commentators believe that the protectionists talk in the US election is very common but when it comes to governing, the scenario could be completely different. Not only NAFTA, Trump has questioned the value of NATO, saying he would demand that allies pay more for US protection. Toronto’s Global News reported that Canadian officials are already bracing for a very bumpy ride as the shockwaves from stunning upset reverberates to south of the border. Experts, according to the Global News, agree on one point: “It’s not going to be business as usual.” It’s too early to suggest where Trump’s ‘America First’ policy would lead Canada in its relations with the neighbour. But economics and trade, environment, security and defence, and international relations may all come under further scrutiny under the new US administration. Prime Minister Trudeau is pressing forward on a climate-change policy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions but with Trump in power, he would find it harder to sell his own climate-change policies in Canada. Trudeau avoided talking down Trump during the election campaign and he probably did it for Canada’s interest to build the relationship. There are other things to build on – cross-border security arrangements and NORAD, which is the bilateral military air defence alliance, are a few to name. But how far can Trudeau carry forward the Canadian agenda with the protectionist ‘America First’ US president? Is Trump becoming a new conundrum for Canadian PM? It will take sometime to get the answer. | 1 |
The House passed the measure in a 220-213 vote, which was postponed after an overnight speech by the chamber's top Republican opposing the measure. Its fate is unclear in the Senate, where centrist Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have raised concerns about its size and some of its programs. The bill has been scaled down substantially from Democrats' initial $3.5 trillion plan but still aims to invest millions to expand education, lower healthcare costs and tackle climate change. The vote comes after Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke for a record-setting 8-1/2 hours starting late Thursday night in remarks cataloguing a list of Republican grievances - some related to the bill and some not - while at times shouting over Democrats in the House who were openly dismissive. In a dig at McCarthy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began her speech supporting the bill by saying "As a courtesy to my colleagues, I will be brief." "Much has been said on this floor. But the facts are these: following the vision of President Biden, guided by the expertise and energy of our chairs, members and staff, we have a Build Back Better bill that is historic, transformative and larger than anything we have ever done before," Pelosi said. "If you are a parent, a senior, a child, a worker, if you are an American, this bill’s for you, and it is better.” It also follows the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that the bill would raise federal budget deficits by $367 billion over 10 years, but that additional revenues from improved Internal Revenue Service tax collections could generate a net increase in revenues of $127 billion through 2031. The White House estimates the IRS changes will generate $400 billion in additional revenue and says the bill overall will reduce deficits by $121 billion over a decade. Several moderate Democrats said they needed the CBO's assessment before they would vote, and several of them said they accepted the White House's math. The legislation follows the $1 trillion infrastructure investment bill that Biden signed into law this week - two key pillars of the Democratic president's domestic agenda - and a separate $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that passed in March. | 0 |
Plants and animals are shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water, researchers said on Monday, warning it could have profound implications for food production in years ahead. "The worst-case scenarios ... are that food crops and animals will shrink enough to have real implications for food security," Assistant Professor David Bickford, of the National University of Singapore's biological sciences department, said. Bickford and colleague Jennifer Sheridan trawled through fossil records and dozens of studies which showed that many species of plants and creatures such as spiders, beetles, bees, ants and cicadas have shrunk over time in relation to climate change. They cited an experiment showing how shoots and fruit are 3 to 17 percent smaller for every degree Celsius of warming in a variety of plants. Each degree of warming also reduces by 0.5 to 4 percent the body size of marine invertebrates and 6 to 22 percent of fish. "Survival of small individuals can increase with warmer temperatures, and drought conditions can lead to smaller offspring, leading to smaller average size," they wrote in their paper which was published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, on Monday. "Impacts could range from food resources becoming more limited (less food produced on the same amount of land) to wholesale biodiversity loss and eventual catastrophic cascades of ecosystem services," Bickford wrote. "We have not seen large-scale effects yet, but as temperatures change even more, these changes in body size might become much more pronounced - even having impacts for food security." | 0 |
“Areas of the glacier that sit near geologic features thought to be volcanic are melting faster than regions farther away from hotspots,” said Dustin Schroeder, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin.The researchers built on a previous study that mapped out the system of channels that flow beneath the Thwaites Glacier, a fast-flowing glacier that scientists say is vulnerable to global warming.Using data from airborne radar, the researchers were able to figure out where these subglacial streams were too full to be explained by flow from upstream."The swollen streams revealed spots of unusually high melt," Schroeder said.The minimum average heat flow beneath Thwaites Glacier is 114 milliwatts per square metre (or about 10 square feet) with some areas giving off 200 milliwatts per square metre or more, the study showed."In comparison, the average heat flow of the rest of the continents is 65 milliwatts per square metre," Schroeder said.“The extra melt caused by subglacial volcanoes could lubricate the ice sheet from beneath, hastening its flow toward the sea,” Schroeder said.To understand how much the volcanic melt contributes to this flow - and what that means for the future of the West Antarctic ice sheet - glaciologists and climate scientists will have to include the new, finer-grained findings in their models, Live Science reported.The findings appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | 0 |
NEW DELHI, Nov 12,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Australia said it will invest $50 million to develop green technologies in India, in a sign Canberra was trying to bridge differences with New Delhi over climate change negotiations. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the announcement during a visit that was also aimed at soothing bilateral relations strained after several Indian students were assaulted in Australia, sparking an outrage in India. "Our challenge is to work together and shape a common future for us all, requiring real action on part of all countries." India has slammed the so-called "Australian Proposal" on climate change that seeks to remove the distinction between rich and poorer nations, calling on both sides to cut emissions. Developing countries led by India and China say negotiations should be based on a previously agreed UN framework that requires rich nations to take deep emission cuts while putting no such restrictions on poorer countries, Indian officials say. India is also unhappy Australia refuses to supply uranium to nations that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermining an India-US civilian nuclear deal which allowed uranium to be supplied to India for the first time in decades. "What Australia is trying to do is reduce disputes and build on whatever opportunities that exist. Issues like climate change, attacks on Indians and the nuclear deal are a few," said Naresh Chandra, former ambassador to the United States. Representatives from about 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen next month to discuss a new climate change pact. "The Australian proposal is already facing opposition from China, G-77 and other developing countries. India is saying no to the proposal and Australia would definitely want India to dilute its stand," said K. Srinivas, a Greenpeace climate change expert. The Australia prime minister made the investment announcement in Delhi after a meeting with Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. | 0 |
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard ruled out changes to her planned 30 percent mining tax if re-elected on Saturday, as powerful miners and Green lawmakers threatened to restart hostilities over the issue. The tax, which has weighed on the Australian dollar and mining stocks since it was first proposed in May, is a key issue in what polls suggest could be the closest election in 50 years, with Gillard's Labor on course to scrape back into power. Gillard is likely to need the support of Greens senators in the new parliament to pass the tax, fuelling concerns among investors that she could be forced to toughen the proposal in order to appease Green senators who want the tax rate increased. "I rule out any horse trading with the Greens on the minerals resource rent tax," Gillard said on Thursday in her last major speech of the campaign, which effectively started in June when she replaced her unpopular predecessor, Kevin Rudd, in a late-night coup. The Welsh-born red-head, whose initial move as Australia's first female leader was to water down Rudd's original 40 percent mining tax, sought to reassure investors that she stood by the weaker version, which she hammered out in talks with miners BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata. "I have consistently ruled out any movement on the minerals resource rent tax. What I have agreed with Australia's biggest miners is what I will legislate," Gillard told Australia's National Press Club in a final pre-election speech. The 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal projects, forecast to raise A$10.5 billion ($9.5 billion) over two years starting 2012, is strongly opposed by small and second-tier miners who say the plan has undermined their ability to attract investment capital. A Labor victory would also see a possible carbon-trading scheme to combat climate change from 2012 and ensure construction of a $38 billion fibre-optic national broadband network. The Liberal-National opposition opposes both plans. A "CLIFF-HANGER" For financial markets, however, the worst-case scenario on Saturday is a hung parliament, where Labor or the conservative opposition would need to secure the support of independent or Green lawmakers in order to form a minority government. "A hung parliament or a minority government could cause foreign investors to trim their exposure to Australia, putting downward pressure on the sharemarket and the Australian dollar," chief economist Craig James of CommSec said in a note to clients. Australian voters seem just as pleased as Gillard to reach the end of a campaign that has been parodied by TV comedians as one of the most uninspiring in memory, with one former opposition leader actually encouraging people not to vote at all. But voting is compulsory in Australia, punishable with a A$20 fine, so candidates on both sides can count on winning their heartland seats -- leaving the campaign focused on just a few marginal electorates that will decide the outcome. Gillard predicted a close result. "The election is a cliffhanger, an absolute cliffhanger," she said. Opposition leader Tony Abbott, a former seminarian, earlier said he would campaign non-stop for a marathon 36 hours in order to win support from undecided voters. Abbott has pulled the conservative opposition to within reach of victory by campaigning strongly against government debt and waste, and promising no new mining tax and highlighting how the government move to dump Rudd proved it was in disarray. But history is not on Abbott's side. Australians have not voted out a government after only one term since 1931, when a deeply divided Labor Party was voted out in the wake of the Great Depression. Whatever happens on Saturday, Gillard will make history. If she wins, Gillard will be the first woman to win a national election in Australia. If she loses, Gillard will have served just 58 days as prime minister and will be fifth on the list of Australia's shortest-serving prime ministers. | 0 |
OSLO, Thu Feb 12,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas are hitting new highs, with no sign yet that the world economic downturn is curbing industrial emissions, a leading scientist said on Thursday. "The rise is in line with the long-term trend," Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said of the measurements taken by a Stockholm University project on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard off north Norway. Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, rose to 392 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere in Svalbard in December, a rise of 2-3 ppm from the same time a year earlier, he told Reuters. Carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to have risen further in 2009, he said. They usually peak just before the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, where most of the world's industry, cities and vegetation are concentrated. Plants suck carbon dioxide, which is released by burning fossil fuels, out of the atmosphere as they grow. Levels fall toward the northern summer and rise again in autumn when trees lose their leaves and other plants die back. "It's too early to make that call," he said when asked if there were signs that economic slowdown was curbing the rise in emissions. And he said any such change would be hard to detect. "That's a tricky one to do," he said. "If we had, for example, a year with an unusually warm Siberian winter, that could cancel the human variation." A warm Russian winter would allow more bacteria to break down organic material in the soil, releasing carbon dioxide. 800,000-YEAR PEAKS Levels of carbon dioxide are around the highest in at least 800,000 years, and up by about a third since the Industrial Revolution. The increase is caused by "mainly fossil fuel burning and to some extent land use change, where you have forests being replaced by agricultural land," Holmen said. The UN Climate Panel says rising greenhouse gas concentrations are stoking warming likely to cause floods, droughts, heatwaves, rising seas and extinctions. Latest data is from December because measuring equipment on Svalbard is being replaced. "We can see the trend from these winter numbers," Holmen said. The numbers are higher than annual average year-round figures reported by groups such as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More than 190 nations have agreed to negotiate a new international deal by the end of 2009 to fight climate change. It would succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which sets carbon dioxide limits for 37 industrialized nations. | 0 |
Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali told Bangladesh journalists at about 6.30pm that they would meet again after the official dinner.This is an unprecedented event in the SAARC foreign ministers-level parleys that after concluding all agendas the meeting had been adjourned.“We are trying to get the energy cooperation deal signed,” he said as the Nepal foreign ministry cancelled its scheduled briefing for foreign journalists.Ali, however, ruled out any chance of signing the two other deals related to road and railway connectivity during the summit.Though he did not name the country because of which those signing would not take place, it was an established fact in Kathmandu that Pakistan was not agreeing to sign those deals.The signing does not mean that member states would implement those as it could not live up to their earlier promises that include implementing South Asian free trade regime and South Asian economic union.But the signing would send a strong message across that the leaders could agree on a common goal of connectivity in the summit themed on ‘Deeper Integration for Peace and Prosperity’.The foreign ministers will set the agenda for the two-day 18th summit where the leaders of the eight member states would gather amid tight security.Even the movement of the accredited journalists has been restricted.SAARC that unites South Asia, which according to an ADB study is the “least integrated” region in the world, has been criticised for not having any collective gains to show since it began functioning in 1985.But this summit will be watched closely as influential India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a strong message of working together with the SAARC countries by inviting all heads of states in his swearing-in ceremony.This is his first summit and before leaving New Delhi he in a statement said “development of close relations with our neighbours is a key priority for my Government”.Analysts say the relations between India and Pakistan determine whether the regional grouping can move smoothly.Bangladesh for timely implementationBangladesh stressed on “timely” implementation of the regional projects at the foreign ministers-level meeting on Tuesday.Foreign Minister Mahmood Ali said they had taken a number of decisions to make the regional grouping “effective”.The meeting approved the standing committee proposals.Apart from, trade, economy, communications, energy, poverty reduction, climate change, combating terrorism, education and culture, regional cooperation, youths development have also been stressed in the meeting.One research paper titled ‘Best practices in poverty alleviation and SDGs in South Asia’, two separate action frameworks on sanitation and nutrition and one publication on ‘Next steps to the South Asian Economic Union (SAEU)’ have been launched in the foreign ministers’ meeting.The meeting instructed the SAARC Secretariat to take views of the member states to organise the summit at a particular time like the UN general assembly.They also asked member states to submit the “request list” and “offer list” to the Secretariat under the SAFTA sensitive list reduction.Bangladesh has already submitted those.The foreign minister said Bangladesh has requested investments in tourism. “It’s open."The foreign ministers asked the SAARC Development Fund Secretariat to take up innovative projects on energy and communications.They agreed to publish a ‘SAARC Development Report’ biennially where member states would present their development outcomes.They further asked for starting an inter-governmental process to put forward the collective views of South Asia in the formation of the post-2015 development agenda.The ministers also agreed on making SAARC food bank functional by eliminating the “threshold limit” for the members.The meeting analysed different projects of the SAARC Agriculture Centre based in Dhaka.They also decided to transfer the two projects – Regional Support Unit (RSU) and Regional Epidemiological Centre (REC) – to the Agricultural Centre after their completion.The foreign ministers stressed on making the South Asian University in New Delhi as a ‘Centre of Excellence’ and Bangladesh pushed for taking more students and teachers from the country.South Asian Women Development Forum (SAWDF) has been recognised as a SAARC body.The moratorium of taking new SAARC observers will continue, the foreign minister said, while briefing journalists on the outcomes of the meeting.Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque was present, among others, during the briefing at Hotel Soaltee Kathmandu. | 1 |
WASHINGTON. Mar 9(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - President Barack Obama will lift controversial restrictions on human stem cell research on Monday and sign a pledge to take politics out of science, the White House says, a clear repudiation of the approach taken by his predecessor George W Bush. The decision, which fulfills a campaign promise, pits Obama against many religious conservatives who oppose such research because they say it involves destroying life. Aides said Obama would not dictate details about how stem cell research should be overseen but would give the National Institutes of Health 120 days to come up with guidelines. Researchers and advocates are gathering for a White House ceremony at which Obama will make the announcement, said Melody Barnes, director of Obama's domestic policy council. Several prominent scientists hailed the decision. Obama will also sign a pledge to "restore scientific integrity in governmental decision making." Some scientists accused Bush of sacrificing scientific research and subverting scientific findings to appease his conservative political and religious base, not only on stem cells but on climate change policy, energy and reproductive and end of life issues. Bush aides denied this but said they had the political mandate to shape policy. Dr. Harold Varmus, a former NIH director who is also president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and an adviser to Obama, said Obama's actions would return U.S. stances to where they were pre-Bush. "This memorandum will reinforce statements that the president has already made on the importance of science and technology in our society," Varmus told reporters. "Public policy must be guided by sound scientific advice." The NIH would take into consideration guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences and the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Varmus said. "This is not a partisan issue," he added. Staunchly conservative Republicans such as Utah Senator Orrin Hatch support lifting restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and voted several times in Congress to do so in a bill Bush then vetoed. "IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL" Bush and others argued that it is immoral and unethical to experiment on human embryos because it involves destroying cells that could give rise to human life. But supporters say it is unethical not to advance medical research, especially using embryos from fertility clinics that were destined for destruction anyway. Kansas Senator Sam Brownback issued a statement of dissent: "If an embryo is a life, and I believe strongly that it is life, then no government has the right to sanction their destruction for research purposes." He argued that other sources of stem cells that do not come from human embryos offer as much promise. Stem cell experts agree that all types of stem cells should be developed, but it is not clear which offer the best route to a new type of therapy called regenerative medicine, in which it is hoped doctors can replace brain cells destroyed by Alzheimer's disease, reverse genetic defects such as cystic fibrosis, and regrow severed spinal cords. | 0 |
The summit, which concludes Friday, is intended to cover an array of topics, including trade, human rights and climate change. But it is also part of an effort by Biden’s foreign policy team to highlight one of the president’s primary goals: assembling a united front against China as it increasingly demonstrates its economic and military might around the world. As a candidate, Biden promised to make China a central focus of his foreign policy. Instead, a senior administration official acknowledged to reporters this week that the war in Europe had created daily demands that had consumed the time and energy of the president and his team. But the official, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the summit, said Biden remained concerned about, and focused on, the need to prevent China from dominating the Indo-Pacific. The gathering of Biden and the other world leaders in Washington is an opportunity to demonstrate that commitment, the official said. On Thursday evening, the White House announced new investments of about $150 million in the region as part of a series of agreements between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The investments by the United States include $40 million for clean energy projects in Southeast Asia. A senior White House official said the administration estimated that the money would be used to help raise or finance as much as $2 billion for the construction of the projects. The United States also pledged to invest $60 million to deploy additional maritime assets — led by the Coast Guard — to the region, and to perform training and other activities in coordination with other countries aimed at enforcing maritime laws. And the administration said it would spend $15 million to expand health surveillance programs in Southeast Asia and better detect COVID-19 and other airborne diseases in the region. The president is also traveling to Japan and South Korea from May 20-24, a trip that will focus in large part on China. White House officials have not provided details about the trip, but the president is expected to meet with fellow leaders of the other so-called Quad countries: Australia, India and Japan. On Thursday, the leaders from the ASEAN countries met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers before gathering at a Washington hotel to discuss business opportunities with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and executives from US industries. Biden welcomed the leaders to the White House on Thursday evening in a brief ceremony on the South Lawn. The group posed for a picture before walking into the White House for dinner. On Friday, the Asian leaders will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the morning, and then with Biden at the White House later in the day. According to the administration official, the group will discuss trading opportunities; transit through disputed waterways, including the South China Sea; and other topics. One of those topics is likely to be Myanmar, an ASEAN member, where Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted as the country’s civilian leader last year when the military staged a coup. The administration official said the United States and countries in the region were focused on the situation and frustrated by it. A U.S. national security official said the United States and the other nations agreed to leave a chair empty during the summit for Myanmar as a way of registering their disapproval of the actions by its military. The official also said the United States supported the decision by ASEAN to prevent a military representative from Myanmar from attending the summit. The gathering is also intended to be an opportunity for Harris to demonstrate her focus on the region. She led a U.S. delegation to Asia this past summer, using a speech in Singapore to denounce China’s “unlawful claims” over the South China Sea, which she said “undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations.” The administration official said Harris planned to use Friday’s meeting with the Asian leaders to focus on climate action, clean energy and sustainable infrastructure. © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
A senior Iranian lawmaker warned Western powers they would soon have to accept the reality of the country's nuclear advances, Iran's state news agency reported late on Saturday, days before talks are set to re-open on its disputed nuclear programme. The head of the parliamentary committee for national security and foreign policy, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, was speaking at a ceremony in Mashhad in memory of what Iran describes as its nuclear martyrs; at least four scientists associated with Iran's nuclear programme have been assassinated since 2010 and a fifth was wounded in a bomb attack. Western countries suspect Tehran of covertly developing a nuclear weapons programme, accusations Iran has repeatedly denied. Both sides are set to take part in negotiations this week in an effort to find a solution to international concerns, though even the location of the talks has not yet been agreed. Boroujerdi said the P5+1 group of countries needed to change their policy because "confronting the Islamic Republic will not be to their benefit", the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. "Honourable Iran will continue the debate about peaceful nuclear energy, and that moment isn't far away when the world will see that arrogant countries, led by America and Europe, will accept the reality of nuclear advances and Iran's membership into the nuclear club." He added that despite the climate of threats and sanctions, Iran had made great progress in its nuclear capability and was proficient in all stages of enrichment from mining raw uranium in Iranian mines, producing yellow cake (concentrated uranium powder), building centrifuges and injecting uranium gas into them. In February Iran announced it had loaded domestically made fuel rods into the Tehran Research Reactor, which produces radio isotopes for medical use and agriculture. Iran has repeatedly pointed out that under its membership of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has the right to engage in peaceful nuclear activities. Boroujerdi emphasised that Iran's nuclear programme was solely for peaceful needs, but that if the International Atomic Energy Agency did not keep to its commitments, "then no doubt our enthusiastic young scientists will build a reactor inside the country". Speaking in the presence of families of scientists who were killed, Boroujerdi warned that assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists was pointless. "Iran's advances have forced the Zionist regime (Israel), the Arabs and America to turn to eliminating our nuclear scientists. But they should understand that such evil deeds will lead nowhere, because thousands of universty students and professors in Iran will continue along the road of nuclear science." A recent report by the IAEA said Iran had tripled its production of higher grade enriched uranium, which has caused further concern that there is a military motive to its activities. While some analysts remain doubtful about Iran's claims, experts say that uranium enriched to 20 percent represents most of the technical effort needed to attain the 90 percent threshold required for nuclear explosions. The Islamic Republic says the more highly refined uranium will replenish dwindling stocks of special fuel for a Tehran reactor that produces much-needed medical isotopes for thousands of cancer patients across the country. The United States and its allies have imposed new sanctions against Iran's financial and energy sectors to force Tehran to abandon its enrichment activities. Israel has threatened Iran with pre-emptive strikes to stop it getting the bomb, but US president Barack Obama has emphasised the importance of trying to find a diplomatic solution. The next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries comprising the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany had been due to take place this Friday, April 13, but the two sides have been seemingly unable to agree on a location. | 2 |
The rising cost of providing food aid will top the agenda when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon meets heads of U.N. agencies, the World Bank and IMF in Switzerland later this month, a spokeswoman said on Friday. Ban will host a semi-annual meeting of U.N. agency heads in the Swiss capital of Berne on April 28-29, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Heuze said. World Bank President Robert Zoellick and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn are also to attend, she said. "The main subjects on the agenda will be the food crisis and climate change. They will look at means of coordination," Heuze told Reuters. The World Bank has warned that higher food and energy costs, along with poor infrastructure and falling aid levels, threaten to undo several years of growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. High prices, driven by bad harvests and record fuel costs, have triggered riots and violence in poor and developing countries including Haiti and Indonesia, especially those which rely on imports for the bulk of food supplies. Josette Sheeran, who heads the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP), and Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will be among the participants at the closed-door talks in Berne. The WFP's initial appeal to donor countries for this year was $2.9 billion. But due to rising food and fuel costs, the Rome-based agency issued an emergency appeal in late February for an extra $500 million to help feed 73 million hungry people in 80 countries. Since then, the price it pays to buy Thai rice, a staple in many poor countries, has jumped from $460 a tonne in early March to $780 a tonne now. As a result, its emergency appeal has risen to $756 million, a WFP spokeswoman said. "I can't guarantee this figure won't change again because if prices continue to rise, we'll need to act accordingly," spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told a news briefing. The agency has received $900 million in donations so far, which represents only 20 percent of its overall needs of at least $3.65 billion for the year, she added. The FAO warned last week that food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor. Despite a forecast 2.6 percent hike in global cereal output this year, record prices are unlikely to fall, forcing poorer countries' food import bills up 56 percent and hungry people on to the streets, Diouf said at the time. | 0 |
Those votes are likely to win more support than in previous years from large asset managers seeking clarity on how executives plan to adapt and prosper in a low-carbon world, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen activist investors and fund managers. In the United States, shareholders have filed 79 climate-related resolutions so far, compared with 72 for all of last year and 67 in 2019, according to data compiled by the Sustainable Investments Institute and shared with Reuters. The institute estimated the count could reach 90 this year. Topics to be put to a vote at annual general meetings (AGMs) include calls for emissions limits, pollution reports and “climate audits” that show the financial impact of climate change on their businesses. A broad theme is to press corporations across sectors, from oil and transport to food and drink, to detail how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints in coming years, in line with government pledges to cut emissions to net zero by 2050. “Net-zero targets for 2050 without a credible plan including short-term targets is greenwashing, and shareholders must hold them to account,” said billionaire British hedge fund manager Chris Hohn, who is pushing companies worldwide to hold a recurring shareholder vote on their climate plans. Many companies say they already provide plenty of information about climate issues. Yet some activists say they see signs more executives are in a dealmaking mood this year. Royal Dutch Shell said on Feb11 it would become the first oil and gas major to offer such a vote, following similar announcements from Spanish airports operator Aena, UK consumer goods company Unilever and US rating agency Moody’s. While most resolutions are non-binding, they often spur changes with even 30% or more support as executives look to satisfy as many investors as possible. “The demands for increased disclosure and target-setting are much more pointed than they were in 2020,” said Daniele Vitale, the London-based head of governance for Georgeson, which advises corporations on shareholder views. COMPANIES WARM THE WORLD While more and more companies are issuing net-zero targets for 2050, in line with goals set out in the 2015 Paris climate accord, few have published interim targets. A study here from sustainability consultancy South Pole showed just 10% of 120 firms it polled, from varied sectors, had done so. “There’s too much ambiguity and lack of clarity on the exact journey and route that companies are going to take, and how quickly we can actually expect movement,” said Mirza Baig, head of investment stewardship at Aviva Investors. Data analysis from Swiss bank J Safra Sarasin, shared with Reuters, shows the scale of the collective challenge. Sarasin studied the emissions of the roughly 1,500 firms in the MSCI World Index, a broad proxy for the world’s listed companies. It calculated that if companies globally did not curb their emissions rate, they would raise global temperatures by more than 3 degrees Celsius by 2050. That is well short of the Paris accord goal of limiting warming to “well below” 2C, preferably 1.5C. At an industry level, there are large differences, the study found: If every company emitted at the same level as the energy sector, for example, the temperature rise would be 5.8C, with the materials sector - including metals and mining - on course for 5.5C and consumer staples - including food and drink - 4.7C. The calculations are mostly based on companies’ reported emissions levels in 2019, the latest full year analysed, and cover Scope 1 and 2 emissions - those caused directly by a company, plus the production of the electricity it buys and uses. ‘TAILWIND ON CLIMATE’ Sectors with high carbon emissions are likely to face the most investor pressure for clarity. In January, for example, ExxonMobil - long an energy industry laggard in setting climate goals - disclosed its Scope 3 emissions, those connected to use of its products. This prompted the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) to withdraw a shareholder resolution seeking the information. Calpers’ Simiso Nzima, head of corporate governance for the $444 billion pension fund, said he saw 2021 as a promising year for climate concerns, with a higher likelihood of other companies also reaching agreements with activist investors. “You’re seeing a tailwind in terms of climate change.” However, Exxon has asked the US.jSecurities and Exchange Commission for permission to skip votes on four other shareholder proposals, three related to climate matters, according to filings to the SEC. They cite reasons such as the company having already “substantially implemented” reforms. An Exxon spokesman said it had ongoing discussions with its stakeholders, which led to the emissions disclosure. He declined to comment on the requests to skip votes, as did the SEC, which had not yet ruled on Exxon’s requests as of late Tuesday. ‘A CRUMB BUT A SIGN’ Given the influence of large shareholders, activists are hoping for more from BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor with $8.7 trillion under management, which has promised a tougher approach to climate issues. Last week, BlackRock called for boards to come up with a climate plan, release emissions data and make robust short-term it targets, or risk seeing directors voted down at the AGM. It backed a resolution at Procter & Gamble’s AGM, unusually held in October, which asked the company to report on efforts to eliminate deforestation in its supply chains, helping it pass with 68% support. “It’s a crumb but we hope it’s a sign of things to come” from BlackRock, said Kyle Kempf, spokesman for resolution sponsor Green Century Capital Management in Boston. Asked for more details about its 2021 plans, such as if it might support Hohn’s resolutions, a BlackRock spokesman referred to prior guidance that it would “follow a case-by-case approach in assessing each proposal on its merits”. Europe’s biggest asset manager, Amundi, said last week it, too, would back more resolutions. Vanguard, the world’s second-biggest investor with $7.1 trillion under management, seemed less certain, though. Lisa Harlow, Vanguard’s stewardship leader for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, called it “really difficult to say” whether its support for climate resolutions this year would be higher than its traditional rate of backing one in ten. ‘THERE WILL BE FIGHTS’ Britain’s Hohn, founder of $30 billion hedge fund TCI, aims to establish a regular mechanism to judge climate progress via annual shareholder votes. In a “Say on Climate” resolution, investors ask a company to provide a detailed net zero plan, including short-term targets, and put it to an annual non-binding vote. If investors aren’t satisfied, they will then be in a stronger position to justify voting down directors, the plan holds. Early signs suggest the drive is gaining momentum. Hohn has already filed at least seven resolutions through TCI. The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, which Hohn founded, is working with campaign groups and asset managers to file more than 100 resolutions over the next two AGM seasons in the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia. “Of course, not all companies will support the Say on Climate,” Hohn told pension funds and insurance companies in November. “There will be fights, but we can win the votes.” | 2 |
LONDON Oct 20, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Prospects for a new UN climate pact in December remained in the balance after talks among big emitters on Monday but with signs of action by Brazil, India and Australia. "It's more do-able today than yesterday," British energy and climate secretary Ed Miliband said at the close of a two-day meeting of 17 emitters that account for about 80 percent of world greenhouse gases. "It remains in the balance in my view". Todd Stern, Washington's climate envoy who co-hosted the meeting, echoed hopes of a deal despite sluggish progress in 190-nation talks meant to end with a new pact to fight global warming in Copenhagen in December. "More progress needs to be made but we think that something can be done," he said. Both he and Miliband said there was no "Plan B", for example to delay Copenhagen inot 2010. Earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged world leaders to go to Copenhagen for the Dec. 7-18 meeting, up to now intended as a gathering for environment ministers. "Leaders must engage directly to break the impasse," he told the talks. "I've said I'll go to Copenhagen, and I'm encouraging them to make the same commitment." Talks are bogged down in disputes between industrialised and developing countries over how to share out curbs on emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. Just one week of formal talks remains before Copenhagen, in Barcelona in early November. BALI TO COPENHAGEN The U.N. talks launched in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 are stuck on how big carbon cuts recession-hit rich countries should make by 2020 and how much they should pay developing countries to fight global warming. Away from the meeting, Brazil, Australia and India took steps that could help inch towards a deal. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that Brazil wanted to forge a common position among all Amazon basin countries for Copenhagen and was considering inviting presidents of all Amazon states to discuss the issue on Nov. 26. Brazil is considering freezing its total greenhouse gas emissions at 2005 levels. In Canberra, Australian Climate Minister Penny Wong said the government would bring carbon trade legislation back to parliament on Thursday and will demand a vote on the controversial laws before the end of November. The conservative opposition on Sunday demanded changes to the scheme, already rejected once by the upper house, to avert a second defeat that would give Prime Minister Kevin Rudd an excuse to call a possible snap election. The government, which is ahead in opinion polls and could benefit from an election, wants to start carbon trading from July 2011, putting a price on greenhouse gas and helping curb emissions in one of world's highest per capita polluters. And an Indian newspaper said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh wanted New Delhi to accept curbs on the country's rising carbon emissions, dropping insistence that they should hinge on new finance and technology from rich nations. "We should be pragmatic and constructive, not argumentative and polemical," The Times of India quoted Ramesh as writing in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India, China and other big developing countries fear they will be hard hit by climate change and say it is in their national interest to limit the effects of more extreme droughts, floods, rising seas and melting glaciers that feed major rivers. A big sticking point for Copenhagen is that the United States, the only industrialised country outside the current Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions, is struggling to pass carbon-cutting laws by December. "I don't want to speculate about what happens if it doesn't go all the way," Stern said. And in Cape Town, South Africa pointed to one area of soaring emissions -- next year's soccer World Cup. Emissions would leap almost tenfold from a 2006 benchmark set by Germany, partly because air travel would be added to the count. | 0 |
Australia, criticised as a Kyoto Protocol holdout, on Wednesday stepped up its demands for the climate pact to be scrapped, saying 'Old Kyoto' belonged in the 'pages of climate change history'. Canberra, which signed but refused to ratify Kyoto, would meet its targets under the pact, despite warnings by Australia's Climate Institute that Greenhouse Gas emissions were set to rise sharply, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. But Kyoto should be replaced with a global agreement which included emerging heavyweights India and China, as well as the world's biggest polluter, the United States, Turnbull said. "In my view the United States will never ratify the protocol as it stands," Turnbull told Australia's National Press Club. "Whatever the accounting washup of Kyoto may be, the fact is that the protocol's first commitment period, beginning next year, is rapidly moving into the pages of climate change history." The Kyoto Protocol, which sets emissions caps for many wealthy signatory countries while setting none for poorer ones such as China, will expire in 2012. Australia, the world's biggest exporter of coal, has refused to ratify the pact or set binding cuts on carbon emissions, saying the move would unfairly hurt the economy. Turnbull said on Wednesday that Canberra would spend A$18.5 million ($15.2 million) in energy-hungry China to help cut the country's emissions by capturing methane from underground mining and using it for electricity generation. China, which along with the United States, Australia, Japan, India and South Korea is a member of a rival Kyoto pact, rejected emissions caps, saying they may hurt growth. Turnbull, who champions practical measures to fight climate change rather than symbolic pacts like Kyoto, said the protocol had also ignored the need to stop deforestation in developing countries like Indonesia and Brazil. "It's no wonder Kyoto's results have been so anaemic," he said. The independent Climate Institute last week said Australia, the world's biggest polluter per capita, would pass its cap of 108 percent of 1990-level greenhouse emissions -- a charge Turnbull rejected on Wednesday with the latest 2005 figures. Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne said Turnbull was trying to bury the bad news that energy and transport emissions had risen in the last two years amid the country's mining and commodity export boom. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard argues climate change solutions need to be globally agreed rather than limited like 'Old Kyoto' to industrialised, mainly European, nations. But with the government facing re-election later in the year and opinion polls showing climate change is a major issue for 80 percent of voters, Howard has unveiled a range of environment measures to bolster his green credentials. Australia is expected to make measures to combat climate change the centrepiece of the May 8 Budget, with the government having already flagged spending A$10 billion to reform water use amid a decade of crippling drought. | 0 |
The Copernicus Climate Change Service, the first major international weather agency to report on conditions in 2017, said temperatures averaged 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.46 Fahrenheit) at the Earth's surface - 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial times. Last year was slightly "cooler than the warmest year on record, 2016, and warmer than the previous second warmest year, 2015", it said. Temperature records date back to the late 19th century. "It's striking that 16 of the 17 warmest years have all been this century," Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of Copernicus, told Reuters, adding there was overwhelming scientific consensus that man-made emissions were stoking the warming trend.
The Copernicus study is in line with a projection by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in November that 2017 would be second or third warmest behind 2016. In 2016, an extra dose of heat came from El Nino, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean every few years. But last year was the hottest year without an El Nino, according to Copernicus, run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It pointed to a retreat of sea ice in the Arctic and prolonged dry conditions in southern Europe that helped trigger wildfires in Portugal and Spain in 2017 as examples of the sort of disruptions that are becoming more frequent in a warming climate. ‘Bundle up’ US President Donald Trump, who doubts that climate change has a human cause, tweeted on Dec. 29 about bone-chilling cold in the United States and cast doubt on the need for action to limit emissions. "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!" he wrote. Trump plans to quit the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has the backing of almost 200 nations and seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times, ideally 1.5 C (2.7 F). High winds and heavy show barrelled into the US northeast on Thursday, closing schools and government offices and disrupting travel. Data on Thursday compiled by the University of Maine and the Climate Change Institute showed temperatures in the eastern United States, Greenland and parts of central Asia were indeed colder than usual, while most of the rest of the world was warmer. Earlier on Thursday, German reinsurer Munich Re said insurers would have to pay claims of around $135 billion for 2017, the most ever, following a spate of hurricanes, earthquakes and fires in North America. Thepaut said rising sea levels and higher temperatures that can produce more rainfall may have aggravated Atlantic hurricanes, even though it was hard to detect links between individual storms and man-made climate change. The WMO will publish its review of 2017 temperatures, also drawing on Copernicus and other US, British and Japanese data, in about two weeks. | 0 |
COPENHAGEN, Dec 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Prospects for a strong UN climate change deal grew more remote on Thursday at the climax of two years of talks, with developed and developing nations deadlocked on sharing cuts in greenhouse gases. Dozens of heads of state were arriving in the Danish capital to address the December 7-18 conference, which is meant to sign a new pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions on Friday. Ministers have struggled to craft a coherent text for the leaders to sign because they have so far failed to close a rift over how far developing world should join industrialised countries in cutting carbon emissions. A Danish proposal to break the talks into smaller groups to speed up progress foundered on opposition from poor countries, backed by top greenhouse gas emitter China. "There was no progress overnight in consultations on how to consult," said a source who declined to be identified. "We are in serious trouble. There is hope that the arrival of Lula (Brazil) and the Chinese PM might unblock this." China told participants it saw no possibility of achieving a detailed accord to tackle global warming, an official from another nation involved in the talks said early on Thursday. The official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters the Chinese had instead suggested issuing "a short political declaration of some sort," but it was not clear what that declaration would say. China was still committed to the negotiations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. Jiang told a regular news conference that "China hopes the Copenhagen meeting is successful, and has always taken a constructive attitude." Talks on Wednesday had stalled after some developing nations rejected a proposal by the Danish hosts to try and simplify complex drafts by convening a small ministerial group to narrow long lists of negotiating options. China also wanted all countries involved. Some developed nations ministers complained that the talks could be strangled on issues of procedure. "People can kill this process, kill the agreement with process arguments. It is very dangerous at the moment," said Britain's energy and climate minister Ed Miliband late on Wednesday, declining to name any countries. LEADERS COMING The Copenhagen summit is meant to agree a global climate deal, as a basis for agreement on a new treaty to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol after 2012, to avoid dangerous climate change and drive a shift to a greener global economy less dependent on fossil fuels. About 120 heads of state and government will join the talks on Thursday and Friday, with U.S. President Barack Obama planning to arrive on Friday morning. Speakers are lined up to address the summit until the small hours of the morning, including political heavyweights such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. While the overall picture appears bleak, there has been some progress in areas critical to reaching a deal. Africa dramatically scaled back its expectations for climate aid from rich nations on Wednesday, and Japan pledged about $11 billion (6.8 billion pounds) in public funds to 2012 to help poor countries adapt to a warmer world and cut their emissions. Substantial progress is stalled on sharing the cost of emissions cuts, and a disagreement over whether to craft one new climate treaty or extend the present Kyoto Protocol and add an extra pact involving more nations. Kyoto binds the emissions of nearly 40 industrialised countries, but not the United States which never ratified the pact, and does not require action of developing nations. Under a new deal, the United States wants international scrutiny of performance by developing nations against targets to slow growth in their emissions, something they have rejected. | 0 |
Global warming will stifle life-giving microscopic plants that live in the surface layer of the oceans, cutting marine food production and accelerating climate change, according to a study published on Wednesday. Phytoplankton are not only the foundation of the marine food chain, but every day they take more than 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, scientists from Oregon State University, NASA and four other institutions said. But as global warming heats the surface layer of the ocean it becomes lighter and therefore separated from the cooler depths from which the phytoplankton get many of their nutrients. This cuts their numbers, not only reducing the food in the oceans but slashing the amount of carbon dioxide they take from the air and therefore accelerating the climate warming process. "Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a key part of global warming," said lead researcher Michael Behrenfeld. "This study shows that as the climate warms, phytoplankton production goes down, but this also means that carbon dioxide uptake by ocean plants will decrease ... making the problem worse," he added. Despite their tiny size, phytoplankton account for about half of the photosynthesis on Earth -- converting vast quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon as food for the planet's marine ecosystem. The study, published in the science journal Nature, comes from a decade-long analysis of the oceans by NASA's SeaWiFS satellite which measured the changing colors of the waters caused by changing levels of phytoplankton. The higher the concentrations of these tiny plants, the greener the water. The scientists -- who also came from the University of California/Santa Barbara, Princeton University, Rutgers University and the University of Maine -- found local variations but a global drop in numbers with higher temperatures. "This clearly showed that overall ocean productivity decreases when the climate warms," Behrenfeld said. Scientists predict that global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, due mainly to carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport. But they also fear that beyond two degrees of warming the planet's climate could trip the so-called feedback mechanism with the rising heat releasing even more greenhouse gases than being produced by human activities. A comprehensive study last month by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern found that acting now to tackle climate change could cost one percent of global economic output -- a figure that rises 20-fold if action is delayed. The higher the concentrations of these tiny plants, the greener the water. The scientists -- who also came from the University of California/Santa Barbara, Princeton University, Rutgers University and the University of Maine -- found local variations but a global drop in numbers with higher temperatures. "This clearly showed that overall ocean productivity decreases when the climate warms," Behrenfeld said. Scientists predict that global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, due mainly to carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport. But they also fear that beyond two degrees of warming the planet's climate could trip the so-called feedback mechanism with the rising heat releasing even more greenhouse gases than being produced by human activities. A comprehensive study last month by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern found that acting now to tackle climate change could cost one percent of global economic output -- a figure that rises 20-fold if action is delayed. | 0 |
Global warming's effects look most serious for ageing and urban populations and people with chronic health conditions. And Europe and the eastern Mediterranean are more vulnerable than Africa and southeast Asia due to many older people living in densely populated cities, the researchers said in an analysis in The Lancet medical journal. "Trends in the impacts of climate change, exposures and vulnerabilities show unacceptably high risk for health, now and in the future," said Hilary Graham, a professor at Britain's York University who co-led the work. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change involved work from 27 academic institutions in disciplines from health to engineering to ecology, plus expertise from the United Nations and intergovernmental agencies across the world. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), climate change affects many factors influencing health, including clean air and water, food and shelter. It estimates that between 2030 and 2050, climate change could cause an additional 250,000 deaths a year due to malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria and heat stress. The report found that in 2017, some 157 million vulnerable people were exposed to heatwaves. Some 153 billion hours of labour were lost last year due to heat exposure, it said. It also found that small changes in temperature and rainfall can result in large changes in the transmission of certain infectious diseases spread via water and mosquitoes, such as cholera, malaria and dengue fever. Howard Frumkin, a climate and health specialist at the Wellcome Trust which part-funded the work, said the findings were clear. | 0 |
The tiny sun-dimming effect could offset about one percent of warming worldwide and up to 30 percent locally such as over vast northern forests in Siberia, Canada or the Nordic nations, they wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience. While proportionally small, some scientists said the study provided further evidence of the importance of protecting forests, which help to slow climate change by absorbing greenhouse gases as they grow and to preserve wildlife. Observations of forests from 11 sites around the world showed that plants emitted tiny particles that float on the wind as temperatures warm and act as seeds for water droplets that create clouds, they wrote. Clouds' white tops in turn reflect sunlight back into space and offset warming, they wrote. The study focused on forests in Europe, North America, Russia and southern Africa. The effect is believed to be smaller over far hotter tropical forests such as in the Amazon or the Congo basin. "It's a small effect - one percent is not much," said lead author Pauli Paasonen of the University of Helsinki and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. "If temperatures were to increase by 1 degree without this effect, they'd rise 0.99 degrees with it," he told Reuters of a study that included researchers in the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Hungary and Sweden. SUNSHADE Many other tiny aerosols, such as human pollution from factories, cars and power plants, also have a sun-dimming effect that may be slowing the pace of climate change, blamed mainly on emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.But there has been uncertainty about the role of nature, and of plants' emissions of gases such as monoterpenes. "Everyone knows the scent of the forest," Ari Asmi, a University of Helsinki researcher who also worked on the study, said in a statement. "That scent is made up of these gases." It is unclear why plants emit more monoterpenes at higher temperatures - it may be a side-effect of trees' natural air conditioning to reduce heat. "Forests are providing an additional cooling. This is another reason why we should conserve and protect forests," said Dominick Spracklen, an expert on plants and climate change at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the study. But the damaging effects of warming on forests, such as more wildfires or insect pests, may exceed tiny benefits of more clouds that would only come from healthy forests, he said. Spracklen said plants' cooling effect was tantalising evidence for people who believe the planet somehow acts as a self-regulating organism for life, sometimes known as the Gaia hypothesis. One idea launched in 1987 was that warmer temperatures spur the growth of more algae in the upper oceans. These tiny plants would in turn release more of the chemical dimethyl sulphide that seeds clouds to reflect sunlight. "No one has yet proved that this effect exists," he said. The UN panel of leading climate scientists says that human emissions of greenhouse gases are driving up world temperatures and will lead to ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. It says that it is at least 90 percent certain that human activities, rather than natural variations in the climate, are to blame for most of the warming in the past half-century. | 0 |
For many bankers and traders, the days of company perks such as sleek limos, cushy business class seats, and fat steaks are gone. Multibillion dollar write-downs have forced trading desk heads and senior bankers to chip away at small comforts to reduce expenses and strengthen the bottom line. Just ask Ron Karp, a controller at Corporate Transportation Group, which provides rides home to Wall Streeters working late. "The phone doesn't ring as much as it used to. If you're firing people you're not going to send them around in limos," Karp said. The slowdown has been visible over the past month at car services city-wide, he added. Cutbacks are happening in individual departments, rather than companywide as seen early this decade after the tech bubble burst. But affected employees feel the pinch anyway. Credit Suisse has reduced some cell phone subsidies and done away with car vouchers. Merrill Lynch has banned business class travel for some divisions, Goldman Sachs has pulled free soda, and JP Morgan has upped the requirements for free meals and car rides. Slashing small perks cuts costs, but more importantly it signals that workers should keep expenses down in areas under their control. "Banks cut perks to reinforce to employees that the firm's under pressure," Brad Hintz, an equity analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said. "It tells people to use their heads and watch expenses." A HARSH CLIMATE Financial institutions have announced more than $300 billion of write-downs, losses and credit provisions since mid-2007. That has spurred big layoffs, including over 23,000 announced in April, with about half the cuts coming out of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. "The usual pattern is to accelerate layoffs and cut operating costs as much as they can," said Roy Smith, a professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the Stern School of Business and a former partner at Goldman Sachs. Banks followed this protocol in 1987, 1990-91, 1994, 1998 and 2000-2002, he said. The question remains whether the cuts will end as the outlook for Wall Street firms improves, with the AMEX Security Broker Dealer Index .XBD rising over 30 percent to 181 since its March 17 lows. TIGHTENING THE BELT Managers forced to make a choice prefer to cut comforts rather than personnel so that they are equipped to take advantage of any rebound in the markets. Hence, at Credit Suisse, some divisions have placed a strict $30 limit on meals ordered by traders working late, according to a person familiar with the matter. Employees can no longer choose dinner from any restaurant in town. Instead, all catering goes through online service SeamlessWeb, so that managers can better monitor food orders. Gone are some employees' free personal cell phone bills: the firm now only subsidizes a portion. Car vouchers are history: traders must pay for rides with corporate cards. Some divisions at Merrill Lynch, which recently posted its third straight quarterly loss, have pushed employees to the back of the airplane: they've eliminated first class and business class travel for all domestic flights, according to one equity trader familiar with the matter. Spokespersons for Credit Suisse and Merrill said the changes were not implemented across each company, but by individual teams or divisions. Even firms relatively unscathed by the credit crunch are slashing expenses. At JPMorgan, which acquired Bear Stearns for a fire sale price in March, one bond trader said some employees must work later to be eligible for a car ride home, while others must stay at work for a specified time after ordering food on the company account. A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment on the issue. Free soda stopped flowing on certain Goldman Sachs trading floors a few weeks ago, a company spokesperson said. Cost cuts can go too far though, and companies may end up paying in other ways, said Jeff Visithpanich, a principal at compensation consultant Johnson Associates. "Maybe it looks good on paper, but what you get is a number of people taking longer breaks to go downstairs to Starbucks." | 3 |
Although he formally
retired from public life in 2010 — promising to quietly sip tea with his wife
and visit his grandchildren — Tutu remained a powerful advocate for what he saw
as right and fair, including a host of causes such as social and climate
justice. He also stood against
corruption and lack of accountability under the African National Congress, and
against discrimination, calling out the Anglican Church for not taking a
stronger stance for gay rights. “If God, as they say,
is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God,” he told the BBC in 2007, after the
election of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in the United States led the
Anglican Church to grapple with the issue. Gay rights later
became a personal cause for Tutu. When his daughter
Mpho Tutu, an Anglican priest, married a woman, her longtime partner, Marceline
van Furth, in 2015, he was publicly supportive. When their marriage led the
church to revoke her license, and to her leaving the priesthood, he also
supported her choice. Still, Tutu remained
loyal to the church, said Mamphela Ramphele, a former anti-apartheid activist
who spoke Sunday on behalf of the family. Although he was
saddened by the church's rules, Ramphele said, Tutu followed them at his
daughter’s wedding. “He was not allowed
to bless them, and he followed the precepts of the church at their marriage,”
Ramphele said. Tutu also used his
post-church platform, mainly the Desmond and Leah Legacy Foundation, to speak
out against “adaptation apartheid,” the growing divide between rich and poor
countries in responding to climate change. Through the
foundation, he added his voice to the calls for climate justice and
accountability from governments and big business. Last year, he met
with former Vice President Al Gore in Cape Town to discuss divestment from
fossil fuels. And his foundation invited Ugandan climate justice activist
Vanessa Nakate to deliver a lecture in his name, alongside Christiana Figueres,
executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change. In a video message
before the lecture, Tutu called environmental destruction “the human rights
challenge of our time.” Over the years, he
also lent his name to other causes, including the promotion of social cohesion,
which is the focus of the Desmond Tutu Peace Center, and to HIV research. At the height of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic, when South Africa’s public health response was marred by
inconsistency and malaise, Tutu’s name helped a research centre in Cape Town
raise its profile, allowing it to become one of the leading institutions of its
kind. Toward the end of
apartheid in the early 1990s, it was Tutu who coined the phrase “the rainbow
nation” to describe the optimism of a multiracial South Africa. But in later
years, he did not temper his criticism of the new government or the African
National Congress. Although he enjoyed a
close friendship with the party’s leader and South Africa’s first Black leader,
President Nelson Mandela — the two men famously made fun of each other’s
sartorial choices — Tutu was critical of Mandela’s successors. He was
particularly vociferous in his disappointment in President Jacob Zuma, who
resigned in 2018 and whose administration was tarnished by corruption scandals. Indeed, in 2011, Tutu
was openly incensed when the South African government under Zuma refused to
grant the Dalai Lama a visa to attend Tutu’s 80th birthday celebrations. “Our government,
representing me — representing me — says it will not support Tibetans who are
being oppressed viciously by the Chinese,” Tutu said in a news conference,
visibly angry. The South African
government, believed to be currying favour with the Chinese government, denied
a visa to the Tibetan spiritual leader three times, in 2009 and again in 2014,
when he was to attend a summit meeting of Nobel laureates alongside Tutu. Tutu’s critiques of
the governing African National Congress continued, and in 2013, he said that he
would not be voting for the party because it had failed to deliver on its
promise of social justice. His rift with the
former liberation movement was also evident later that year when Mandela died.
The government at first snubbed Tutu, despite his prominence and their
relationship, but then invited him to speak at the public memorial service. In May, in one of his
last public appearances, Tutu received his coronavirus vaccine shot in the hope
that it would encourage others to do the same while dispelling misinformation,
which has hampered vaccine uptake in South Africa. “All my life, I have
tried to do the right thing and, today, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is
definitely the right thing to do,” he said after getting the jab, adding that
it was also a “wonderful” chance to get out of the house. “Believe me, when you
get to our age,” he said, “little needles worry you far less than bending over
does.” ©2021 The New York
Times Company | 0 |
a series of anti-poverty targets set at the UN in 2000 – he painted a mixed picture and called for efforts to help those most in need. "Our Millennium Goals remain achievable – so long as we help the poorest nations break free of the traps that ensnare them." The secretary-general also said the UN Human Rights Council must "live up to its responsibilities as the torchbearer for human rights consistently and equitably around the world." Ban, who since last week has been conducting intensive diplomatic activities on key global issues and crises, offered a ringing endorsement of multilateralism. "An increasingly interdependent world recognises that the challenges of tomorrow are best dealt with through the UN. Indeed, they can only be dealt with through the UN," he said. Some 193 speakers are expected to participate in this year's general debate, including more than 70 heads of State and nearly 30 heads of government. The debate is scheduled to continue until 3 October. The opening of the assembly's general debate follows high-level meetings in recent days on climate change, the Darfur conflict, Iraq, Afghanistan and the situation in the Middle East. Ban is also expected to conduct bilateral meetings with over 100 heads of State or government or ministers during the next two weeks. | 0 |
The world's first zero-emission polar research station opened in Antarctica on Sunday and was welcomed by scientists as proof that alternative energy is viable even in the coldest regions. Pioneers of Belgium's Princess Elisabeth station in East Antarctica said if a station could rely on wind and solar power in Antarctica -- mostly a vast, icy emptiness -- it would undercut arguments by sceptics that green power is not reliable. "If we can build such a station in Antarctica we can do that elsewhere in our society. We have the capacity, the technology, the knowledge to change our world," Alain Hubert, the station's project director, told Reuters at the inauguration ceremony. Global warming, spurred by greenhouse gas emissions, has prompted governments to look for alternative energy sources. And renewable energies are gaining a foothold in Antarctica, despite problems in designing installations to survive bone-chilling cold and winter darkness. Wind and even solar power are catching on -- solar panels on the Antarctic Peninsula can collect as much energy in a year as many places in Europe. Thomas Leysen, chairman of Belgium's Umicore, a leading manufacturer of catalysts for cars who attended the ceremony, said it made good business sense for companies to help protect the environment. "The global credit crisis is a result of unsustainable behaviour. We can't deal in an unsustainable way with our planet otherwise we will also face a crisis which will be even bigger than the credit crisis," he said. Constructed over two years, the steel-encased station uses micro-organisms and decomposition to enable scientists to re-use shower and toilet water up to five times before discarding it down a crevasse. Wind turbines on the Utsteinen mountain ridge and solar panels on the bug-like, three-story building ensure the base has power and hot water. Even the geometry of windows help conserve energy. Scientists monitoring global warming predict higher temperatures could hasten melting at Antarctica, the world's largest repository of fresh water, raising sea levels and altering shorelines. If Antarctica ever melted, world sea levels would rise by about 57 metres. This will have affect some 146 million people living in low-lying coastal regions less than one metre above current sea levels, researchers said. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said failure to reduce emissions by 50 to 85 percent by the middle of this century could be catastrophic. "Globally we will be in a temperature increase zone that the earth has not known for the past two to three million years," he said. | 0 |
Mohsin passed away during treatment in Dhaka's Combined Military Hospital at 9:30am Monday, Selina Haque, additional secretary to the defence ministry, confirmed. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has expressed deep shock at the death of Mohsin and offered her condolences to the bereaved family. Mohsin was admitted to CMH on Jun 2 after testing positive for the coronavirus infection. Later, he was moved into intensive and received plasma therapy as his condition deteriorated. The younger brother of former principal secretary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, Mohsin was promoted to the rank of senior secretary on Jun 14 while he was hospitalised. Born in Cumilla in 1963, Mohsin secured an MSc in Soil Science from Dhaka University. Later, he completed MA in Governance Studies from Northern University in Dhaka. A member of the 1985 BCS batch, Mohsin served the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Industries, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the Prime Minister's Office in different capacities. He was the secretary to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change before his stint at the defence ministry. | 5 |
The top diplomats of Pakistan and India met in Islamabad on Thursday, emerging from talks to signal a joint resolve against militant extremism and hinting that more comprehensive discussions may be renewed. It was the second meeting in four months between Foreign Secretaries Salman Bashir and Nirupama Rao, of Pakistan and India, respectively. The two last met in New Delhi - the first official talks between the two sides since the 2008 Mumbai attacks - but those discussions were seen as having achieved little. On Thursday, however, both sides said the talks were marked by "a great deal of cordiality, sincerity and earnestness," that will pave the way for a more comprehensive dialogue, signalling a possible - and unexpected - thaw. "I believe we must work together to deal with that threat and we must deny terrorist elements any opportunity to derail the process of improvement of relations between our two countries," Rao told a joint news conference. Pakistan blog: blogs.reuters.com/Pakistan/ Security is high on India's list of concerns with Pakistan, with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of supporting militant groups in a bid to wrest control of India's part of Kashmir and check rising Indian influence in Afghanistan. Tackling militant groups such as Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)- blamed by India for the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people - has been a precondition of India for restarting comprehensive talks over water, Kashmir and other disputes. Pakistan has been reluctant to do so, and has done little against LeT's founder, Hafiz Saeed, who remains a free man. SOFTER INDIAN POSITION ON TALKS? Rao seemed to signal that India's position on future talks might be softening. "There was a lot of soul-searching here," she said. "The searchlight is on the future, not on the past." Pakistan welcomed the apparent softening of India's attitude. "After this engagement, I feel much more optimistic and confident about a good outcome at the ministerial level and good prospects for the two countries in terms of their relationship," Bashir said. Prime ministers Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan and Monmohan Singh of India met in Bhutan in April on the sidelines of a regional summit in a bid to restart talks between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The Mumbai attack pitched relations into a diplomatic deep-freeze. The renewed tension, along with the proxy war, is seen as hampering U.S.-led efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan. Rao said the two prime ministers had asked their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries to meet "as soon as possible to work out the modalities for restoring trust" and taking the dialogue forward. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the climate of talks had changed for the better and the two leaders had asked their officials to meet as frequently as possible. "I don't think either side was expecting such a positive turn in dialogue," Qureshi told reporters. "It was a step in the right direction and it was in the right spirit." While Thursday's meeting showed that both sides may be willing to focus on improving ties, there are also fears that strong domestic concerns may stop them from making the concessions needed for a breakthrough. One risk to normalising relations is that another major militant attack in India and the subsequent domestic political pressure could force the government to break off dialogue again. India's Intelligence Bureau issued an alert on a possible militant attack on Thursday. Local media reports, citing unnamed sources, said a militant strike was aimed at sabotaging talks. "A terror alert has been issued by the Intelligence Bureau," confirmed Onkar Kedia, a spokesman for the Home Ministry, speaking to Reuters by telephone. | 1 |
Developing nations might get help to build nuclear power plants under proposals at 170-nation climate talks in Bonn for expanding a fast-growing UN scheme for curbing greenhouse gases. Nuclear power is the most contentious option for widening a U.N. mechanism under which rich nations can invest abroad, for instance in an Indian wind farm or a hydropower dam in Peru, and get credit at home for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "It's one of the issues that needs to be considered," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said on Thursday of suggestions by countries including India and Canada at the June 2-13 talks of aid for atomic energy. Other proposals at the talks include giving credits for capturing and burying carbon dioxide, for instance from coal-fired power plants, or to do far more to encourage planting of forests that soak up carbon as they grow. Many nations and environmentalists oppose expanding the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to include nuclear power. The CDM is part of the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases running until 2012. "Nuclear power is not the energy of the future," said Martin Hiller of the WWF conservation group. "It should not be in the CDM. The CDM should be about renewable energy." He said nuclear power was too dangerous although it emitted almost none of the greenhouse gases associated with burning coal, oil and gas and which are blamed for heating the planet.
KYOTO No decisions on overhauling the CDM will be taken at the Bonn talks, part of a series of negotiations meant to end with a new long-term U.N. climate treaty by the end of 2009 to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. "I think nuclear power in the CDM is a non-starter for most delegations," one European delegate said. The debate reflects wide uncertainty about whether to turn to nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels in a fight to avert rising temperatures that could bring heatwaves, droughts, rising seas and more powerful cyclones. De Boer projected that the CDM could channel up to $100 billion a year towards developing nations in coming decades if industrialised countries agreed sweeping cuts in emissions and made half their reductions abroad. That was also based on the assumption that credits for averting greenhouse gas emissions would average $10 a tonne. So far the CDM has projects approved or under consideration that would avert a combined total of 2.7 billion tonnes of emissions by 2012, roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions of Japan, Germany and Britain. De Boer rejected criticisms that the CDM was badly flawed, for instance for handing huge profits to carbon traders and companies in China that destroy HFC 23, a powerful greenhouse gas that is a waste product from making refrigerants. "The fact that people have found a way to remove a powerful greenhouse gas and make a profit is not morally wrong," he said. "We've created a market mechanism and, guess what, it's working." Other criticisms of the scheme focus on whether or not funding has led to emissions cuts, or whether these would have happened anyway -- for example because of existing state support for wind power in China or India. | 2 |
Donor countries on Wednesday pledged a record $4.25 billion over the next four years for the Global Environment Facility, the world's largest public green fund that helps developing countries tackle climate change. The commitments by 30 donor countries during a session in Paris on Wednesday is a 52 percent increase in new resources for the facility. GEF Chief Executive Monique Barbut said the replenishment of funds is the first "tangible confirmation of financial commitments" made during international climate talks in Copenhagen in December. In Copenhagen, negotiators from industrialized and emerging nations sought to agree on the basic terms of a new global climate agreement in the run-up to the next summit in Cancun, Mexico in December. Part of the agreement was aimed at providing financing to developing countries to help them adapt to climate changes. Some of those funds will be directed through the GEF into projects implemented by UN agencies and development institutions like the World Bank. Barbut said about $1.35 billion of the new funds committed on Wednesday would be directed at tackling climate change. The rest will be used to better manage and expand protected and endangered areas, improve the management of trans-boundary water systems, reduce pollutants in land and water, and expanding and protecting the world's forests. The new funds are a "testimony to the international donor community's commitment to the environmental agenda," said Axel van Trotsenburg, the vice president for concessional finance and global partnerships at the World Bank. British climate change expert Nicholas Stern, speaking at the International Monetary Fund, called on world leaders to reach a political agreement on climate change at Cancun in order to lay the foundation for an international treaty in 2011. He said the agreement should set out how $30 billion in climate financing will be provided to developing nations over the next three years to adapt to climate change. It should also indicate how this initial support will be increased to $100 billion a year by 2020, in particular by introducing new and innovative sources of funding. The GEF has been replenished four times since its inception in 1991 starting with $2.02 billion in 1994, $2.75 billion in 1998, $2.92 billion in 2002 and $3.13 billion in 2006. To date, the facility has provided $8.7 billion in grants for more than 2,400 environmental projects in over 165 developing countries and emerging economies. | 0 |
The sandstorm, known as a calima in Spain, began covering much of the Iberian Peninsula on Tuesday morning, blanketing cars and buildings in a thick red dust and making it harder to breathe in the stiflingly dry air. A calima occurs when a burst of dusty, warm wind forms during sandstorms in the Sahara and then crosses over from the African desert. With rain forecast in Madrid on Thursday morning, residents were bracing themselves for a muddy rain. “There’s not much that can be done at this stage,” said Miguel Serrano, a porter in Madrid, who said he had been busy sweeping dust outside his building Wednesday. “Let’s now see whether the rain helps clean it up or at least makes the air more pleasant.” While Spain’s skies tended toward the apocalyptic, with blood orange colours reminiscent of areas besieged by wildfires, the effects were more subtle elsewhere. From the Swiss Alps to Britain, residents of countries far from the Sahara looked out their windows Wednesday and noticed something slightly off. It was not the end times, sky-on-fire hues of Spain, but rather a vague sense that this is not how it usually is. In London, it was as if the skies had been run through a sepia-toned filter, a slightly unsettling aura that could easily be taken as a harbinger of nothing good. It was the grey-orange colour the sky would be in a movie about a town recovering from nuclear fallout. Although the phenomenon isn’t new, the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service described this week’s events as “an exceptional Saharan dust episode,” with “very high concentrations of coarse particulate matter.” Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the service, said it was not unusual in February and March for wind to kick up sand in the Sahara, sending it on an international voyage as far away as South America. There were traces of Saharan dust in Britain last year as well, he said. But it is typically not as noticeable as it has been this week, he said. The storm was stronger because of “weather patterns being in the right configuration to bring it directly into Europe,” he said. In the coming days, the dust is expected to move north through Europe, reaching as far as Denmark, before fading by the weekend, the monitoring service said. “The current concentrations of particulate matter in the transports are exceptionally high, and some studies predict that climate change will result in even more intense Saharan dust storms in the future,” the service said in a statement. It added that the storms would threaten to worsen air quality, affect the frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and speed the decline of glaciers. On Wednesday, Spain’s health ministry called the sandstorm an emergency situation and issued a warning to residents to stay indoors and keep doors and windows shut to avoid inhaling particles, particularly people with existing breathing problems. The ministry also warned drivers to show caution because of diminished visibility. Overall, the ministry said people should “reduce all outdoor activity.” Spain is often on the front line of winds and storms coming from the Sahara and Sahel deserts because it is separated from Morocco only by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar. Still, weather experts said that it was rare for the calima to hit Madrid and other parts of central or northern Spain with such intensity. Episodes of calima are, however, relatively common in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the northwestern coast of Africa. In February 2020, the Canary Islands were hit by their worst sandstorm in 40 years, forcing airports to close at a time of year when the islands receive many tourists from northern Europe seeking a mild winter climate. ©2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana states, part of the farm belt that borders the capital, New Delhi, accounts for 30percent to 40percent of air pollution in October and November, according to air-quality monitoring agency SAFAR. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration set out to tackle the problem by establishing a fund to help farmers get rid of rice paddy straw, left out in the field by mechanised harvesters, by using machines. It has taken 22.49 billion rupees ($302 million) and four years but the plan aimed at stopping farmers torching their crop waste has failed to have any measurable impact on air quality, with New Delhi's again in the "very poor" category this month, as in previous years, SAFAR data showed.
A layer of dust blankets a street at Postogola in Dhaka. Photo: Mahmud Zaman Ovi
In the Karnal district of Haryana, 117 km (73 miles) north of New Delhi, dozens of farmers from 12 villages said that the authorities' failure to iron out glitches in the plan and the prohibitive prices of the equipment had made it difficult for them to either buy or hire it. A layer of dust blankets a street at Postogola in Dhaka. Photo: Mahmud Zaman Ovi "The subsidy plan looks good on paper but the officials have failed to address our practical problems," said Kishan Lal, a grain grower. "Despite the subsidy, the machines are beyond our reach." A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Two government officials, who both declined to be identified, acknowledged that the plan has not put an end to stubble burning and said it would take time. Under the plan, individual farmers can get a 50 percent subsidy and farm cooperatives an 80 percent subsidy to buy the machines for cutting, collecting and hauling away compressed paddy straw. Other than the subsidy offered by the federal government, since 2018 Punjab state has spent 10.45 billion rupees on crop waste management.
A thick layer of dust covers the air of Road No. 27 in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi as sewerage repair work drags on. Photo: Mahmud Zaman Ovi
Farmers said the three pieces of machinery needed cost 250,000 rupees to 350,000 rupees, and they also need to buy at least three tractors and two trolleys. A tractor and trolley - not covered under the subsidy programme - cost about 550,000 and 300,000 rupees, respectively. A thick layer of dust covers the air of Road No. 27 in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi as sewerage repair work drags on. Photo: Mahmud Zaman Ovi Also, farmers need to first pay upfront and then claim the subsidy, which take up to 10 months, said farmer Jagdish Singh. To be eligible for the subsidy, farmers need to buy the machines only from select government-approved shops, which often sell the equipment at a premium, farmers said. 'RACE AGAINST TIME'
Last month, growers from three villages - Raipur Jattan, Shahjahanpur and Gagsina - pooled their money to buy one set of the machines but soon found it was insufficient to handle a combined 9,000 acres of farmland spread across the villages. "The machines can barely cover 200 to 300 acres in 20 days," said farmer Rakesh Singh. "Forget about three villages, this machine is not sufficient even for one. We burn the residue as we race against time to plant wheat." After harvesting rice, farmers have a short window of about 20 days to plant wheat, and late sowing means lower yields. A sharp rise in rice production and yields in India, the world's biggest exporter of the grain, has exacerbated the problem of crop waste, with Punjab and Haryana generating more than 27 million tonnes of rice straw a year. "The plan has failed to address the problem because most farmers can't buy such expensive machines," said Sunil Dahiya, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Severe dust pollution adds to commuters' woes on the ruptured Mariner's Road in Chattogram's Firingi Bazar area. Dust pollution increases in winter. Photo: Suman Babu
The two government officials argued that the transition to mechanised crop-waste management would be a slow process. Encouraging power, paper and sugar producers to use the rice straw as fuel could also be a viable solution, they said. Severe dust pollution adds to commuters' woes on the ruptured Mariner's Road in Chattogram's Firingi Bazar area. Dust pollution increases in winter. Photo: Suman Babu "Instead of turning Punjab and Haryana into a junkyard of these machines, the government should pay farmers 200 rupees for every 100 kg of rice straw which can be used as a feed stock for many industries," said agriculture economist Devinder Sharma. | 0 |
BEIJING, Fri Nov 7,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global financial gloom will make citizens of rich nations reluctant to use their taxes to fight global warming and any plan to help poor nations should make the polluters pay, a top UN climate official said. His warning cast doubt on a Chinese proposal to ask the world's rich nations to devote up to 1 percent of their total economic worth to pay for cleaner expansion in the poor world. "It is undeniable that the financial crisis will have an impact on the climate change negotiations," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the UN Climate Change Secretariat. More than 190 nations have agreed to seek a new UN treaty by the end of 2009 to try to cut greenhouse gases from human activity and slow rising temperatures bringing more heatwaves, droughts, more powerful storms and rising sea levels. "If we go to citizens under the current circumstances...and say 'I'm increasing your tax burden in order to pay for climate policy', that might not go down very well," he told Reuters. The solution, he said, was to directly target the polluters as a source of revenue to help developing countries. Speaking ahead of a major conference on climate technology transfer in Beijing, de Boer warned the rich world that under a roadmap for a climate deal to replace the current Kyoto Protocol, they had to create revenue to help developing nations fund greener growth. The plan agreed in Bali last year committed poor countries to curbing emissions if rich governments helped with technology so they did not have to sacrifice economic growth. De Boer said the developed world has focused on commitments to cut emissions as part of the pact to be finalised at a high-level meeting in Copenhagen next year but not paid sufficient attention to technology transfer. He praised China's leadership in negotiations over recent years, and its effort to firm up demands for technology. "This is a great opportunity for the country that has put so much emphasis on this issue to really focus the debate on how technology transfer can be part of the long-term climate change response ... (and) create the institutional arrangements that will finally make this rather elusive concept find a practical base." NEW IMPETUS De Boer said while the financial crisis threatened global efforts to tackle global warming it could also give impetus to talks aimed at forging a new climate-change pact. The crisis has also highlighted the benefits of a trading system, currently favoured by most rich nations, that sets pollution limits but allows companies to buy and sell quotas to meet their targets. The auction of credits to pollute could fund cleaner development in poor nations, he said. "This offers the opportunity to generate resources for international co-operation from within the climate change regime...without having to go to finance ministers them to raise income taxes or other taxes to generate that revenue." A flat carbon tax would be more efficient than the current system, but far more complicated to implement, he said. | 0 |
Did you forget to empty the stale water in the bottom of your flower pot? In tropical Singapore, you could be fined S$100 if environmental inspectors find mosquito larvae in your home because of such carelessness. Draconian measures, such as giving inspectors the right to enter people's homes to check on the status of their flower pots, have helped Singapore eradicate malaria. But while these tactics have reined in the collection of stagnant water which provides a breeding ground for the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito, they have proved less effective in tackling dengue fever, which is carried by the Aedes mosquito. "With malaria, you take care of the brackish water and it's OK," said S. Satish Appoo, head of the National Environment Agency's (NEA) environmental health department. Singapore was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organisation in 1982. "Development has helped to eliminate indigenous cases of malaria, but with urbanisation you have an increased risk of dengue because the Aedes mosquito is an urban insect and very well adjusted to the urban environment. Bottle caps, tin cans these are the places where it can breed." With its equatorial climate, heavy rainfall, dense living conditions and economic dependence on trade and tourism -- its port is the world's busiest while its international airport handled over 32 million passengers last year -- Singapore should serve as the perfect petri-dish for breeding diseases. Yet the island state has managed to keep most of them at bay with stringent regulations and tough enforcement -- and its experience could offer lessons for other countries. Its weapons against malaria and dengue consisted of legislation, an emphasis on public housing and urbanisation, education, and the destruction of mosquito breeding sites. During the 1960s, the government embarked on a programme to move people out of Chinatown's slums and rural communities, or kampungs, into new, high-rise public housing with better sanitation and health care. Today, the vast majority of Singaporeans live in high quality public housing. Life expectancy, at 79-80 years, is higher than in the United States while per capita gross domestic product has soared from US$512 in 1965 to $26,836 in 2005, on a par with Spain. But modernisation was not enough to keep some diseases under control so the authorities stepped in. Under the Infectious Diseases Act of 1976, cases of dengue, malaria, tuberculosis, venereal diseases and others must be reported to the authorities, who can quarantine individuals, as happened during the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Another piece of legislation, the Control of Vectors & Pesticides Act, which dates from 1968, gives inspectors the right to enter homes or other places in search of mosquito breeding sites -- like flower pots and containers that collect water -- and to fine offenders. For households, the fines start at S$100; for building sites, they can run to S$20,000 and can include a jail term. As the number of dengue cases surged alarmingly in 2005, 1,984 households were caught harbouring mosquito larvae and fined, according to the NEA. Such policies can work here because of the government's zero tolerance for corruption and the emphasis on law enforcement on an island with a population of just 4.4 million.
But despite authorities' efforts, dengue has clung on in urban areas. To fight it, the government has urged changes to roof gutters, manhole covers and even the supports used for hanging laundry -- all of which were found to trap rain water, providing temporary breeding sites. This year, the NEA started to clear potential breeding sites ahead of the July-August hot rainy season, when dengue outbreaks are more common. In built-up areas across the island, it's common to see men wearing masks and swathed in protective suits "fogging" gardens and public spaces. But some say such pesticide-spraying is far from effective for killing mosquitoes. "We want to minimise the use of fogging," said Christina Liew, a medical entomologist at Singapore's Environmental Health Institute. "We're now using a more environmentally friendly method, a bacteria which attacks the larvae. Our research shows it destroys the mosquito larvae. You can spray about once a week or use it in doughnut form, putting it in drains, or in construction sites."
Even though Singapore has eradicated malaria, its neighbours have not and dengue outbreaks occur every year in the region -- thousands of people have been infected in India this year, for example. Singapore is keen to encourage research into vaccines and treatment for some of the more common tropical diseases that still affect its people and others worldwide, like dengue. Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG has started a research and development programme in Singapore, working on areas such as dengue and tuberculosis. "It was a logical extension of our research. Singapore was interested in attracting talent," said Alex Matter, director of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases in Singapore. "Dengue is an exploding disease, it spreads like wildfire worldwide. The fact that this year is calm doesn't mean the problem is solved. We still don't have a vaccine, diagnostics or drugs." | 0 |
So far this year, 261 people have died from lightning in the country, putting the South Asian nation on track to beat last year's 265 deaths. Most lightning deaths usually occur during the warm months of March to July. India has seen a similar surge in lightning deaths, with 93 people killed just in the past two days, officials said. The problem has prompted Bangladesh's government to add lightning strikes to the country's list of official types of disasters, which includes floods, cyclones and storm surges, earthquakes, drought and riverbank erosion, among others. As a result, the government now compensates lightning strike victims or their families with sums between Tk 7,500 and Tk 25,000 ($95 to $310). Through mid-May the government had paid Tk 1.5 million ($18,400) in claims this year to families of 81 people who died because of lightning. More heat, more rain Scientists say warmer conditions associated with climate change are causing more water evaporation from the land and ocean, increasing clouds and rainfall and the potential for lightning storms. "The months of April, May and June are the hottest in Bangladesh and the moist air quickly rises upward to meet with dry north-westerly winds to cool and form large storm clouds," Dipen Bhattacharya, a physics and astronomy professor at Moreno Valley College in California, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Some specialists think that as the world warms up, we should expect more explosive lightning events...rather than a gradual increase," he said. During the three-day period of May 12 to May 14, 67 people died from lightning strikes in Bangladesh. Altogether, 132 people died in May after being hit by lightning, according to the Foundation for Disaster Forum, a Dhaka-based disaster preparedness network. Altogether, 1,476 people have died from lightning in Bangladesh since 2010, Bangladesh Meteorological Department data shows. According to a 2014 University of Berkeley study, lightning strikes are expected to increase by 12 percent for every degree Celsius of warming, with a 50 percent rise in lightning expected by the end of the century. According to Bangladesh's Met Office, prior to 1981, the country saw lightning strikes on average nine days each May. Since that time, the country has seen strikes an average of 12 days each May. Loss of trees Experts in Bangladesh and internationally say the rise in fatal lightning strikes may also be related to the country's population growth and to deforestation, which has led to the disappearance of many tall trees that earlier would have drawn lightning strikes. Now fatalities often involve farmers using metal farm equipment in open fields, or people standing near metal cell phone towers or electrical power towers, experts said. Some said they believed cell phone use also might be leading to more lightning fatalities, but other experts said that link is unlikely. Lightning continues to kill people who take shelter under trees during electrical storms as well, they said. Atiq Rahman, Executive Director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that it would not be wise to blame the rise in deaths directly on climate change. But AQM Mahbub, an earth and environmental science professor at the University of Dhaka, said rising global temperatures over the last century were driving a range of changing weather phenomenon, including stronger tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, floods, droughts and heatwaves. "The increased numbers of lightning strikes may be due to global warming but it needs further research to be confirmed," he said. He said the United States, which once saw 200 to 300 lightning deaths a year, had managed to dramatically reduce that toll by making people aware of the risks of standing in open areas during thunderstorms. In Bangladesh - or anywhere where storms threaten - "people should take shelter immediately in any (building) and farmers should flatten themselves to the soil when they meet any possibility of thunderstorm to avoid incidents," he said. | 0 |
The European Commission is debating whether to push for a carbon tariff on imports from countries that do not tackle their greenhouse gas emissions, as part of climate change proposals due out this month. Supporters of the measure say it would level the playing field for European companies facing tougher domestic emissions penalties. The new rules would be part of a raft of post-2012 proposals covering issues including national emissions targets and clean energy subsidies. Unlike the European Union, neither China, India nor the United States have yet agreed to binding emissions reductions. The idea of imposing some kind of tariff on goods imported from countries with less strict controls on greenhouse gases was first put forward by former French President Jacques Chirac. But the plan has run into opposition from European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson who has said it would be hard to implement and could lead to trade disputes. A preliminary draft, seen by Reuters, says companies importing goods into the 27-nation European Union from countries that do not similarly restrict greenhouse gas emissions would have to buy EU emissions permits. A Commission official confirmed that the carbon charge issue was still under consideration, despite opposition. "It's very much debated," the official said. "It's not solved yet." The measure, which needs the backing of EU governments, would be equivalent to a carbon tariff, taxing imports based on the price of emissions permits in Europe and the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the manufacture of the goods outside the EU. UNILATERAL TARGETS The European Union says it is a leader on climate change and is alone in pushing for tough, unilateral emissions-cutting targets, saying it will cut greenhouse gases by a fifth by 2020 versus 1990 levels. France, other EU countries and energy-intensive industries in Europe, such as its steel sector, want to avoid further losses of competitiveness against producers in China and other emerging economies as well as rivals in the United States. European companies will face tougher penalties from 2013 under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme. Participants already have to buy emissions permits above a certain quota that they get for free, and the Commission will cut that quota from 2013. The preliminary draft seen by Reuters said that from 2013 electricity generators would get for free half the permits that they receive now and other companies would get 90 percent. German financial newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Friday that overall the European Commission would auction 60 percent of all emissions permits from 2013, compared with a maximum of 10 percent now and the rest given out free. The final draft may yet be changed, the Commission official said. It is due to be discussed by senior officials over the next two weeks leading up to publication on Jan. 23. After that it is up to Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, to set a timetable for discussion by EU leaders. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Sun Nov 2,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - As the US presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush administration is also sprinting to enact environmental policy changes before leaving power. Whether it's getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste or making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes have found little favor with environmental groups. The one change most environmentalists want, a mandatory program to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, is not among these so-called "midnight regulations." Bureaucratic calendars make it virtually impossible that any US across-the-board action will be taken to curb global warming in this administration, though both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have promised to address it if they win Tuesday's US presidential election. Even some free-market organizations have joined conservation groups to urge a moratorium on last-minute rules proposed by the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. "The Bush administration has had eight years in office and has issued more regulations than any administration in history," said Eli Lehrer of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "At this point, in the current economic climate, it would be especially harmful to push through ill-considered regulations in the final days of the administration." John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, which joined Lehrer's group to call for a ban on these last-minute rules, said citizens are cut out of the process, allowing changes in U.S. law that the public opposes, such as rolling back protections under the Endangered Species Act. WHAT'S THE RUSH? The Bush team has urged that these regulations be issued no later than Saturday, so they can be put in effect by the time President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20. If they are in effect then, it will be hard for the next administration to undo them, and in any case, this may not be the top priority for a new president, said Matt Madia of OMB Watch, which monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, through which these proposed regulations must pass. "This is typical," Madia said of the administration's welter of eleventh-hour rules. "It's a natural reaction to knowing that you're almost out of power." Industry is likely to benefit if Bush's rules on the environment become effective, Madia said. "Whether it's the electricity industry or the mining industry or the agriculture industry, this is going to remove government restrictions on their activity and in turn they're going to be allowed to pollute more and that ends up harming the public," Madia said in a telephone interview. What is unusual is the speedy trip some of these environmental measures are taking through the process. For example, one Interior Department rule that would erode protections for endangered species in favor of mining interests drew more than 300,000 comments from the public, which officials said they planned to review in a week, a pace that Madia called "pretty ludicrous." Why the rush? Because rules only go into effect 30 to 60 days after they are finalized, and if they are not in effect when the next president takes office, that chief executive can decline to put them into practice -- as Bush did with many rules finalized at the end of the Clinton administration. White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied the Bush team was cramming these regulations through in a hasty push. Fratto discounted reports "that we're trying to weaken regulations that have a business interest," telling White House reporters last week the goal was to avoid the flood of last-minute rules left over from the Clinton team. There is at least one Bush administration environmental proposal that conservation groups welcome: a plan to create what would be the world's largest marine wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean. That could go into effect January 20. | 0 |
A top UN official suggested a 2020 greenhouse gas goal for developing nations on Thursday as part of a new UN climate pact as China and the United States sought common ground to fight global warming. Many nations expressed worries about a lack of urgency in the negotiations, less than two months before 190 nations are meant to agree a new UN pact in Copenhagen to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. In New Delhi, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, suggested that poor nations could slow the projected growth of their emissions by 15 percent by 2020 to help ensure an agreement. A dispute about sharing out the burden of curbs on greenhouse gases between rich and poor nations is one of the main stumbling blocks. De Boer said a "balanced agreement" was needed to overcome "mistrust and suspicion". The UN climate panel in 2007 said rich nations would have to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 below 1990 levels to limit temperature rises to 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and avoid the worst of heatwaves, floods, and rising seas. It said developing nations should show a "substantial deviation" below the projected growth of emissions -- but did not set a figure. "If industrialised countries are reducing by 25-40 percent by 2020 then I think you would also by 2020 perhaps need to see something in the order of a 15 percent deviation below business as usual in developing countries," de Boer said. EU DEMANDS The European Union wants developing nations to curb growth by 15-30 percent by 2020. Developing nations have long objected that offers of cuts by the rich so far fall well short of 25 percent. In Beijing, China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters, spoke of willingness to cooperate. "We should be aware of the severity and urgency of coping with climate change, and we should also seize this precious development opportunity," Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang told a summit of academics, businessmen and officials. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a video address: "As always, we are more likely to succeed when we work together." "As the world's two largest emitters of carbon, the United States and China have a responsibility to lead the world in developing and adopting clean technologies, and as two of the world's largest economies our nations have the power to build a thriving global marketplace for these technologies," she said. Developing nations want billions of dollars in aid and technology to help them shift to renewable energies and forego the cheap fossil fuels that helped the developed world get rich since the Industrial Revolution. In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also said the talks needed more urgency to prevent a "human emergency" affecting hundreds of millions of people. "For too many people, not just in our own country but around the world, the penny hasn't yet dropped ... that this climate change challenge is real and is happening now," he said.
"There isn't yet that sense of urgency and drive and animation about the Copenhagen conference." Climate change will deepen Middle East tensions, trigger wars over water and food and lead to unprecedented migration unless action is taken now to curb global warming, he said. On the business front, General Electric Co said a deal freeing up trade in environmental goods and services was urgently needed. GE's senior counsel for intellectual property and trade, Thaddeus Burns, said the deal should be negotiated separately from the Doha round of talks to open up world trade. The Doha talks are in their eighth year with no sign of a breakthrough. The WWF environmental group cautioned that a lack of political nerve could mean climate deadlock in Copenhagen to echo Doha. "The world doesn't want Copenhagen to come to mean another Doha," said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF's Global Climate Initiative. | 0 |
The bill, which would prohibit broad categories of certain goods made by persecuted Muslim minorities in an effort to crack down on human rights abuses, has gained bipartisan support, passing the House in September by a margin of 406-3. Congressional aides say it has the backing to pass the Senate and could be signed into law by either the Trump administration or the incoming Biden administration. But the legislation, called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has become the target of multinational companies including Apple, whose supply chains touch the far western Xinjiang region, as well as of business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce. Lobbyists have fought to water down some of its provisions, arguing that while they strongly condemn forced labour and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act’s ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China. Xinjiang produces vast amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes and polysilicon, and supplies workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories. Human rights groups and news reports have linked many multinational companies to suppliers there, including tying Coca-Cola to sugar sourced from Xinjiang, and documenting Uighur workers in a factory in Qingdao that makes Nike shoes. In a report issued in March, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, listed Nike and Coca-Cola as companies suspected of ties to forced labour in Xinjiang, alongside Adidas, Calvin Klein, Campbell Soup Co., Costco, H&M, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger and others. In a statement, Coca-Cola said that it “strictly prohibits any type of forced labour in our supply chain” and uses third-party auditors to closely monitor its suppliers. It also said that the COFCO Tunhe facility in Xinjiang, which supplies sugar to a local bottling facility and had been linked to allegations of forced labour by The Wall Street Journal and Chinese-language news media, “successfully completed an audit in 2019.” Greg Rossiter, the director of global communications at Nike, said the company “did not lobby against” the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act but instead had “constructive discussions” with congressional staff aides aimed at eliminating forced labour and protecting human rights. Asked about the allegations of forced labour, Nike referred to a statement in March in which it said that it did not source products from Xinjiang and that it had confirmed that its suppliers were not using textiles or yarn from the region. Nike said that the Qingdao factory had stopped hiring new workers from Xinjiang in 2019, and that an independent audit confirmed there were no longer employees from there at the facility. (According to a report published in March by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that cited state media, the factory employed around 800 Uighur workers at the end of 2019 and produced more than 7 million pairs of shoes for Nike each year.) China’s vast campaign of suppressing and forcibly assimilating Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang has attracted the scorn of politicians and consumers around the world. But for many companies, fully investigating and eliminating any potential ties to forced labour there has been difficult, given the opacity of Chinese supply chains and the limited access of auditors to a region where the Chinese government tightly restricts people’s movements. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require companies sending goods to the United States to scrutinise those supply chains, or perhaps abandon Chinese suppliers altogether. It would impose high standards, barring imports of goods made “in whole or in part” in Xinjiang unless companies prove to customs officials that their products were not made with forced labour. The bill also targets so-called poverty alleviation and pairing programs that ship Muslims from impoverished areas to work in factories elsewhere, which human rights groups say are often coercive. Companies would be required to disclose information on their ties to Xinjiang to the Securities Exchange Commission. Richard A. Mojica, a lawyer at Miller & Chevalier, said that for many companies, convincing the authorities that they have no involvement with forced labour could take months. Firms were already responding by trying to find sources for products outside Xinjiang, he said. “Rebutting a presumption of forced labor is going to be a very challenging endeavor,” he said.
A factory inside the Shenzhen Industrial Park Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region of China on Aug. 3, 2019. American lawmakers unveiled legislation on Wednesday, March 11 that, if passed, would tightly restrict imports to the United States from the Xinjiang region of western China, the toughest response yet to Beijing’s mass detention of minorities and coercive labour practices there spelling problems for brands like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and Patagonia. (Gilles Sabrié/The New York Times)
Companies and groups lobbying on the bill have been pushing for various revisions, including easing disclosure requirements, people familiar with the conversations said. A factory inside the Shenzhen Industrial Park Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region of China on Aug. 3, 2019. American lawmakers unveiled legislation on Wednesday, March 11 that, if passed, would tightly restrict imports to the United States from the Xinjiang region of western China, the toughest response yet to Beijing’s mass detention of minorities and coercive labour practices there spelling problems for brands like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and Patagonia. (Gilles Sabrié/The New York Times) Apple, which has extensive business ties to China, has also lobbied to limit some provisions of the bill, said two congressional staff members and another person familiar with the matter. Disclosure forms show that Apple paid Fierce Government Relations, a firm led by former staff aides to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and President George W. Bush, $90,000 to lobby on issues including Xinjiang-related legislation in the third quarter. Apple’s lobbying was previously reported by The Washington Post. Apple also paid outside firms this year to lobby on another bill, the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act of 2020. Apple disputed the claim that it had tried to weaken the legislation, saying it supported efforts to strengthen US regulations and believes that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act should become law. According to a document viewed by The New York Times, Apple’s suggested edits to the bill included extending some deadlines for compliance, releasing certain information about supply chains to congressional committees rather than to the public, and requiring Chinese entities to be “designated by the United States government” as helping to surveil or detain Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. In its March report, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute identified Apple and Nike among 82 companies that potentially benefited, directly or indirectly, from abusive labour transfer programs tied to Xinjiang. That report said that O-Film Technology, a contractor for Apple, Microsoft, Google and other companies, received at least 700 Uighur workers in a program that was expected to “gradually alter their ideology.” It tied other Apple suppliers, including Foxconn Technology, to similar employment programs. Apple said in a statement that it had the strongest supplier code of conduct in its industry and that it regularly assessed suppliers, including with surprise audits. “Looking for the presence of forced labor is part of every supplier assessment we conduct and any violations of our policies carry immediate consequences, including business termination,” the statement said. “Earlier this year, we conducted a detailed investigation with our suppliers in China and found no evidence of forced labor on Apple production lines and we are continuing to monitor this closely.” Lobbying disclosures show that companies have spent heavily to sway Congress on Xinjiang-related legislation, although they reveal nothing about their specific requests. In the first three quarters of 2020, Nike spent $920,000 on in-house lobbying of Congress and other federal agencies. Disclosures do not break down expenditures by topic but show Nike lobbied on matters including physical education grants, taxes and climate change, as well as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Nike also paid outside firms like Cornerstone Government Affairs, Ogilvy, Capitol Counsel, GrayRobinson, American Continental Group, DiNino Associates and Empire Consulting Group more than $400,000 this year to lobby on issues including the act. Rossiter said that Nike had these firms on retainer long before the Xinjiang legislation was introduced, and that the company actively worked with lobbying firms to engage Congress on a variety of subjects it cares about. Coca-Cola has also invested heavily, spending $4.68 million in the first three quarters of 2020 on in-house lobbying and hiring Empire Consulting Group and Sidley Austin to lobby on issues including the act. Coca-Cola said in a statement that it complies with all laws associated with its political activities and has “adopted best-in-class disclosures practices.” The US Chamber of Commerce declined to comment on lobbying, instead providing a letter it sent to Congress in November with seven other industry groups. The letter said the groups had long been working to combat forced labour, and urged the government to take a comprehensive approach that would mobilise the administration, Congress and foreign governments to address the problem, in addition to industry. © 2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
In France and Austria, the pandemic brought the planes-vs.-trains question to the forefront. The French government’s COVID bailout package of Air France required the airline to eliminate domestic flights when there was a rail option that took under 2 1/2 hours to complete; the measure was later written into law. The Austrian government placed a similar condition on its support to Austrian Airlines, demanding that the company end its 50-minute flight between Vienna and Salzburg, a journey that passengers can make by train in about three hours. The European Commission also designated 2021 as the “Year of European Rail,” seizing the opportunity to spread the word about train travel, particularly to a younger audience. While passenger traffic was growing steadily through 2019, it was starting from a low base: Before the pandemic, only 8% of all passenger travel in the European Union was by train. But in addition to the public relations campaign, European leaders are also working to reduce practical barriers to cross-border train travel by introducing new data-sharing systems; replacing outdated infrastructure; and building new high-speed routes, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. “The idea is that for train trips of less than four hours, no businesspeople will choose to fly, and for trips below six hours, normal people — tourists — will take the train,” said Alberto Mazzola, executive director of the Community of European Railways and Infrastructure Companies, which is based in Brussels. Mazzola added that government leaders are throwing their weight behind railway infrastructure, particularly high-speed lines. “We heard this 20 years ago,” he added. “The difference today is that we are seeing the investments.” NIGHT TRAINS ON THE RISE Europe’s night trains are a big part of the rising tide of rail on the continent. On the decline since the 1990s, overnight services suffered alongside the growth of low-cost air carriers and a rise in government investment in high-speed trains, whose faster daytime services often displaced their slower nighttime counterparts. But that trend was already starting to shift before the pandemic, and now the momentum behind night trains appears to be building fast, with new sleeper connections cropping up across the continent. “It’s true that we have a real revival of night trains in France and in Europe,” said Alain Krakovitch, director of travel at SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company. “It is a very strong demand, both from customers but also from elected officials, mayors and the government.” Last year, SNCF relaunched overnight services between Paris and Nice, with tickets starting as low as 19 euros, about $21, for a midweek low-season ticket. That compares with 31 euros, not including baggage fees or the cost of airport transfers, for a short flight on EasyJet leaving on a similar day. SNCF also offers overnight services between Paris and Toulouse, and between Paris and Lourdes in southwestern France. A night train to Hendaye, a French coastal town near the Spanish border, will run in July and August. And change-free overnight service between Paris and Berlin — a journey that currently takes eight hours and requires at least one change — is scheduled to begin in December 2023 as a cooperative effort between four European operators. So far, said Krakovitch, demand has been strong. “It’s true that this is a huge draw for passengers. The idea of being able to fall asleep in Paris and wake up in Nice saves a night in a hotel,” Krakovitch said. “It allows you to arrive very early in Nice without being tired. It’s a product that has many benefits, but we had to invest heavily to relaunch it. We hope to keep this momentum going.” It’s a similar story elsewhere in Europe. Last year, the Swiss Federal Railways launched a new overnight connection from Zurich to Amsterdam (with stops in Basel, Switzerland, and Cologne, Germany), adding to overnight services connecting Switzerland’s largest city to Berlin; Budapest, Hungary; Prague; and Zagreb, Croatia; among other destinations. European Sleeper, a Dutch Belgian company founded by two entrepreneurs, is planning an overnight connection between Brussels and Prague, with stops in Amsterdam and Berlin, among other cities; they hope to launch the service this summer, but the start date is not yet confirmed. Meanwhile, Austrian operator ÖBB’s Nightjet service has recently begun offering an overnight link between Vienna and Paris, with tickets ranging from about 30 euros for a normal train seat to 200 euros or higher, depending on the date of travel, for a first-class private cabin. (A midweek, low-season flight on the same route costs 44 euros, not including baggage fees, on low-cost carrier Transavia.) Nightjet, which also runs overnight services to cities like Rome, Milan, Brussels and Amsterdam, is offering passengers more options to book private compartments, a Nightjet spokesperson said, adding that some cabins have a private shower and toilet. The prices scale with the amenities provided: A couple travelling overnight from Vienna to Amsterdam on a weeknight in July, for instance, can book two seats in a private compartment for a total of 129 euros. Alternatively, they could opt for a two-bed sleeper cabin for 378 euros for both travellers, including breakfast. Add a private shower and toilet, and the price rises to 418 euros. At the moment, all of the Nightjet “rolling stock” is in use, but new services should be coming online in the years ahead, the spokesperson said. More than 30 new sleeper trains should be delivered beginning in 2023. ONGOING CHALLENGES But while night trains are offering new connections for travellers, they serve only specific routes. People who are looking to make connections between cities that aren’t linked on those networks continue to face challenges, both in booking their tickets and in the prices they are charged. Some long-distance journeys with multiple stops are still much cheaper by plane than by train. The fact remains that, despite the European Union’s support for rail, the bloc’s governments continue to grant enormous subsidies to airlines — in the form of bailout packages as well as low taxes on jet fuel — although that could change soon. And while the French and Austrian bans on short-haul flight bans attracted attention in Europe, in effect, the measures ended flights on just one route — Vienna to Salzburg — in Austria, and three in France: Paris to Bordeaux, Paris to Lyons, and Paris to Nantes. In the French case, passengers are still allowed to fly those routes if they make up part of a longer plane journey. Herwig Schuster, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace’s EU Mobility for All campaign, called the French and Austrian measures “a starting point” and said the European Union should prohibit flights for which there is a train alternative that takes under six hours, instead of just two or three. Such a measure would eliminate about one-third of Europe’s most popular short-haul routes, but Schuster maintained that consumers are ready for such a shift: A recent climate survey found that 62% of Europeans support a ban on short-haul flights. The biggest obstacle, he added, would be making sure that rail options are at least as affordable as flights. On several European routes — especially longer-distance trips that cross multiple national borders — flying remains the cheaper option: A one-way, midweek flight from Zurich to Barcelona, Spain, in July costs as little as 45 euros on low-cost carrier Vueling, compared with 140 euros (and many more hours) to cover the same distance by rail. Flying is also usually the more affordable option for trips from London to Madrid, Copenhagen to Rome, and Paris to Budapest. The fact that Europe’s vast rail network lacks a single ticketing system presents another challenge, said Mark Smith, who runs The Man in Seat 61, a website with resources for train travel in Britain, Europe and around the world. But he said that in many cases, trains are a good value compared with planes, especially when you account for baggage fees and the cost of getting to and from the airport. Booking in advance, just as you would for a flight, can also save travellers a lot of money, Smith said, adding that he advises people to reserve their long-distance train travel one to three months ahead to avoid last-minute price hikes. He also recommends sites like Trainline and Rail Europe for booking multicountry trips in Europe. He added that many travellers still opt for the train, even if, in some cases, it does mean paying more for their ticket. When he started his site 20 years ago, Smith said, most people he spoke to who were interested in long-distance train travel were either scared of flying or unable to fly for medical reasons. These days, he hears a different rationale. “People are fed up with the airport and airline experience; they want something less stressful and more interesting,” he said. “And they want to cut their carbon footprint.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 2 |
Australian Prime Minister John Howard took delivery of an official report on carbon trading on Thursday, and media said it called on Canberra to introduce trading by 2011, rather than wait for a global system. The report, which will form the basis of the conservative government's response to climate change, came after Howard said for the first time he would consider setting a national target for carbon emissions, which are blamed for global warming. "This is one of the most eagerly awaited reports that's been presented to the government," Howard said on Thursday. With elections looming and his coalition's poll standing at record lows, the veteran prime minister is under pressure on the environment. Labor Party rival Kevin Rudd is promising to slash carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050 and to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Howard set up the inquiry into climate change and carbon trading six months ago to find ways of pricing carbon pollution without hurting the nation's economy. Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter. He has regularly said he would be willing to embrace carbon trading, but only as part of a global trading system. Carbon trading usually involves putting a price and strict limits on pollution, allowing companies that clean up their operations to sell any savings below their allocated level to other companies. Australia's Ten TV network said the prime minister's task force on carbon trading -- made up of top bureaucrats in liaison with business -- had recommended that Canberra set up its own carbon trading system by 2011, initially fixing the price of carbon at A$20 a tonne ($17/tonne). Australia's Climate Institute said on Monday the price would need to be above A$10/tonne to provide enough incentive for investment in clean energy. A Citigroup report said it expected Howard to commit to carbon trading before 2012, but said a price below A$20 would be too low to encourage clean energy and would lead to uncertainty for electricity generators, resulting in higher power prices. Green groups want Howard to commit to cut greenhouse emissions by 30 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 percent by 2050. With no domestic nuclear power, Australia relies on coal for about 85 percent of its electricity, with less than 4 percent produced from renewable energy sources. Howard, who along with the United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions, said on Wednesday he could set an emissions target if the government introduced carbon trading. "If we move towards an emissions trading system, that will of necessity involve a long-term target of some kind," he told a mining industry dinner. Howard has yet to say when he will release the carbon report or announce the government's response. ($1=A$1.21) | 0 |
Firefighters in Australia marked out homes that can't be saved on Thursday as bushfires advanced on several towns and burned uncontrolled across large areas of the country's southeast. Strong winds drove a large blaze into the Tasmanian hamlet of Cornwall and firefighters battled to save homes on the southern island state. "They just stood in the flames with hoses and not a lot more," ABC radio reported. Fire authorities placed red tape across driveways of houses in Cornwall and nearby St Marys, marking them as homes they would be unable to save as an expected late wind change fanned a large blaze ravaging surrounding bushland. "If a property has trees right up to the back door, then it's going to put lives at risk and we have to declare those houses as undefendable," Tasmanian Fire Service spokesman Michael Watkins told Reuters. The St Marys blaze engulfed 14 houses in the coastal tourist town of Scamander on Monday and has since moved to threaten three more rural communities, driven by winds gusting at 50 kilometres (31 miles) per hour. Most of the homes, identified as at risk through a process called "structural triage", were farms and isolated coastal homes surrounded by thick scrubland, Watkins said. In Victoria state, more than 4,000 Australian and New Zealand firefighters were battling 11 blazes sparked by lightning strikes that have burnt 420,000 hectares (1,621 square miles) of rugged mountain bushland and which threaten several towns. As temperatures soared again after two days of relatively cool conditions that aided control efforts, authorities were considering calling for reinforcements from the United States. Firefighters were scrambling to save the historic Mt Buffalo Chalet in the state's northeast as strong northerly winds pushed a blaze towards the grand 96-year-old building. The fire claimed another ski resort on Mt Buffalo on Tuesday. Fire crews in New South Wales fought to control a fire burning in pine forests to the southwest of the Australian capital, Canberra. Smaller fires were also smouldering in South Australia state. Firefighters say Australia faces an extreme fire danger this summer after a drought that has turned many rural areas into tinder boxes. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall to the country. Bushfires are a regular feature of Australia's summer. In January 2005, the deadliest bushfires in 22 years killed nine people in South Australia. Over the past 40 years, more than 250 people have been killed in bushfires in Australia. | 0 |
The plant being built by Desolenator in the Sundarbans delta in West Bengal state will start operating next year. It will sell clean water at a subsidised rate and hire more than a dozen women in Pathar Pratima, a company official said. The social enterprise model, with all proceeds going towards the salaries and training of the women and maintenance of the water distribution centre, is essential for this poor community, said Louise Bleach at Maastricht-based Desolenator. "Water purification technologies can be expensive, and often people who are most deprived of clean water and in need of these systems cannot afford them," said Bleach, development and impact lead at Desolenator, which is also building a plant in Dubai. "Solar-powered desalination technology is sustainable and suitable for communities experiencing brackish water or heavily contaminated water even in off-grid, remote and challenging environments," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. In arid and coastal areas, desalination is key to supplying drinking water. There are more than 16,000 desalination plants worldwide, with about two-thirds located in wealthy nations. But the technique is generally expensive and energy-intensive, and a 2019 UN-backed study found the plants produced on average 1.5 litres of brine for every litre of fresh water, which can contain toxins harmful to marine ecosystems. Now, however, the process is becoming more affordable due to newer technologies and cheaper renewable energy options. The India project - the first for Desolenator - is part of Carlsberg's plan to halve water usage at its breweries by 2030 and conserve shared water resources in high-risk areas. The Danish company has identified all seven of its Indian breweries as high-risk sites and is using different technologies and water-conservation measures to tackle the problem. The Sundarbans plant, which will produce about 20,000 litres of clean water per day for the town, can help set "the foundation for all other development goals - health, education, income generation and rural female empowerment", Carlsberg said. Local people now buy packaged water or water sold by private companies in trucks, often at "extortionate prices", said Anurag Gupta, a programme coordinator at the WaterAid charity which is also a partner in the project. The task of fetching drinking water often falls to women, who may have to travel long distances and also bear the brunt of illnesses from contaminated water, he noted. "The women suffer the most, so we are training them to work in the distribution centre, and to increase awareness of the need for clean water in the community," he said. "The plant will not only solve the problem of contaminated water, but also provide jobs for women and increase the community's resilience in an area that is facing major climate change impacts," he added. | 0 |
The planet Venus made a slow transit across the face of the sun on Tuesday, the last such passing that will be visible from Earth for 105 years. Transits of Venus happen in pairs, eight years apart, with more than a century between cycles. During Tuesday's pass, Venus took the form of a small black dot slowly shifting across the northern hemisphere of the sun. Armchair astronomers watched the six-hour and 40-minute transit on the Internet, with dozens of websites offering live video from around the world. Closeup views from the Prescott Observatory in Arizona, fed into Slooh.com's webcast, showed a small solar flaring in the making just beneath Venus' sphere. Tuesday's transit, completing a 2004-2012 pair, began at 6:09 p.m. EDT (2209 GMT). Skywatchers on seven continents, including Antarctica, were able to see all or part of the transit. Even astronauts aboard the International Space Station joined in the spectacle. "I've been planning this for a while," space station flight engineer Don Pettit said in a NASA interview. "I knew the transit of Venus would occur during my rotation, so I brought a solar filter with me." It's not all about pretty pictures. Several science experiments were planned, including studies that could help in the search for habitable planets beyond Earth. Telescopes, such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, are being used to find so-called extrasolar planets that pass in front of their parent stars, much like Venus passing by the sun. During the transit of Venus, astronomers planned to measure the planet's thick atmosphere in the hope of developing techniques to measure atmospheres around other planets. Studies of the atmosphere of Venus could also shed light on why Earth and Venus, which are almost exactly the same size and orbit approximately the same distance from the sun, are so different. Venus has a chokingly dense atmosphere, 100 times thicker than Earth's, that is mostly carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Its surface temperature is a lead-melting 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius) and towering clouds of sulfuric acid jet around the planet at 220 miles per hour dousing it with acid rain. "Venus is known as the goddess of love, but it's not the type of relationship you'd want," an astronomer said on the Slooh.com webcast. "This is a look-but-don't-touch kind of relationship." Scientists are interested in learning more about Venus' climate in hopes of understanding changes in Earth's atmosphere. During previous transits of Venus, scientists were able to figure out the size of the solar system and the distance between the sun and the planets. Tuesday's transit is only the eighth since the invention of the telescope, and the last until December 10-11, 2117. It also is the first to take place with a spacecraft at Venus. Observations from Europe's Venus Express probe will be compared with those made by several ground and space-based telescopes, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, the joint US-European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and Japan's Hinode spacecraft. | 6 |
The British government played an early role in brokering the three-way alliance with the United States and Australia to deploy nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific, according to officials in London and Washington. The landmark agreement was announced hours after Australia canceled a $66 billion deal for diesel-electric submarines with France, provoking fury in Paris and quiet satisfaction in London. For British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with President Joe Biden at the White House and speak at the United Nations, it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage. Since leaving the European Union 18 months ago, Britain has cast about for a place in the world. Brexiteers latched on to the phrase “Global Britain,” which always seemed more a marketing slogan than a coherent foreign policy. Yet the deal sealed Wednesday, in which the United States and Britain would supply Australia with the submarines, confirmed Britain’s status as a military power with nuclear expertise, as well as a trusted ally of the United States. It also lent credibility to Johnson’s effort to build a British presence in Asia, a strategy that at first looked mostly like a nostalgic throwback to its imperial past. Now, Britain has negotiated trade deals with Australia, Japan and South Korea, and deployed an aircraft carrier to help the United States keep an eye on China in the South China Sea, where Beijing is asserting its own imperial ambitions by constructing a chain of military installations. “It does for the first time start to flesh out Global Britain,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to Washington. “We’re starting to build a real presence, in the defense and economic spheres, in that part of the world.” Darroch cautioned that the economic dividends of the deal — how many jobs and how much money would flow to British factories — still had to be worked out with the United States. Joining a far-flung security alliance also imposes costs and expectations on Britain, which is shrinking the size of its military and, like many countries, has had its public finances ravaged by the pandemic. Still, for a country that was treated as little more than an afterthought by Biden in the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was a welcome return to relevance. British officials cited the deal as proof of their ability to move adroitly in a post-Brexit world — in this case, at the expense of a European neighbor. Australia first approached Britain to propose that the British and Americans help it deploy nuclear-powered submarines, according to British officials. The Australians concluded that the diesel models provided in the French deal were not going to be adequate for a future in which China posed an ever greater threat. Britain’s links with the United States on nuclear technology date back to a 1958 defense agreement, so the concept of the two allies working together was not only natural but unavoidable. The United States will provide the highly enriched uranium that powers the submarines’ reactors. Britain and Australia, officials said, made an aggressive sales pitch to Washington that included an exchange between Johnson and Biden in June at the Group of 7 meeting in Cornwall, England. Britain, they said, had to fend off American officials who questioned why Australia could not simply buy submarines directly from the United States. Among Britain’s arguments: Its military protocols are more closely aligned with those of the Australian military, making it easier for the Australians to operate vessels also equipped with British technology. A Biden administration official said the White House never contemplated cutting Britain out of the alliance. “It was largely a technical decision,” said Bates Gill, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute who is based in Sydney. “But it could also have been partially a decision about trustworthiness.” For Johnson, who has made the “special relationship” with the United States the cornerstone of his foreign policy, the submarine deal was compensation for having his views on Afghanistan brushed aside by Biden. Johnson, officials said, wanted the withdrawal to be contingent on conditions on the ground. Regardless of ruffled feathers, Johnson has made it clear that Britain will back Biden on his No. 1 priority: the competition with China. “They’re making choices, and the choices have consequences,” said Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, who praised the British approach. To some in Britain, those consequences might not be worth the benefits. Theresa May, Johnson’s predecessor as prime minister, warned that Britain could be dragged into a war with China over Taiwan. In 2016, Johnson argued that leaving the EU would allow Britain to engage more independently with China. That was before Beijing cracked down on Hong Kong, a former British colony. Now, Britain’s China policy looks scarcely different from that of the United States. Johnson hopes to build on Britain’s profile by playing host at a successful United Nations climate-change conference in November in Glasgow, Scotland. But it is not clear how much help he will get from Biden. Britain is pressing the United States to double its contribution to a $100 billion annual fund to help countries mitigate the impacts of climate change. It has yet to do so. Britain, analysts said, may benefit from having a new foreign secretary, Liz Truss, who won praise in her last job for negotiating trade deals in Asia. Johnson demoted her predecessor, Dominic Raab, after he came under fierce criticism for staying on vacation last month in Crete when the Taliban swept into Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. “Liz Truss has her detractors,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to Washington. But he said she was “as well placed as anyone to try and add substance to the slogan of Global Britain.” For all of the satisfaction in London, Britain still faces daunting geopolitical realities. The submarine deal is likely to worsen its relationship with France, which is already strained by post-Brexit disputes over fishing rights and migrants crossing the English Channel. The French government’s disdain for Britain was evident in its response to news of the alliance: It recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia but left its envoy to Britain — a gesture, the French media said, meant to convey that it viewed Britain as a bit player in the geopolitical drama. Other analysts said France was particularly irked because it believed the United States was rewarding Britain when it should be punished for leaving the EU. Still, Johnson should not count on smooth sailing with Washington, either. Britain may yet find itself at odds over Northern Ireland, where Johnson is pressing for changes in post-Brexit trade arrangements. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on a visit to London, reiterated a warning that if Britain jeopardized the peace in Northern Ireland, Congress would not approve a trade agreement between Britain and the United States. Beyond that, analysts said, Biden’s offhand treatment of Britain on Afghanistan, coupled with the short notice the White House gave France before announcing the security alliance, showed that the United States would pursue its interests without regard to the sensitivities of trans-Atlantic relationships. “The most remarkable thing is how little the Americans are talking about this and how much the Brits are,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and the Americas program at Chatham House, a British research institution. “That basic fact captures a lot about the special relationship. Special doesn’t mean equal.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
US president Barack Obama will call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons across the globe, in remarks on Sunday he hopes will lend credibility to his message in atomic disputes with Iran and North Korea. Visiting Prague during an eight-day visit to Europe, Obama plans to deliver what his aides have billed as a major speech on weapons proliferation. Obama, who is making his debut on the world stage, said in Strasbourg, France on Friday that he would lay out an agenda to secure the world's loose nuclear materials and halt the spread of illicit weapons. He added that he wanted to offer an agenda "to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons." "Even with the Cold War over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," Obama said. Obama, a former U.S. senator who succeeded President George W. Bush in January, has long shown interest in the issue of halting weapons proliferation and wants to make it a signature foreign policy issue for his new administration. "The president has been very focused on these issues of proliferation for many years," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told reporters. "Tomorrow, I think you'll hear the president, in a very comprehensive way, outline many of the things that he's been talking about and working on for some time," McDonough said. While in Prague, Obama will also discuss climate change and energy security with the 27 leaders of European Union countries at a summit hosted by the Czech EU presidency, undermined by a government collapse last week. Thousands of Czechs are expected to turn up for Obama's speech at a square outside the medieval Prague Castle, with the panorama of the historic Czech capital in the background. The call for renewed efforts at global nuclear disarmament is likely to be well received in Europe, where Obama is seeking to use his strong popularity to advance his agenda on issues such as Iran and the war in Afghanistan. The proliferation speech comes after Obama met on Wednesday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit, where the two leaders pledged to pursue a new deal to cut nuclear warheads. The aim to is agree to a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1), which led to the biggest-ever bilateral cuts in nuclear weapons, but expires in December. Obama is seeking support from Russia, China and other countries to pressure Iran over its disputed nuclear program and ratchet up pressure on North Korea, which has said it will send a satellite into space between April 4 and 8. The launch is widely seen abroad as a disguised long-range missile test. The United States and its European allies accuse Iran of planning to build an atomic bomb. But Iran denies this, saying its nuclear program is aimed at the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. McDonough said Obama will urge a revival of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was ratified in 1970 and calls on nuclear states to take steps to disarm and forbids non-nuclear states from trying to acquire them. "That is an age-old bargain that the president wants to reinforce and it will strengthen our hand with countries like Iran that continue to pursue an illicit nuclear technology," he said. George Perkovich, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington, said that unlike issues such as the economic downturn and the Iraq war, the proliferation agenda is not an issue he inherited from the Bush administration but one he is actively promoting. "This is one of the few things that is not part of his inheritance," Perkovich said. The visit to the Czech Republic, a central European NATO-member country about to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communist rule, has been marred by the collapse of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's cabinet. After losing a no-confidence vote, his government is expected to leave power soon. The Czech government is a close U.S. ally that has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Topolanek, who is chairing the European Union in the first half of this year, caused a stir last week when he described U.S. prescriptions to fix the economic crisis as a "road to hell." Topolanek plans to ask Obama about plans to build a missile defense radar southeast of Prague, a project firmly backed by the Czech government but opposed by most Czechs. The Czech radar system and plans to site missile shield bases in Poland have angered Russia but lost pace under Obama's administration. Obama has told Moscow he is willing to slow the deployment of the system in Europe if Russia helps in curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. | 0 |
World business leaders welcomed U.S. President George W. Bush's acknowledgment of climate change as "a serious challenge" and called on Wednesday for long-term emissions standards to help them plan. Bush declined in his annual State of the Union address to support mandatory caps on heat-trapping carbon gases that big U.S. companies such as General Electric Co. have pushed for, instead backing new technologies to cut the amount of gasoline used in the United States. While supporting the White House nod to alternative energies such as ethanol, wind, solar and nuclear power, corporate executives meeting at the Swiss ski resort of Davos said they wanted Washington to lock in stricter U.S. emissions standards. "It is a good step, but we need to take many more," Duke Energy chief executive James Rogers said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting, where climate change is dominating talks among some 2,400 movers and shakers from around the globe. Power plants being built today will be used for 50 years, so a sense of future regulations is critical for current investment decisions, Rogers said, explaining the business interest in more far-reaching U.S. standards. "We are not sitting on the sidelines waiting. A tremendous amount of work is going into being prepared (for a new regulatory regime)," Rogers said. Alcoa chief executive Alain Belda agreed, saying it was untenable for the American climate change agenda to continue to be set by individual states such as California. "I think the country needs one rule," he told a climate change panel at Davos, noting such a standard could reduce the risks for companies of adopting new -- often expensive -- emissions-cutting technologies. He also said strong leadership from the United States, the top global source of greenhouse gases, could spur other less wealthy countries to tighten their emissions rules. 'BEHIND THE CURVE' In Japan, the head of the United Nations Climate Secretariat Yvo de Boer celebrated Bush's environmental messages as a sign "that the climate on climate is changing in the U.S." Former German environment minister Juergen Trittin told German radio that the speech could "improve transatlantic cooperation in the fight against climate change." But others dismissed the speech as too little, too late. "The president failed to produce a comprehensive plan," said Sven Teske, a renewable energy expert at environmental group Greenpeace. "It's a collection of technical suggestions but no real policy shift. Diane Wittenberg of the California Climate Registry, an organization that helps companies and other groups monitor their emissions, said the Bush speech was a disappointment. "He started behind the curve and never got ahead of it," she said, noting that most U.S. climate change leadership has come from state governments and the private sector, who are seeking to shape future environmental policies to their favour. "Businesses see that climate will make a new set of winners and losers in the business community, and they want to be on the winning side," she said. According to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers survey released at Davos, 40 percent of 1,100 chief executives globally are concerned about threats from climate change, though in the United States the figure was a much lower 18 percent. Mark Spelman, head of European strategy at rival consultancy Accenture, said increased corporate attention to environmental issues was partially a public relations exercise, designed to woo green-conscious consumers, but also reflected long-term calculations over future energy costs. "Your enlightened CEO can see that down the road the price of carbon is going to go up, and that is going to have an impact on long-term profitability, so getting ahead of the curve will put the company in better shape," Spelman said. Still others see commercial opportunity in a shift toward a new clean or low-carbon economy. Citigroup has listed 74 companies that are well-placed to benefit from a switch to a more carbon-neutral global economy, including clean energy companies, water utilities and carmakers. | 1 |
An upsurge in anti-Western rhetoric is unlikely to scare foreign investors off Libya because Muammar Gaddafi has made clear his political views will not block economic reform. The veteran ruler made stinging attacks on Western corporate "colonialism" in early March in speeches marking the 30th anniversary of his state of the masses Jamahiriyah system which bans elections and political parties. The comments appeared aimed at placating hardline aides who fear being sidelined by economic liberalisation, analysts say. They may also reflect official discontent at what Libya feels is insufficient reward by the West for its 2003 abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction programme. But analysts consider that his opinions -- albeit heartfelt -- will not endanger pro-business reforms Gaddafi himself has sponsored in the oil- and gas-exporting OPEC member country. Gaddafi has long said he dislikes what he calls the pro-Western world economic order but argues Libya has no choice but to cooperate with it or risk economic disaster.
QUIRKINESS Geoff Porter, an analyst at Eurasia Group consultants, which advises multinational corporations on political risk, said the speeches appeared to be for domestic consumption. "The oil companies have not been deterred. They've developed a finely tuned ear to filter out the rhetoric," he said. Monica Enfield of PFC Energy consultants said: "This is characteristic of his quirkiness. Companies get used to it." Western firms might be forgiven for having reservations. Libyans must train militarily to guard against plans by Western oil firms to instal a puppet ruler, Gaddafi said. "Anyone who spreads the poison of colonisation will be crushed," Gaddafi said. "If an American company found someone who tells it he will rule Libya and give it 90 percent of oil revenues it will accept this and support him. Why not?" "They will give him millions in order to gain billions." Analysts said the speeches appeared aimed primarily at members of influential revolutionary committees who fear they may no longer have a place in a Libya opening to the world. The job of the committees of Gaddafi devotees is to encourage Libyans to attend grassroots congresses that make up the government and ensure loyalty to his no-party ideology. But some in the committees have prospered using business links to the state, commentators say, and they could see a fairer and more open business climate as a threat. "He's playing to the old guard that emerged with him," said Mansour el-Kikhia, a Libyan political scientist at the University of Texas. "The old guard is afraid that if he changes his tune they'll be affected. He has to reassure them they still have a place." Ashour Shamis, a veteran UK-based Libyan commentator, said Gaddafi's comments should be seen mainly in the context of a struggle between opponents and advocates of economic reform. "Neither side is certain they have his backing. He's trying to placate the committees by indicating 'there may be some changes ahead but they won't affect the core of the system'." Some argue that growing business ties to the West indicate that the tide is flowing in favour of the reformists. A delegation of top companies led by the US-Libya Business Association visited Tripoli in December 2006 and were briefed on $25 billion in investment opportunities. "We were deeply impressed with the warmth and quality of our exchanges with the government," association director David Goldwyn said. In February, Ahmed Fituri, head of the Americas department of Libya's foreign ministry, became the highest ranking official to visit Washington since the 2003 announcement.
OUTRAGEOUS RHETORIC Rex Tillerson, chairman of America's Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly listed oil firm, visited Tripoli in February to attend the signing of an energy exploration venture. Claire Spencer of Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs said the speeches may also have been a bid to signal that Libya still needs to be courted and remains important. "They feel they've been ignored since WMD," she said of the 2003 weapons move. "They suspect the US thinks it's dealt with Libya and they see that the more outrageous rhetoric these days comes from Iran and Venezuela, which gets them the attention." In 2004 the United States ended a broad trade embargo placed on Libya in 1986 and diplomatic ties were restored in 2006. But the two sides have had differences over Libyan payments of restitution to families of those killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. The bomb was linked to Libyan agents and killed 270 people. Many of the victims' relatives say Tripoli has not completed restitution payments. | 1 |
Space agencies including NASA have agreed to use their next generation of satellites to help monitor climate change, the United Nations weather agency said. The consensus came at a high-level meeting this week in New Orleans, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said. "High-tech efforts to better understand global warming have been strengthened after the world's space and meteorological agencies gave their support to a WMO strategy for the enhanced use of satellites to monitor climate change and weather," the WMO said in a statement issued late on Thursday. The aim is to ensure that satellites launched over the next 20 years constantly record parameters such as sea levels and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Senior officials from NASA, the European Space Agency and space agenices in Japan, China, Brazil and India attended the two-day meeting where WMO presented its strategy. "Every agency which attended supported it," WMO spokesman Paul Garwood said. Climate change monitoring requires very long-term continuous measurement, according to Jerome Lafeuille, who heads the space-based observing system division of WMO's space programme. Satellites are essential to this, because they give a global picture of changes in the oceans, on land and in the atmosphere. Scientists blame climate change mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and warn it will bring extreme weather including more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas. At least 16 geo-stationary and low-earth orbit satellites currently provide operational data on the planet's climate and weather as part of WMO's global observation system. | 0 |
The agency said it was lifting India’s rating to Baa2 from Baa3 and changed its rating outlook to stable from positive as risks to India’s credit profile were broadly balanced. The upgrade, Moody’s first of India since January 2004, moves the rating to the second-lowest investment grade, one notch higher than Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, which have kept India just above “junk” status for a decade and more. The decision by Moody’s is a plaudit for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and the reforms it has pushed through, and comes just weeks after the World Bank moved India up 30 places in its annual ease of doing business rankings. Indian stocks, bonds and the rupee rallied. “It seems like Santa Claus has already opened his bag of goodies,” said Lakshmi Iyer, head of fixed income at Kotak Mutual Fund. “The (ratings) move is overall positive for bonds which were caught in a negative spiral. This is a structural positive which would lead to easing in yields across tenors.” India had lobbied Moody’s hard for an upgrade last year, but failed. The agency cited doubts about the country’s debt levels and fragile banks, and declined to budge despite government criticism of its rating methodology. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters the upgrade was a “belated recognition” of the steps the government has taken to fix India’s $2 trillion economy. Modi’s top colleagues portrayed it as a further victory for the prime minister after U.S.-based research agency Pew released a survey this week that showed nearly nine out of 10 Indians held a favourable opinion of him. Other upgrades doubted But some economists said the other big rating agencies were unlikely to follow suit soon. Radhika Rao, an economist at DBS, said implementation of reforms, a subdued rural sector and weak investment had slowed growth while rising oil prices have raised risks to the economy. “We don’t think the other two global rating agencies, Fitch and S&P, will follow up in a hurry, based on their cautious rhetoric,” she said, noting their concerns on “weak” state and central government finances. Jaitley said the government will stick to the path of fiscal consolidation. It is targeting a fiscal deficit of 3.2 percent of gross domestic product for the year ending in March 2018, falling to 3 percent in 2018/19. “We will maintain the fiscal discipline,” he said, expressing confidence that existing policies will let India “glide” to a stronger financial position. Moody’s separately raised the ratings of top Indian lender State Bank of India and HDFC Bank as well as state-run energy firms NTPC, NHPC and GAIL India Limited and the National Highways Authority of India, potentially lowering their borrowing costs. Markets surge India’s benchmark 10-year bond yield fell to as low as 6.94 percent before ending at 7.05 percent while the rupee ended at 65.02 per dollar, stronger from 65.3250 at Thursday’s close. The main Mumbai stock index closed 0.67 percent higher. But debt traders said heavy bond supply and a hawkish inflation outlook meant the rally was unlikely to last beyond a few days. “Who has the guts to continue buying in this market?” said a bond trader at a private bank. Moody’s said the recently introduced goods and services tax (GST), a landmark reform that turned India’s 29 states into a single customs union for the first time, would boost productivity by removing barriers to inter-state trade. “The upgrade takes into account the potential impact of the recent good and services tax reform to support growth over time,” Marie Diron, associate managing director, sovereign risk group at Moody’s Investors Service, told Reuters. She said Moody’s had also accounted for a higher general government deficit, adding: “We think there is a commitment to fiscal consolidation even if there are some slippages in the short-term.” But some market participants questioned the timing of the upgrade, with one foreign bank dealing describing it as “a little dicey given ... concerns about the government’s fiscal discipline.” Moody’s said it expects India’s real GDP growth to moderate to 6.7 percent in the fiscal year ending in March 2018 from 7.1 percent a year earlier. The agency also raised India’s local currency senior unsecured debt rating to Baa2 from Baa3 and its short-term local currency rating to P-2 from P-3. Moody’s said that while a number of key reforms remain at an early stage, it believes those already implemented will advance the government’s objective of improving the business climate, enhancing productivity and stimulating investment. “Longer term, India’s growth potential is significantly higher than most other Baa-rated sovereigns,” said Moody’s. | 2 |
Rescuers searched for more than 800 people missing in the southern Philippines on Sunday after flash floods and landslides swept houses into rivers and out to sea, killing more than 650 people in areas ill-prepared to cope with storms. Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan cities on Mindanao island were worst hit when Typhoon Washi slammed ashore while people slept late on Friday and early Saturday, sending torrents of water and mud through villages and stripping mountainsides bare. The Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) said 652 people were killed in eight provinces in the southern Mindanao region, with more than 800 missing. "Our office was swamped with hundreds of requests to help find their missing parents, children and relatives," Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the PNRC, told reporters. "We're helping coordinate the search with local government, army, police and even other aid agencies." Floods washed away entire houses with families inside in dozens of coastal villages in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan. "This is the first time this has happened in our city," Vicente Emano, mayor of Cagayan de Oro, said in a radio interview. He said officials in the area did not receive adequate warning before the typhoon struck. The state disaster agency said adequate warnings had been given to officials and residents three days before the typhoon made landfall on Friday. BODIES PILED UP; SOLDIERS BUILD COFFINS Disaster and health officials were struggling to deal with the scores of bodies that have been recovered. Some were stacked one on top of each other in under-staffed mortuaries that were unable to cope with the numbers of dead. "I saw for myself bloated bodies of women and children, not less than 100," Vice President Jejomar Binay told Philippines radio as he toured the worst hit areas in Cagayan de Oro. Binay distributed food packs and ordered the relocation of families living near waterways and other hazards. Brigadier General Roland Amarille, head of an army task force in Iligan, said soldiers had been mobilized to recover bodies and build coffins. "We need body bags and lime to deal with too many cadavers," Amarille said, fearing an outbreak of disease. "Local mortuaries are no longer accepting cadavers and they are even asking people to bury the dead at once because there are too many bodies even in hallways," he said. Most of the fatalities were from a slum area on an island sandwiched by two rivers in Iligan. "About 70 percent of the houses on the island were washed into the sea," Amarille said. Mindanao island, the southernmost in the Philippines, is a mineral-rich region that also produces rice and corn but is not normally in the path of an average 20 typhoons that hit the Southeast Asian country each year. "This poses challenges to us ... We need to educate people with this kind of change in climate," Pang said. "The volume of rainfall for one month fell in just one day." RESCUED BY CARGO SHIP Typhoons normally strike the central Visayas region and the south and east of Luzon, the main island in the north. Carmelita Pulosan, 42, said she and eight family members and neighbors survived by sitting on top of the tin roof of their house as it drifted miles into the open sea after floodwater swept through their village. They were rescued by a cargo ship. "There was a deafening sound followed by a rush of water. We found ourselves in the river and the current took us out to the sea," Pulosan, from Cagayan de Oro, told Reuters. "The current was very strong. God is really good to us. He saved my family," she said. Only one 3-storey building was left standing in their village, Pulosan said. Red Cross official Pang said officials and residents did not expect such a huge volume of water cascading down mountains into river systems because the area was not in the typhoon belt. She said Cagayan de Oro last experienced floods in 2009 but there was only minimal damage and no deaths. Many people found their homes destroyed after returning to shattered villages, Pang said. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States, a major ally of the Philippines, was ready to help. The Chinese embassy would donate $10,000 to help in the relief efforts, an embassy official said. Washi, downgraded to a tropical storm with gusts of up to 80 km per hour (50 miles per hour), was hovering about 60 km (40 miles) west of the southwestern city of Puerto Princesa and was expected to move out of Philippine waters late on Sunday. | 1 |
Scientists have called for a radical rethink of our relationship with the planet to head off what they warn could be economic and environmental catastrophe. In a report published on Thursday by the London-based Royal Society, an international group of 23 scientists chaired by Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston called for a rebalancing of consumption in favor of poor countries coupled with increased efforts to control population growth to lift the estimated 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day out of poverty. "Over the next 30-40 years the confluence of the challenges described in this report provides the opportunity to move towards a sustainable economy and a better world for the majority of humanity, or alternatively the risk of social, economic and environmental failures and catastrophes on a scale never imagined," the scientists said. The 133-page report, which Sulston describes as a summary of work done over the last two years, comes against a backdrop of austerity-hit governments reducing subsidies for renewable energy, global car companies falling over themselves to meet demand for new cars in rapidly growing economies like China and Brazil, and increasing pressure to exploit vast reserves of gas locked in rocks around the globe through the controversial process known as 'fracking'. But the scientists insist the goals in the report are realistic. They argue lifestyle choices, human volition and incentives enshrined in government policy can make a significant difference to patterns of consumption. They cite the growing appetite for recycling in the developed world, Britain's policy-driven switch to lead-free fuel in the 1980s, and the seemingly prosaic example of air traffic control as examples of where international cooperation can work. Sulston said governments realized quickly that the consequences of not managing air traffic could be catastrophic: "They said 'this is dangerous; we've got to cooperate'." The scientists say developed and emerging economies should stabilize and then start reducing their consumption of materials by increased efficiency, waste reduction and more investment in sustainable resources. Carbon dioxide emissions are 10 to 50 times higher in rich countries compared to poor nations, they say. Rising greenhouse gas emissions are almost certainly responsible for increasing global average temperatures, leading to rising sea levels and more extreme weather, climate scientists say. Voluntary programs to reduce birth rates, education for young women and better access to contraception urgently need political leadership and financial support. Professor Sarah Harper of Oxford University, another of the authors, said the issue of population had fallen off the development agenda in the last 10-15 years but it should be reinstated and coupled closely with environmental challenges, starting at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio in June. WANTED: BRAVE POLITICIANS The trend to urbanization remains intact. Some 50 percent of the world's population, which surpassed 7 billion last year, is living in cities. The world's population is forecast to rise to 10 billion before flattening off and the urban proportion is forecast to increase to 75 percent by the end of the century. Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, a report author and Executive Director of the African Institute for Development Policy research group, said the need for education about family planning and improved access to contraception was most acute in Africa, which is forecast to contribute 70 percent of the average population growth. He said all the evidence points to African women wanting fewer children and argued the main reason for high fertility in a country like Niger was the fact that half of all women are married at the age of 16. The scientists also supported growing calls for a revision in how we measure economic growth. "We are extremely wedded to the idea that GDP increases are a good thing," said Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex and another of the authors. He argued that GDP measures many of the 'bads' in terms of the well-being of the planet as well as the 'goods', adding: "There is an urgent need for policy change." The scientists present some startling statistics. A child from the developed world consumes 30-50 times as much water as one from the developing world. Global average consumption of calories increased about 15 percent between 1969 and 2005, but in 2010 almost 1 billion people did not get their minimum calorie needs. Minerals production rocketed in the 47 years up to 2007; copper, lead and lithium about fourfold and tantalum/niobium, used in electronic gadgets, by about 77 times. For developed countries, Sulston said the message of the report boils down to something quite simple: "You don't have to be consuming as much to have a healthy and happy life". But will politicians and consumers respond? "It is a brave politician who is prepared to tell Western consumers to consume less to let the developing world consume more," said Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University in London. "But we need such bravery now, urgently." Lang, who was not involved in the study, welcomed it saying: "The West over- and mal-consumes its way to diet-related ill-health from a diet with a high environmental impact. The evidence is there but will politicians and consumers listen and change?" | 0 |
The scientists said their research did not
pinpoint when this threshold, which they described as a tipping point, might be
reached. “But it’s worth reminding ourselves that if it
gets to that tipping point, that we commit to losing the Amazon rainforest,
then we get a significant feedback to global climate change,” said one of the
scientists, Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the
University of Exeter in England. Losing the rainforest could result in up to 90
billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide getting put back into the
atmosphere, he said, equivalent to several years of global emissions. That
would make limiting global warming more difficult. Among previous studies there has been a large
degree of uncertainty as to when such a threshold might be reached. But some
research has concluded that deforestation, drying and other factors could lead
to substantial forest dieback in the Amazon by the end of this century. Carlos Nobre, a senior scientist at the
National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil and one of the first to
sound alarm over the potential loss of the Amazon more than three decades ago,
described the new study as “very compelling.” “It raised my level of anxiety,” said Nobre,
who was not involved in the research. Covering more than 2 million square miles in
Brazil and neighboring countries, the Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest,
and serves a crucial role in mitigating climate change in most years by taking
in more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. In its diversity
of plant and animal species, it is as rich as or richer than anywhere else on
the planet. And it pumps so much moisture into the atmosphere that it can
affect weather beyond South America. But climate change, together with widespread
deforestation and burning for agriculture and ranching, has taken a toll on the
Amazon, making it warmer and drier. The region, one of the wettest on Earth,
has experienced three droughts since 2000. Most previous studies of resiliency in the
Amazon relied on models, or simulations, of how forest health might change over
time. In the new research, the scientists used actual observations: decades of
remote sensing data from satellites that measure the amount of biomass in
specific areas, which corresponds to their health. Looking only at pristine
parts of the rainforest, the researchers found that overall since 2000 these
areas lost resilience. For example, it took increasingly longer for forested
areas to regain their health after suffering a drought. “That lack of resilience shows that, indeed,
there is only so much of a beating that this forest can take,” said Paulo
Brando, a tropical ecologist at the University of California Irvine who was not
involved in the study. “It’s reducing the ability to bounce back.” But Brando said this was not necessarily a
sign that a tipping point was unavoidable, and pointed to the need to stop
clear-cutting and forest degradation in the region. “These systems are highly
resilient, and the fact that we have reduced resilience doesn’t mean that it
has lost all its resilience,” he said. “If you leave them alone for a little
bit, they come back super strongly.” The researchers found that more than
three-quarters of the untouched rainforest lost resiliency over that time, and
that the loss was greatest in areas that were drier or closer to human
activities like logging. The study was published in the journal Nature Climate
Change. Chris Boulton, a researcher at the University
of Exeter and the study’s lead author, said that the Amazon was like a giant
water recycling network, as moisture from evaporation and transpiration from
trees is blown by winds. So the loss of some of the forest, and some of the
moisture, leads to more drying elsewhere. “You can imagine that as the Amazon dries you
start to see that resilience being lost even faster and faster,” Boulton said.
Forests might then decline and die off relatively quickly and become more like
a savanna, with grasses and far fewer trees. Not only would the loss of forest trees add
the carbon stored in their tissues back into the atmosphere, savannas would
also take up far less carbon than the large, broad-leafed trees they replaced.
Savanna habitat would also support far fewer species. Nobre said the research shows that the Amazon
“is on the edge of this cliff, this switch to a different ecosystem.” And if it
were to happen, he added, “that would be the new ecosystem for hundreds of
years, perhaps thousands of years.” About 17% of the Amazon has been deforested
over the past half-century, and while the pace of deforestation slowed for some
years in Brazil, it has picked up again more recently. The researchers said
their work showed that efforts to stop deforestation would not just protect
specific areas but have an effect on the resiliency of the Amazon as a whole. “They are absolutely correct,” Nobre said. “We
have to get to zero deforestation, zero forest degradation,” adding, “We still
have a chance to save the forest.” ©2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The biggest climate talks in history must deliver an ambitious, sweeping agreement to capitalise on pledges by countries to fight global warming, the United Nations said on Sunday. A day before the two-week talks in the Danish capital formally begin, the UN climate chief said time was up to agree on the outlines of a tougher climate deal after troubled negotiations have deepened splits between rich and poor nations. "I believe that negotiators now have the clearest signal ever from world leaders to draft a solid set of proposals to implement rapid action," Yvo de Boer told reporters. "Never in the 17 years of climate change negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together. Almost every day countries announce new targets or plans of action to cut emissions," he said. Much is at stake at Copenhagen. Scientists say the world is heating up because of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and massive deforestation. The United Nations says the world needs a tougher climate pact to brake rapidly rising carbon pollution. Failure to do so would mean triggering dangerous climate change such as rising seas, melting ice caps and greater weather extremes that could disrupt economies and force millions to become climate refugees. In a show of support, 105 world leaders have said they will attend the talks' closing stages to try to seal a deal after years of bitter debates over how to divide up the burden of emissions curbs and who should pay. Poor countries say developed nations have grown rich by fuelling their economies with coal, oil and gas and that they are most responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. Yet developing countries now emit more than half of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations says all countries must play their part in braking the rise of pollution. Japan said on Sunday it would stick with its target to cut emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 during the talks, although the target is contingent on all major emitters, such as China and the United States, being ambitious. In recent weeks, China, India, Indonesia and other countries have announced emissions reduction pledges, boosting hopes of success in Copenhagen. WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE Curbs on emissions pledged to date meant the world was within striking distance of a deal to cut greenhouse gases to a level that would avoid the worst effects of global warming, a report said on Sunday. "With everybody doing a little more we could close that gap," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said in Copenhagen. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was optimistic the conference would produce an agreement. "We will get an agreement -- and, I believe, that the agreement will be signed by all U.N. member states which is historic," Ban said in an interview in the Danish daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende. The United Nations set a deadline for the Copenhagen talks to yield a legally binding, and tougher, agreement to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol from 2013. But negotiations, launched in 2007, became bogged down and the talks are likely to end with a weaker political declaration. A legally binding treaty text might agreed next year. De Boer said he was pleased U.S. President Barack Obama would join other leaders at the final stages to hear concerns of countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. "I hope that as part of the negotiation process he comes with an ambitious American target and strong financial support to reach out to developing countries as well." Obama has said his government would offer a provisional 17 percent emissions cut from 2005 levels by 2020, but developing nations and greens say this is not tough enough. CHRISTMAS WISH De Boer said Copenhagen had to deliver three things. He said it must result in a list of rich country targets that were ambitious, clarity on what major developing countries would do to limit the growth of their emissions, and a list of financial pledges to help poorer nations green their economies and adapt to climate change impacts. Greenpeace said the talks needed stronger political will. "The climate change negotiations have never seen such a momentum, and it must not be wasted," said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International. A strong agreement in Copenhagen would give investors a clearer idea of future government policies on putting a price on carbon pollution and additional incentives for clean energy, such as wind and solar as well as green transport. | 0 |
An African Union summit opened on Monday with the stage set for a battle over Sudan's determination to assume the chair despite fierce criticism of continuing bloodshed in its Darfur region. Sudan was adamant it should get the chairmanship, promised a year ago, despite a chorus of demands from rights organisations and Western governments that it be snubbed because of abuses in Darfur, where the the United States says genocide has occurred. Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told Reuters: "I don't expect responsible leaders of the AU to change their position because there are some rights groups outside the AU pressuring them. I think they are beyond pressure." The chairmanship was promised to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir a year ago when he was passed over for the post because of the violence in Darfur, which experts estimate has killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes. Critics say that far from abating, the violence has worsened in the last year and government-backed Arab militias have killed thousands. Bashir has repeatedly blocked deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster an overstretched African Union military mission of 7,000 soldiers and monitors. In an opening speech at the summit, the AU's top diplomat, Alpha Oumar Konare, accused Sudan of attacking Darfur civilians. "We appeal to the government of Sudan to stop attacking and bombarding Darfur and instead restore peace," he said. Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on the eve of the two-day summit that the AU would undermine its credibility if it gave the chairmanship to Bashir while abuses continued in Sudan's vast Western region. Chad, whose relations with Sudan are severely strained after the Darfur conflict spilled over their border, has vowed to withdraw from the AU if Bashir gets the chair. Asked at the summit opening what he would do if the chair went to Sudan, Chad President Idriss Deby said: "This is not a foreseeable step that would be taken by the African Union." Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters: "The Egyptian position is that there is a decision to give Sudan the chair and that needs to be implemented unless the summit decides otherwise." But he expected as big a struggle over Sudan's candidacy as a year ago. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told reporters: "I think we will have an easier solution to the question of the chairmanship than we did last year. The decision has not been made." Diplomats said moves were under way to promote Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete as an alternative to Bashir. They said Western governments were lobbying in favour of Kikwete. "(The AU) is one of the great success stories in international relations and diplomacy and it can be lost in half an hour. That's what the AU needs to weigh up," British Africa minister David Triesman told Reuters before the summit. An AU committee of seven "wise men", including Obasanjo, will discuss the Sudan issue on Monday and then present recommendations to the full summit, delegates said. The Addis Ababa meeting is also due to discuss raising a peacekeeping force for Somalia to replace Ethiopian troops, unrest in Guinea and climate change, as well as the AU military mission in Darfur, but diplomats say much of the debate will be overshadowed by Sudan. Delegates said opposition to Sudan was rising among the AU governments. "How can you ask someone who is dealing with their own internal conflict to deal with all the other issues going on the continent? The leaders are taking this into account and a solution will be found," one African delegate said. | 1 |
US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure. "I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," he said in an interview with PBS Newshour. "What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were." Sweden has labeled the accord Obama helped broker a disaster for the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the summit was "at best flawed and at worst chaotic," and climate change advocates have been even more scathing in their criticism. The talks secured bare-minimum agreements that fell well short of original goals to reduce carbon emissions and stem global warming, after lengthy negotiations failed to paper over differences between rich nations and developing economies. Some singled out China for special blame. British Environment Minister Ed Miliband wrote in the Guardian newspaper on Monday China had "hijacked" efforts to agree to significant reductions in global emissions. Beijing denied the claim and said London was scheming to divide developing countries on the climate change issue. Obama did not point any fingers, but did say the Chinese delegation was "skipping negotiations" before his personal intervention. "At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said. Obama forged an accord with China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the conference's final hours after personally securing a bilateral meeting with the four nations' leaders. "We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries -- not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters," he said. | 0 |
Although US President Barack Obama has never set foot there, China cast a long shadow in the Pacific region where he grew up. Obama, who will visit Shanghai and Beijing for the first time on November 15-18, spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, five time zones away from Washington, D.C.; and beginning in 1967, when he was six years old, he lived in Jakarta for four years. At the time, China was in the throes of Chairman Mao Zedong's bloody Cultural Revolution. Abroad, the nation was less interested in selling widgets than in promoting Mao's brand of radical communism -- a force the U.S. saw behind communist movements and political upheaval in Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. In 1979, Obama's senior year at Punahou school in Honolulu, China and the United States normalized diplomatic relations, launching a three-decade period in which ties between the two grew inexorably tighter and deeper -- and complicated. "Think of what China was in 1979: It was an autarkic, insular, inward-looking country that was preoccupied with its own internal things," said a senior U.S. official. "Even 10 years ago ... there was still a sort of sense of 'We're not a part of these global rules, we're not doing this stuff.' Now they see themselves as sitting at the table." If there were any doubts that China would have a seat at the table from now on, Obama dispelled those when he sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there on her first official trip abroad -- not Pakistan, Afghanistan or any other foreign policy hot spot. "That the first major visit (was) to China, and to Asia as well, is symbolic of where the locus of international economic activity -- and to some degree the locus of international activity, period -- is going to be in the coming years," said economist and author Zachary Karabell, whose new book "Superfusion" posits that the U.S. and Chinese economies have effectively merged. Beijing, once considered a wallflower on global affairs, is in turn warming to its more prominent role, though it's unclear that will translate into greater cooperation with Washington on issues like climate change and the nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea -- not to mention human rights differences. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg highlighted the tension at the heart of the relationship in a speech in September. "Given China's growing capabilities and influence, we have an especially compelling need to work with China to meet global challenges," he said. But Steinberg added that there was a tacit bargain in which the United States expects China to reassure the rest of the world that its growing role "will not come at the expense of security and wellbeing of others." That of course includes America's. "The big challenge there is going to be to maintain a competitive U.S. economy, and at the same time to maintain a high degree of stability and equanimity in the U.S.-China relationship," said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute think tank. Indeed, even as the United States and China have grown closer diplomatically, their economic and trade ties have deepened to the point of mutual dependence. Not only does China depend on the U.S. export market to fuel its highflying economic growth rates, the United States relies on China's vast savings to help finance its burgeoning budget deficits. "It is clearly unsustainable. This relationship helped give rise to global economic imbalances," said Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist with Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong. "If we are ever going to free ourselves of these imbalances, we need to reverse this relationship, get China to buy things in the U.S. and the U.S. to invest in China." "STAKEHOLDER" STRATEGY When it comes to the big foreign policy issues of the day, the Obama White House and that of his predecessor George W. Bush tend to live in opposite worlds. The rare exception is China. Obama's approach builds on aspects of the Bush administration's stance toward China, which encouraged Beijing to be a responsible "stakeholder" in the global community. But all indications are that the Obama White House intends to move the bilateral relationship to the next level, making it more of a partnership -- and that in turn is raising hackles among some traditional U.S. allies, who often don't see eye to eye with China and now worry they will be marginalized. One of the clearest signals of the Obama administration's desire to give China and other large, fast-growing economies more global clout was the decision -- adopted at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 summit in September -- to make the G20 the premier forum for discussing global economic issues. The shift reduces the role of the G7 and G8, groups dominated by rich Western countries that have long enjoyed elite status in global economic decision-making. And that has led to some European anxiety that the G20 could give way to a G2 of the United States and China. In Pittsburgh, European officials privately vented frustration at a U.S. willingness to bend over backwards to give China a voice. During one session on International Monetary Fund voting power, a European official became so angry at China's position he had to leave the room to cool down. At a luncheon, some Europeans were less astonished by China's refusal to include climate change in the communique than by the United States' willingness to go along. Several delegates could barely eat their lunch, according to a former U.S. official who was told of how the discussion played out. But the Obama administration wants to reassure Beijing that the United States, for one, welcomes China's new assertiveness on the world stage, even if the two countries don't always agree. Climate change is expected to be a major topic of Obama's meetings with President Hu Jintao when he visits Beijing. Ahead of the December 7 global climate talks in Copenhagen, the administration sees this issue as a key test of whether China will step up to the plate as a truly global player. "What we're seeing here is for the first time really in the history of U.S.-China relations, truly global issues are moving to the center of the U.S.-China relationship," said Kenneth Lieberthal, who was a top Asia adviser to former President Bill Clinton. IS CHINA A RIVAL OR AN ALLY? For all the talk of a growing U.S.-China partnership, in many ways the two remain rivals. Both U.S. conservatives and the Pentagon express concern about a decade of double-digit annual growth in the budget of China's secretive military. "We don't deny the legitimacy, that they're entitled to modernize their military," said the U.S. official. "But given the size of China and its position, its neighbors, we are entitled to ask, 'Why are you doing the things that you're doing?'" The top concern on both the left and the right in the United States, however, is Beijing's growing economic clout. Highlighting U.S. ambivalence about China, a Thomson Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that while Americans view China as important, many are wary. Thirty-four percent of Americans chose China as the "most important bilateral relationship" in a poll of 1,077 adults across the United States. Next were Britain, selected by 23 percent, and Canada, the choice of 18 percent. When asked to characterize China, 56 percent saw it as an adversary while only 33 viewed it as an ally. In some sectors, trade issues are going to "pit the U.S. against China" and Obama will need to assert U.S. interests without inviting a "nasty confrontation with China," said Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute. The Obama administration says it will not shrink from standing up for U.S. economic interests. For proof, it says, look no further than its decision in September to slap a 35 percent duty on Chinese-made tires. Since Obama took office in January, the administration has twice declined to label China a "currency manipulator" -- a designation that could trigger negotiations leading to possible trade sanctions. But Treasury has made clear it thinks China's currency, the renminbi, is undervalued and the topic is expected to come up when Obama meets Hu. U.S. manufacturers say Beijing's policy of managing its currency puts them at a big disadvantage because the cheaper renminbi lowers the price of Chinese goods abroad. Last year, imports from China totaled more than $330 billion, making it by far the biggest contributor to the U.S. current account deficit. But in a sense, no one buys American like Beijing -- at least when it comes to investing in debt securities. Having amassed some $800 billion of U.S. Treasuries, China is the largest holder of the U.S. government debt, giving Beijing new leverage over Washington but also making their economies more closely intertwined than ever. "SHOT ACROSS THE BOW" In what some U.S. analysts saw as a "shot across the bow" of the United States this year, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for the creation of a super-sovereign reserve currency, all but saying the U.S. dollar's days as the world's preeminent currency were numbered. He made the suggestion in an essay published a week before the London Group of 20 summit. Clearly aiming at an international audience, the central bank took the unusual step of publishing the paper in English at the same time as it issued the Chinese version. "The central bank's discussion really did reflect China's anxieties about its massive forex reserves, the depreciating dollar and U.S. monetary issuance," said Dong Xian'an, chief economist at Industrial Securities in Shanghai. China fears U.S. authorities will be tempted to "monetize the debt" by allowing inflation to rise, eroding the value of U.S.-dollar denominated assets held by the Chinese. Premier Wen Jiabao put it bluntly when he spoke in March at the most important Chinese press conference of the year: "We have lent a massive amount of capital to the United States and of course we are concerned about security of our assets. To speak truthfully, I do indeed have some worries." He urged America to maintain its "creditworthiness" and safeguard Chinese assets, a lecture that did not go unnoticed. CURRENCY TALK HITS A NERVE Chinese officials have taken umbrage at some suggestions that China's high savings rate contributed to the global imbalances. Some private-sector U.S. analysts say massive capital inflows from China helped fuel the housing bubble that set the stage for the financial crisis. Zhou said in September that the paper about the dollar had been partly a way of rebuffing such criticisms. But the central banker's proposal hit a nerve. Persistent complaints from Washington about the Chinese currency have long been a source of friction. Moreover, the dollar has been sliding lately and public comments about the possibility of it losing its stature could reinforce its weakness, posing dangers for both China and the United States. So the two countries have since found a way of discussing currencies that causes less of a stir in their capitals and in foreign exchange markets -- and the new name of the game is "rebalancing." Although it was hesitant at first, Beijing got on board in Pittsburgh with a U.S. call for an economic rebalancing. The idea is for export-driven economies like China to boost domestic demand while big spenders like the United States strive to increase savings. It is in this context that currencies could come up in the Hu-Obama meeting, said a senior U.S. official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "It will be clear that part of rebalancing is having a more balanced economic growth that depends more on domestic demand and that obviously implicates macroeconomic policy in all its dimensions," the official said. This official rejected the widely held view that China's vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries are a matter of concern. "They have an enormous stake in our economic success and we have an enormous stake in their economic success," this official said. "That's not a problem; it's a good thing. It's an enormously good thing and it should be welcomed." Prestowitz said China's leverage is limited by an awareness that it too, would, suffer drastic consequence if it decided to suddenly unload its holdings of U.S. Treasuries. "It would be a mutually-assured destruction situation," Prestowitz said in a view shared by many Chinese analysts. "Under extreme circumstances, it might be possible for Chinese leaders to threaten to sell Treasuries," said Xie Tao, an expert on U.S.-China relations at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. "But at the moment, I really cannot believe that they would do this," Xie said. Rebalancing and currency rows are new items on a list of U.S.-China faultlines that has long been topped by Taiwan and human rights. TENSIONS COOLING WITH TAIWAN Taiwan is still the one issue that could trigger war between China, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island, and the United States, which is committed by U.S. law to provide weapons for Taiwan's defense. But Obama's tenure has coincided with a cooling of tensions between Beijing and Taipei thanks to the 2008 election of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who has sought better ties with China. But potential friction over U.S. arms sales remains. The Obama administration has angered some for appearing to play down human rights in the interest of gaining Chinese cooperation in combating the financial crisis. Obama broke with presidential tradition and did not meet the Dalai Lama when the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader visited Washington last month. But U.S. officials reject the idea that Obama snubbed the Dalai Lama and tell critics to judge the policies by their results. Other foreign policy disputes stem from China's scorching economic growth. China's need for energy and raw materials to fuel its growth has led it to deepen ties with countries which have troubled relations with the United States or face international condemnation for their human rights records or pursuit of banned weapons. China's oil investments in Sudan drew calls for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics by critics who said China abetted the perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur. China's energy trade with Iran is seen as helping Tehran withstand Western economic sanctions over its nuclear ambitions. Drew Thompson, director of China Studies at the Nixon Center in Washington, said the United States has started to take into account how Chinese "resource needs and self-perceived insecurities" influence its foreign policy. "The more we address those insecurities and resolve them as much as possible, the more we will get from China in terms of shaping the behavior of other nations, such as Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe," he said. NO LONGER CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT WITH A BRANDY The new dynamic in Sino-America relations was on clear display last April, when Obama brokered a dispute between Hu and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G20 summit in London in April. The G20 was under enormous pressure to show unity amid fears financial markets could face another wave of turmoil after the chaos of late 2008 and early 2009. But at a luncheon of beef and asparagus, Hu and Sarkozy were deadlocked over the French president's proposal to crack down on international tax havens. China was concerned about the potential impact on the Hong Kong and Macau banking sectors. Ratcheting up the pressure was a threat Sarkozy had issued on the eve of the summit to walk out unless the G20 talks yielded a firm commitment on financial regulatory reforms. Obama pulled each leader aside and urged each to give ground, even though his own view on tax havens was closer to Sarkozy's. At a news conference later, he spoke approvingly of the rise of countries like China and said it was a good thing decisions were no longer made by "Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy." "That's an easier negotiation but that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be," Obama said. | 0 |
Australia's two major parties wooed independent lawmakers on Sunday after an inconclusive election left the nation facing its first hung parliament since 1940 and set up financial markets for a sell-off. The Australian dollar and shares were likely to fall when trading resumes on Monday, analysts said, with the vote count threatening to drag on for days and both the ruling Labor party and opposition seemingly unable to win a majority. "The uncertainty is going to be a real killer to the financial markets," said economist Craig James of Commsec, suggesting the Australian dollar could fall a cent or more. With 78 percent of votes counted, a hung parliament was most likely, with two possible scenarios for a minority government: a conservative administration backed by rural independents or a Labor government backed by Green or green-minded MPs. The latter scenario is frightening for many investors, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard indicating on Sunday after early talks with independent and Green MPs that she was open to discussing the policies of this disparate group of lawmakers. "It's my intention to negotiate in good faith an effective agreement to form government," said Gillard, adding her Labor party was better placed to deliver stable government and noting that Labor had won more votes than the conservatives. Conservative leader Tony Abbott also met some crossbench MPs on Sunday. "I have spoken briefly to each of the three incumbent independents. I don't want to pre-empt the discussions that I expect will be held over the next few days," Abbott said. "I intend to be very pragmatic, but within the broad policy parameters we discussed during the election," Abbott told reporters in Sydney. The independent and Green lawmakers who have emerged from the election stand for everything from higher income and company taxes, in the case of the Greens, to more open government and fewer banana imports, in the case of two independents. The Greens party, which is also set to win the balance of power of the Senate, will certainly push for action on climate change, with Labor postponing its carbon emissions trading scheme until 2012 and the conservatives opposing a carbon price. "The minimum for climate change is to take action, to get something under way," said Greens leader Senator Bob Brown. Brown has earlier suggested an interim, fixed A$20 ($17.8) a tonne carbon price ahead of a full-blown emissions trading scheme. Treasurer Wayne Swan sought to reassure markets that the caretaker Labor administration could provide stability until a new government is formed. "The investment and broader community can be assured that Australia's economy is among the strongest in the world, with a stable financial system and world class regulators who have served both sides of politics very effectively," he said. MARKET BRACED FOR SELL-OFF Investors would prefer a minority conservative administration over a Labor-Green arrangement, UBS chief strategist David Cassidy said, noting that conservative leader Abbott had pledged to scrap Labor's proposed 30 percent mining tax. The tax on major iron ore and coal-mining operations has weighed on mining stocks such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and the Australian dollar. "Clearly the market won't like the uncertainty," UBS's Cassidy said, predicting moderate selling. "Markets would be uncomfortable with a Labor government with Green assistance." Greens leader Brown met Gillard, who ousted former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a party coup in June, for preliminary talks on Sunday, though Brown said later that no agreements were reached, no policies discussed and no demands made. He said he was now ready to meet Abbott: "We have repeatedly shown we are very responsible in working with the bigger parties to get good outcomes in positions of balance of power." Election analysts said both Gillard's Labor party and the opposition conservatives were likely to fall short of enough seats to form a government alone, forcing them to rely on four independents and a Green MP to take power. One Green-minded and center-left independent candidate, Andrew Wilkie, who has a chance to win a lower house seat, said on Sunday he already had taken a call from Gillard but declined to be drawn on which major party he would support. "I am open-minded," Wilkie told ABC radio, adding he would back the party that could ensure stable and "ethical" government. Another independent, Bob Katter, a stetson-wearing maverick from the outback, said he would support the party he felt would do more for rural communities and ensure their right "to go fishing and camping and hunting and shooting." Independent Tony Windsor said he would be "happy to talk to anybody" when the final results were in, local media reported. Some of the independents have protectionist views and are outspoken about Chinese investment in Australian resources. | 1 |
DAVOS, Switzerland, Tue Oct 2, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Global warming will produce stay-at-home tourists over the next few decades, radically altering travel patterns and threatening jobs and businesses in tourism-dependent countries, according to a stark assessment by UN experts. The UN Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organisation and the World Tourism Organisation said concerns about weather extremes and calls to reduce emissions-heavy air travel would make long-haul flights less attractive. Holiday-makers from Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan were likely to spend more vacations in or near their home countries to take advantage of longer summers, they said. In a report prepared for a UN conference on climate change and tourism, they projected that global warming would reduce demand for travel between northern Europe and the Mediterranean, between North America and the Caribbean, and between northeast Asia and southeast Asia. "The geographic and seasonal redistribution of tourist demand may be very large for individual destinations and countries by mid- to late-century," the agencies said. "This shift in travel patterns may have important implications, including proportionally more tourism spending in temperate nations and proportionally less spending in warmer nations now frequented by tourists from temperate regions." However, overall travel demand was expected to grow by between 4 and 5 percent a year, with international arrivals doubling to 1.6 billion by 2020. In some developing and island states, tourism accounts for as much as 40 percent of national economic output. Officials from tourism-dependent countries such as the Maldives, Fiji, the Seychelles and Egypt told the conference that shifts in travel choices, and ecological damage from global warming, posed serious threats to their businesses and jobs. "Tourism is a catalyst to the economy. If you are hitting the tourism sector, automatically this rocks the whole economic machinery," Michael Nalletamby of the Seychelles Tourism Board told the Davos conference. Christopher Rodrigues, chairman of the British government agency VisitBritain, said the sector needed to find ways to reduce the effects of ever-increasing travel demand on the environment, which in turn affects the industry's health. "The biggest risk is that the success of the tourist industry becomes its own undoing," he told the conference. | 0 |
More than 60 people have been killed in days of flooding, landslides and thunderstorms that have left many people without food and drinking water and have isolated them by cutting off the internet, according to officials. The devastation in India’s northeast, one of the worst affected regions, has submerged railway tracks, bridges and roads. In the remote state of Assam, 31 of its 33 districts have been affected by floods, impacting the lives of more than 700,000 people, officials said Saturday. At least 18 people have died in the state because of floods and landslides, according to news reports. At least 33 people were killed in the neighbouring state of Bihar by lightning strikes and heavy rain in its 16 districts, Nitish Kumar, chief minister, said Friday. Climate scientists have said that India and Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their proximity to the warm tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, which are increasingly experiencing heat waves. The rising sea temperatures have led to “dry conditions” in some parts of the Indian subcontinent and “a significant increase in rainfall” in other areas, according to a study published in January by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. On Sunday, India’s meteorological department warned of “thunderstorms with lightning and very heavy rainfall” in many parts of the country’s remote northeast where the Brahmaputra, one of the world’s largest rivers, has inundated vast areas of agricultural land, villages and towns over the past couple weeks. The floodwaters of the Brahmaputra and other rivers have arrived with fury in Bangladesh, a low-lying nation of about 170 million people, where extreme rainfall and landslides washed away a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp overnight last year. In 2020, torrential rains submerged at least a quarter of the country. About 2 million people have been affected in the Sylhet region, in the country’s east, in what officials describe as one of the worst floods in many years. “We haven’t seen such a widespread flood in Sylhet for around two decades,” S M Shahidul Islam, a chief engineer of the Bangladesh Water Development Board, said Sunday. “Heavy rainfall and increased flow of floodwater through the Surma River is the main reason for this situation,” said Islam, explaining that dams in the area are unable to hold the floodwaters that have started pouring into cities. At least 10 people have been killed in the region, most drowning after their boats capsized while they were trying to move to safer areas, officials said Sunday. “We still are working to see if there are more casualties,” said Mosharraf Hossain, the top official in the Sylhet region. Roads cut off by floods have made relief efforts challenging, officials say. But the devastation has left millions of people with nothing. “The flood situation is terrible in our village in Zakiganj,” said Mahmudul Hasan, 29, who was taking shelter with six family members in Sylhet. The family has not received any food or water, said Hasan. And he said he was constantly worried about his home. “Our house is made of mud,” he explained. The government of Bangladesh has closed nearly 600 schools and colleges indefinitely to use them as shelters. At least 3,000 hectares of rice paddy fields have been consumed by the flooding, which is expected to affect the livelihoods of thousands of farmers, officials said. © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
After repeatedly blocking domestic carbon trading, Australia said on Thursday it would now push for Asia-wide emissions trading to combat global warming as part of a planned 'new-Kyoto' pact. The turn-around by Australia, which refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, comes as an opinion poll showed most Australians believe the government should sign Kyoto. Environment Minister Ian Campbell said Australia wanted to forge a 'New Kyoto' out of a six-nation alliance of the world's biggest polluters -- China, India, the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan. "Working within our region is a good place to start," Campbell said, adding an Asia-wide scheme would be a stepping stone to a comprehensive global carbon trading framework. "A very clear vision for Australia being part of a constructive post-Kyoto, beyond-Kyoto, framework, is something that we do need to get everybody in," Campbell told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. Professor Warwick McKibbin, a central bank board member, said a global carbon trade framework would never occur unless Australia and other developed nations took the lead. "You need to start at the national level and move out from there," McKibbin told the Australian Financial Review. A British report on climate change this week warned of an environment-wrought global depression unless action was taken now to combat global warming. Using calculations in the British report, Australia exported A$61 billion ($52 billion) worth of climate change every year in the form of coal exports totalling 233 million tonnes, or nearly a third of the world total. A Newspoll done for environmental groups, including Greenpeace, showed 79 percent of Australians wanted their conservative government to sign Kyoto. Nine in 10 people wanted a shift from coal-fired power to renewable energy. Kyoto obliges about 40 nations to cut emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Australia negotiated a rise in emissions, setting a Kyoto target of limiting emissions to 108 percent of 1990 levels. Australia, which has failed to ratify Kyoto, is already feeling the brunt of global warming with the worst drought in 100 years eating into economic growth. But Prime Minister John Howard said signing Kyoto would achieve nothing for Australia, which is the world's 10th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. "The best way to go in the short term is to clean up the use of fossil fuel. There is a mantra and a mythology about Kyoto," Howard said. "We need an approach that will achieve the goal, but doesn't disproportionately hurt Australia," he said. Australia has in the past two weeks announced clean and alternative energy projects worth A$185 million ($143 million). | 0 |
Achieving the 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) target has been the driving force for climate negotiators and scientists, who say it is the limit beyond which the world will suffer ever worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas. But six months before world leaders convene in Paris, prospects are fading for a deal that would keep average temperatures below the ceiling. Greenhouse gas emissions have reached record highs in recent years. And proposed cuts in carbon emissions from 2020 and promises to deepen them in subsequent reviews - offered by governments wary of the economic cost of shifting from fossil fuels - are unlikely to be enough for the 2C goal. "Paris will be a funeral without a corpse," said David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, who predicts the 2C goal will slip away despite insistence by many governments that is still alive. "It's just not feasible," said Oliver Geden, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "Two degrees is a focal point for the climate debate but it doesn't seem to be a focal point for political action." But as officials meet in the German city of Bonn from June 1-11 to lay more groundwork for the Paris summit, the United Nations says 2C is still within reach. Christiana Figueres, the UN's top climate change official, acknowledges that national plans for emissions curbs - the building blocks for the Paris accord - won't be enough for 2C. But she says new mechanisms for future rounds of pledges, perhaps in 2025 and 2030, can hit the 2C mark. "You don't run a marathon with one step," said Figueres. She says governments need to change their attitudes towards a low-carbon economy, based on clean energies such as wind or solar power, that can boost economic growth, cut pollution and create jobs. TOTEMIC GOAL The 2C cap has its roots in an Earth Summit in 1992, which pledged to avoid undefined "dangerous" human interference with the climate system. Over time 2C became a totemic goal. It was first adopted by the European Union in 1996, U.S. President Barack Obama accepted 2C in 2009 and it was formally declared as the organising principle of climate talks at a UN meeting in Mexico in 2010. It is an ambitious cap. Temperatures have already risen by 0.85C since 1880, when industrialisation became widespread. UN studies say that may already be causing irreversible changes, from a meltdown of Greenland's ice to collapse of coral reefs. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlined scenarios last year to stay below 2C that could require cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions lasting decades, at rates of three or even six percent a year. Such cuts would be unprecedented in modern history: neither the 2009 international recession nor the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union cut economic activity enough to drive emissions down so fast, the International Energy Agency says. Cuts of that magnitude may require yet-to-be developed technologies that could, for example, extract carbon dioxide from the air. "It will not be a piece of cake," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who encouraged the EU to adopt the 2C goal and says it is still achievable. "It would be perhaps comparable to what the United States did in the Second World War - they changed their economy to producing tanks rather than automobiles," he said. On the other hand, blowing past 2C warming could shift the debate to whether humanity can adapt to 3 or 4 degrees of warming - the current trend for 2100. Those advocating adaptation to a much hotter planet raise the prospect of designing new drought- or flood-resistant crops, building ever higher sea walls, or even encouraging migrations from lands that can no longer support their populations. Developing nations reject that talk. "Any increase beyond 2 degrees is a death warrant for our countries," said Tony de Brum, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. He says rising seas could wipe low-lying states off the map. He said small island states could block a deal if Paris sets the world on track for high levels of warming. About 100 developing nations want an even more ambitious 1.5C ceiling. FAILURE NOT AN OPTION Some experts want alternatives to 2C. New ways of measuring success could be concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or progress towards zero carbon emissions by 2050 or 2100. Alternatively, the word "overshoot" - describing the long-taboo idea that temperatures can exceed 2C and then fall again - may seep ever more into the debate. Still, there are reasons for optimism that the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 Paris summit will agree a global deal, succeeding the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that set emissions cuts only for rich nations and avoiding the embarrassing failure of a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. They note that this time, China and the United States, the top emitters, are cooperating for an accord. Corporations have joined in the search for solutions, prices of solar and wind energy have tumbled, and more development aid is on offer. Political leaders, meanwhile, want to avoid any perceptions of failure in Paris. "There is a Copenhagen syndrome," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said last week. "No world leaders want to (go through) that again." | 0 |
The world is getting hotter, with 2011 one of the warmest years on record, and increasing temperatures are expected to amplify floods, droughts and other extreme weather patterns around the planet, said a UN report released on Tuesday. The World Meteorological Organisation, part of the United Nations, said the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. That has contributed to extreme weather conditions that increase the intensity of droughts and heavy precipitation across the world, it said. "Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities," WMO Deputy Secretary-General Jerry Lengoasa told reporters in Durban. This year, the global climate was influenced heavily by the strong La Nina -- a phenomenon usually linked to extreme weather in Asia-Pacific, South America and Africa, but which developed unexpectedly in the tropical Pacific in the second half of 2010. One of the strongest such events in 60 years, it was closely associated with the drought in east Africa, islands in the central equatorial Pacific and the United States, as well as severe flooding in other parts of the world. The report was released to coincide with the start of UN climate talks this week in the South African coastal city of Durban aimed at reaching cuts in gas emissions to head off what scientists see as a global ecological disaster caused by climate change. For raphic on the world's biggest CO2 emitters: click link.reuters.com/dej35s Prospects for a meaningful agreement appear bleak with major emitters the United States and China unwilling to take on binding cuts until the other does first, major players Japan, Canada and Russia unwilling to extend commitments that expire next year and the European Union looking at 2015 as a deadline for reaching a new, global deal. The report said the buildup of greenhouse gasses has depleted sea ice caps and put the world at a tipping point of irreversible changes in ecosystems caused by global warming. "Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached new highs," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said separately in a statement. "They are very rapidly approaching levels consistent with a 2-2.4 degree Centigrade rise in average global temperatures which scientists believe could trigger far reaching and irreversible changes in our Earth, biosphere and oceans." Russia experienced the largest variation from average, with the northern parts of the country seeing January to October temperatures about 4 degrees higher in several places, it said. UN scientists said in a separate report this month an increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if governments failed to contain emissions, bringing unprecedented destruction as glaciers melt and sea levels rise and small island states are erased from existence. | 0 |
Leaders of the Commonwealth group of mostly former British colonies met on Friday for a three-day summit under pressure to get tougher on human rights abuses by members or risk losing its purpose as a group. Britain's 85-year-old Queen Elizabeth opened the meeting of leaders of the 54 states of the Commonwealth, home to 30 percent of the world's population and five of the G20 leading economies but struggling to make an impact on global policies. The leadup to the summit has been dominated by pressure to take a stronger line on human and political rights abuses. A confidential report to the group warned than unless it did, the Commonwealth risked becoming pointless as an organisation. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in her opening speech, touched on the issue when she said it needed "to ensure that those member nations that fall short (of the group's values) understand that their peers want to see change". Much of the debate has focused on Sri Lanka and international demands that it allow an independent inquiry into accusations of war crimes during its 25-year civil war, especially in its final months in 2009. Sri Lanka says it will wait for the results of its own investigation next month, calling the pressure over human rights a propaganda war waged by the defeated Tamil Tigers. A senior Commonwealth official said foreign ministers on Thursday failed to agree on a key recommendation in an "eminent persons" report that the group set up a rights commissioner. Canada, home to a large ethnic Tamil community, has said it will boycott the 2013 Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka, unless the host country improves its human rights record. "Today, Commonwealth leaders are faced with a choice - reform the Commonwealth so that it can effectively address human rights violations by its members, or risk becoming irrelevant," said Madhu Malhotra, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Deputy Director. British Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed suggestions that the Commonwealth was no longer of much use. "We live in a world of networks and this is a great network: a third of the world's population, 54 different countries across six continents," he told reporters in Perth. "But not just a network, a network with values about promoting human rights and democracy and freedom." ABORIGINES CLEANSE OPENING CEREMONY Aborigines cleansed the opening ceremony by waving smoke from burning grass over leaders as they arrived. Local Noongar Aborigines welcomed the leaders to their traditional homeland. In a stark reminder of the clash of cultures, Aborigines refer to British white settlement of Australia as the invasion. About 500 people, protesting a broad range of issues, demonstrated in Perth but were kept well away from the leaders by a large contingent of police in the central business district, dominated by office blocks of the mining companies that are the backbone of Western Australia's economy. Smaller countries within the group, many at risk from the effects of global warming, are pressing for a strong statement ahead on next month's international summit of climate change in the South African city of Durban. There have also been calls on leaders to help to end the practice of child brides. Twelve of the 20 countries with the highest rates of child brides are in the Commonwealth. And health advocates say laws in 41 Commonwealth states making homosexuality a crime breached human rights, hindering the fight against HIV-AIDS. Commonwealth states represent 60 percent of the world's HIV-AIDS population. | 0 |
President Barack Obama said revamping US energy policy would be a top priority next year and may have to be done "in chunks" rather than through one piece of legislation, according to Rolling Stone magazine. In an interview published on Tuesday, Obama lamented that more progress to fight climate change had not been made since he took office, and blamed the economy for that failure. "One of my top priorities next year is to have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our over-reliance on fossil fuels," Obama told Rolling Stone. "We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation. But we're going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it's good for our national security, and, ultimately, it's good for our environment." Climate change was one of Obama's top priorities when he took office in 2009, but it took a backseat to healthcare reform, financial regulation reform, and economic stimulus legislation. The US House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions roughly 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels -- a goal the Obama administration enshrined in its pledge at UN climate talks. But a similar bill did not make it through the Senate. "During the past two years, we've not made as much progress as I wanted to make when I was sworn into office. It is very hard to make progress on these issues in the midst of a huge economic crisis," Obama said. Asked whether he foresaw putting his full weight behind an energy policy push similar to the attention he gave healthcare reform, Obama said: "Yes. Not only can I foresee it, but I am committed to making sure that we get an energy policy that makes sense for the country and that helps us grow at the same time as it deals with climate change in a serious way." That may be complicated by November congressional elections. Republicans are expected to make big gains in the Nov. 2 polls, possibly taking control of one or both houses of Congress. With Republicans in power or even smaller Democratic majorities in Congress, the president will have a harder time getting his policy priorities passed. Obama's decision to grant an interview of more than an hour to Rolling Stone reflects a bid to energize young voters who helped propel him to the presidency two years ago, an effort that includes a trip to college campuses this week. Climate change is a key issue among young voters. | 0 |
Germany's policy of blending fossil diesel with biodiesel to combat climate change is failing because 20 percent comes from soyoil produced in countries where deforestation takes place, Greenpeace said on Wednesday. The environmental pressure group said it had tested fossil diesel sold at 46 petrol stations across Germany to determine which vegetable oils were used in compulsory biodiesel blending content. About 20 percent was soyoil rather than rapeseed oil from the German harvest, it said. Greenpeace said in a statement that Germany's blending programme would not reduce global warming as soyoil imports largely came from South America, where tropical rain forests were being cut down to cultivate soybeans. "Huge areas of tropical rain forests are being destroyed for the new plantations, for example in Argentina," Greenpeace said. Germany's biofuels industry association VDB said Greenpeace's charges were groundless. "Soyoil comes from North America, Argentina and Brazil," said VDB chief executive Petra Sprick. "Soyoil from the U.S. and Argentina does not have rain forest issues. Imports from Brazil are largely handled by the major trading houses such as ADM, Bunge and Cargill which have voluntary agreements only to purchase soyoil from sustainable agriculture and not from areas using cleared tropical rain forests." Germany introduced compulsory blending of biodiesel with fossil diesel at oil refineries in January 2007 as part of its programme to combat global warming. Fossil diesel must contain 4.4 percent biodiesel by energy content. A vegetable oil trader said the Greenpeace figures displayed the growing volume of biodiesel imports into Germany. "A large volume of soyoil-based biodiesel seems to be coming in from Argentina, which only started large scale biodiesel output last year and is apparently concentrating hard on exports," the trader said. | 0 |
The report, by 540 experts in 37 nations, said the seas could become 170 percent more acidic by 2100 compared to levels before the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, can become a mild acid when mixed with water.Acidification is combining with a warming of ocean waters, also caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and other man-made factors such as higher pollution and overfishing, the report said."It is like the silent storm - you can't hear it, you can't feel it," Carol Turley, a senior scientist at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England, told Reuters.The study, released on the sidelines of a meeting of almost 200 nations in Warsaw on ways to slow global warming, estimated that acidity of the oceans had already increased by 26 percent since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.A 170 percent increase in acidity is equivalent to cutting the Ph level of the ocean, a scale of acidity and alkalinity, to 7.9 from 8.2 on a logarithmic scale. Battery acid rates about 1 and soap, an alkaline, is about 10.CORALS, CRABSThe pace of acidification was the fastest in at least 55 million years, the scientists said. Acidification undermines the ability of everything from corals to crabs to build protective shells and has knock-on effects on the food web."Marine ecosystems and biodiversity are likely to change as a result of ocean acidification, with far-reaching consequences for society," according to the summary led by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme."Economic losses from declines in shellfish aquaculture and the degradation of tropical coral reefs may be substantial owing to the sensitivity of molluscs and corals to ocean acidification," it said.And some studies have found that young clown fish, made famous by the movie "Finding Nemo", behaved as if drunk in more acidic waters, their brains apparently disoriented.Another study found that rockfish can become more anxious."A normal fish will swim equally in light and dark areas in a tank ... an anxious one on high carbon dioxide spends more time in the darker side, the more protected side," said Lauren Linsmayer of the University of California, San Diego."If society continues on the current high emissions trajectory, cold water coral reefs, located in the deep sea, may be unsustainable and tropical coral reef erosion is likely to outpace reef building this century," the report said.Deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases, from power plants, factories and cars, would limit acidification.The Warsaw talks are working on plans for a global deal, due to be agreed in 2015, to limit climate change. | 0 |
Scientists and climate policy experts who quit have not returned. Recruitment is suffering, according to federal employees, as government science jobs are no longer viewed as insulated from politics. And money from Congress to replenish the ranks could be years away. As a result, President Joe Biden’s ambitious plans to confront climate change are hampered by a brain drain. At the Environmental Protection Agency, new climate rules and clean-air regulations ordered by Biden could be held up for months or even years, according to interviews with 10 current and former EPA climate policy staff members. The Interior Department has lost scientists who study the impacts of drought, heat waves and rising seas caused by a warming planet. The Agriculture Department has lost economists who study the impacts of climate change on the food supply. The Energy Department has a shortage of experts who design efficiency standards for appliances such as dishwashers and refrigerators to reduce the pollution they emit. At the Defense Department, an analysis of the risks to national security from global warming was not completed by its original May deadline, which was extended by 60 days, an agency spokesman said. Biden has set the most forceful agenda to drive down planet-warming fossil fuel emissions of any president. Some of his plans to curb emissions depend on Congress to pass legislation. But a good portion could be accomplished by the executive branch — if the president had the staff and resources. Although the Biden administration has installed more than 200 political appointees across the government in senior positions focused on climate and the environment, even supporters say it has been slow to rehire the senior scientists and policy experts who translate research and data into policy and regulations. During the Trump years, the number of scientists and technical experts at the USGS, an agency of the Interior Department and one of the nation’s premier climate-science research institutions, fell to 3,152 in 2020 from 3,434 in 2016, a loss of about 8%. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Challenging the might of the "infidel" United States, Osama bin Laden masterminded the deadliest militant attacks in history and then built a global network of allies to wage a "holy war" intended to outlive him. The man behind the suicide hijack attacks of September 11, 2001, and who US officials said late on Sunday was dead, was the nemesis of former President George W. Bush, who pledged to take him "dead or alive" and whose two terms were dominated by a "war on terror" against his al Qaeda network. Bin Laden also assailed Bush's successor, Barack Obama, dismissing a new beginning with Muslims he offered in a 2009 speech as sowing "seeds for hatred and revenge against America." Widely assumed to be hiding in Pakistan -- whether in a mountain cave or a bustling city -- bin Laden was believed to be largely bereft of operational control, under threat from US drone strikes and struggling with disenchantment among former supporters alienated by suicide attacks in Iraq in 2004-06. But even as political and security pressures grew on him in 2009-2101, the Saudi-born militant appeared to hit upon a strategy of smaller, more easily-organized attacks, carried out by globally-scattered hubs of sympathizers and affiliate groups. Al Qaeda sprouted new offshoots in Yemen, Iraq and North Africa and directed or inspired attacks from Bali to Britain to the United States, where a Nigerian Islamist made a botched attempt to down an airliner over Detroit on Dec 25, 2009. While remaining the potent figurehead of al Qaeda, bin Laden turned its core leadership from an organisation that executed complex team-based attacks into a propaganda hub that cultivated affiliated groups to organise and strike on their own. With his long grey beard and wistful expression, bin Laden became one of the most instantly recognizable people on the planet, his gaunt face staring out from propaganda videos and framed on a US website offering a $25 million (15 million pounds) bounty. Officials say US authorities have recovered bin Laden's body, ending the largest manhunt in history involving thousands of US troops in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers in the rugged mountains along the border. Whether reviled as a terrorist and mass murderer or hailed as the champion of oppressed Muslims fighting injustice and humiliation, bin Laden changed the course of history. ASYMMETRIC WARFARE The United States and its allies rewrote their security doctrines, struggling to adjust from Cold War-style confrontation between states to a new brand of transnational "asymmetric warfare" against small cells of Islamist militants. Al Qaeda's weapons were not tanks, submarines and aircraft carriers but the everyday tools of globalization and 21st century technology -- among them the Internet, which it eagerly exploited for propaganda, training and recruitment. But, by his own account, not even bin Laden anticipated the full impact of using 19 suicide hijackers to turn passenger aircraft into guided missiles and slam them into buildings that symbolized US financial and military power. Nearly 3,000 people died when two planes struck New York's World Trade Centre, a third hit the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers rushed the hijackers. "Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs," bin Laden said in a statement a month after the September 11 attacks, urging Muslims to rise up and join a global battle between "the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels." In video and audio messages over the next seven years, the al Qaeda leader goaded Washington and its allies. His diatribes lurched across a range of topics, from the war in Iraq to US politics, the subprime mortgage crisis and even climate change. A gap of nearly three years in his output of video messages revived speculation he might be gravely ill with a kidney problem or even have died, but bin Laden was back on screen in September 2007, telling Americans their country was vulnerable despite its economic and military power. MILLIONAIRE FATHER Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman Mohamed bin Laden, he lost his father while still a boy -- killed in a plane crash, apparently due to an error by his American pilot. Osama's first marriage, to a Syrian cousin, came at the age of 17, and he is reported to have at least 23 children from at least five wives. Part of a family that made its fortune in the oil-funded Saudi construction boom, bin Laden was a shy boy and an average student, who took a degree in civil engineering. He went to Pakistan soon after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and raised funds at home before making his way to the Afghan front lines and developing militant training camps. According to some accounts, he helped form al Qaeda ("The Base") in the dying days of the Soviet occupation. A book by US writer Steve Coll, "The Bin Ladens," suggested the death in 1988 of his extrovert half-brother Salem -- again in a plane crash -- was an important factor in Osama's radicalization. Bin Laden condemned the presence in Saudi Arabia of US troops sent to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait after the 1990 invasion, and remained convinced that the Muslim world was the victim of international terrorism engineered by America. He called for a jihad against the United States, which had spent billions of dollars bankrolling the Afghan resistance in which he had fought. TRAIL OF ATTACKS Al Qaeda embarked on a trail of attacks, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing that killed six and first raised the spectre of Islamist extremism spreading to the United States. Bin Laden was the prime suspect in bombings of US servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996 as well as attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224. In October 2000, suicide bombers rammed into the USS Cole warship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors, and al Qaeda was blamed. Disowned by his family and stripped of Saudi citizenship, bin Laden had moved first to Sudan in 1991 and later resurfaced in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996. With his wealth, largesse and shared radical Muslim ideology, bin Laden soon eased his way into inner Taliban circles as they imposed their rigid interpretation of Islam. From Afghanistan, bin Laden issued religious decrees against US soldiers and ran training camps where militants were groomed for a global campaign of violence. Recruits were drawn from Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe by their common hatred of the United States, Israel and moderate Muslim governments, as well as a desire for a more fundamentalist brand of Islam. After the 1998 attacks on two of its African embassies, the United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at Afghanistan, targeting al Qaeda training camps. Bin Laden escaped unscathed. The Taliban paid a heavy price for sheltering bin Laden and his fighters, suffering a humiliating defeat after a US-led invasion in the weeks after the September 11 attacks. ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA Al Qaeda was badly weakened, with many fighters killed or captured. Bin Laden vanished -- some reports say U.S. bombs narrowly missed him in late 2001 as he and his forces slipped out of Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains and into Pakistan. But the start of the Iraq war in 2003 produced a fresh surge of recruits for al Qaeda due to opposition to the US invasion within Muslim communities around the world, analysts say. Apparently protected by the Afghan Taliban in their northwest Pakistani strongholds, bin Laden also built ties to an array of south Asian militant groups and backed a bloody revolt by the Pakistani Taliban against the Islamabad government. Amid a reinvigorated al Qaeda propaganda push, operatives or sympathizers were blamed for attacks from Indonesia and Pakistan to Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Spain, Britain and Somalia. Tougher security in the West and killings of middle-rank Qaeda men helped weaken the group, and some followers noted critically that the last successful al Qaeda-linked strike in a Western country was the 2005 London bombings that killed 52. But Western worries about radicalization grew following a string of incidents involving US-based radicals in 2009-10 including an attempt to bomb New York's Times Square. In a 2006 audio message, bin Laden alluded to the US hunt for him and stated his determination to avoid capture: "I swear not to die but a free man." | 0 |
"Corruption is the elephant in the room" for improved water supplies, said Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which was a co-producer of the report. The study said investments of $840 billion to $1.8 trillion a year, or up to about 2.2 percent of world gross domestic product, would be needed over 20 years to provide universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation and to improve other services such as irrigation and hydro power. That would mark a sharp rise from the current $500 billion invested each year but yield benefits of at least $3.0 trillion a year, or more than $1.0 trillion above the highest projected spending, it said. Benefits would include "direct economic return, livelihood creation, health system savings, and the preservation of nature's ecosystem services", according to the study, which said it was the first long-term estimate for water costs. Adeel told Reuters the benefit and cost estimates were intended to help debate about water, a sector that faces strains from a rising world population, pollution and climate change. Drinking waterAlmost 2.5 billion of the world's 7 billion people lack access to sanitation, and about 770 million lack safe drinking water, UN data show. The report cited a 2008 study by Transparency International that said about 30 percent of spending on water-related infrastructure in developing nations today is lost to corruption. Transparency International said, for instance, that aquifers in 90 percent of Chinese cities were polluted because of lax enforcement of environmental laws. In Mexico, it said irrigation subsidies were skewed towards the biggest farmers. "I've no indications that the fight against corruption, except perhaps for some small cases, has made much progress" since 2008, said Teun Bastemeijer, director of the Water Integrity Network in Berlin, which has ties to Transparency International. "Much of the impact of this corruption falls on the poor and those without access to water," according to Wednesday's report, produced with the UN Office for Sustainable Development and the Stockholm Environment Agency. Adeel said that companies and aid agencies could try to invest directly in local projects in developing nations, bypassing central governments, to limit the risk of corruption. Major companies in the water sector include France's Veolia and Suez, and ITT Corp and GE Water of the United States. All say they try to stamp out corruption. | 0 |
Power demand grew 13.2% to 135.4 billion kilowatt hours (kWh),
as the electricity requirement in the north grew between 16% and 75%, a Reuters
analysis of government data showed. Electricity use is expected to grow as India's weather office
has forecast above normal maximum temperatures over most parts of the west
central, northwest, north and northeast. India and neighbouring Pakistan have been suffering from
extreme heat this year and more than a billion people are at risk from the
heat, scientists have warned, linking the early onset of an intense summer to
climate change. The unprecedented electricity use resulted in widespread power
cuts in April, as utilities scrambled to manage demand as coal supplies
dwindled. Power supply fell short of demand by 2.41 billion units, or 1.8%, the
worst since October 2015. Demand for power in Delhi rose 42% in April, with northern
states such as Punjab and Rajasthan seeing electricity demand grow 36% and 28%
respectively, government data showed. Soaring temperatures lead to a 74.7% rise in electricity use
by Sikkim, a small hilly state in the northeast famous for its scenic
mountains. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, two other mountainous states
thronged by tourists seeking a retreat from the heat of the plains, saw power
demand surge by more than a sixth because of the higher temperatures. Other northern states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and
Jharkhand in the east saw demand for electricity rise more than 25%, the data
showed. Seven states including southern Andhra Pradesh state suffered
their worst power cuts in more than six years, according to the data. Most of
the states were those in the north that faced soaring temperatures due to the
heatwave. India is likely to face more power cuts as utilities'
inventories of coal, which were at the lowest pre-summer levels in at least
nine years, declined 13%, despite state-run Coal India, which makes up 80% of
India's coal output, ramping up production by more than 27%. | 0 |
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his first official visit to Papua New Guinea on Thursday to repair ties with South Pacific island nations and promote security and democracy in the troubled region. Rudd received a ceremonial welcome at Port Moresby's main airport from dancers in traditional tribal costume. But security was tight as soldiers patrolled the area. Rudd will meet Prime Minister Michael Somare and is expected to discuss security in PNG, which is struggling to combat violent crime and climate change, which is a major issue with parts of the country threatened by rising sea levels. Democracy in Fiji, which has been ruled by a coup leader since 2006, was another top issue. Analysts said Rudd's trip, the first to the South Pacific since he won power last November after 12 years of conservative rule in Australia, should lead to more cooperation between Canberra and its Pacific island neighbours. "There is a sense in the Pacific that Australia is condescending. Rudd is trying to approach them on the basis of a regional neighbour who is concerned and willing to assist," international relations analyst Michael McKinley told Reuters. PNG is a Melanesian country of about 6 million people from 700 different clan groups, most of whom live a subsistence village life despite the country's vast mineral wealth. Australia is the biggest aid donor to PNG, spending A$355 million ($332 million) a year. On Saturday, Rudd will visit the nearby Solomon Islands, where Australia has about 200 police and troops as part of an international mission sent in 2003 to maintain law and order after the country nearly collapsed. Australia considers PNG, the Solomon Islands and Fiji to be part of an arc of instability due to volatility, crime and ethnic violence in the region. Fiji, for instance, has had a series of coups and army rebellions since 1987. Australia's former government angered Pacific islands nations with its determination to stamp out corruption under an interventionist policy designed to stop states from failing and becoming havens for criminals and foreign militants. Canberra's relationship with PNG broke down in 2006 after a man wanted in Australia on child sex charges evaded extradition after being flown out of PNG on a military aircraft, and with Somare accusing Canberra of interfering in domestic affairs. REBUILDING TIES PNG's Post Courier newspaper said Rudd's visit was an opportunity for both nations to put aside previous tensions. "The new Labor government and PNG government must recourse the colonial mindset to see Papua New Guinea as equal partners in development, security and one of existence through geo-strategic co-existence," the paper said in an editorial on Thursday. The former Australian government under prime minister John Howard had also wanted to send police to PNG to help control crime and violence, but the plan was shelved when the country refused to offer the police immunity from prosecution. Somare's government has put the police deployment back on the agenda since Rudd's election, but wants the police to be under the command of the PNG government. "We very much support an ECP (Enhanced Cooperation Programme) scheme, but by our terms," PNG Internal Security Minister Sani Rambi told the Post Courier newspaper. McKinley, from the Australian National University, said PNG and Pacific island nations were relieved at the change of government in Australia, while talks on sending Australian police back to PNG were a positive step. "The one thing Australia can't afford is to have these places in a state of civil strife," McKinley said. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Sun Jul 27,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - What if cutting greenhouse emissions could also save the lives of soldiers in Iraq, where fuel-laden convoys make them targets? The US Army says it is happening now in a push to reduce its carbon 'bootprint.' From forward areas like Iraq and Afghanistan to training ranges in the United States, the Army has been working to limit its use of fossil fuels and make its operations more environmentally sustainable. The goal is to bring Army emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide down by 30 percent by 2015, said Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety and occupational health. "What I'm interested in doing is finding out what the greenhouse gas emissions, this carbon bootprint, are for the Army in two to three years at the latest," Davis said by telephone. "We want to emit less that do that, hand in hand with reducing energy consumption from fossil fuels." The Army has pushed for environmental sustainability at all of its bases, starting with the giant Fort Bragg in North Carolina in 2001, Davis said. In practice, that meant changing the way training ranges were set up. Fort Bragg has long been the site of mock towns and villages used for combat training. Each village used to cost up to $400,000 to build. Now they are made of recycled truck-sized shipping containers at a cost of about $25,000, Davis said, and the shipping containers stay out of the solid waste stream. In the first years of the Iraq war, the long supply chain stretching from Kuwait to the battlefield put convoys at risk from makeshift bombs called IEDs. Much of the cargo was fuel, Davis said.
LESS FUEL, LESS RISK The more vehicles in the convoy, the more soldiers were vulnerable so it made sense to cut down on the amount of fuel required on the front line. "If we can reduce consumption on our forward operating bases by using renewable energy, let's say wind or solar instead of a diesel generator outside the tent ... then we can reduce the number of these supply convoys that need to come forward that are getting hit by these IEDs," Davis said. A recent survey of U.S. forward bases in Djibouti, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan showed that 85 percent or more of the power was used for air conditioning to provide comfort for sleeping but also to keep communications equipment cool. Poorly insulated tents and temporary buildings are the norm in these areas, Davis said, and keeping them cool was a challenge. The solution? Foam insulation sprayed directly on tents cut the loss of energy by 45 percent. Limiting greenhouse emissions from Army vehicles presents a different challenge, since making a Humvee or Bradley fighting vehicle more lightweight to save fuel would offer less protection for troops. But this could change, Davis said. "There's emerging technology that is providing lighter-weight armor, so I think at some point ... you're going to see more hybrid vehicles in the tactical military fleet," he said. Davis questioned the notion that the US military is among the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. The numbers are hard to pin down but the Army is starting to do just that, starting in June with an online program to track carbon emissions at Fort Carson in Colorado. The system shows Fort Carson emits 205,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, about the same as a town of 25,000 people. Eventually this system, produced by California-based Enviance, is to be used on all Army bases. It is also in use at corporations and utilities in 45 countries to track compliance with environmental and safety regulations, Enviance's president Lawrence Goldenhersh said. | 0 |
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said social justice and political reforms to stem corruption would guide policy in the coming year, as the country's annual session of parliament closed with the passage of a landmark property law. The premier, who made limiting China's breakneck growth with energy savings and spending on the countryside a theme of this year's parliament, also cautioned that investment growth was too high and economic development neither stable nor balanced. "The two great tasks are first, focusing our energies on developing the productive forces of society, and second, advancing social justice and fairness," Wen said at a news conference. "The speed of a fleet is not determined by the fastest vessel, rather it is determined by the slowest one." Delegates to the National People's Congress, which acts largely as a rubber stamp for Communist Party policy, closed the session with the passage of the property law, which for the first time explicitly protects private property. They also passed a corporate income tax bill that ends preferential treatment for foreign-funded firms by unifying tax rates at 25 percent. The move reflects China's determination to wean its economy off exports and move away from cheap manufactured goods. Wen said China must do more to focus on groups left out of the country's rapid rise into the world's fourth-largest economy, particularly farmers. "The priorities now are ... narrowing income gaps and building social security networks that cover both the cities and the countryside," he said. Increasing protests across China fuelled by corruption, land grabs and a yawning rich-poor gap threaten stability, underscoring the leadership's concerns over the chasm between booming coastal cities and the lagging hinterland. Wen also stressed the need to improve the quality of listed companies and the administration of capital markets as a bull run drove Chinese stock valuations far above international levels, sparking fears that a speculative bubble may be developing. "I pay attention to the development of the stock market, but I pay even more attention to the health of the stock market," said Wen, a geologist by training. And he directly addressed the issue of corruption, after a year in which top leaders have been sacked for graft and the business and political elite of Shanghai is under scrutiny for its role in a scandal involving embezzled social security funds. Wen, who survived Cultural Revolution purges on his way to the pinnacle of power, blamed corruption on a lack of checks and balances and held out the prospect of greater popular oversight of officials. "The solution to this problem above all needs to be addressed in institutions. We should push forward political reforms and reduce the over-concentration of power and strengthen people's supervision over the government," he said. Wen reaffirmed China's plans to set up an agency to invest part of the country's more than $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. Such an agency would have no impact on US dollar-denominated assets and would make proper use of foreign exchange reserves with the goal of preserving and increasing their value, he said. Managing such large foreign exchange reserves posed a challenge for a country with little experience in investing abroad, Wen added. In foreign affairs, Wen said he hoped his visit to Japan in April would be an "ice-thawing journey", following a period of rancour over issues stemming from Japan's pre-World War Two invasion of China. And in a nod to his fast-industrialising country's environmental woes, Wen said China would issue a plan to address climate change, but he held out no promises to accept international caps on its growing greenhouse gas emissions. | 0 |
The mountain had been scribbled on a piece of cardboard, and formed the backdrop for an online show she was performing as part of the annual Leicester Comedy Festival. But Ives said it was more than a prop: It was a metaphor for the daily struggles of transgender people in Britain, who have to continually deal with attacks, as if clambering up a hill. If it sounded like a tough premise for a comedy show, Ives insisted it would be fine. “I’m more than qualified to take you up this hypothetical mountain.” After all, she said, “I am transgender myself.” Transgender people have never had a higher profile in British culture, but with that visibility has come opposition to transgender rights, in mainstream news media and on social media. And in stand-up comedy, a medium that reacts to society’s preoccupations, trans issues have often been treated like a punchline. Stepping on stage as a trans comedian in this context, Ives said in a recent phone interview, she sometimes felt as if she had to represent an entire community when she would prefer to just tell jokes. Unlike in the United States, where positions on transgender issues are split along partisan lines, in Britain, prominent voices on both the political left and right have said, for example, that allowing transgender women to use bathrooms that match their gender identity endangers other women. (A 2018 study from UCLA found concerns about safety and privacy were unfounded.) JK Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” books, is perhaps the most famous British figure to make such claims, and people, including many fans, have accused her of transphobia. In an essay last year, she wrote that she saw the movement for transgender rights as doing “demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
Jen Ives, a British comedian, in London on Feb 24, 2021. Lauren Fleishman/The New York Times
Dan Healey, an academic at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Gender, Identity, and Subjectivity, said in a telephone interview the debate around transgender rights in Britain was louder than in the United States. “What we have here is a debate between groups of feminists who either accept trans women are women, or who don’t,” he said. Jen Ives, a British comedian, in London on Feb 24, 2021. Lauren Fleishman/The New York Times Trans people say feminists who don’t accept them question their very humanity. “One of the worst things about the state of trans issues in the UK now is it does feel like there’s an active attempt to dehumanise trans people,” Ives said. “We’re so often not viewed as people. We’re viewed as a debate, or an agenda or a trend.” Ives, 30, said she had talked about being transgender onstage since she first tried stand-up in 2017, and audiences seemed to “like the fact someone was talking about it,” she said. “Peak Trans,” her show, was partly a response to the toxic climate in Britain, she said. “If you make someone laugh, you’re not going to necessarily change their mind, but you’re at least showing them that you are a person,” she added. In the show, even when Ives talked about the anger against transgender people, she was never far from a silly joke. “Being trans is not the only thing about me,” she said at one point, adding she was also a vegetarian. “I really, really, really did want to go vegan over Christmas,” she said, “but as a trans woman I just felt I’d put my dad through enough.” Trans comedians have been appearing on British stages for decades. In December, the hugely popular Eddie Izzard made headlines after saying she wants “to be based in girl mode” and is using she/her pronouns, having worn dresses and heels onstage since the early 1990s. Debra-Jane Appleby, a trans stand-up, won the Funny Women comedy award in 2005, and Bethany Black, who is also trans, has been a regular on Britain’s comedy circuit for almost two decades. In 2010, Black told The Guardian newspaper that “mostly people don’t care about me being trans.” During a recent video interview, she laughed when she was reminded of that comment. “Yeah, that’s changed a bit,” she said. Back then, people “thought perhaps there were like 10 or 15 transsexuals in the world,” she said. “Now, they’re like, ‘They’re everywhere and they’re trying to get into sports!’” Despite the fact she jokes about transphobia onstage, Black said the debate in Britain around trans people has taken a toll on her. “I was diagnosed with agoraphobia a couple of years ago, and a lot of that comes down to constantly feeling like I’m in this battle,” she said. Also tiring are the comedians and TV shows that make lazy jokes about transgender people, Black said. Those had become such a feature of some high-profile comedians’ routines that James Acaster, another British stand-up, mocked this tendency in a 2019 set. Yet many comics avoided those jokes when they were on the same lineup as she was, Black added. “No matter how much they are all bold, super pro-free speech, a lot of them suddenly don’t say it when I’m on the bill,” she said. One exception was comedian Adam Rowe, she added. Rowe has a routine in which he says lingerie company Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t cast transgender or plus-size models in its shows.
In an undated photo made remotely, Bethany Black, a British comedian, on Feb 25, 2021. “This is my life,” Black said of being transgender. “This is something that I have to deal with every day, and not as a thought experiment.” Many British comedians made jokes about trans people, Black said — though she added they usually avoid those when she is on the same lineup. Devin Oktar Yalkin/The New York Times
“If you were born as a man, you can identify as a woman,” he says in the routine. “You can’t identify as a Victoria’s Secret model,” he adds, saying to an imaginary trans applicant, “Why not? Because your hands are like shovels, Brian.” (Toward the end of the routine, he notes that Victoria’s Secret did, in fact, recently cast a trans model.) In an undated photo made remotely, Bethany Black, a British comedian, on Feb 25, 2021. “This is my life,” Black said of being transgender. “This is something that I have to deal with every day, and not as a thought experiment.” Many British comedians made jokes about trans people, Black said — though she added they usually avoid those when she is on the same lineup. Devin Oktar Yalkin/The New York Times In an email, Rowe defended the joke. “The routine isn’t transphobic,” he said, adding it was actually written to “trap people who aren’t listening properly into thinking that it is.” He said people got distracted by buzzwords. Ives said she had seen comedians who aren’t trans do trans material, and it could be “hilarious.” After all, “I can laugh at myself,” she said. But, she added, “a lot the time it just feels like a cheap dig.” Many times in her career, she has had to go onstage directly after a male comedian who’d made jokes about transgender women, she added. She would normally mock the comedian in response. “But that’s making the best of a bad situation,” Ives said. “I’d rather not.” During her recent show, Ives gradually led her audience up the metaphorical Peak Trans, stopping along the way to make jokes about transgender people in sport and her own coming out. But then, as the climbing party got closer to the summit, one subject loomed into view. “I’m sorry,” Ives said. “We’re going to talk about JK Rowling.” Ives first made a joke about Rowling’s recent novel “Troubled Blood,” which features a male killer who disguises himself as a woman. Ives said she really wanted to “be an activist and speak out about it.” “The problem is,” she said, “that book is 1,000 pages long. I’m not reading that!” Rowling wanted “people like me to stop using women’s spaces,” Ives said. “And she wants me to use men’s toilets.” Ives became quieter. “Trans women are a lot like spiders,” she said, “and not just because we’re hairy and we set traps. We’re like spiders because we’re generally more scared of you than you are of us.” © 2021 New York Times News Service | 2 |
Australia's main opposition Labor Party elected the party's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd as its new leader on Monday, dumping veteran leader Kim Beazley a year out from a federal election. Rudd won a party ballot with 49 votes to 39 for Beazley, a Labor Party spokesman said. The party's health spokeswoman Julia Gillard will be his deputy. Labor has lost four elections in a row to Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and needs to secure 16 seats from the government to win office. The next elections are due in the second half of 2007. Party spokesman Anthony Byrne said Beazley, 57, urged the party to unite behind Rudd, 49, so Labor could win back power. "He believes we can win the next election, and wants to see Kevin Rudd become the next prime minister of this country," Byrne quoted Beazley as telling the meeting. The leadership change comes as a new poll shows the centre-left Labor Party has a strong chance of victory at next year's election. An ACNielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers said Labor had an election-winning 12-point lead over the government with 56 percent support to 44 percent for Howard's conservative coalition. But after a decade in power, Howard, 67, continues to command a strong personal rating in polls and he has promised to stay in politics to contest the next election. Rudd was first elected to parliament in 1998 after working as a bureaucrat, political adviser and a diplomat, serving postings in Stockholm and Beijing. Rudd has promised to continue with Labor's policy to withdraw Australian forces from Iraq, sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change and scrap unpopular workplace laws. Michael Lee, a former Labor lawmaker and minister in Paul Keating's government in the 1990s, said the strong victory for Rudd would help the party put aside leadership tensions ahead of the next election. "The fact it is a clear-cut decision works in Kevin's favour," Lee told Sky television. Rudd has said he would ask Beazley, who lost elections to Howard in 1998 and again in 2001, to remain in parliament and to serve on his frontbench. | 0 |
French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres both took to Twitter to express concern about the fires that have reached a record number this year, devastating vast swathes of forest considered a vital bulwark against climate change. Bolsonaro responded angrily to what he regarded as meddling. “These countries that send money here, they don’t send it out of charity. ... They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty,” he said in a Facebook Live broadcast. But earlier on Thursday, he said that Brazil alone lacked the resources to control the fires. “The Amazon is bigger than Europe, how will you fight criminal fires in such an area?” he asked reporters as he left the presidential residence. “We do not have the resources for that.” Fires in the Amazon have surged 83% so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier, government figures show. Although fires are a regular and natural occurrence during the dry season at this time of year, environmentalists blamed the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture. Farmers may have had at least tacit encouragement from the firebrand right-wing president, who took power in January. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he believes Brazil should open the Amazon up to business interests, to allow mining, agricultural and logging companies to exploit its natural resources. On Wednesday, he blamed non-governmental organizations for setting the fires, without providing evidence. He appeared to row back on Thursday, when he said for the first time that farmers could be behind the fires. AD FOR “FIRE DAY” Macron took to Twitter to call the Amazon fires an “international crisis” that should be discussed by the G7 summit that will begin on Saturday in Biarritz, France. The Group of Seven rich countries does not include Brazil. Guterres said he was “deeply concerned” by the fires, adding, “We cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity.” Federal prosecutors in Brazil said they were investigating a spike in deforestation and wildfires raging in the Amazon state of Pará to determine whether there has been reduced monitoring and enforcement of environmental protections. Prosecutors said they would look into an ad that they said was published in a local newspaper encouraging farmers to participate in a “Fire Day,” in which they would burn large areas of forest “to show Bolsonaro their willingness to work.” Colombia, home to part of the northern Amazon, on Thursday offered its support in the fight to protect the forest. “Colombian authorities are already working to contain the propagation of these fires toward Colombian territory and we are willing to collaborate with our neighbors in this common cause,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Brazil is facing growing international criticism over its handling of the Amazon, 60% of which lies in the country. Earlier this month, Norway and Germany suspended funding for projects to curb deforestation in Brazil after becoming alarmed by changes to the way projects were selected under Bolsonaro. At the time, when asked about the loss of German funding, Bolsonaro said, “Brazil does not need that.” Others were less sanguine. Brazil’s lower house speaker, Rodrigo Maia, said on Twitter he would create “an external committee” to monitor the burning of the rainforest, and he vowed to form a group “to evaluate the situation and propose solutions to the government.” The Bishops Conference for Latin America expressed concern about the “tragedy,” and on Thursday called on countries to take immediate action to protect the rainforest and nearby communities. “We urge the governments of the Amazon countries, especially Brazil and Bolivia, the United Nations and the international community to take serious measures to save the world’s lungs,” it said. Wildfires are also raging in Bolivia, where officials estimate that an area the size of the US state of Delaware has burned in recent days. | 0 |
But climate change is subverting the system. Fire seasons are running longer, stronger, hotter. The major fires now blanketing Sydney in smoke started early, within days of the last California blazes. And the strain is global. Countries that used to manage without extra help, like Chile, Bolivia and Cyprus, have started competing for plane and helicopter contracts as their own fires intensify. That is stretching capacity for the companies that provide most of the globe’s largest firefighting aircraft, and increasing anxiety for fire officials worldwide. “We’re all feeling it,” said Richard Alder, general manager of Australia’s National Aerial Firefighting Center. “As fire seasons ramp up and get longer — and they definitely seem to be doing that, the science tells us that — it places more demand on aircraft to support the firefighting. And it’s only one part of the equation.” The age of fire is upon us, scientists say, and the public and private system built to contain it is being pushed to its limits. While firefighting is still primarily done on the ground, governments and frightened residents are increasingly demanding costly assistance from the air. The European Union created a reserve fund this year for firefighting aircraft, with contracts allowing for deployments across national borders. Bolivia leased the world’s only Boeing 747 water bomber to fight fires in the Amazon in August, after the plane had been used in Israel in 2016, Chile in 2017 and California in 2018. Meanwhile in Asia, South Korea is reaching out to companies like 10 Tanker Air Carrier in New Mexico, while Indonesia borrowed an air tanker from Australia a few years ago that came from Coulson Aviation in Canada, which is now doubling the size of its contract fleet, while developing new technologies for mapping and fighting fires at night. What these companies and fire officials say they are planning for is a world ablaze year-round. “It’s coming from all over,” said John E. Gould, president of 10 Tanker Air Carrier, who started his career fighting fires in Alaska in the 1970s. “Fires are affecting climates and places they never used to affect.” That has forced firefighting “to be a global effort, not a state or national effort,” said Stuart Ellis, the chief executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, which manages fire planning for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. “It’s not just a firefighting issue,” he added. “We need to be more critical of our planning decisions. We need to examine building in bush-fire-prone areas. People love living in the bush, but as the bush is becoming more vulnerable, is that viable?” In Australia, the conservative government has yet to confront such difficult questions as it rejects a discussion of climate change and its impact. But the country is fast becoming a fiery test case for the pressures that are building worldwide. Australia is more vulnerable than most: It is arid and expansive, with large cities sprawling toward wilderness. Climate change is already delivering a sharp shift in precipitation, spurring a lengthy drought. Dry areas are now drier and larger, with forests that used to be reliably moist becoming tinderboxes waiting for a spark. This week, more than 1,000 firefighters have been battling more than 120 blazes in four states as dangerous fire conditions and record temperatures persist. In some areas, no significant rainfall is expected until January. “We’re starting to see unprecedented conditions,” said Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist at the Australian National University. “We had bush fires starting as early as winter — and by the time spring came around, we had fires in subtropical rainforest.” Fire officials and scientists say they are being forced to imagine, for the first time, overlapping and intensifying demands. “Something is clearly changing,” said Richard Thornton, chief executive of the Melbourne-based Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. “And the climate is driving all of that.” The fires of this new era cannot always be tamed. Neither aircraft nor ground crews can do much for the blazes that spread quickly with powerful winds. The Tubbs Fire that destroyed parts of Santa Rosa, California, in 2017 jumped an eight-lane freeway. The winds supercharging the Camp Fire that burned through the town of Paradise, California, last year pushed water bombers too high into the air to drop their payload. Nonetheless, aircraft use, and fire management costs, are soaring. Chile, which expanded its contracts with Coulson this year, spent more than three times as much on firefighting from 2014 to 2018 as it did during the previous five-year period. The U.S. Forest Service spent more than $1 billion on fire suppression in 13 of the 18 years between 2000 and 2017. Costs surpassed $2 billion for the first time in 2017 and 2018, when California’s fire seasons were especially severe. In Australia, too, firefighting expenses are rising. And because the responsibility largely resides with individual states, fire officials are increasingly worried whether the system can handle what’s on the way. Firefighters are already hard to deploy across state lines: Of Australia’s 300,000 fire and emergency service personnel, roughly 85% are volunteers who tend to stay where they live. Large airplanes and helicopters that dump water or other firefighting materials are thus increasingly seen as the most vital weapons for what officials call “surge capacity” — the ability to add resources as fires defy control. Two years ago, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre — which coordinates air support for all of Australia’s states and territories — sent a proposal to Parliament asking for a more than 70% increase in its annual federal funding, to 26 million Australian dollars ($17.7 million). But the request was ignored. And state governments are now bearing the burden. There will be seven large air tankers in Australia this fire season; a DC-10 owned by 10 Tanker touched down in New South Wales last weekend, ahead of the usual Dec. 1 start date, after fighting the recent fires in California. The state also recently bought a 737 Fireliner — along with two lead planes — from Coulson Aviation for $17.9 million. It can carry 4,000 gallons of liquid along with 72 passengers. Other states — and countries — have signalled they may follow. But buying or leasing a water tanker is not as easy as ordering hoses, or even sharing a few hundred firefighters, as the United States and Australia do now as well. The planes being modified are typically decades old. It can take years to turn them into firefighting weapons, and officials are anxious about whether the market will meet their needs. All 18 of the large air tankers that the US Forest Service plans to use through 2022 will come from private contractors, according to the agency’s aviation strategy. The more that fires surge into fall for California, the worse it may be for Australia and the rest of the world when it’s time to share. “I suspect we’re all becoming more nervous,” said Alder, who has been fighting fires in Australia for decades. “We’re keeping a watchful eye on it.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
The number of clean bathing beaches in Britain has quadrupled in a decade, helped by a series of hot, dry summers, an environmental charity said on Friday. The Marine Conservation Society said three exceptionally dry summers in the last four years had cut the amount of sewage being discharged into the sea after rainstorms. But it warned that years of progress could be reversed if climate change brings warmer, wetter winters and summer storms, as some experts predict. "Heavy rain translates into poor water quality because water-borne pollutants such as raw sewage, petro-chemicals and farm waste by-pass the sewer system and sweep directly from the land into rivers and the sea," said Thomas Bell, the society's coastal pollution officer. "This effect was particularly apparent across the UK during summer 2004 and throughout last winter. It's a serious problem that we believe will worsen in years to come." Raw sewage can harm marine life and give swimmers serious infections such as gastroenteritis, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, the society said. In its 20th annual Good Beach Report, 494 beaches, or 63 percent of those tested, were said to have excellent water quality. In 1997, 125 beaches were given a clean bill of health. Eight beaches in Wales failed the stringent tests, including Abercastle and Pwllgwaelod on the Pembrokeshire coast. Seven Scottish beaches failed, including Largs and Barassie in Ayrshire. England's only failure was Staithes in North Yorkshire. Guernsey's Pembroke Bay also slipped up. The society praised the water industry for improving the way it treats sewage over the last 20 years, but said more investment is needed to help sewage works cope during storms. bdnews24.com/mir/1525 h
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Climate change threatens UK beaches
LONDON, May 19 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The number of clean bathing beaches in Britain has quadrupled in a decade, helped by a series of hot, dry summers, an environmental charity said on Friday. The Marine Conservation Society said three exceptionally dry summers in the last four years had cut the amount of sewage being discharged into the sea after rainstorms. But it warned that years of progress could be reversed if climate change brings warmer, wetter winters and summer storms, as some experts predict. "Heavy rain translates into poor water quality because water-borne pollutants such as raw sewage, petro-chemicals and farm waste by-pass the sewer system and sweep directly from the land into rivers and the sea," said Thomas Bell, the society's coastal pollution officer. "This effect was particularly apparent across the UK during summer 2004 and throughout last winter. It's a serious problem that we believe will worsen in years to come." Raw sewage can harm marine life and give swimmers serious infections such as gastroenteritis, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, the society said. In its 20th annual Good Beach Report, 494 beaches, or 63 percent of those tested, were said to have excellent water quality. In 1997, 125 beaches were given a clean bill of health. Eight beaches in Wales failed the stringent tests, including Abercastle and Pwllgwaelod on the Pembrokeshire coast. Seven Scottish beaches failed, including Largs and Barassie in Ayrshire. England's only failure was Staithes in North Yorkshire. Guernsey's Pembroke Bay also slipped up. The society praised the water industry for improving the way it treats sewage over the last 20 years, but said more investment is needed to help sewage works cope during storms. | 0 |
“I love milk,” said Jean Bosco Nshimyemukiza, the motorcycle taxi driver, as he sipped from a large glass of fresh milk that left a residual white line on his upper lip. “Milk makes you calm,” he said, smiling. “It reduces stress. It heals you.” Nshimyemukiza and the others were all seated at a milk bar, one of the hundreds found everywhere in the capital, Kigali, and scattered all across this small nation of 12 million people in central Africa. In Rwanda, milk is a beloved drink and the milk bars are a favourite place to indulge, combining the pleasures of the beverage with a communal atmosphere. Men and women, young and old, sit on benches and plastic chairs throughout the day, glass mugs before them, gulping litres upon litres of fresh milk or fermented, yogurt-like milk, locally known as ikivuguto. Some patrons drink it hot, others like it cold. Some — respecting an old custom of finishing your cup at once — chug it down quickly, while others sip it slowly while eating snacks like cakes, chapatis and bananas. However they take their glass, everyone comes to socialise and unwind. But first and foremost, they drink milk. Lots of it. “I come here when I want to relax, but also when I want to think about my future,” said Nshimyemukiza, who added that he drinks at least three litres of milk daily. “When you drink milk, you always have your head straight and your ideas right.” While milk bars have popped up everywhere over the last decade, the drink they sell has long been intrinsic to the country’s culture and history, as well as its modern identity and economy. Over the centuries, cows were a source of wealth and status — the most valuable gift to confer on a friend or a new family. Even royalty craved easy access to milk. During the Kingdom of Rwanda, which lasted for hundreds of years until the last king was deposed in 1961, cows’ milk was kept in wooden bottles with conical woven lids right behind the king’s thatched palace. Cows were considered so valuable they ended up in children’s names — Munganyinka (valuable as a cow) or Inyamibwa (beautiful cow) — as well as in traditional dances, where women raised their hands to emulate the giant-horned Ankole cows. In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of a genocide, during which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered within 100 days. The majority of those killed were ethnic Tutsis, historically herdsmen and rich in cattle. Cattle-keeping families, and their cows, were targeted by extremists from the Hutu ethnic group who were mostly farmers, said Dr. Maurice Mugabowagahunde, a history and anthropology researcher at the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy. As the country recovered from the genocide, Rwanda’s government looked to cows again as a way to expand the economy and fight malnutrition. In 2006, President Paul Kagame introduced the Girinka programme, which aims to give every poor family one cow. The program has so far distributed over 380,000 cows nationwide, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources — with contributions coming from private companies, aid agencies and foreign leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. The programme (Girinka means “may you have a cow” in a local language) is one of the development projects that have garnered Kagame support nationwide even as he brooks no dissent and cracks down on rivals. As milk production increased in this landlocked nation, so did the number of people who moved to urban areas for education and employment. And so were born the milk bars, which allowed farmers to sell their surplus milk and let customers drink copious amounts of it to be reminded of home. Most milk bars are in Kigali, the country’s most-populous city, with 1.2 million people. Steven Muvunyi grew up with nine siblings in the Rubavu district in the country’s west. After moving to Kigali to attend university, he said he missed being in the countryside, milking cows and drinking milk without limits. “I come to the milk bars and I am overcome with nostalgia from my childhood,” he said one evening in late September, as he drank from a big mug of hot, fresh milk in downtown Kigali. As he sat at the bar, Muvunyi, 29, who works in Rwanda’s budding technology sector, showed photos of his 2-year-old son looking at him while he drank a glass of milk at his parents’ farm. He worried, he said, that children growing up in cities would not be as connected to the country’s dairy culture, given the easy access now to pasteurised milk at supermarkets. “I want to teach my children early the value of milk and cows,” he said. For all their appeal, the milk bars, and the dairy sector in general, have faced growing challenges in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic severely affected the industry, particularly as Rwanda instituted one of the most stringent lockdowns in Africa. As authorities mandated a night curfew, closed markets and banned movement between cities and districts, the economy took a hit, and Rwanda slumped into recession. More than half of Rwanda’s small- and medium-size dairy businesses closed during the lockdown, according to the government. Three of the country’s five biggest milk processors were operating from 21% to 46% of their capacity. The restrictions were particularly hard on small, independent milk bars. In recent years, many smaller bars had closed as corporate chains consolidated their grip on the market. Climate change has also presented challenges. In recent years, recurring droughts have left thousands of people without food and cows lacking feed and water. Shortages of milk have surfaced nationwide. Adverse weather conditions over the past four months have also meant a rise in milk prices. On average, a litre of milk at the shops in Kigali has increased from 500 Rwandan francs (50 cents) to 700 francs (70 cents). For Illuminee Kayitesi, who owns a milk bar in the Nyamirambo neighbourhood in Kigali, the lockdowns of the past year affected her ability not only to pay rent, but also to pay her employees and stay profitable enough for her to take care of her family. The recent milk shortages also meant she couldn’t keep the bar’s milk cooler full most days. While business has slowly picked up as more people get vaccinated and the country reopens, “it’s still not easy,” she said. But no matter the circumstances, Rwandans say the milk bar is here to stay. During the pandemic last year, Ngabo Alexis Karegeya started sharing images and videos on Twitter about the Rwandan attachment to cows and milk — drawing national attention. Karegeya graduated from university this year with a degree in business administration, but still fondly remembers his days tending cows as a boy. He tweeted a photo of himself in his graduation gown with the caption “certified cow-boy y’all.” “Rwandans love cows and they love milk,” said Karegeya, who owns five cows in the lush hills of his family’s home in western Rwanda and drinks three litres a day. “The milk bar brings us together,” he said. “And we will keep coming to the milk bar to drink more milk.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
While the scandal — set off by a video revealing the far-right Freedom Party’s openness to Russian influence peddling — did not appear to have dimmed the appeal of Kurz, it did seriously dent voter support for the party, his former coalition partner. The leftist Greens, on the other hand, saw their support more than double. Kurz’s conservative People’s Party won more than 37% of the vote, according to preliminary results released Sunday — putting him comfortably in first place, but with not enough votes to be able to govern alone. That result means the former chancellor will need a partner to govern, either linking up again with the far right or tapping the Greens. Buoyed by the recent global call for action to curtail climate change, the Greens surged in a reflection of a trend across Germany and elsewhere in Europe. A People’s Party coalition with the centre-left Socialists would also be possible numerically, but that was viewed as unlikely, unwanted by either party. “We were voted out of office in May, and it was a difficult four months, but today the people returned us to office,” Kurz told a room of cheering supporters in Vienna after initial results were announced, thanking them for their trust and support. But he gave no indication of how he would proceed with forming a government. The Freedom Party won 16% support, a loss of about 10 percentage points from the 2017 election, reflecting continuing fallout from the video that surfaced in May. The video showed the party’s former leader and erstwhile vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, discussing an exchange of favours with a woman claiming to be a Russian oligarch’s niece. Last week, prosecutors in Vienna began an investigation into Strache on suspicion of embezzling party funds, a move that could cause further headaches for the party and make Kurz think twice about joining forces with it again. Only about a third of all voters who supported Kurz wanted to see a return to power of his coalition with the far right, analysts said, but only a quarter want to see him go into power with the Greens. Kurz has indicated he is open to teaming up again with the Freedom Party, which some analysts said may be a closer policy fit than his other choices. “Based on an analysis of key issues, there is an 80% convergence between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, while the People’s Party and the Greens only agree on about 20% of issues,” said Peter Filzmaier, a professor of politics at Danube University Krems. But based on other parties’ performances at the polls, Kurz may opt to look leftward in an attempt to appeal to younger voters who threw their support behind the Greens. “After what we have seen today, a coalition between the conservatives and the far right has become less probable and a coalition with the conservatives and the Greens more probable,” Filzmaier said. The Socialists, another possible governing partner, suffered their worst showing since 1945, earning only 21.8% support based on the results so far. The party’s decision to call a no-confidence vote against Kurz in May, ushering in a caretaker government, led to acrimony between the centre-right and centre-left that analysts said made a potential coalition between the two unlikely. The Greens returned to Parliament with 14% of the vote, two years after infighting caused the party to split and crash out of the legislature, having failed to clear the 5% hurdle necessary to earn seats. The surge in support for the Greens meant the party would be enough to enter into a two-way coalition with Kurz’s conservatives. But that would require compromise from all sides, especially on essential issues where the former chancellor has championed a much tougher line, including migration, domestic security and the welfare state. The leader of the Greens, Werner Kogler, said his party would focus on delivering on its campaign promises to turn around the previous government’s policies. “There needs to be radical change” in environmental and climate policies and the fight against corruption, Kogler told the public broadcaster ORF. Many people voted for the Greens because they dislike Kurz, which would make the coalition talks long and difficult, according to Markus Wagner, a professor of political science at the University of Vienna. “Going together with the Greens would be attractive to Mr Kurz because they have a lot of young voters,” Wagner said. “But in terms of policies, it would be quite a big gap.” “I don’t think it’s impossible, but it is hard to predict right now what will happen,” Wagner added. Kurz, 33, revived his staid conservative party two years ago by co-opting and giving a youthful repackaging to much of the far right’s agenda, which ushered him into his first term in office. His recent campaign pledged to continue the work of his previous government, including maintaining a hard line on immigration and ensuring domestic security. Although that strategy appeared to succeed, the question now for Kurz — and indeed Austria and the rest of Europe — is whether he will double down on that approach and invite the Freedom Party back into coalition, despite past troubles and voters’ diminished support. “It can’t be expected that 16% will carry much weight,” said Herbert Kickl, a Freedom Party leader and hard-liner who served as interior minister in the previous government, when asked during a debate televised on ORF about the possibility of reviving the coalition. Critics had looked disapprovingly on Kurz during his term in office for repeatedly turning a blind eye to the Freedom Party’s continual flirtation with anti-Semitic sentiments and extreme-right organisations. They worry that another far-right coalition could further weaken democratic institutions in the Alpine country, which has long seen itself as a bridge between East and West. © 2019 The New York Times Company | 0 |
But Trump's election win could hand Moscow an elusive prize - the lifting or easing of Western sanctions. Rolling back those sanctions, imposed by the United States and the European Union to punish Moscow for its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, could spur investment in Russia's flat-lining economy. That might make it even easier for Putin, who is trying to plug holes in the state budget inflicted by low oil prices and sanctions, to win a fourth presidential term in 2018 by allowing him to show he has returned the economy to growth. "Clearly the chances of sanctions being lifted on Russia have risen substantially," Charles Robertson, Renaissance Capital's global chief economist, said. "That would improve the investment climate for Russia." Russia's rouble currency and stocks gained on the Trump election victory. Ukraine's dollar-denominated bonds tumbled to multi-month lows, reflecting pessimism about what a Trump presidency means for the divided and indebted country. The Kremlin had been bracing for fraught relations if the White House had been won by Hillary Clinton - a politician Putin once accused of stirring up protests against him and who state media portrayed as an anti-Russian warmonger. Trump was portrayed in a more positive light. Putin described him as "very talented" and in Kremlin-backed media he was cast as a plucky political maverick. Still, few in Moscow had believed the Republican candidate would win, apart from a group of Trump-supporting nationalists who gathered in a Moscow bar decorated with a triptych of Putin, Trump and French Front National leader Marine Le Pen. Once it became clear he had won, Russia's parliament erupted in applause and Putin told foreign ambassadors he was ready to fully restore ties with Washington. State TV ran a clip of a Russian doppelganger of Trump taunting a cowed Clinton lookalike and Margarita Simonyan, the boss of RT, the Kremlin's English-language TV news channel, said she would drive around Moscow with a US flag to celebrate. But Russian glee was tempered by a recognition that Trump's pre-election promises might be diluted and that deep contradictions between Moscow and Washington would remain, even if Trump and Putin adopt a friendly tone in public. Easing sanctions Trump's attempts to ease restrictions on doing business with Russia could also be constrained by Congress, which has shown it has little patience for the Kremlin's military adventures. Executives with Western firms say the biggest obstacle to deals with Russia is not the sanctions themselves but the prospect that more could be imposed and the zeal with which existing sanctions are enforced. If a Trump White House were to send a signal to businesses that it was taking a more lax approach, investments could start flowing again with sanctions still in place. A softer US stance could also weaken European sanctions resolve. The bloc's measures have already started to look wobbly, with some member states finding ways to circumvent them, others saying it is time to discuss moving on, and some business groups in countries such as Germany lobbying against them. Until now, Washington has helped stiffen European resolve. When Russia placed a Eurobond in May this year, many European banks decided not to take part because they did not want to fall foul of US financial regulators. "America was the leader there and amazingly has been able to hold Europe together (on sanctions)," political analyst Masha Lipman told Reuters. "With Donald Trump in the White House I think there may be changes, something that might be beneficial for Russia." Putin needs sanctions lifted as they risk hurting his re-election prospects. Russia's central bank is forecasting economic growth of up to 1 percent next year, well below the level Russian households have come to expect. After previous slumps, recoveries have been driven by foreign lending and investment. There are already some signs that the economy is hurting support for Putin, a trend that is only likely to grow in the 18 months until the Russian presidential election. Hard bargain Kremlin-watchers said that, even if US-relations were less antagonistic with Trump in the White House, any deal would involve hard bargaining on both sides. Russia is seeking formal recognition from the world that Crimea, part of Ukraine, is now Russian territory, something it has only got so far apart from a handful of nations. It also wants Kiev to do more to implement a peace deal covering eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists hold sway. In Syria, where Russia is helping President Bashar al-Assad fight a war with air strikes and military assistance, Moscow wants the West to drop ideas about changing the government, abandon help for what it says are hardline Islamists, and drop talk of possible no-fly zones. One possibility is a quid pro quo, with Russia making concessions on Syria in exchange for the United States ceding ground on Ukraine and sanctions. "For Russia the key point is Ukraine. If Trump says that America does not care about Ukraine, then that is all that Russia wants to hear right now," Georgy Bovt, editor of the Russkiy Mir magazine, told Reuters. "On Syria it will be easier to reach a deal. I think that on Assad, Russia will be willing to compromise because Ukraine is more important for Russia." Personalities Much has been made in Russian and Western media of the perceived similarities and differences between Putin and Trump, who have never met. Both are fond of tough talking and some Russian politicians have suggested the pair might be able to forge a close working relationship similar to the one the Russian leader enjoyed with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Trump has said he might even meet Putin before his inauguration. Putin's spokesman said there were currently no plans for such a meeting. People familiar with both men's leadership styles advised caution however, saying both were relatively thin-skinned when it came to criticism. Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think-tank close to the Foreign Ministry, told Reuters the fact that Trump was an untested politician would also be a worry for the Kremlin. "He's a loose cannon and you never know what to expect from him," he said. There were also concerns the two men might be too alike. "The problem is that both of them, Putin and Trump, are macho," Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected analyst and former pro-Putin lawmaker, told Reuters. "They could try to take the measure of each other. We can't let that happen." | 1 |
India will spend some $200 million to protect its forests and will announce how much carbon emission is being captured by its green cover, the environment minister said on Friday. Jairam Ramesh said the money would go into conserving and restoring unique vegetation, controlling forest fires and strengthening forestry infrastructure, among other goals. "This reflects the high priority that the prime minister accords to the renewal of our forestry establishment which is critical in our climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts," he said. Forestry forms an important part of international negotiations for a new U.N. climate change deal in December, and India says efforts to conserve and increase forest cover should be considered as vital as reducing deforestation. Forests soak up vast amounts of planet-warming CO2 and can act as a brake on climate change. Under an emerging U.N. scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD, developing nations could potentially earn billions of dollars by setting aside and rehabilitating their forests. The valuable carbon offsets they earn could be sold to rich nations to help them meet their emissions goals under the scheme that is likely to be part of a broader climate pact from 2013. Ramesh said India would announce on Aug. 10 the results of a study into how much emissions were being captured by India's forests. The quantification could bolster India's demand for money for afforestation efforts under REDD. "We have for the first time estimated how much of our emission is being captured by the forest cover," he said. About 65 million hectares, or 20 percent of India's land, is under forest cover. Ramesh said the cover would be extended by another six million hectares over the next six years. | 0 |
The world's biggest emitters of global-warming greenhouse gases met behind closed doors on Wednesday for a US-sponsored conference, as protesters pointed up Hawaii's vulnerability to climate change. The two-day meeting is meant to spur UN negotiations for an international climate agreement by 2009 so a pact will be ready when the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, stressed that time was short to come up with a plan and said delegates to the Hawaii meeting need to take the lead. By midday, he said there was "no clear sense of direction yet." "Nothing got accomplished yet this morning," de Boer said in an interview. "This was a first discussion on what is this process supposed to deliver, how can it contribute to broader negotiations." He described a change in mood from the first round in September of these U.S.-led talks among major greenhouse polluters, when many participants faulted Washington as isolated for its stand against the Kyoto agreement's mandatory carbon limits. A global conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, in December and the "roadmap" it produced made the difference, de Boer said. "I think people feel a lot more comfortable now given that there was an outcome in Bali establishing the issues that need to be part of both the negotiations and a post-2012 package," he said. Andy Karsner of the US Energy Department, a delegate to this conference, agreed. "I have been very pleased, in fact touched, by the sentiment in the room, that really reflects a changing of the mood, a turning of the page," Karsner told reporters. "It really exemplifies how significant the Bali roadmap has been in terms of all the nations of the world beginning to signal the areas that they will concentrate on over a very limited timetable." CONCERN ABOUT US-LED PROCESS Another participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was some lingering concern about the US-led process. Delegates from all the countries stressed that this meeting was meant to feed into the U.N. negotiations, not compete with them or undermine them, this participant said. "I think it was mostly clearing the table of all the old dirty dishes," this participant said, referring to delegates' mention of the relationship between these talks and the UN negotiations. "There still are a lot of concerns from a lot of the people about this process." The Hawaii meeting drew representatives of the richest countries -- the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- and some of the fastest growing, including China and India. The United States has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, contending that its aim to set mandatory limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and vehicles unfairly exempts big emitters like India and China as well as developing countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico. The Bush administration favors what it calls "aspirational" long-term goals to be set voluntarily by countries, but administration officials stress they support certain mandatory steps, such as fuel-efficiency standards and the use of alternative fuels. In his final State of the Union address on Monday, President George W. Bush was applauded when he announced a $2 billion fund to ease the transfer of environmental technology. Several dozen activists demonstrated across from the meeting site, and nearby, others showed how high the ocean water would extend if there is a 39-inch (one-meter) rise in global sea levels, which some experts predict by century's end. A column in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper sounded a skeptical note. "If the U.S. finally drops its blinders and agrees to dramatic cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions, this meeting could be a defining moment in history. Or this meeting could be another nonevent, or worse, a cynical diversion," said the column, co-written by Jeff Mikulina, director of the Sierra Club's Hawaii chapter. "It's more likely to be a speed-bump," Mikulina said later by telephone . (For more Reuters information on the environment, see http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/) | 0 |
Billions of refugees, victims of drought and famine, are on the move. The streets are full of violent gangs and human traffickers. Pandemics are breaking out. Welcome to a new literary genre – climate fiction, or cli-fi. Some of it might be sensational, some of it not exactly great literature, and some downright depressing, but there’s little doubting cli-fi’s growing popularity. Cli-fi – along with its elder brother sci-fi – is now considered part of modern literature’s classification system. Though some titles make only a passing reference to climate change, while others are more concerned with murder, mayhem and sex than with global warming, others are more thoughtful, science-based works. Well-established novelists have used climate change as a backdrop in their books. The prize-winning writer, Ian McEwan, in his 2010 novel Solar, describes the world of physicist Michael Beard – a man of apparently insatiable sexual and culinary appetite – and his invention of a system for solving the global energy problem. Margaret Atwood, the Canadian poet and novelist, has often used environmental catastrophe as a theme in her work: her trilogy MaddAddam graphically describes global floods and battles with criminals. Ultimately civilisation – and the environment – is rebuilt. “There’s a new term, cli-fi, that’s being used to describe books in which an altered climate is part of the plot”, Atwood writes in The Huffington Post. “Dystopic novels used to concentrate only on hideous political regimes, as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. “Now, however, they’re more likely to take place in a challenging landscape that no longer resembles the hospitable planet we’ve taken for granted. “Whether fictional or factual, the coming decades don't sound like a picnic. It's a scary scenario, and we're largely unprepared.” Academic engagement The emerging cli-fi genre has given birth to new courses at universities: academics say cli-fi helps people, particularly the young, engage more in science – and in the dangers posed by climate change Sarah Holding is the author of several cli-fi books aimed mainly at a younger audience. In a review of cli-fi books for children in The Guardian newspaper, Holding says the new genre helps young readers value their environment. “…These books are posing new questions about what it means not just to survive but to be human. Don’t be put off by the preponderance of floodwater or the scarcity of basic resources – what you’ve got here are fast-paced, intrepid adventures into the unknown…” Dr Renata Tyszczuk of the University of Sheffield in the UK is running a project called Culture and Climate Change, which aims to involve the wider artistic community in the issue. Tyszczuk says cli-fi is one area where culture has responded to climate change and includes some great work – but it’s not enough. “Climate change is viewed by universities and many others as a science and technology ‘problem’ which needs to be solved. Doubters “The arts are in a position to help put this difficult new knowledge into a much wider context and in so doing encourage more thoughtful and purposeful responses.” Not everyone is convinced cli-fi is a good thing. There is concern that critical issues relating to the planet’s future are being trivialised in a series of sensational novels. George Marshall is founder of the UK-based Climate Outreach organisation and author of a book on communicating climate change. Writing in the New York Times, Marshall says cli fi will do little to help the battle against climate change. “I predict that ‘cli-fi’ will reinforce existing views rather than shift them. The unconvinced will see these stories as proof that this issue is a fiction, exaggerated for dramatic effect. “The already convinced will be engaged, but overblown apocalyptic storylines may distance them from the issue of climate change or even objectify the problem.” | 0 |
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