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Nearly 200 nations agreed on Saturday to a sweeping plan to stem the loss of species by setting new 2020 targets to ensure greater protection of nature and enshrine the benefits it gives mankind. Environment ministers from around the globe also agreed on rules for sharing the benefits from genetic resources from nature between governments and companies, a trade and intellectual property issue that could be worth billions of dollars in new funds for developing nations. Agreement on parts of the deal has taken years of at times heated negotiations, and talks in the Japanese city of Nagoya were deadlocked until the early hours of Saturday after two weeks of talks. Delegates agreed goals to protect oceans, forests and rivers as the world faces the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago. They also agreed to take steps to put a price on the value of benefits such as clean water from watersheds and coastal protection by mangroves by including such "natural capital" into national accounts. Services provided by nature to economies were worth trillions of dollars a year, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said in a statement, adding businesses from banks to miners were key in halting rapid loss of ecosystems. "These goals recognize and value the irreplaceable benefits that nature provides to people in the form of food, fuel, fiber, fodder and freshwater that everyone depends on," Andrew Deutz, director of international government relations for U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy, told Reuters. Delegates and greens said the outcome would send a positive signal to troubled U.N. climate negotiations that have been become bogged down by a split between rich and poor nations over how to share the burden in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. U.N. climate talks resume in Mexico in a month. "TORTUOUS NEGOTIATIONS" "We're delighted there's been a successful outcome to these long and tortuous negotiations and I think it shows that these multilateral negotiations can deliver a good result," said Peter Cochrane, head of Australia's delegation in Nagoya. Delegates agreed to a 20-point strategic plan to protect fish stocks, fight the loss and degradation of natural habitats and to conserve larger land and marine areas. They also set a broader 2020 "mission" to take urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity. Nations agreed to protect 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Currently, 13 percent of land and 1 percent of oceans are protected for conservation. The third part of the deal, the Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources, has taken nearly 20 years to agree and sets rules governing how nations manage and share benefits derived from forests and seas to create new drugs, crops or cosmetics. The protocol could unlock billions of dollars for developing countries, where much of the world's natural riches remain. "The protocol is really, really a victory," Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira told reporters. It will also mean changes for businesses. "This isn't a boring protocol. It will regulate billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry," said Tove Ryding, policy adviser for biodiversity and climate change for Greenpeace. Karl Falkenberg, head of the European Commission's environment department, said it would also fight poverty. "We finally have something that is going to give great results for the environment, for the poor people," who will be able to earn money in exchange for access to genetic materials, he said after the talks ended. Delegates and greens had feared the ill-feeling that pervaded climate negotiations after last December's acrimonious meeting in Copenhagen would derail the talks in Nagoya. "There's been a mood of change. I think the failure of the Copenhagen meeting last year perhaps has meant a new realisation that we need to more flexible in negotiations," said Jane Smart, director of conservation policy for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. | 0 |
According to the inscription on the tomb’s pediment, its occupant was a freed slave named Marcus Venerius Secundio, who became rich and “organised performances in Greek and Latin that lasted four days,” Buondonno, a Pompeii tour guide, read, translating from the Latin. Inside the tomb, believed to date to just decades before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that smothered Pompeii in AD 79, archaeologists had discovered one of the best preserved skeletons ever found. “It’s odd for that time. Normally adults were cremated,” Buondonno said. But the tomb was important for other reasons, too. “Recent finds like this show us new insight into the lower classes of Pompeii,” said Luana Toniolo, a former Pompeii staff archaeologist, who excavated the site. In particular, an epigraph with Secundio’s condensed biography — which also says he was a custodian at the Temple of Venus and trained for the priesthood in a cult — shed light on some occupations that freed slaves “could aspire to,” she said. For archaeologists, the tomb inscription was also important as confirmation of a hitherto unverified theory that performances in Pompeii had been presented in Greek, the language most used in the eastern Mediterranean. It still wasn’t clear whether those were musical or theatrical, but it was proof that Pompeii had been a cosmopolitan city. “We know people from throughout the Mediterranean lived in Pompeii,” Gabriel Zuchtreigel, 40, the site’s director, said in a video about the find. It was an open, multiethnic society, he added. It used to be that visitors thronged to the ancient ruins mostly to see dazzling frescoes in grandiose abodes, captivated by the tragedy of an ancient civilization that had no chance of survival against the tons of ash, gas and rocks that snuffed out life in the city. But Zuchtreigel, the Italo German archaeologist who took over Pompeii in 2021, is hoping that under his watch, visitors will get to know the ancient city through a broader lens, exploring its complex social stratification. “Many of the questions we are today addressing are inspired by other fields emerging here, such as gender studies and post-colonial studies,” Zuchtreigel said. “We should not forget that all the wealth and art works that we see in Pompeii are really based on a society where not only slavery existed, but there was no concept of social welfare.” Hard evidence of the grim life that enslaved people endured emerged last year with the discovery of “the Room of the Slaves” in a villa to the north of Pompeii. The cramped space contained three cots (the smallest one likely for a child), as well as a chamber pot and clay jugs, suggesting that its inhabitants were living in what was also a storage area. The room had been lit by a small upper window. “Sometimes you are suddenly very close to this reality of what probably the majority of inhabitants of Pompeii experienced,” Zuchtreigel said. “I think it was a very tough society.” There are plenty of items still to cross off on Zuchtreigel’s checklist to bring a site frozen in the first century into the 21st. “We still need to think about how to better include people with disabilities, children, people with different cultural backgrounds,” he said. “It’s not just about the barrier free access, it’s also about the language we use and the way we try to explain the site.” For some, it is about time that these issues were finally out in the open. “Oftentimes archaeologists can be conservative with the topics they address,” Sarah E Bond, an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa, said in a phone interview, adding, “I am psyched to see things starting to come around in Pompeii.” Increasingly, there has been a broader shift in scholarly research into the ancient world to investigate previously overlooked issues — “things like sexual assault and rape, or slavery,” Bond said. “It’s just great to now see Italian archaeologists overseeing Pompeii as a museum site, embracing important questions of gender, forced labor and violence in important ways,” she added. Among other headline-grabbing discoveries of recent years was a well-preserved thermopolium, or ancient snack bar, that shed light on ancient culinary tastes, which included a soupy concoction of snails, sheep and fish: “Pompeian street food,” Zuchtreigel quipped. In the so-called House With the Garden, not far from the thermopolium, a charcoal inscription found on one wall in the atrium would appear to date Vesuvius’s eruption to October rather than August, as has been traditionally held. “There were already many hints that the eruption was in the autumn: traces of pomegranates, fermenting wine, hearths in some rooms. You don’t light a fire in August,” said Nicola Meluziis, a Pompeii site employee. Much of the work carried out in the past decade came under the aegis of the Great Pompeii Project. This $137 million effort, funded by the European Union, began in 2013 to better preserve the site, after a building collapsed in 2010, sparking international debate about the maintenance there. “The money was spent, and spent well,” Zuchtreigel said, lavishing praise on his predecessor, Massimo Osanna, who oversaw the site when money was flowing, before he was promoted to oversee all of Italy’s museums. Osanna brought about “an enormous turnaround,” he said. That also included an about-face in the way Pompeii communicated, said Bond, who gave Osanna credit for giving Pompeii a strong social media presence. During his tenure, Pompeii generated public interest by using Instagram and Twitter to announce discoveries, rather than keeping them under wraps until they were published in scholarly journals, the old way of doing things in Italy. “I saw a whole new generation of people engaging who had never been to the site of Pompeii, ever,” Bond said. “But they saw it on Instagram and they were just enthralled.” Online presence aside, for Zuchtreigel, the real challenges to the site are on the ground, exacerbated by climate change, which he said had a measurable impact: The site was now subject to abrupt temperature changes from hot to cold, and periods of drought, as well as very heavy rains. “All this adds stress to the ancient structures and frescoes, and it’s very concerning,” he said. “There is a reason why indoor museums normally have air-conditioning.” New technology — including sensors, thermal imaging cameras and drones — are being introduced at Pompeii to provide data and images that immediately alert staff members to potential problems, like humidity in the walls or seismic activity. “The goal is to have the real-time picture what’s actually happening,” so it would be possible to intervene before it was too late, Zuchtreigel said. Artificial intelligence and robotics are also being used to piece together the ceiling frescoes of the House of the Painters at Work, which was destroyed in a World War II bombing. (That building, an ancient home, got its name because paint pots and brushes had been found in one room.) And 3D laser scanning technology was used to make a model of a horse skeleton unearthed in 1938 that recreated some of its missing parts. New technologies will also play a role in explaining to visitors an area being restored on the western edge of the ancient site called “Insula Occidentalis,” which comprises several urban villas built on a slope overlooking the Gulf of Naples. Paolo Mighetto, the architect who is overseeing the project, said brainstorming was underway on how best to bring the area alive for the public, perhaps by using holograms, or some sort of interactive illumination. “We’re thinking about different solutions,” he said. (There is already a Pompeii app that people can download on their smartphones and get information about buildings by scanning QR codes throughout the site.) One villa in the area, the so-called House of the Library, offered up an especially interesting “treasure chest” of material, Mighetto said. It gives a sweeping sense of some 2,000 years’ worth of upheavals, including a major earthquake in AD 62; the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; Pompeii’s first excavation in the 18th century, when underground tunnels were dug beneath the building; and the deformations caused by World War II bombs. “We’re seeing traces of a succession of events over time,” said Mighetto. “Our challenge is to allow visitors to see the traces of these disastrous events through the lesions, cracks and deformations of the masonry” so that they could better “understand the drama of the past,” using these new technologies. In a way, too, Pompeii has always been a trendsetting site. “Not only for archaeology, but for restoration techniques and for making archaeology accessible to the public,” Zuchtreigel said. “And that’s had a huge impact.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
SINGAPORE, Tue Jun 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Many Asian firms do not fully understand the potential earnings impacts of carbon pricing in the region nor are they prepared for the risk of carbon import duties on their goods, a senior UBS analyst said on Tuesday. Airlines, cement and steel firms, computer makers and shipping lines were among the sectors likely to be hit depending on margins, ability to pass on costs and exposure to the United States and Europe, said Simon Smiles, Asian thematic analyst for UBS in Hong Kong. He said a major climate meeting in December in Denmark could be a catalyst for wider introduction of carbon pricing in Asia and that a carbon tax or emissions trading would affect many companies across every Asian market within three years. "Investors in Asia don't focus on this issue at all. They are very short-term focused, they look at climate change and think this isn't something governments in India and China really have front-of-mind," he told Reuters from Hong Kong. Smiles is author of major UBS report "How could carbon pricing impact Asian company earnings?", published recently. He looked at three scenarios: domestic carbon pricing in Asian countries; "equalising" carbon import duties between richer and poorer nations and harsher climate change carbon import duties. He said the second option was the most likely in the medium term and pointed to signals from the United States and the European Union about the possible introduction of duties on goods from countries that don't have greenhouse gas caps. The Waxman-Markey climate bill, yet to be voted on in Congress, proposes the introduction of an international reserve allowance programme. This would involve US firms buying energy-intensive goods from nations that do not have the same emissions targets as the United States. The US firms would have to buy the allowances to offset the carbon implied in the foreign products, such as cement or steel. CARBON DUTIES Smiles said marine transport firms, airlines, steel makers and computer companies would be affected under the second scenario because exporters would pay for the carbon based on the amount of CO2 they emitted. Domestic firms did not. "When the US introduces carbon pricing, nations comprising over 50 percent of global private consumption will have carbon pricing. They'll be in a better position to potentially introduce carbon-related import duties." According to the report, Taiwan's Eva Airways would be the most-affected Asian airline, with earnings per share falling 34.3 percent under this scenario, based on 2010 earnings projections and a carbon price of US$9 per tonne. Thailand's Siam City Cement's EPS would fall 10.6 percent, while South Korean Hyundai Merchant Marine's EPS would drop 51.4 percent. Under the first scenario in which domestically focused firms and exporters pay for the CO2 they emit, airlines, power utilities, marine transport and cement makers are among the worst hit, he said. The study assumed countries in Asia introduced domestic carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes targeting a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions. China Airlines, for instance would see its estimated 2010 EPS plunge catastrophically because of the high exposure to the United States and EU, 30 percent fuel cost exposure and slightly negative earnings margin. Singapore Airlines' EPS would fall only 8.6 percent because of its 9.5 percent net profit margin and slightly smaller fuel cost exposure, according to the report. Smiles said the third scenario in which exporters of manufactured goods directly or indirectly paid for the CO2 their home countries emitted looked less likely at present. Under this scenario the primary motivation was to force the hand of China, India and other developing nations to join world efforts to fight global warming. "The assumption in the report is to have a look at broadly what we think a domestic carbon pricing regime would cost (for these countries)," Smiles said. It was then assumed that the entire cost for every country was imposed by the US and Europe on all manufactured exports from those countries by way of a flat tax. For China, the implied carbon cost was $55 billion in 2007 terms, while for India it was $9 billion. | 3 |
Climate campaigners protesting at the planned expansion of London's Heathrow airport said on Friday they had drawn up a list of targets for "direct action" over the weekend including a bank and airport operator BAA. The campaigners, camped since Saturday outside the northern perimeter fence of the world's busiest international airport, also plan to target air freight operations and Heathrow's still-to-be-completed fifth terminal but not passengers. "We have no argument with the passengers. This is all about stopping governments and corporations taking unacceptable decisions based purely on profit," spokeswoman Sophie Stephens said. Scientists say air transport contributes heavily to global warming, noting that carbon dioxide and water vapour emitted at altitude are four times more potent than at sea level. The British government is committed to tackling climate change by cutting CO2 emissions but also backs a rapid expansion of air travel, which is set to double in the next 25 years. The protesters, now numbering about 800 but with more expected to arrive for the planned 24-hours of action from midday on Sunday, want Heathrow's expansion plans dropped and the growth of air travel halted. Stephens said they planned to picket the headquarters in London of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank has worked with BAA owner, Spain's Ferrovial. They would also march on BAA's headquarters next to the airport, picket air freight operations and planned to mark out the extent of Heathrow's planned third runway. The protest comes at the height of the holiday season, three months after a blazing jeep was used to attack Glasgow airport and a year after police thwarted what they said was a plan to bomb airliners flying out of Heathrow to the United States. Heathrow handles an average of almost one flight a minute. Opened 60 years ago, it was designed to cater for 40 million passengers a year but already sees close to 70 million. Police, who have drafted in reinforcements, have said the camp has been infiltrated by violent anti-capitalist demonstrators -- an accusation Stephens denied. On Thursday police made several arrests when some of the campaigners chained themselves to the perimeter railings of two small airfields near London, and on Friday several more glued themselves to the doors of the Department of Transport. BAA says it accepts global warming is a problem but that aviation contributes only a small fraction of the carbon emissions that cause it. | 0 |
The European Union urged China on Monday to further open its markets to help redress a "huge" trade surplus with the bloc and called on it to ratify a key rights covenant. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said after meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi she had also stressed the need for action by Beijing to tackle climate change. "I mentioned the huge trade deficit that is there," she told Reuters. "If you only think, in the year 2006 -- 130 billion euros. That's a huge deficit and therefore we really want to get market access. I really mentioned this." Yang declined to comment after the meeting in the German city of Hamburg before heading for further talks with EU ministers. Ferrero-Waldner said Yang had brought up the issue of an EU arms embargo China wants lifted, after which she had stressed the need for China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. "That certainly should be ratified and there of course you have all the different rights that are very important," she said when asked if she had raised EU concerns about labour rights standards in China that many Europeans see as a threat to European jobs. The European Union has imposed an embargo on arms sales to China since the bloody suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and made lifting it conditional on progress on human rights. However, France has been a leading proponent of ending the embargo, despite strong opposition from the United States. The meetings come ahead of broader talks between EU and Asian countries in Hamburg, at which the EU side is expected to stress the labour rights. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Europe sought fair competition. "Asia is a region of tremendous economic dynamism, from which German and European business also benefit greatly," he told the Hamburger Abendblatt on the eve of the meetings. "But I also want our competition to be fair ... this means we cannot have jobs being shifted from Europe to Asia simply because we insist on high environmental and social standards here which are not respected in other parts of the world." | 0 |
Italy’s education minister said Tuesday that its public schools would soon require students in every grade to study climate change and sustainability, a step he said would put Italy at the forefront of environmental education worldwide. The lessons, at first taught as part of the students’ civics education, will eventually become integrated throughout a variety of subjects — a sort of “Trojan horse” that will “infiltrate” all courses, the education minister, Lorenzo Fioramonti, said. Environmental advocates welcomed the new subject matter, with some caveats. Teaching children about sustainability is “certainly very important” said Edoardo Zanchini, vice president of Legambiente, Italy’s leading environmental group. But he warned that responsibility should not simply be passed on to children. “Science tells us the next 10 years are crucial,” he said. “We cannot wait for the next generation.” Fioramonti is a member of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which has long put environmental concerns at the heart of its identity. He has already become a target of conservatives for backing taxes on sugar and plastics, and for encouraging students to take part in climate protests last September instead of attending class. Starting in September 2020, he said, teachers in every grade will lead lessons in climate change and environmental sustainability. That 33-hour-a-year lesson, he said, will be used as a pilot program to ultimately fold the climate agenda of the United Nations into the entire curriculum. So merely studying place names and locations in geography class? “Forget that,” Fioramonti said. Geography courses will soon study the impact of human actions on different parts of the planet, too, he said. In an interview, Fioramonti said that a group of experts — including Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, and Kate Raworth of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute — will act as “peer reviewers” for ministry staff preparing the curriculum. By January, he said, the ministry will be ready to train teachers. For children age 6 to 11, he said, “we are thinking of using the fairy-tale model,” in which stories from different cultures would emphasize a connection to the environment. Middle schoolers would be expected to learn more technical information, and high school students would explore the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in depth. Until August, 5-Star had governed Italy for more than a year with the nationalist League party, led by Matteo Salvini, who is still the country’s most popular politician, and who has a sceptical view of climate change. One cold spring day in Milan, Salvini, then the interior minister, appeared to trivialize climate change. “Talking about global warming — we are in the middle of May and call upon global warming, because we haven’t had a cold like this in Italy in recent years,” he said. “We are turning on our heaters.” Fioramanti suggested that Salvini needed to be educated. “That’s the kind of nonsense we want to avoid by educating children that this is the most important challenge humanity has ever faced,” he said. “And I want to secure this before there is any change in government that can imperil that kind of process.” But Salvini still looms over the wobbly 5-Star-led government, and Italy’s many government collapses in recent years have cut short other educational programs. An attempt by a left-leaning government to teach children how to spot disinformation, for example, was discontinued after it lost power. Fioramanti said a law passed last year, when 5-Star was still aligned with the League, gave him the authority to introduce lessons on climate change. He said that the conditions had not been right to go forward with the new curriculum then, but that they were now. Still, many Italians are concerned that 5-Star’s emphasis on environmental issues — or, perhaps, its failure to pursue such goals competently — is destroying the country’s economy. This month, Italy faced a new economic emergency when the foreign operator of a southern Italian steel plant, Ilva, said it would pull out because the 5-Star-led government had decided to end criminal immunity for environmental breaches even as the company sought to clean up the polluted facilities. Such a move could cost Italy more than 8,000 jobs. One environmental activist expressed reservations that Fioramanti’s plan may be too dogmatic. Chicco Testa, president of the environmental group Assombiente, urged officials to make sure children were exposed to varied views, including those of climate-change deniers. “To listen to people who say different things is good,” he said. “What the UN says is not gospel.” But as President Donald Trump began pulling the United States out of the landmark Paris Agreement this week, Fioramanti said that every country needed to do its part to stop the “Trumps of the world” and that his ambition was to show children there was another way. “The 21st-century citizen,” he said, “must be a sustainable citizen.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
A new type of snub-nosed monkey has been found in a remote forested region of northern Myanmar which is under threat from logging and a Chinese dam project, scientists said Wednesday. They said hunters in Myanmar's Kachin state said the long-tailed black monkey, with white-tufted ears and a white beard, could often be tracked in the rain because its upturned nostrils made it prone to sneezing when water dripped in. "It's new to science. It's unusual to travel to a remote area and discover a monkey that looks unlike any other in the world," Thomas Geissmann, lead author of the study at the University of Zurich-Irchel, told Reuters. Studies of a carcass and four skulls showed the monkey differed from snub-nosed monkeys in China and Vietnam. The experts had no photos of a live Myanmar monkey. The scientists estimated there were between 260 and 330 of the monkeys living in an area of about 270 sq km (100 sq miles) and believed the species to be critically endangered. "The hunting pressure is likely to increase considerably in the next few years as new dam construction and logging roads invade" the monkeys' habitat, they wrote in the American Journal of Primatology. IN CHINESE HANDS "The future of the snub-nosed monkey lies in Chinese hands," said Frank Momberg, of Fauna and Flora International and a co-author of the study. Monkeys were hunted for meat or fur and their body parts were used in traditional medicines in China. He said China Power Investment Corp., leading the dam project further down the valley on a tributary of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar, had an economic interest in preserving the forested region where the monkeys live. More roads and logging would cause erosion around the watershed that could clog up the new reservoir with silt, reducing power generation, he said. He praised China for carrying out a study of the dam's possible effect on the environment. The discovery of the snub-nosed monkey contrasts with a rising trend of extinctions, caused by factors such as land clearance, expansion of cities, pollution and climate change. A U.N. conference in Nagoya, Japan, this week is looking at ways to safeguard biological diversity after the world failed in a goal set in 2002 of a "significant reduction" in the pace of extinctions of animals and plants by 2010. A separate study in the journal Science showed growing numbers of the world's birds, mammals and amphibians had moved closer to extinction in recent decades. A fifth were classified as threatened. | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Instead of sidelining the fight against climate change, the global credit crisis could hasten countries' efforts to create 'green growth' industries by revamping the financial system behind them, the UN climate chief said on Friday. But that would depend on governments helping poor countries -- who are key to saving the planet's ecology -- tackle their problems, instead of spending most available money on rescuing the financial world, Yvo de Boer told reporters. De Boer said the financial "earthquake" that has seen markets plunge worldwide in recent weeks could damage UN-led climate change talks, but only "if the opportunities that the crisis brings for climate change abatement are ignored." "The credit crisis can be used to make progress in a new direction, an opportunity for global green economic growth," de Boer, who heads the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference. "The credit crunch I believe is an opportunity to rebuild the financial system that would underpin sustainable growth ... Governments now have an opportunity to create and enforce policy which stimulates private competition to fund clean industry." De Boer said a successful outcome to climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 would create new markets, investment opportunities and job creation. But he warned that "if available global capital is used primarily to refloat the financial world, we literally will sink the futures of the poorest of the poor. "And I hope that the credit crunch will not mean that people in the South will have to wait for those in the North to have repaid their credit card debts and mortgages before attention is again turned to the South." Without reaching out a hand to developing countries, it would be very difficult to make advances on the rest of the environmental agenda, De Boer said. Environment ministers will meet in two months' time in Poznan, Poland, to prepare for the Copenhagen summit, which is due to agree on a new global-warming accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Ministers in Poznan must make clear they were "willing to put financial resources, the architecture, the institutions in place that will allow developing countries to engage in a global approach on both mitigation and adaptation," he said. Funding did not have to all come from governments and he foresaw "an approach where we very much use the market". De Boer said the financial crisis had not so far affected the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, which allows rich countries to offset their carbon footprints by investing in clean energy projects in developing countries. | 1 |
Kamran Reza Chowdhury Thimphu, April 28 (bdnews24.com)--The 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation starts Wednesday in the Bhutanese capital as the regional grouping turns 25 since its inception in Dhaka in 1985. Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the Maldivian president Mohamed Nashid, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksha, Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Indian premier Manmohan Singh, Nepalese prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Pakistan's prime minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani will deliver their speeches at the opening session. Lyonchhen Jigmi Y Thinley, the Prime minister of Bhutan, which for the first time is hosting South Asia's biggest gathering of top leaders, will chair the session. Besides, the Thimphu declaration, the two-day summit will adopt a SAARC statement on climate change, the central theme of the event. Despite 25 years of its existence, critics say the regional grouping has so far failed to achieve anything substantial that would have cut poverty and improve the life of more than 1.5 billion people of the region. The widely-held impression about SAARC in the member countries is that it is a forum for an annual gathering of top leaders, where they make bold promises but fail to implement them. "The SAARC summit gives the South Asian top leaders an opportunity to meet face to face without the presence of media and bureaucrats," Bhutanese foreign secretary Daw Penjo told bdnews24.com Sunday night at the Bangladesh embassy. He said the face to face interaction of the leaders contributes to the improvement of relations. "The 16th SAARC summit will chart out a 25-year road map as per the aspiration of people of the region," said the secretary. Meanwhile, the SAARC foreign ministers have finalised the drafts of the two agreements for approval at the summit - the convention on cooperation on environment and the convention on trade in services. The council of ministers and the standing committee also prepared the Thimphu declaration and the Thimphu statement on climate change, the central theme of the 16th summit. The member states will announce a common SAARC position on climate change, though the declaration will not include a text on legally binding emission cut targets for the polluters. As per the proposal of Bangladesh, the declaration will include a SAARC charter for democracy with a view to promoting democracy in all eight countries, foreign secretary Mohamed Mijarul Quayes told bdnews24.com Tuesday. Meanwhile, all the heads of states and governments other than Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh have reached Thimphu, a beautiful hilly city. Singh will arrive Wednesday morning before the summit starts at 2.30 pm. The summit will also see the inauguration of the headquarters of the SAARC Development Fund in Thimphu. | 1 |
Anger has erupted over proposals that could give officials powers to remove or relocate residents to make way for tourism, luxury housing and deep sea mining projects in the islands, which lie 500 km (300 miles) off India's southwestern coast. "For generations we have lived quiet lives, rarely protesting policies created in the mainland ... But if they take away my land and home, where will we all go?" fisherman Sakariya, who uses one name, said by phone. Like many local fishermen, his only asset is the family home his grandfather built on a roughly 1,000 square foot (93 square metre) plot of land near the beach, in the island capital of Kavaratti. "This is not a big city where people can be relocated nearby. For us, it will probably mean having to move to the mainland. How can we allow anyone to take our homes away?," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Along with thousands of other islanders, Sakariya, 40, has taken to social media to voice his concerns as COVID-19 curbs keep them from taking to the streets to protest. A Twitter campaign started by students has gained traction on the mainland, with #SaveLakshadweep being backed by prominent politicians including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. This week, residents' group Save Lakshadweep Forum staged a one-day hunger strike to protest against the new land acquisition rules that have stirred up eviction fears among the islands' roughly 65,000 people. Protesters also fear the plans could strain already limited public services on the islands, including a lack of clean drinking water, healthcare and access to the mainland. Lakshadweep Administrator Praful Patel did not respond to a request for comment, but another senior official - Collector S Akser Ali - told reporters recently the goal was to develop the islands "holistically", with local people's welfare in mind. 'MAINLAND SENSIBILITIES' The government's plans to have "happy and prosperous islanders on ecologically protected islands" also extend to the Andaman and Nicobar archipelagoes, which lie in the Bay of Bengal. Land clearance orders have already been issued for four tourism projects in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, despite concerns about their environmental impact. "These plans do not consider the ecosystem of the islands as particularly unique and are primarily mainland sensibilities of generting revenue and employment being implemented," said conservationist Manish Chandi. "The cost of these proposed projects, on the lives of people and the ecosystem, has to be taken into account," said Chandi, who has lived and worked on the islands for decades. These biodiversity hotspots are already witnessing the impact of climate change, with rising sea levels submerging one of the uninhabited islands in the Lakshadweep, besides residents losing land to coastal erosion, studies have shown. According to the government's plans, however, the development of the island groups will take place as part of an integrated island management plan, made to protect the people and ecosystem. A senior official at the federal government's policy think-tank Niti Aayog said that under phase one of the project only some tent houses and resort villas were under construction in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. "No other plans have been green lit yet," he said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media. "A consultant has been hired to prepare a feasibility report and then phase 2 will start." 'THEY SHOULD BE TOLD' But in the Lakshadweep islands, mistrust is widespread. That has been fueled by authorities' recent demolition of fishermen's beach shacks, said K Nizamuddin, who belongs to the self-governing body in Kavaratti, which is reimagined as a smart city in the development plans. Nizamuddin said part of the problem was that residents had not been properly informed about the plans. "We haven't been consulted and most islanders are clueless about what the future will bring. If drastic changes are coming, they should be told about it," he said. "In a smart city, there has to be space for local fishermen and for traditional livelihoods like animal rearing to continue. Instead, authorities have broken fishermen's sheds on the beach saying it violates norms. So there is mistrust." Under the draft regulations, residents would also have to get planning permission before making even minor changes to their homes, said lawyer R Rohith. "In other regions it may seem normal for the government to acquire land for projects, like building a road, but in the islands, it is just not done," Rohith said, referring to laws that aim to protect islanders' rights and the fragile ecosystem. In the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the government wants to build a major port facility, a greenfield international airport, townships and solar plants. "Nobody is saying there shouldn't be any development," Chandi said, highlighting the fact that the islands have poor roads, inadequate transport and water supplies and even patchy telecommunications networks. "But it has to be consultative, taking into consideration the fact that this is a unique ecosystem, home to indigenous people, settlers, all of whom have varying needs and requirements ... and not to forget marine life." The views of local people, including vulnerable tribal groups living in the islands' forests, have not been taken into consideration, said anthropologist Vishvajit Pandya. "This brilliant idea is not what the people want," Pandya said. Hundreds of miles away in the Lakshadweep islands, the fisherman Sakariya echoed Pandya's criticism. "We have lived in this small strip of land for decades. We know the impact of disturbing this ecology better than anyone. Officials should listen to us." | 0 |
Leaders from the world's major industrialised nations will try to paper over deep divisions on global warming and a range of foreign policy issues when they meet on the Baltic coast this week for a G8 summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, host of the annual Group of Eight meeting at the elegant Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, has been working for months to lay the foundation for a summit breakthrough in the fight against climate change. But her drive looks doomed after US President George W. Bush announced his own climate strategy last week which rejects the approach to cutting greenhouse gases favoured by Merkel and other Europeans. Merkel at the weekend insisted that the United Nations, rather than individual countries or groups of countries, should take the lead in global efforts to combat climate change and acknowledged she was in for a tough summit. "We will wrestle with climate change until the very last minute," Merkel told Der Spiegel magazine. "You will see that there are differing opinions from the fact that some things might not be in the final document." In the absence of a climate consensus, the German hosts will be keen to shift the focus of the June 6-8 meeting to Africa. Hit by accusations they are not delivering on promises made at a summit in Scotland two years ago to help fight poverty on the continent, G8 countries are expected to reaffirm commitments to double development aid by 2010. The club -- made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- will also announce plans to increase funds for combating AIDS in Africa. But differences on major global issues may overshadow the areas of consensus, even if leaders avoid any public rows. Contentious foreign policy issues include US plans to deploy a missile shield in central Europe and a push by the United States and Europe to grant effective independence to Kosovo, the breakaway Serbian province. Russian President Vladimir Putin is dead-set against both and his combative Cold War-style rhetoric in recent weeks had the German hosts worried about an ugly confrontation with Bush. Now that seems unlikely. Bush referred to Putin as a "friend" last week and invited him to his family home in Maine next month -- moves clearly intended to ease tensions.
AGREE TO DISAGREE "On a lot of the big issues they will agree to disagree," said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "We should get through it without major confrontation, but that is partly because the Europeans realise changes to US foreign and climate change policy won't come until there is a new president, so why rock the boat?" Bush, who made headlines at the 2006 summit in St. Petersburg by shocking Merkel with an impromptu backrub, is not due to leave office for another 1-1/2 years. But Heiligendamm will be the last G8 summit for Britain's Tony Blair and probably Putin, who has vowed to step down in the spring of next year. Newcomers include French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Informal meetings of the world's top industrial powers date back to 1975, when the G6 (Canada joined in 1976 and Russia in 1998) gathered in Rambouillet, France to coordinate economic policy following a global oil crisis and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. Now the club, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the world's growth but only about one-eighth of its population, faces accusations of irrelevance and is under pressure to adapt to a shift in the global economic balance. In a nod to these concerns, Merkel has invited the leaders of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa this year. The emergence of new economic powers is not all that has changed in the three decades since world leaders first met. As recently as 1999, when Germany hosted its last G8 summit, heads of government mixed with locals in the streets of Cologne. But the Sept. 11 attacks, clashes between anti-globalisation protesters and police at a 2001 summit in Genoa, and bombings in London during the 2005 summit changed all that. On Saturday, German police clashed with hundreds of protesters who set fire to cars, threw bottles and torched bins in the port of Rostock after a larger peaceful demonstration. Up to 16,000 German security personnel will be on duty for the three-day meeting and leaders will be sealed off from tens of thousands of demonstrators by a daunting 12-kilometre fence. | 0 |
Egyptians vote on Saturday in a referendum on constitutional changes that are designed to allow free and fair elections but have splintered the reform movement that toppled Hosni Mubarak. The vote has divided Egypt between those who say much deeper constitutional change is needed and others who argue that the amendments will suffice for now. A high turnout is expected. The Muslim Brotherhood, a well organised Islamist group, has come out in favour of the amendments, setting it at odds with secular groups and prominent reform advocates including Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, both candidates for the presidency. The military council to which Mubarak handed power on Feb. 11 is hoping the amendments will pass so it can move along the path it has set towards parliamentary and presidential elections that will allow it to cede power to an elected government. "This will be a watershed vote," said Ahmed Saleh, an activist now coordinating ElBaradei's presidential campaign. "People's appetite for voting is high now and change is in the air". The military council to which Mubarak handed power on Feb. 11 called for a strong turnout. "The goal of this referendum is to create an adequate climate for parliamentary and presidential elections but more important than the outcome is that Egyptians participate and give their voice," it said. The council asked a judicial committee to draft the amendments, which include a two-term limit on the presidency, restricting to eight years the time a leader can serve in the office Mubarak held for three decades. Rejection of the amendments will force the council to rethink its strategy and prolong a transitional period that it wants to keep as short as possible. But the reforms fall far short of the demands of reformists who want the constitution completely rewritten. Youth groups who organised the protests against Mubarak said the amendments were an attempt to "abort the revolution". TIGHT TIMETABLE More broadly, they are worried that a tight timetable set by the military for elections will not give enough time for parties to recover from years of oppression and give an advantage to the Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of Mubarak's administration. General Ismail Etman, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, said this week that amending the constitution was "the best and not the most ideal solution". In an interview with Al Gomhuria newspaper published on Thursday, he said approval of the amendments would lead to new laws that would open up political life, including an end to restrictions of political party formation. Newspapers, television stations and social networking sites have been alive with debate over how to vote. The "No" camp pressed its campaign on Friday in a full-page advert in Al Masry Al Youm, a popular Egyptian newspaper. "How can I agree to a historic decision without time or adequate information?" was one of the objections listed alongside pictures of actors, politicians, religious figures and businessmen who are urging voters to reject the amendments. On the next page, a Muslim Brotherhood leader gave the opposing view: "Supporting the constitutional amendments is a step towards realising the demands of the revolution ... the ones who reject them have not offered a clear alternative." Up to 45 million of Egypt's population of 80 million are eligible to vote and a high turnout is expected from voters accustomed to elections marred by violence and vote-rigging under Mubarak. "Of course I will vote. I never felt my vote would count as much as it will on Saturday," said Ahmed Adel, 35, who added he would vote for the amendments to help get his country back on track. "We need a parliament and president as soon as possible". Activist Ziad el-Elemi disagreed: "We are holding workshops across the country to raise awareness among citizens that constitutional amendments are not enough." | 2 |
Heckling is something Trudeau has always faced, but this time the attacks have new bite. After six years in office, a prime minister who promised “sunny ways” and presented himself as a new face is now the political establishment, with a track record and missteps for opponents to criticise. Even if the Liberal Party clings to its hold on Parliament, as observers expect, this bruising election campaign has done him no favours. Ben Chin, the prime minister’s senior adviser, said that no politician could have sustained Trudeau’s initial popularity. “If you’re in power for six years or five years, you’re going to have more baggage,” Chin said. “You have to make tough decisions that not everybody’s going to agree with.” For much of his time in office, opposition party leaders have accused Trudeau of putting his personal and political interests before the nation’s good — of which the snap election being held Monday is the most recent example. They also have had rich material to attack him on over controversies involving a contract for a charity close to his family, and a finding that he broke ethics laws by pressing a minister to help a large Quebec company avoid criminal sanctions. And for every accomplishment Trudeau cites, his opponents can point to unfulfilled pledges. Anti-vax protesters have thronged his events, some with signs promoting the far-right People’s Party of Canada, prompting his security detail to increase precautions. One rally in Ontario where protesters significantly outnumbered the police was shut down over safety concerns, and at another in the same province, the prime minister was pelted with gravel as he boarded his campaign bus. A local official of the People’s Party later faced charges in that episode of assault with a weapon. Trudeau has many achievements since 2015 to point to. His government has introduced carbon pricing and other climate measures, legalised cannabis, increased spending for Indigenous issues and made 1,500 models of military-style rifles illegal. A new plan will provide day care for 10 Canadian dollars a day per child. Although his popularity has diminished, Trudeau’s star power remains. When he dropped by the outdoor terrace of a cafe in Port Coquitlam, an eastern suburb of Vancouver, for elbow bumps, quick chats and selfies with voters, a crowd soon swelled. “We love you, we love you,” Joy Silver, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher from nearby Coquitlam, told Trudeau. But as Election Day nears, many Canadians are still asking why Trudeau is holding a vote now, two years ahead of schedule, with COVID-19 infections on the rise from the delta variant, taxing hospitals and prompting renewed pandemic restrictions in some provinces or delaying their lifting in others. Also criticised was that he called the vote the same weekend Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, when Canadian troops were struggling to evacuate Canadians as well as Afghans who had assisted their forces. “They’ve been struggling with answering that question the whole campaign,” said Gerald Butts, a longtime friend of Trudeau’s and a former top political adviser. “And that’s part of why they’re having trouble getting the message across.” Trudeau has said that he needs to replace his plurality in the House of Commons with a majority to deal with the remainder of the pandemic and the recovery that will follow — although he avoids explicitly saying “majority.” The Liberal Party’s political calculation was that it was best to strike while Canadians still held favourable views about how Trudeau handled pandemic issues, particularly income supports and buying vaccines. “We’re the party with the experience, the team and the plan to continue delivering real results for Canadians, the party with a real commitment to ending this pandemic,” Trudeau said at a rally in Surrey, another Vancouver suburb, standing in front of campaign signs for candidates from the surrounding area. “Above all, my friends, if you want to end this pandemic for good, go out and vote Liberal.” During much of the 36-day campaign, the Liberals have been stuck in a statistical tie with the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Erin O’Toole, each holding about 30% of the popular vote. The New Democrats, a left-of-center party led by Jagmeet Singh, lies well behind at about 20%. Kimberly Speers, a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said that Trudeau’s personality and celebrity may be working against him. “The messaging, from the NDP and the Conservatives especially, is that it’s a power grab and it’s all about him,” she said. “And that message has just really seemed to stick with voters.” Some scandals during Trudeau’s tenure have helped the opposition, too. In 2019, Trudeau’s veterans affairs minister, an Indigenous woman, quit amid allegations that when she was justice minister, he and his staff had improperly pressured her to strike a deal that would have allowed a large Canadian corporation to avoid a criminal conviction on corruption charges. Despite his championing of diversity, it emerged during the 2019 election that Trudeau had worn blackface or brownface three times in the past. And last year a charity with deep connections to his family was awarded a no-bid contract to administer a COVID-19 financial assistance plan for students. (The group withdrew, the program was cancelled, and Trudeau was cleared by the federal ethics and conflict of interest commissioner.) His opponents have also focused on promises they say he has fallen short on, including introducing a national prescription drug programme, creating a new electoral structure for Canada, lowering debt relative to the size of the economy, and ending widespread sexual harassment in the military and solitary confinement in federal prisons. The Centre for Public Policy Analysis at Laval University in Quebec City found that Trudeau has fully kept about 45% of his promises, while 27% were partly fulfilled. Singh has been reminding voters that Trudeau vowed to bring clean drinking water to all Indigenous communities. There were 105 boil-water orders in effect at First Nations when Trudeau took power, with others added later. The government has restored clean water to 109 communities, but 52 boil-water orders remain. “I think Mr Trudeau may care, I think he cares, but the reality is that he’s often done a lot of things for show and hasn’t backed those up with real action,” Singh said during the official English-language debate. O’Toole, for his part, has sought to portray the vote as an act of personal aggrandizement. “Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their lives: privileged, entitled and always looking out for No. 1,” he said at a recent event in rural Ottawa. “He was looking out for No. 1 when he called this expensive and unnecessary election in the middle of a pandemic.” Security and secrecy have increased at Trudeau’s campaign stops after several of them were disrupted by protesters angry about mandatory COVID-19 vaccination rules and vaccine passport measures that the prime minister has imposed. At the rally outside a banquet hall in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, Trudeau, sleeves rolled up and microphone in hand, gave an energetic speech before diving into a mostly South Asian crowd eager to pose for pictures with him. In a change from previous practice, the crowd had been gathered by invitation rather than by public announcement, partly to keep its size within pandemic limits, and no signs promoted the event on the formidable gate to the remote location. Up on the hall’s roof, two police snipers in camouflage surveyed the scene. After an earlier rally in Ontario was canceled, Trudeau was asked if US politics had inspired the unruly protests. His answer was indirect. “I think we all need to reflect on whether we do want to go down that path of anger, of division, of intolerance,” he said. “I’ve never seen this intensity of anger on the campaign trail or in Canada.” Translating wider poll results into precise predictions of how many seats the parties will hold in the next House of Commons is not possible. But all of the current polling suggests that Trudeau may have alienated many Canadians with an early election call and endured abuse while campaigning, for no political gain. The most likely outcome is that the Liberals will continue to hold power but not gain the majority he sought. If that proves to be the case, Butts said, “it’s going to end up pretty close to where we left off, which is a great irony.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 4 |
Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. A lot of climate research shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for increasing global average surface temperatures by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010 and for a sea level rise of about 2.3mm a year from 2005-2010 as ice caps and glaciers melt. Rising sea levels threaten about a tenth of the world's population who live in low-lying areas and islands which are at risk of flooding, including the Caribbean, Maldives and Asia-Pacific island groups. More than 180 countries are negotiating a new global climate pact which will come into force by 2020 and force all nations to cut emissions to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius this century - a level scientists say is the minimum required to avert catastrophic effects. But even if the most ambitious emissions cuts are made, it might not be enough to stop sea levels rising due to the thermal expansion of sea water, said scientists at the United States' National Centre for Atmospheric Research, US research organisation Climate Central and Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Melbourne. "Even with aggressive mitigation measures that limit global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial values by 2100, and with decreases of global temperature in the 22nd and 23rd centuries ... sea level continues to rise after 2100," they said in the journal Nature Climate Change. This is because as warmer temperatures penetrate deep into the sea, the water warms and expands as the heat mixes through different ocean regions. Even if global average temperatures fall and the surface layer of the sea cools, heat would still be mixed down into the deeper layers of the ocean, causing continued rises in sea levels. If global average temperatures continue to rise, the melting of ice sheets and glaciers would only add to the problem. The scientists calculated that if the deepest emissions cuts were made and global temperatures cooled to 0.83 degrees in 2100 - forecast based on the 1986-2005 average - and 0.55 degrees by 2300, the sea level rise due to thermal expansion would continue to increase - from 14.2cm in 2100 to 24.2cm in 2300. If the weakest emissions cuts were made, temperatures could rise to 3.91 degrees Celsius in 2100 and the sea level rise could increase to 32.3cm, increasing to 139.4cm by 2300. "Though sea-level rise cannot be stopped for at least the next several hundred years, with aggressive mitigation it can be slowed down, and this would buy time for adaptation measures to be adopted," the scientists added. | 0 |
Supply chains, vaccine distribution, access to critical minerals, cyber threats, digital tax, crypto-assets and climate change required a step change in how the world economy is managed, the advisors said in a report published on Wednesday. Mark Sedwill, a former head of Britain's civil service and national security advisor who chaired the G7 Advisory Panel on Economic Resilience, said the G7 should work together more effectively to identify and manage emerging risks or coercion. On China, the advisors said Beijing was determined to reach market dominance in areas such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and had already done so in the refining and production of minerals key to the world's green transition. The panel recommended investment in new infrastructure and research, ensuring that trade rules supported the fight against climate change, and a commitment to information-sharing, traceability and standards reform for minerals critical to the green transition. The report will form part of discussions at a Group of 20 leaders' summit in Rome later this month and at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November. | 0 |
The poor are among those likely to suffer most from climate change, according to a draft UN report that says the world must act quickly to brake ever more damaging temperature rises. World leaders will meet at UN headquarters in New York on Monday to discuss ways to fight warming, partly spurred by reports by the UN climate panel early this year saying human activities were very likely the cause of an unequivocal warming. A new draft of the panel's 22-page "Summary for Policymakers", obtained by Reuters, sharpens warnings about climate change and adds a more human touch by pointing more clearly to those who are most vulnerable. "In all regions there are certain sectors and communities which are particularly at risk, for example the poor, young children, the elderly and the ill," it says. The report, prepared by 40 experts, sums up 3,000 pages of science. The poor, for instance, depend heavily on farming that may be disrupted by shifts in rains or desertification in Africa. In Asia, millions of the poorest people live around river deltas that may be hit by rising seas or storm surges. The report also highlights risks including extinctions, heatwaves, erosion and increased strain on water supplies for hundreds of millions of people. The draft of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), dated Aug. 31, will be reviewed and approved by governments in Valencia, Spain, in November. It updates a May 15 draft, obtained by Reuters last month. It reiterates that world emissions of greenhouse gases would have to peak by 2015 and then fall by between 50 and 85 percent by 2050 below 2000 levels to limit global temperature rise to 2.0-2.4 degrees Celsius (3.6-4.3 F) above pre-industrial times. Such curbs are far stiffer than those under consideration by most nations meeting in New York. President George W. Bush has also called talks of major emitters on Sept. 27-28. Even so, costs of slowing climate change would be moderate. Depending on the stiffness of curbs, the draft says costs of action would range from cuts in global gross domestic product of less than -0.12 to less than 0.06 percentage points a year. It warns that change is already emerging, ranging from earlier spring plantings of crops in some areas, more fires and pests in forests or a melting of low level ski resorts. Among editing changes, the new draft adds a mention that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by burning fossil fuels, is at its highest level in at least 650,000 years. The main thrust of the report remains. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," it begins, noting that 11 of the past 12 years rank among the top dozen warmest years since records began in the 1850s. The report also shows that temperatures will rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 Celsius (2-12 Fahrenheit) this century and that sea levels are set to rise by 18 to 59 centimetres (7 to 23 inches) despite wide uncertainties about Greenland or Antarctica. The report does not add new information about a shrinking of Arctic sea ice this summer, saying the ice could disppear "almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century". The US National Snow and Ice Data Center said in April that the melting was faster than projected by the IPCC and that the Arctic Ocean might be ice-free before the middle of the century. | 0 |
The average temperature in Japan could rise by up to 4.7 degrees Celsius (8.5 Fahrenheit) this century unless steps are taken to combat global warming, the Environment Ministry said on Wednesday. Japan, the world's second-biggest economy, could face a rise in the average temperature of 1.3-4.7 C (2.3-8.5 F) in the 2070-2099 period from levels registered in 1961-1990, the ministry said in a report. The rise in temperatures could boost rainfall in Japan by up to 16.4 percent, the report said. A panel of experts set up by the ministry will analyse the possible impact of rising temperatures and produce an outline in May of steps Japan could take to combat it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected a "best estimate" last February that world temperatures would rise by 1.8 to 4.0 C (3.2-7.2 F) this century. The UN body also said rising temperatures could lead to more hunger, water shortages and ever more extinctions of animals and plants. It said crop yields could drop by 50 percent by 2020 in some countries and projected a steady shrinking of Arctic sea ice in summers. | 0 |
Palep’s
9-year-old daughter, Aviana Campello-Palep, in contrast, approaches the topic
with zero self-consciousness or hesitation. “When my friends talk about getting
their period, they just talk about it,” Aviana said. “It’s just normal in a
girl’s life.” These frank
conversations have led Palep and her daughters, Aviana and Anaya, who is 8, to
create Girls With Big Dreams, a line of undergarments for tweens, which
includes reusable period underwear that offers an environmentally friendlier
alternative to disposable pads and tampons; their brand will launch in early
February and be sold online. “I’m
hopefully going to make a difference in somebody’s life so they’re not
embarrassed at some point by something that’s so normal,” Aviana said. The
Campello-Palep girls are representative of two emerging trends that have become
clear to period advocates, and anyone who casually follows #PeriodTok: Members
of Gen Z and beyond are more forthcoming about their periods than generations
past, and they are more likely to care whether the products they use are
environmentally sustainable. The convergence of the two ideals may signify a
cultural shift in how young people are approaching menstruation. More options
for reusable period products like absorbent underwear, menstrual cups, cloth
pads and panty liners, and applicator-free tampons are on the market now than
ever before — some made just for teens and tweens. “This whole
movement is youth-driven,” said Michela Bedard, executive director of Period
Inc., a global nonprofit focused on providing access to period supplies and
ending period stigma. “Young menstruators are having a completely different
experience in terms of managing their periods with reusables throughout their
life.” Reusable products
represent only a fraction of menstruation supplies purchased in the United
States — Americans spend $1.8 billion on pads and $1 billion on tampons yearly,
which dwarfs sales of all other products combined. But the market share for
reusable products is expected to grow through the next decade, according to
forecasters, largely fueled by the wider acceptance and availability of
menstrual cups in Western countries. Still, the
average menstruator can use thousands of tampons in their lifetime. And single-use
plastic menstrual products take about 500 years to decompose, a 2021 report
from the United Nations Environment Programme found. Members of
Gen Z, who studies find are more likely to get involved in climate change and
sustainability efforts than previous generations, are teaching their parents
about new ways to handle their monthly cycle openly and sustainably. “I used to
have conversations about how to hide your tampon or pad up in your sleeve or in
your shorts or in your pants,” said Dr Cara Natterson, who is a pediatrician;
the author of American Girl’s best-selling “The Care and Keeping of You”
series; and founder of Oomla, a gender- and size-inclusive line of bras and
puberty products. “I do not have that conversation anymore because the kids go,
‘Why should I hide my tampon and my pad?’ They are 100 percent right.” Natterson’s
18-year-old daughter has educated her about new products in the marketplace,
some of which she discovers from Instagram influencers or #PeriodTok videos.
“Teens are looking for conversations around people’s experiences, not five-star
Amazon reviews,” she said. Natterson
recently considered using cloth pads again after a failed experiment with them
years ago, at her teenager’s behest. “They didn’t work super well when they
were first being invented and iterated,” she said. “My daughter said, ‘You got
to try them again.’” Environmental
sustainability and menstruation may be having a moment, but it’s not the first
time, said Lara Freidenfelds, a historian of health, reproduction and
parenting, and author of “The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century
America.” Homemade menstrual rags were the norm through the turn of the 20th
century, up until Kotex became the first successfully mass-marketed pad in
1921. Modernity equaled disposability, and the brand was aspirational, she
said. The first
robust discussions of sustainability in menstrual care started in the 1970s as
people experimented with cloth pads and sponges. “There have always been young
people who were idealistic and thought about these things but did not find the
products available to be practical,” she said. Sustainability has historically
been sacrificed for the sake of convenience, she added. Today,
parents of Gen Zers benefit from improvements in menstrual technology: The
cloth pads of yore are not the cloth pads of today; and period underwear, for
example, is made of highly absorbent fabric without being bulky. New
menstruators often turn to a parent for products and advice — now parents can
hand over more than a disposable pad or tampon, potentially rerouting some of
the more than 15 billion disposable products that end up in landfills every
year in America. “The world
we’re going to have when these progressive Gen Zers become parents in 20 years
— that’s going to be fascinating,” said Nadya Okamoto, a former executive
director of Period Inc. and co-founder of the sustainable menstrual products
brand August. Despite
these cultural shifts and advances in technology, there are significant
barriers to widespread use of reusable or recyclable products. “When you first
get your period, pads are the easiest thing to find and buy,” said Anaya
Balaji, who is 13. “If you go into the school bathrooms, they’re stocked with
Always,” she added, referring to the disposable brand’s ubiquitous presence in
her California high school. As an online
community leader for the Inner Cycle, a virtual forum for the August brand,
Anaya connects with her peers on social media to provide education and
awareness. “You can find the products out there that fit your body and that
work good for you and good for the environment,” she said. Still, some
young people can’t afford reusable products, especially in communities where
period poverty — or the lack of access to menstrual products — is an issue.
“Even though the investment in a $25 pair of underwear or a $60 cup would save
you money, a lot of people don’t have that money every month,” said Bedard,
whose organisation serves the economically disadvantaged. Like
disposable products, reusable and recyclable products are also subject to a
“tampon tax” — a tax that is levied on products that are deemed nonessential —
in many states. Activists argue that such taxes are sexist and discriminatory
and have fought to repeal them nationwide through legislative action. In 2021,
several states, including Louisiana, Maine and Vermont, nixed the tax. The cultural
stigma that plagues menstruation also stubbornly persists, despite the best
efforts of young people to normalize periods. Patriarchal taboos around
virginity, purity and “dirtiness” in many cultures and religions quash
conversation and can impede the use of internal menstrual products, such as
tampons or cups. Corporate
messaging still largely emphasizes discreetness and cleanliness, which makes
periods seem dirty or bad, said Chella Quint, a menstrual activist, educator
and author of “Own Your Period: A Fact-filled Guide to Period Positivity.” “For
a long time, the disposable menstrual product industry was hugely responsible
for propagating and perpetuating the sort of negative taboos that keep people
down and frightened,” she added. Menstrual
health is a public health issue and has no gender, Natterson said. To combat
taboos around the subject, anyone, even those who don’t menstruate, should be
able to speak freely about periods too, she said. Natterson said she’s made
sure her 16-year-old son knows to hand his sweatshirt to a classmate who has a
blood stain on their pants, and to have a tampon or pad to share. “Teaching
everyone to respect other people’s bodies — everyone needs to be part of that
conversation,” she said. © 2022 The
New York Times Company | 2 |
Just around
five months old, the baby cheetahs are dehydrated, stunted and so lacking in
the calcium they would normally get from their mother's milk that they have
problems walking. But at least they are alive. The Cheetah
Conservation Fund (CCF) and the government of Somaliland - which broke away
from Somalia in 1991 - have been rescuing trafficked cheetah cubs in the region
for the past four years. Only around
6,700 adult cheetahs are left in the wild worldwide, and the population is
still declining, according to the International Union for Conservation of
Nature. Kidnapped
cubs are often destined for the exotic pet trade in the Middle East but few
people realise the suffering that entails. Four or five cheetah cubs die for
each one that reaches the market, Dr Laurie Marker, the head of CCF, said.
Mothers are often killed. Their first
year, CCF received around 40 cubs in Somaliland, she added. Many didn't survive
long. But by setting up safehouses and providing veterinary care, they've been
able to cut deaths to almost zero, she said. Right now the organisation houses
67 cheetahs. Droughts
exacerbated by global warming are increasing pressure on the cheetahs, she
said, as less grazing supports fewer herds of wild prey and farm animals.
Farmers who once shrugged it off when a cheetah attacked one of their animals
are now less able to shoulder losses, she said. "If a
predator eats their livestock, they are much more angry," she said.
"They will go and track the mother down, where the cubs would be, and try
to get money from the cubs to support the losses that they had." Somaliland
is planning to open a national park where the cheetahs will be able to roam,
Environmental Minister Shukri Ismail Haji, said. But although
the tiny breakaway region lies in the band most affected by climate change, it
cannot access most environmental funding because hardly any world bodies
recognise it as a separate country from Somalia, the minister said. "We are
an unrecognised government. The international funding we can get is very little
as a result." | 0 |
The main impact of climate change will be on water supplies and the world needs to learn from past cooperation such as over the Indus or Mekong Rivers to help avert future conflicts, experts said on Sunday. Desertification, flash floods, melting glaciers, heatwaves, cyclones or water-borne diseases such as cholera are among the impacts of global warming inextricably tied to water. And competition for supplies might cause conflicts. "The main manifestations of rising temperatures...are about water," said Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water which coordinates work on water among 26 UN agencies. "It has an impact on all parts of our life as a society, on natural systems, habitats," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Disruptions may threaten farming or fresh water supplies from Africa to the Middle East. "Therein lies the potential for conflicts," he said. Shortage of water, such as in Darfur in Sudan, has been a contributing factor to conflict. But Adeel said that water had often proven a route for cooperation. India and Pakistan have worked to manage the Indus River despite border conflicts and Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have cooperated in the Mekong River Commission. "Water is a very good medium (for cooperation). It's typically an apolitical issue that can be dealt with," said Adeel, who is also director of the U.N. University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health. 250 MILLION Regions likely to become drier because of climate change include Central Asia and northern Africa. Up to 250 million people in Africa could suffer extra stress on water supplies by 2020, according to the U.N. panel of climate experts. "There are many more examples of successful transboundary cooperation than conflict over water," said Nikhil Chandavarkar, of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary of UN-Water. "We are trying to take the examples of good cooperation -- the Mekong, the Indus are examples. Even where there were hostilities in the surrounding countries the agreements did function," he told Reuters. Adeel said that water should have a more central role in debates on food security, peace, climate change and recovery from the financial crisis. "Water is central to each of these debates but typically isn't seen as such," he said. And efforts to combat global warming will themselves put more strains on water because of rival economic demands -- such as for irrigation, biofuels or hydropower. Adeel noted efforts to manage water supplies by counting how much water goes into products -- from beef to coffee. One study showed that it took 15,000 litres to produce a pair of blue jeans, he said. Making industries aware of water use could help shift to conservation. He said the world might reach a "millennium goal" of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015 but was failing in a related target of improving sanitation. About 2.8 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. | 0 |
Emergency workers battled to hold back overflowing rivers after Britain's worst floods in 60 years engulfed villages and town streets and cut off fresh water supplies to hundreds of thousands of people. Days of pouring rain have turned wide areas of central and western England into lakes, flooding 4,500 houses, threatening many more and leaving cars submerged. Harvesting of crops such as barley and rapeseed has been delayed and milk production and deliveries curtailed, sparking fears of food shortages. In the western city of Gloucester, Ken Ticehurst, 41, said police had been guarding the doors to a local supermarket on Monday night to stop panic buying of bottled water after reports of fighting in local food stores. "There's a weird feeling of being under siege," he told Reuters on Tuesday. Freak downpours have left many Britons, more used in recent years to record high summer temperatures, wondering if they are witnessing the impact of global warming. Other parts of Europe are enduring a heatwave that has killed 18 people in Romania and forced Greece to call a state of emergency. Police, firefighters and the military fought a desperate all-night battle to hold back floodwaters from an electricity substation that supplies power to half a million people in the western English county of Gloucestershire. They managed to keep the water out and the power running. "The relentlessness of the rainfall this summer has been quite exceptional and the damage immense," Britain's National Farmers Union said in a report.
CLIMATE CHANGE Homeowners waded through knee-deep water surveying the damage to their homes. Insurers said these and similar June floods in northern England could raise claims of up to 2 billion pounds ($4 billion). A break in days of rain brought hope to flood victims and others living in fear of the rising waters, driven by major rivers such as the Thames and the Severn; but officials said there could be more rain on the way. "We're hopeful the worst has passed but it's hard to say," said Stuart Brennan, a spokesman for the government's Environment Agency. The government has promised more money to help with drainage and flood defences, but it has been criticised for failing to act sooner to tackle failings in its flood defence plans. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who toured a flooded area on Monday, said some places had received a month's rainfall in an hour. "Extreme events such as we have seen in recent weeks herald the spectre of climate change and it would be irresponsible to imagine that they won't become more frequent," Nick Reeves, executive director of The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, a scientific group, said. But Alastair Borthwick, an engineering professor at Oxford University, said there was not enough data to judge whether climate change was a factor in the flooding. Up to 350,000 people in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham may be without mains water for up to two weeks after pumps at a water treatment works were engulfed by water. But most of the 43,000 homes that had their power cut off when an electricity substation was flooded were reconnected. | 0 |
Bill Clinton will take his philanthropic summit to Hong Kong next year, hoping that Asians will keep issues such as poverty, health and climate change on the agenda as economies from India to China grow rapidly. On Wednesday, the former US president kicks off his third annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York, rubbing shoulders with everyone from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie. And at a meeting that rates action over talk, he will push those attending to commit to do good, hoping to build on $10 billion of pledges made in the first two years of his summit. Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for Clinton, said next year's Hong Kong summit is "to spark the same spirit of philanthropy and engagement in the business community in Asia." "The idea is to have a truly global initiative," Yarrow told Reuters. "Given the explosion of growth in several Asian economies and the rapid pace of development in the region it made perfect sense to host a separate event in Asia." At this year's New York meeting, Yarrow said Clinton will unveil www.mycommitment.org, a database of about one million volunteer groups globally to help people find a way to do good in their own communities. Clinton will also target U.S. university students in a discussion with rock star and activist Bono, comedian Chris Rock and singers Alicia Keys and Shakira, to be aired by MTV. This year's three-day brainstorming session is set to attract more than 1,200 people from 72 countries -- including 52 current and former heads of state, celebrities, aid workers and company chiefs. Born out of his frustration while president from 1993 to 2001 at attending conferences that were more talk than action, Clinton has described the initiative as matching "people with ideas and those who have the means to see them through." Last year British billionaire Richard Branson pledged to spend about $3 billion over 10 years fighting global warming. But a commitment unveiled by Clinton in 2006 to create a green fund to raise up to $1 billion that would be managed by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn to support renewable energy investments "did not get off the ground due to complications," Yarrow said. RESTORING AMERICA'S 'SOFT POWER' Despite leaving office six years ago, Clinton's successful humanitarian work, which has also included a role as the U.N. special envoy for the tsunami, saw him come in at No. 6 on Vanity Fair magazine's 2007 top 100 power rankings. Devin Stewart, director of Global Policy Innovations at the New York-based Carnegie Council, said the Clinton Global Initiative was helping restore America's "inspirational power," which he said was damaged by an overreaction from Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It captures the America that people around the world respect, instead of the America that exports its own fear and paranoia after 9/11," Stewart said. "America will be admired if it tackles global issues and works for the greater good." Elliot Schrage, a senior fellow for Business and Foreign Policy, agreed that the initiative had highlighted the value of "soft power" and demonstrated the "engagement of America's civil society in solving global problems." "While government leaders will be bemoaning problems at the United Nations this week, representatives from governments, civil society, the private sector and policy experts will be working on creative new forms of collaboration to solve those same problems," he said. In his new book "Giving," Clinton said he hopes to continue the Global Initiative meetings for at least a decade. | 0 |
Negotiators from around 195 countries are working to lay the foundations for a new global climate accord that is due to be agreed in 2015 in Paris, and come into force after 2020, but few concrete steps have emerged from two weeks of talks in Warsaw. "The Warsaw talks, which should have been an important step forward ... are now on the verge of delivering virtually nothing," said China's lead climate negotiator Su Wei. Around 800 representatives from 13 non-governmental organizations walked out of the talks on Thursday, exasperated at the lack of progress at the meeting, which is likely to run overnight into Saturday. It was hoped the conference would at least produce a timetable to ensure ambitious emissions cut targets and climate finance pledges are set in time for Paris. But the selection and wording of issues has been politically sensitive. Rich countries want to emphasize future emission targets for all, while developing nations say industrialized nations must lead in setting targets and foot most of the bill because they have historically accounted for most emissions. French Development Minister Pascal Canfin said all should submit initial targets for emissions beyond 2020 by early 2015. "Warsaw will have been a good launch pad for Paris if each state goes away with the principle of putting commitments with numbers on the table ... by the beginning of 2015 at the latest," he said. The talks have also been sharply divided over aid. Developed nations agreed in 2009 to raise climate aid to $100 billion a year from 2020 from an annual $10 billion for 2010-12. Hit by economic slowdown, rich countries are now more focused on their own economies and are resisting calls to firm up plans for raising aid from 2013 to 2019. MORE URGENCY Scientists say warming is causing more heatwaves, droughts, and could mean more powerful storms. The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines has risen to more than 4,000. A U.N. panel of climate scientists said in September "sustained and substantial" cuts in greenhouse gases are needed to achieve a U.N. goal of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times - widely seen as a threshold for dangerous change. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders on Thursday to make "bold pledges" for emissions cuts by a summit he will host on September 23 next year but acknowledged many nations would be late. Many developing nations want that to be a deadline for rich nations to outline initial emissions cuts beyond 2020 but the United States has said it will unveil its plans in early 2015. A draft document issued on Friday, which still has to be approved by parties, suggested a draft negotiating text be ready at the latest by December 2014 climate talks in Lima, Peru. Developing nations are also pushing for a new mechanism to deal with loss and damage related to climate change, but developed countries do not want a new institution, fearing that it could pave the way for huge financial claims. | 0 |
Europe expects to overcome a dispute with the United States blocking the launch of negotiations on a new climate treaty beyond 2012 at UN talks in Bali, Germany said on the final day on Friday. "All parties are willing to be flexible, to search for a compromise," said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, playing down a long-running clash with the United States over how far rich nations should cut greenhouse gases by 2020. "I think that the situation is good, the climate in the climate conference is good, that we will have success in the end," he said. "I don't know when we will come to an end." Indonesia, hosting the Dec. 3-14 talks in Bali, had suggested dropping an ambition for rich nations to make stiff cuts in emissions of between 25 to 40 percent by 2020 in a bid to overcome Washington's opposition to a draft text. The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only developed nation outside the 37-country Kyoto, has repeatedly said that setting a 2020 goal would prejudge the outcome of coming negotiations. Earlier, the EU insisted the rich should lead the way in curbing emissions to persuade developing nations, such as China and India, to agree in Bali to launch two years of negotiations on a global climate pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. "We continue to insist on including a reference to an indicative emissions reduction range for developed countries for 2020," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. "Let me underline once again that the Bali 'roadmap' must have a clear destination," he said. Reading a statement, he did not, however, repeat the 25 to 40 percent demand. Gabriel would not say what had caused his more optimistic tone. One compromise draft by Indonesia retains an ambition for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak in the next 10-15 years and to fall well below half of 2000 levels by 2050. But it drops the 25-40 percent range for rich nations by 2020. It was not clear if the United States and other countries would agree to the text. Indonesia presented an alternative with the 2020 goals, as part of a drive to avert climate changes such as more heatwaves, floods, rising seas and melting glaciers. BAN RETURN The United States did not want to distinguish between climate efforts by rich and poor countries, isolating it from the G77 group of developing nations and the European Union. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided warned of the risks of failure in Bali. "That would be very serious," he said, but added: "I think there will be an agreement." Organisers say the talks may last overnight into Saturday. Ban, on a visit to East Timor after attending the Bali talks, would make an unscheduled return on Saturday morning to give a news conference, his spokeswoman Michelle Montas said. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said most nations considered it vital to include the United States in a new climate treaty. "The general sense of everyone here is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to begin crafting a post-2012 climate change regime without the major economy and the major emitter," he said. Outside the conference centre, activists wearing red t-shirts reading "Kyoto - just do it" chanted "breakthrough, breakthrough". Developing nations are exempt from Kyoto's 2008-2012 first phase. Despite opposition to Kyoto, the United States plans to join a new treaty, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 with participation of developing nations led by China and India. On other issues, the Bali talks agreed steps on Friday to slow deforestation. Trees store carbon dioxide as they grow. "The agreement on deforestation is a good balance between different countries views and is one of the substantial achievements of this conference," Dimas said. He said the agreement launched pilot projects, which would tackle deforestation and forest degradation, and contribute to harder proposals in a broader climate pact in 2009. | 0 |
Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi called for an overhaul of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing CO2 emissions on Sunday, to deal with the environmental impact of Asia's rapid economic development. "It is important to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol to create a new, practical and effective framework in which all countries, including the United States, China and India, will participate," Omi said. The Japanese government will contribute up to $100 million to two new funds to be set up together with the Asian Development Bank to promote clean energy and improve the investment climate in Asia, he told the opening session of the ADB's annual meeting in Kyoto, western Japan. Omi also said Japan would provide loans of up to $2 billion over the next five years through the government-affiliated Japan Bank for International Cooperation to promote investment and address the issue of climate change. "I expect this initiative will help ensure sustainable economic development in the region," he said. Omi said the Kyoto Protocol covers only 30 percent of total current CO2 emissions worldwide, and that ratio is expected to fall as emissions from developing countries increase. The ADB said on Friday it would spend at least $1 billion on clean energy projects in 2008, as it seeks to strengthen its role in balancing economic development and environmental concerns in the region. That would mark a rise of 10 percent or more from this year, when it is expected to invest $900 million in such projects. Omi, who was formerly a minister in charge of science and technology, also said the ADB should place more emphasis on these fields, saying this would be "a new wing" to the agency in helping developing countries in the region. "I believe it may be worthwhile to direct a portion of ODA (official development assistance) to cooperation in research activities and capacity building in the science and technology area," he said. But Japan, which is struggling to reduce its mountain of public debt, cut its ODA budget for poor countries in fiscal 2007/08 by 4.0 percent from the previous fiscal year to 729.3 billion yen ($6.1 billion). | 0 |
A British plan to drill into a sunless lake deep under Antarctica's ice in December could show the risks of quicker sea level rise caused by climate change, scientists said on Friday. Sediments on the bed of Lake Ellsworth, which is several hundred meters (yards) below sea level and buried under 3 km (1.6 miles) of ice, may include bits of ancient seashells that could be dated to reveal when the ice sheet last broke up. Experts say the West Antarctic ice sheet over the lake contains enough ice to raise world sea levels by 3-5 meters if it ever broke up - a threat to low-lying areas from Bangladesh to Florida, from Buenos Aires to Shanghai. "Society needs to know the risk of a collapse," of the ice sheet, said Martin Siegert, of the University of Bristol and principal investigator for the mission that will also look for unknown life forms in a rivalry with Russian and US scientists. There are 360 known sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica - formed by heat from the Earth melting the bottom of the ice. "One way to find out (the risks of collapse) is to know when it last happened," he said of the mission that has been in the planning stages for 16 years. "We are finally ready to hit the 'go' button," he said. "We set foot on the ice again in October and hope to bring samples to the surface in December 2012," Chris Hill, program manager at the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement. Siegert said no one knew the age of the West Antarctic ice. It might have broken up in naturally warmer periods about 125,000 years ago, 440,000 years ago or a million years ago - all times when sea levels were higher than today. HIPPOPOTAMUS Most worrying would be if the ice collapsed in the Eemian period 125,000 years ago when temperatures were slightly higher than now, hippopotamuses bathed in the Rhine and world sea levels were 4 to 6 meters higher than today. That could be a sign that the ice sheet was very vulnerable to a collapse caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. Most scientists reckon that Greenland, with enough ice to raise world sea levels by 7 meters if it thawed over hundreds of years, is more vulnerable than West Antarctica. The far bigger East Antarctic ice sheet, with enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 50 meters, is coldest and most stable. Sea levels rose by 17 cm (7 inches) last century but many scientists say the rate might pick up to a meter this century. Siegert said the plan to drill into the lake sediments had received little attention compared to the goal of seeing if microbial life had evolved in the darkness under the ice. That might increase the chances of finding life elsewhere in the solar system, such as on Jupiter's ice-swathed moon Europa. The scientists aim to use a hot water drill and take samples in a sterilized titanium container. Russia drilled through to the Vostok Lake in East Antarctica early this year and its scientists plan to return in 2013 to get samples. US scientists plan to sample the Whillans sub-glacial lake "around mid-January" 2013, said John Priscu of Montana State University. He said that the mission would send down a robot vehicle to sample the lake, keeping the borehole open for about two weeks unlike the British plan for faster sampling over a few days. "The Russians have no clean samples from Vostok this time," he told Reuters. "The only samples they have that I am aware of is water, mixed with kerosene drilling fluid." | 0 |
For decades, mining has eaten into the forests of mineral-rich Chhattisgarh. But as the state moves away from opening coal mines, authorities have introduced measures to boost output of forest goods - from tamarind to cashew nuts and medicinal seeds. "The setting of a minimum price has meant that middlemen and traders have to pay a fair price. Family incomes have gone up," said Sushma Netam, who oversees implementation of the state programme aimed at promoting "tribal entrepreneurship". Netam said production had soared since the state launched its "just transition" plan, a green economy strategy set up to cushion the impact of the shift away from coal. "We have more than 200 village groups in the region now, 49 haat (local market) groups and 10 processing centres," she said. While India pushes to expand coal mining to meet its energy needs, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel announced the state would move away from opening new coal mines in 2019 to help reduce emissions and protect forests. Chhattisgarh has India's second-largest coal reserves and significant deposits of iron ore, limestone and bauxite, but it remains one of the nation's poorest states, with more than 40% of its population living below the poverty line. Under the "Van Dhan" plan, the state raised the procurement price of 52 forest products in 2019 and bought 73% of all produce gathered in the state last year. "Mining has been key to the economy and continues under strict norms. But our priority is now the forest," Manoj Kumar Pingua, state principal secretary for forests and industries, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We are willing to forgo millions of rupees generated from mining to protect and improve the livelihoods of forest gatherers. In mining a few make money, but in the green economy, the profit goes directly into the hands of the people." 'SO MUCH BETTER' Chhattisgarh, which has 44% of its territory covered by forest, is now looking to build an organised industry around non-timber forest products, which it says would benefit about 1.7 million families working as gatherers. The deforestation of land for mining has greatly impacted the livelihoods of indigenous communities, who earn up to 40% of their income from forest goods. Revathi Bagel, 21, works at a recently revived cashew plant in Bakawand village where she and other local women prepare the nuts for dispatch to markets across the country. Previously, she travelled hundreds of miles to work as a seasonal labourer. "I walk to work and get paid 8,000 Indian rupees ($108) a month. It's so much better than going to (the western state of) Gujarat to repay an advance and toil on someone else's fields," she said by phone, as piles of cashews were unloaded. Forest produce is traditionally gathered primarily by women, who sell it at village markets and use the income to buy essentials, but a vast network of middlemen has limited the benefits for forest communities. A lack of storage facilities and processing units in remote villages also limits their profits, said Anushka Rose, research coordinator at the Center for Labor Research and Action, a charity promoting informal workers' rights. "If you look at mahua, people gather and sell it in May to local traders because they can't store it," she said, referring to the flowers of the Madhuca longifolia tree, which have numerous medicinal uses and are brewed to make a festive spirit. "Two months later they buy it back at a higher price to use in their festivities. If the Van Dhan scheme is strictly monitored, this situation will change." 'DELAYS IN PAYMENTS' But despite such optimism about the programme's potential, patchy implementation and banking issues have limited its impact so far, said Rajim Ketwas, coordinator of the Dalit Adivasi Manch, a collective working on indigenous rights. "Delays in payments or digital transfers are still a hurdle. The families want cash-in-hand and waiting to be paid for hard work will not be acceptable," she said. Deep in the forest in the state's Baloda Bazar district, village resident Kaushalya Chauhan said by phone her community's payment for chironjee seeds - used medicinally - had been delayed. Pingua acknowledged such glitches and said state authorities were working with the banking industry to ensure women in local markets could access digital payments. Netam, the forest officer, said her greatest accomplishment so far had been to ensure the 3,741 tonnes of tamarind collected in Bastar over the last eight months were de-seeded and processed in record time. It was the district's biggest-ever tamarind harvest. "It just made me so happy that the work got done and the women got paid," she said. | 0 |
Canada declined on Monday to take sides in a dispute among Group of Eight members over climate change, saying merely it wanted to build consensus on the question of how to fight global warming. Germany, which hosts a meeting of G8 leaders next week, wants the group to agree on a series of fixed targets and timetables for cutting emissions. The United States disagrees and wants such language excised from the final communique. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- who says Canada cannot meet targets for emissions cuts set out by the Kyoto climate change protocol -- did not answer when pressed several times by opposition politicians as to whose side he would take at the G8 summit. "In order to have a post-2012 effective international protocol, we need to have all major emitters, including the United States and China, as part of that effort. Canada will be working to try to create that consensus," he told Parliament. Kyoto committed Canada to cutting emissions by 6 percent of 1990 levels by 2012, when the first stage of the international treaty runs out. Canadian emissions are now 32 percent above that target. Washington walked away from Kyoto in 2001 on the grounds that it would hurt the US economy and unfairly excluded such heavy emitters as China. Leaders of all three Canadian opposition parties said they suspected Harper would back US President George W Bush at the summit. "I have a lot of concerns that the government will be siding with the Bush administration instead of supporting the German presidency to be sure that (the) G8 will help humanity to fight climate change," said Stephane Dion, who heads the Liberals. | 0 |
Between 1990 and 2014, harvested wine grape acreage in the growing region around Paso Robles nearly quintupled to 37,408 acres, as vintners discovered that the area's rolling hills, rocky soil and mild climate were perfect for coaxing rich, sultry flavours from red wine grapes. Wines from the region, located midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, have won the kind of international acclaim once reserved for California's more famous growing areas of Napa and Sonoma. And in 2010, a red blend from Paso Robles' Saxum Vineyards was awarded one of winemaking’s highest honours when Wine Spectator magazine named it the worldwide "wine of the year." But in the last few years, California's ongoing drought has hit the region hard, reducing grape yields and depleting the vast aquifer that most of the area’s vineyards and rural residents rely on as their sole source of water other than rain. Across the region, residential and vineyard wells have gone dry. Those who can afford to – including a number of large wineries and growers – have drilled ever-deeper wells, igniting tensions and leading some to question whether Paso Robles' burgeoning wine industry is sustainable. "All of our water is being turned purple and shipped out of here in green glass," said Cam Berlogar, who delivers water, cuts custom lumber and sells classic truck parts in the Paso Robles-area community of Creston. Unlike other states that treat groundwater as a shared resource subject to regulation and monitoring, California's Gold Rush-era rules have generally allowed property owners to drill wells on their land and suck out as much water as they want. "It's a matter of who has the longest straw at the bottom of the bucket," said Berlogar. The water level in his own 57-foot well has dropped 40 feet over the last six to seven years.
Richard Sauret walks in his vineyard, which he said he irrigates with very little water, in Paso Robles, California April 20, 2015. Reuters
In August 2013, in response to the crisis, San Luis Obispo County supervisors passed a moratorium on new vineyards and other water-dependent projects. But the two-year ban, which will expire this summer, did not apply to projects already in the works, and so grape acreage has continued to expand. Richard Sauret, a long-time resident who grows award-winning Zinfandel grapes, has a reputation for conserving water in his hilltop Paso Robles vineyards. Still, he relies on water pumped from the aquifer when he needs to irrigate, and he worries about that resource running out. "There is way too much demand. I blame a lot of vineyards like other people do," said Sauret. "There are a lot of farmers who are going to have to farm with a hell of a lot less water." Change is coming Spurred by the drought, California Governor Jerry Brown last year signed a package of bills requiring groundwater-dependent areas to establish local water sustainability agencies by 2017. The agencies will then have between three and five years to adopt water management plans, and then another two decades to implement those plans. Some residents worry that Paso Robles can't wait that long. Aquifer depletion is difficult to model, but one report for the county of San Luis Obispo projected that, even with no additional growth, the water drawn from the basin would exceed that going in by 1.8 billion gallons annually between 2012 and 2040. "If it goes on unmanaged for another 10 years, it could reach a point where we couldn't correct it," said Hilary Graves, who makes wine under the Mighty Nimble brand. Graves is a fourth-generation farmer whose ancestors came to California as migrant workers after losing everything during the Dust Bowl. "I would like to not have to retrace my family's footsteps back to Oklahoma and Arkansas," said Graves. Water fight If most residents agree that there is a crisis, they are far from agreeing on how to address it. In a divisive 3-to-2 vote, county supervisors recently decided to move forward on creating a new water district that will be governed by an elected nine-member board. But many long-time residents and some of the region’s winemakers worry that large, well-funded newcomers will spend freely to get sympathetic board members elected and then stick local landowners with huge bills for infrastructure projects that disproportionately benefit the larger players.
Richard Sauret demonstrates the irrigation system in his vineyard, which uses very little water, in Paso Robles, California April 20, 2015. Reuters
Susan Harvey, a rural homeowner and president of the non-profit North County Watch, called the model for the proposed district "we pay, they pump." The residents are particularly concerned about politically connected and deep-pocketed new arrivals, including Harvard University, which has invested more than $60 million of endowment funds in the purchase of about 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, and Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the Beverly Hills billionaires behind FIJI Water and the Wonderful brand of pomegranate, citrus and nut products. The Resnicks’ company bought Paso Robles' Justin Vineyards & Winery in 2010 and two years later purchased a 740-acre ranch that had been dry-farmed before it was converted to irrigated vineyards. Jennifer George, a spokeswoman for Justin's parent company, Wonderful, said the winery's new vineyards have been planted with grapes that take less water, and that the company will eventually transition to dry farming the land. Harvard declined to comment for this story. 'Pick your poison' Fifth-generation farmer Cindy Steinbeck, of Steinbeck Vineyards & Winery, helped found Protect Our Water Rights (POWR), one of several groups that have sprung up around the region’s water issues, and is deeply sceptical about a new water agency. Her group is urging land-owners to join a quiet title action to protect their water rights, and would rather see the courts oversee any plan to manage the basin’s water. "We are fighting the big boys," said Steinbeck, who says her goal is to prevent family farmers from being pushed out of Paso Robles. The region will be "an important test case for how other highly-stressed groundwater basins might introduce new regional oversight," said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Paso Robles Agricultural Alliance for Groundwater Solutions (PRAAGS) has been the driving force behind the district. Its board includes a representative from J Lohr Vineyards & Wines, and at least one director affiliated with Harvard's property interests in the area. Other district supporters include Justin Vineyards and County Supervisor Frank Mecham, who voted to establish the new agency. Mecham says he understands residents’ concerns about it, but he also understands the need for water management. Mecham’s great, great grandfather lost his cattle ranch in the area to a drought. "This is the cold, hard reality: You will be managed one way or another. You’ve got to pick your poison," he said. Richard Sauret walks in his vineyard, which he said he irrigates with very little water, in Paso Robles, California April 20, 2015. Reuters Richard Sauret demonstrates the irrigation system in his vineyard, which uses very little water, in Paso Robles, California April 20, 2015. Reuters | 2 |
WASHINGTON, Jul 29, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States and China, the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, signed an agreement on Tuesday that promises more cooperation on climate change, energy and the environment without setting firm goals. Chinese and US officials signed the memorandum of understanding at the State Department following two days of high-level economic and strategic talks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it highlighted the importance of climate change in US-Chinese relations. "It also provides our countries with direction as we work together to support international climate negotiations and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy," said Clinton at the signing ceremony. She said the sides discussed in detail how to cut emissions ahead of a UN conference in Copenhagen in December that aims to set new global goals on controlling climate change. The document, released by the State Department, did not set any firm targets but reiterated support for a 10-year cooperation deal signed last year by the Bush administration and created a new climate change policy "dialogue" which would meet regularly. "It is not an agreement per se for each side to commit themselves to some particular target. It sets a structure for dialogue," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. The memorandum listed 10 areas of cooperation, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, cleaner use of coal, smart grid technologies, electric cars, and research and development. Some in the United States argue Washington should not agree to specific reductions in industrial emissions, which could boost energy prices, until China also agrees. But others say China already has taken more concrete steps than the United States, which must show, in the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting, it is serious about reducing emissions. Chinese state counselor Dai Bingguo said both countries faced severe challenges posed by climate change and Beijing was committed to cooperating with Washington. "We all need to take a strategic and long-term view of China-US dialogue and cooperation in these areas," he said. "Our two countries have an important contribution to make to the global efforts to tackle climate change, to ensure energy security and to protect the environment." US Energy Secretary Steven Chu praised China's efforts but said both countries needed to do more. "Today's agreement ... sets the stage for what I hope will be many years of cooperation," he said. This month, during a visit to China by Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, the two countries launched a $15 million joint project to create more energy-efficient buildings and cars and study the development of cleaner-burning coal. | 0 |
US President George W Bush said on Wednesday it would help to balance trade if China floated its currency, which has been allowed to appreciate gradually in the past two years but remains tightly managed. "We still have got a huge trade deficit with China, which then causes us to want to work with them to let their currency float. I think that would be helpful in terms of adjusting trade balances," he said. The yuan has appreciated a further 7.3 percent since it was revalued by 2.1 percent and decoupled from a dollar peg in July 2005, but critics say it remains significantly undervalued, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage in global markets. US imports from China totaled $121.0 billion in the first five months of the year and are on track to surpass last year's record of $287.8 billion when the bilateral trade deficit also reached a record $233 billion. China could become the third-largest market for US exports by the end of the year, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a recent report. In recent months, though, the quality of Chinese exports has come under a spotlight following a series of scandals and product recalls. Bush, visiting Australia for an Asia-Pacific summit at which he will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao, also said Beijing needed to play a part in defining global goals on climate change. "In order for there to be an effective climate change policy, China needs to be at the table. And in order to get China at the table they have to be a part of defining the goals," Bush told a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Howard has put climate change at the top of the agenda for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. More than any other country, China faces tough demands in forthcoming negotiations on how the world will cope with global warming and what will succeed the current Kyoto Protocol, which governs signatory states' greenhouse gas responsibilities. On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced it had established a team of elite diplomats to navigate the negotiations. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi would head the team. On Tuesday, the Pentagon said computer hackers gained access to an unclassified e-mail system in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, but declined to comment on a report that the Chinese army was responsible. Asked if he would raise the issue with Hu, Bush did not name China, but said: "In terms of whether or not I'll bring this up to countries from which we suspect there may have been an attack, I may." | 0 |
Dr David Nabarro concluded his short visit in Dhaka on Sunday, as part of his global campaign, when he met with health minister Mohammed Nasim and senior government officials. He also
interacted with a group of journalists, including bdnews24.com, at the British
High Commission in Dhaka. The election of the WHO’s eighth director-general will take place in May when its 194 member states convene in Geneva for the annual general meeting, the World Health Assembly. Former Ethiopian foreign minister as well as health minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and former Pakistan’s health minister Dr Sania Nishtar are the other two candidates selected as finalists in the competition to replace Dr Margaret Chan, whose second term of office ends June 30. The recent spate of global outbreaks including Ebola virus and the health challenges posed by climate change, an ageing population and non-communicable diseases and the shortage of new drugs are some of the issues of global concerns for the candidates taking part in the election process. The WHO has been severely criticised for the way it dealt with the Ebola virus outbreak and some experts also raised the question of the relevance of this UN body during that period. The 2014 outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 11, 000 people. Dr Navarro, since Sep 2014, has served as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Ebola, providing strategic and policy direction for the international response. Replying to a question, the British doctor explained why Bangladesh should vote him? He said based on his past experiences he would be able “to get WHO into the right place on its work”. And because of his work experiences in South Asia including Bangladesh, he is also familiar with the issues of health and healthcare in the region. He also said of his professional experience in this region, his works on SDGs and climate change over the last two years as a special envoy of the UN Secretary were also “relevant” to Bangladesh. “I love this country. I worked here in 1982 in the Save the Children. Many great things are done here. I am keen to encourage Bangladesh vote for me. If Bangladesh supports me, others will pay attention,” he said. He has more than 30 years of experience in public health, nutrition and development work at the national, regional and global levels, and has held positions in NGOs, universities, national governments and the UN system. He also served as a Senior Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza, Coordinator of the Movement to Scale Up Nutrition, and also Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition, a position he will continue to hold. During Ebola outbreak, he said, the UN Secretary General brought him in when the virus was “advancing a dramatic way”. After taking the responsibility, he said, he saw that there was “problem” and with the support of all they were able “to help WHO get back on track and after some months it was able to perform the role it should play”. “It showed me there are changes needs in WHO so that it can pick up potential outbreaks more quickly, respond effectively, and make more noise when raising the alarm”. “And so, in the second half of the 2O15, the Director General of WHO asked me to chair a group to advise her on how to reform WHO, so it could better help countries respond to outbreaks.
David Nabarro
“Our advisory group made some recommendations to create a more robust response capacity and the reason why I then decided I wanted to become Director General of WHO and it’s because I wanted to see this through,” he said, explaining his candidature. David Nabarro “It’s something I believe in. It’s something that it's necessary because there is no alternative to WHO for dealing with those outbreaks and it’s something I understand I dealt with avian influenza; I dealt with SARS. I worked on cholera, and I am familiar of outbreak managements”. “I believe by my past experiences that I have the expertise, the courage and the strategic skills and the management ability to get WHO into the right place on this work,” he said, adding that his primary offer was to make WHO “dependable and effective” in the outbreak situation. “I am a person with a very clear and open track record of work on food, nutrition, on infectious disease, on climate change, on SDGs,” he said, adding that previously he raised money and delivered results in different fields. “I believe this is what the WHO needs”. “WHO under my direction will be a fully transparent and auditable organisation by everyone because that’s the one way to run public services in this modern era,” he said. Election process The process to elect the next Director-General started last year on Sep 23 with the announcement of names of candidates nominated by the Member States. Then, member states and candidates interacted in a password-protected web forum hosted on the WHO website. In Nov, a live forum was held, at which candidates presented their vision for the WHO Member States and were also be able to answer questions about their candidacy. In Jan, WHO’s Executive Board prepared a short list of five candidates. The Board members then interviewed them and selected three of them for the final voting which will take place in the World Health Assembly in May. The new Director-General will take office on July 1 this year. Meet the other candidates The three candidates are one each from Africa, Asia and the Europe region. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia topped the vote of the executive members and is a candidate of African Union. According to his campaign page, Ghebreyesus is a “visionary leader, and he guided Ethiopia and numerous global health organisations to achieve game-changing results and increase their impact”. “I envision the world where everyone can lead healthy and productive lives, regardless of who they are or where they live,” he said in his campaign vision. Dr Sania Nishtar from Pakistan made 1O pledges in her campaign featuring issues to achieve “a renewed and reinvigorated” WHO. “This requires bringing reforms to rapid fruition, embracing meaningful and timely transparency, institutionalising real accountability, ensuring value for money, and driving a culture based on results and delivery,” she said on her campaign page. | 1 |
Afghanistan and nations in sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk from shocks to food supplies such as droughts or floods while Nordic countries are least vulnerable, according to an index released on Thursday. "Of 50 nations most at risk, 36 are located in Africa," said Fiona Place, an environmental analyst at British-based consultancy Maplecroft, which compiled the 163-nation food security risk index. Maplecroft said that it hoped the index could help in directing food aid or to guide investments in food production. Upheavals in 2010 include Russia's grain export ban from Aug. 15 spurred by the country's worst drought in more than a century. Afghanistan's food supplies were most precarious, based on factors such as rates of malnutrition, cereal production and imports, gross domestic product per capita, natural disasters, conflicts and the effectiveness of government. It was followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe, all of which suffer from poverty and risk ever more extreme weather because of climate change. At the other end of the scale, the survey said that Finland had the most secure food supplies, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States. Among nations with unreliable supplies, Pakistan -- which ranked 30th most at risk on the list -- is struggling with floods that have killed 1,600 people and badly damaged its agriculture-based economy. "Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa which are dependent on food imports are going to be all the more vulnerable," Alyson Warhurst, head of Maplecroft, told Reuters. She said the Russian export ban would add pressure on China to supply more food to world markets at a time when its domestic wheat and meat consumption were rising. Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures hit a 2-year in early August on worries about Russia's drought. Prices have since fallen more than 20 percent but are still well above levels before the surge. | 0 |
MOMBASA, Kenya, Sep 4, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Maasai warrior Lempuris Lalasho went to Kenya's tourist haven Mombasa to find a white woman to marry, but he ended up working as a hairdresser, a profession that is taboo in his culture. His story opens a window on the strains faced by this ancient tribe as it adjusts to modern life in east Africa's largest economy, whose Indian Ocean beaches lure thousands of tourists, including women seeking sex. Maasai warriors, or moran, are a familiar sight on Kenya's beaches and in its renowned safari parks -- dressed in distinctive red robes and wearing beaded jewelry, they often act as guides or work in security. But sometimes, the eager young men who flock to the coast hoping to make their fortunes -- some with dreams of marrying a white tourist -- have to go against their traditions. Lalasho's status as a moran means he is charged with protecting and providing for his people, and it makes his transgression all the more serious. Maasai warriors are not allowed to touch a woman's head: it is regarded as demeaning in the patriarchal culture. Moran who become hairdressers risk a curse from the elders, or could even be expelled from the community. "If my father finds out what I am doing he will be very mad at me or even chase me from home," said Lalasho, who comes from Loitoktok, near Mount Kilimanjaro on the border with Tanzania. "But I have to eat, that's why I broke my taboo since city life is very expensive," he said. An estimated 500,000 to one million Maasai live in scattered and remote villages across northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, eking out a semi-nomadic existence with herds of precious cows. As drought and hunger bite harder in their rural homes due to climate change and increased competition for resources, hundreds of Maasai men are heading to towns and cities. SPINNING HAIR In tourist resorts like Mombasa, these men end up as hotel workers, night guards, herbalists and hairdressers. Lalasho, who is illiterate and does not know his age, was inspired by the good fortune of a friend, Leishorwa Mesieki. "My friend Leishorwa is now rich. He married a mzungu (white) woman who took him to ... is it New Zealand or Switzerland? I don't know. He came back to build a big house and bought so many cows. I envy him," he added, shaking his head. Lalasho did not have such luck and he was forced to use his skills at spinning hair, which he learnt during his initiation into moranhood in a thicket near Mount Kilimanjaro. Morans learn to weave hair into thin, rasta-like dreadlocks during the initiation, which takes place when boys are aged between 17 and 20. The warriors' hair is often dyed red as well, and the red style is popular among women in cities. For Maasai elder Michael Ole Tiampati, the fate of men like Lalasho threatens the wider Maasai culture. "It's an abomination and demeaning for a moran or Maasai man to touch a woman's head," said Tiampati, media officer for the Maa Civil Society Forum, which protects Maasai traditions. "They have gone against the cultural fiber ... They have to pay a price to be accepted back into the society," he said. CULTURE UNDER THREAT Kenya's Maasai are based in the picturesque Great Rift Valley region, home to the famous Maasai Mara game park. But the tribe who gave the park its name earn little from tourism, which is among Kenya's top three foreign currency earners. This lack of revenue pushes young Maasai into other activities, but their increasing renown in tourist resorts is also bringing competition. Men from tribes like the Kikuyu or Samburu are disguising themselves as Maasai on the beaches of Mombasa and elsewhere. "Foreign tourists love Maasai for their sincerity. We are good-hearted people who do not feel jealous," Lalasho said. Tiampati is more explicit. "(Maasai) warriors are perceived to be erotic, that is why women pensioners from Europe come to look for them. The warriors take a lot of herbs -- some known to have Viagra-like contents like the bark of black acacia tree -- to re-invigorate their loins." The copy-cat trend has angered some Maasai. "It's the beginning of an end of Maasai culture," said tour guide Isac Oramat in Nairobi. "Soon our tradition will just exist in books ... I warn tourists to be aware of these fake Maasais." But for the morans in Mombasa, survival for now takes precedence over preserving their traditional ways. "I have not gone to school. This is the only thing I can do," said hairdresser Ole Sambweti Ndoika, 35. "The women here love our style. We get good money ... I hope to save enough to marry my second wife ... by end of the year," said the father-of-four from Narok in the Rift Valley. Longishu Nyangusi, 25, also works as a hairdresser and like Lalasho came to Mombasa to find a white tourist wife. He says his lack of English has held him back. "I could have hooked a white woman by now. I regret refusing to go to school. I was fooled by our fat cows and thought life is just fine," he said near his open-air salon-cum-shop. | 0 |
Angela Merkel has pushed global warming to the top of her international agenda in a bet that rising public awareness and her close ties to Washington can help deliver results that have proved elusive in past years. The German chancellor has put aggressive action to curb greenhouse gases, which scientists say are swelling sea levels and causing droughts and floods, at the heart of her twin presidencies of the European Union and the Group of Eight industrialised powers. Analysts say her motivation is twofold. As a physicist and former environment minister, Merkel takes the problem seriously and is committed to pressing other world leaders on it at the G8 summit she will host in June. That commitment will be on display at an EU summit in Brussels next week, where Merkel will push her European peers to commit to ambitious cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and binding targets on biofuels and renewable energy. But Merkel is also pushing the issue of climate change on the global stage because she sees a chance to burnish her image, distancing herself from contradictions on energy and environment policy that have plagued her coalition and past governments. Her big test will come at the G8 summit in the Baltic resort town of Heiligendamm, when she tries to bridges gaps between Europe, the United States and countries like China and India. "It is clear that Merkel sees a chance to raise her profile with this issue," said Alexander Ochs, an expert on climate policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "She believes the time is right to continue the talks that Tony Blair started at Gleneagles." Two years ago, the British prime minister failed in his bid to forge an international consensus on combating global warming at a G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland amid resistance from US President George W Bush. Bush refused to repay Blair's loyal support for the US-led war in Iraq with a victory on climate change at the time. In pressing the issue again, Merkel is betting that a shift in public perceptions of the risks of climate change -- notably in the United States -- and her personal ties to a weakened Bush can help her succeed where Blair could not. German officials are taking care to lower expectations for the G8 summit. They have made clear they don't expect the meeting to produce a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, whose first period expires in 2012. But there is hope in Merkel's camp that the foundations for a post-Kyoto accord can be laid by finding common ground between the technology-focused US approach to fighting global warming and Europe's 'cap and trade' strategy of mandatory emissions limits and timetables combined with a carbon-trading system. Experts who advise the German government and corporations on environmental issues say they expect Merkel to press Bush and other countries for agreement on technology targets, R&D cooperation, energy efficiency goals and broad aims for renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. "The question is whether they can establish a technology focused approach that is parallel to Kyoto but also supports it," said Hermann Ott of the Wuppertal Institute in Berlin. By inviting non-G8 members Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa to Heiligendamm, Germany has ensured that countries producing close to 90 percent of global emissions will be there. An influential report by British government economist Nicholas Stern on the costs of climate change and a stark Oscar-winning documentary by former US Vice President Al Gore have given Merkel's diplomatic drive vital momentum. But if she is to succeed in making the environment her signature issue, analysts say she will have to answer critics who question Germany's own record on global warming and history of defending its big firms against climate-friendly rules. Merkel protested earlier this month when the European Commission proposed new emissions limits on cars that would hit German luxury automakers like DaimlerChrysler, BMW and Porsche. And her government initially resisted efforts by the Commission to impose an annual 453.1 million tonne cap on German carbon dioxide emissions, before bowing to Brussels. Her coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats remains split on such crucial issues as nuclear energy and 'ownership unbundling', that would break up the generation and distribution activities of German energy giants like E.ON and RWE. "A lot of our hope for progress on climate change lies with Germany, but they do have these contradictions," said Steve Sawyer, climate and energy policy adviser to Greenpeace. "Which Germany are we dealing with when push comes to shove? That is what we'll find out over the course of next few months." | 0 |
SINGAPORE, Tue Feb 10,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Weekend bushfires in Australia that killed 173 people are a climate change wake-up call for the public and politicians and a window to the future, experts said on Tuesday. With the death toll still growing from the nation's deadliest fires, some analysts say the sheer scale of the tragedy might prompt industry to back-off calls to weaken the government's emissions targets or delay a carbon-trading scheme set for 2010. "What the bushfires might do is suck the oxygen out of the debate. I think public awareness has been focused now on climate change again. We knew what the scientists had predicted and we've actually seen it in action," said Matthew Clarke of Deakin University in Melbourne. "It may be very difficult for those who want weaker carbon reduction scheme targets or those who want to see it delayed to put those arguments into the public sphere. The atmosphere might be more hostile to those arguments," said Clarke, associate professor at the School of International and Political Studies. The fires tore through communities on the outskirts of Melbourne, fuelled by heatwave conditions and strong winds. Melbourne's temperature on Saturday hit 46.4 degrees Celsius, a record for the city. The Australian government released a policy document, or White Paper, in December outlining its plans for carbon trading as part of its strategy to fight climate change. Under the scheme, the government set a target to cut carbon emissions by 5 percent in 2020 from 2000 levels and 15 percent if there is global agreement at the end of this year on a broader pact to fight climate change. But the Greens, citing the fires and severe flooding in northern Australia, are calling for tougher targets. The Greens and two independents hold the balance of power in the Senate and the government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is expected to face a tough time getting the emissions trading legislation passed by the Upper House later this year. BIG AGENDA Industry and particularly big coal-fired power generation firms, say the trading scheme will be too costly. The liquefied natural gas industry, which earns billion of dollars in exports, has said the scheme could force them to move offshore. "Climate Change is a big agenda that should be considered in its own space and it would be irresponsible to find cover for a climate change argument in the bushfires," Heather Ridout, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group, told Reuters in a statement. Some analysts say the fires were predictable and that climate scientists have been warning for years about Australia's vulnerability to rising temperatures and declining rainfall across much of the nation's south. "I would compare this current bushfire event to one of the ghosts in Dickens' Christmas Carol that visits Scrooge and showed him what his future would be like if he didn't change his ways," said professor Barry Brook, director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. "The government should be taking an international leadership role. They are not listening to the ghost whispering in their ear saying this is your future," said Brook, who called for an emissions cut target of 40 percent by 2020 if there is a global climate agreement. "The real danger in the White Paper is not the 5 percent target, it's the 15 percent target. So that's what the Greens should be advocating, changing the international negotiating target and make it as hard as possible." But there was also a risk to investors if the government kept changing the targets because of financial or climate shocks. "The fundamental flaw with the policy of the White Paper is that it's a political compromise, not a clear plan. And a political compromise will be blown in the wind, depending on what shock comes along," said leading climate change policy analyst Warwick McKibbin. "It's very important to have a clear, transparent plan that builds constituencies and clarity about the future so that when something comes along, the policy doesn't fall over," said McKibbin, executive director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in Canberra. | 0 |
US President Barack Obama paid homage to the heroes of D-Day on Saturday, saying their assault on Normandy's beaches exactly 65 years ago had helped save the world from evil and tyranny. Addressing stooped, white-haired veterans, Obama said the Second World War represented a special moment in history when nations fought together to battle a murderous ideology. "We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true," Obama said. "In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity. The Second World War did that." His visit to Normandy came at the end of a rapid tour through Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany and France, where he has tried to reach out to the Muslim world and press for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Speaking in a giant US military cemetery at Colleville, where 9,387 American soldiers lie, Obama said the war against Nazi Germany laid the way for years of peace and prosperity. "It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide," he said. The Colleville cemetery, with its rows of white crosses and stars of David, overlooks the Omaha Beach landing where U.S. forces on June 6, 1944, suffered their greatest casualties in the assault against heavily fortified German defenses. HUMAN DESTINY French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined Obama at Saturday's ceremony held under overcast skies -- much better than the winds and rain that marked D-Day. In his speech, Brown said World War Two did not mark an end to suffering around the globe, and referred specifically to Darfur, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and to poverty and hunger. "How can we say we have achieved all that we set out to do? The promise of peace and justice?" said Brown, who is fighting for his political life at home. "There are dreams of liberation still to be realized, commitments still to be redeemed." In a slip of the tongue that raised smiles, Brown referred to "Obama beach" not "Omaha beach." He then corrected himself. Obama has been trying to repair ties with France and other European states that were alienated by his predecessor George W. Bush's go-it-alone diplomacy, the US-led invasion of Iraq and his policies on climate change. Earlier on Saturday he held talks with Sarkozy, where the two said they were determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Obama also promised an uncompromising stance against North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb last month. In his speech, Obama said D-Day showed that human destiny was determined not by forces beyond man's control but by individual choices and joint action. On a more personal note, he also saluted his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived in Normandy a month after D-Day, and his great uncle, Charles Payne, who was present on Saturday and fought in Europe during the war. It has become a tradition for American presidents to visit Normandy. Ronald Reagan went to the D-Day beaches on the 40th anniversary in 1984, Bill Clinton was there 10 years later and George W. Bush was there in both 2002 and 2004. "I am not the first American president to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last," said Obama. | 0 |
Kim Jong Un gave instructions for measures aimed at more inter-Korean engagement after his younger sister Kim Yo Jong led a three-day visit to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, North Korea’s state media reported on Tuesday. It did not specify what those instructions were. The United States has appeared to endorse deeper post-Olympics engagement between the two Koreas that could lead to talks between Pyongyang and Washington. South’s President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday the United States is open to talking with North Korea, Moon’s spokesman told a briefing. “The United States sees inter-Korean dialogue in a positive light and has expressed its openness for talks with the North,” Moon told Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis, according to the spokesman. US officials also want tough international sanctions to be ramped up to push North Korea to give up its nuclear program. That sentiment was repeated by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, who said Moon had agreed it was necessary to keep up maximum pressure on North Korea. Last year, North Korea conducted dozens of missile launches and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of UN resolutions as it pursues its goal of developing a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the United States. Japanese officials took pains to stress there was no daylight between Japan, the United States and South Korea on their approach to dealing with North Korea. The United States’ “fundamental policy” aimed at denuclearization of the Korean peninsula has not changed, said a senior Japanese diplomat in a briefing to lawmakers. “The goal is denuclearization and the process is dialogue for dialogue, action for action, so if North Korea does not show actions, the United States and Japan will not change their policies,” he said. A senior military official stationed at the border between North and South Korea told Reuters North Korea has lowered the volume of its border propaganda broadcasts since the Olympics’ opening ceremony on Feb. 9. “I still hear it, but it is much less than before,” said the official who is stationed on the southern side of the border and spoke on condition of anonymity. Moon, who was offered a meeting with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang via his sister, has been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Seoul is planning to push ahead with its plans for reunions of family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War in order to sustain the dialogue prompted by the North Korean delegation’s visit. Meanwhile, Trump urged Russia to do more in urging North Korea to scrap its nuclear program, the White House said on Monday, aimed at intensifying the pressure campaign on Pyongyang. Talk of an inter-Korean summit, which would be the first since 2007 if it happened, come after months of tension between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington. As with North Korean media over the weekend, the KCNA report again made no mention of the summit offer made to Moon. Rather, Kim Jong Un gave his gratitude to Seoul for their “sincere efforts” to prioritize the delegation’s visit, which were “very impressive”, KCNA said. Moon and his administration hosted several meetings and meals for the delegation during their stay at the presidential Blue House and luxury five-star hotels while Moon personally accompanied Kim Yo Jong for events at the Olympics as well as an orchestra concert. In addition to the high-level delegation, hundreds of North Koreans including an orchestra and cheer squad have visited South Korea for the Winter Olympics. The cheerleading team will be attendance at the united women’s ice hockey team’s final game in the Olympics on Wednesday, facing old rival Japan to conclude preliminary round play. | 1 |
“We urgently ask all men to come to the town hall at 8,” read the WhatsApp message from the mayor’s office. “The fire has reached the highway.” A farmer hopped on a tractor towing a big blue bag of water and trundled into a foreboding haze. The ever-thickening smoke cut off sunlight, and the wind whipped ash into his unprotected face. Flames along the highway glowed orange and hot, licking up the swaying roadside trees. “We need a bigger tractor!” the driver soon yelled, aborting his mission and rushing back to town as fast as his rumbling machine could take him. For the third year in a row, residents of northeastern Siberia are reeling from the worst wildfires they can remember, and many are left feeling helpless, angry and alone. They endure the coldest winters outside Antarctica with little complaint. But in recent years, summer temperatures in the Russian Arctic have gone as high as 100 degrees, feeding enormous blazes that thaw what was once permanently frozen ground. Last year, wildfires scorched more than 60,000 square miles of forest and tundra, an area the size of Florida. That is more than four times the area that burned in the United States during its devastating 2020 fire season. This year, more than 30,000 square miles have already burned in Russia, according to government statistics, with the region only two weeks into its peak fire season. Scientists say that the huge fires have been made possible by the extraordinary summer heat in recent years in northern Siberia, which has been warming faster than just about any other part of the world. And the impact may be felt far from Siberia. The fires may potentially accelerate climate change by releasing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases and destroying Russia’s vast boreal forests, which absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. Last year, the record-setting fires in the remote Siberian region of Yakutia released roughly as much carbon dioxide as did all the fuel consumption in Mexico in 2018, according to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service in Reading, England. Now, Yakutia — a region four times the size of Texas, with its own culture and Turkic language — is burning again. On some days this month, thick smoke hung over the capital, Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world, making residents’ eyes water and scraping their throats. Outside the city, villagers are consumed by the battle with fire, shoveling trenches to keep it away from their homes and fields, quenching their thirst by digging up the ice sheets embedded in the ground. Life here revolves around the northern forest, known as the taiga. It is the source of berries, mushrooms, meat, timber and firewood. When it burns, the permafrost below it thaws more quickly, turning lush woods into impenetrable swamps. Some forest fires are normal, but scientists say they have accelerated to an extraordinary pace in the past three years, threatening the sustainability of the taiga ecosystem. “If we don’t have the forest, we don’t have life,” said Maria Nogovitsina, a retired kindergarten director in the village of Magaras, population of about 1,000, 60 miles outside Yakutsk. As many villagers have done recently, Nogovitsina made an offering to the earth to keep the fires away: She tore up a few Russian-style pancakes and sprinkled the ground with fermented milk. “Nature is angry at us,” she said. For their part, the people of Yakutia are angry, too. They say authorities have done too little to fight the fires, a sign that global warming may carry a political cost for governments. Four days of travels in Yakutia this month revealed a near-universal sentiment that the Russian government did not grasp the people’s plight. And rather than accept official explanations that climate change is to blame for the disaster, many repeat conspiracy theories, among them that the fires were set on purpose by crooked officials or businesspeople hoping to profit from them. “I haven’t seen it, but that’s what people are saying,” Yegor Andreyev, 83, a villager in Magaras, said of the widely circulating rumors of unnamed “bosses” burning the forests to further various corrupt schemes. “There’s no fires in Moscow, so they couldn’t care less.” In Magaras, Mayor Vladimir Tekeyanov said he was applying for a government grant to buy a drone, GPS equipment and radios. Riding a bulldozer through the charred woods outside the village, a forest ranger, Vladislav Volkov, said he was blind to the extent of the fires because of a lack of aerial surveillance. It was only when he retrieved a broken-down tractor left behind a few days earlier that he discovered a new fire raging in the vicinity. “The fire doesn’t wait while you’re waiting for spare parts,” he said. Russia, in some ways, might benefit from climate change because warmer weather is creating new fertile territory and is opening up the once-frozen Arctic Ocean to greater trade and resource extraction. But the country is also uniquely vulnerable, with two-thirds of its territory composed of permafrost, which warps the land, breaks apart roads and undermines buildings as it thaws. For years, President Vladimir Putin rejected the fact that humans bear responsibility for the warming climate. But last month, he sounded a new message in his annual call-in show with the Russian public, warning that the thawing permafrost could lead to “very serious social and economic consequences” for the country. “Many believe, with good reason, that this is connected primarily to human activity, to emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere,” Putin told viewers. “Global warming is happening in our country even faster than in many other regions of the world.” Putin this month signed a law requiring businesses to report their greenhouse gas emissions, paving the way toward carbon regulation in Russia, the world’s fourth-largest polluter. Russia hosted John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, for talks in Moscow this past week, signaling it is prepared to work with Washington on combating global warming despite confrontation on other issues. Yet Russia’s fight is running up against familiar banes: rigidly centralised government, a sprawling law enforcement apparatus and distrust of the state. As the wildfires spread in June, prosecutors launched criminal investigations of local authorities for allegedly failing to fight the fires. “The people who were occupied with fighting forest fires were close to getting arrested,” said Aleksandr Isayev, a wildfire expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Yakutsk. “Their activities were put on hold.” Then, earlier this month, people in Yakutia were furious after Russia’s Defence Ministry sent an amphibious plane to Turkey to help the geopolitically pivotal country battle wildfires. It took another five days until the Russian government announced it was sending military planes to fight fires in Yakutia as well. “This means that Moscow hasn’t noticed yet,” Aleksandr Fedorov, deputy director of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, said in a interview before Russia sent planes to the region. One recent Friday evening, volunteers in the village of Bulgunnyakhtakh, south of Yakutsk, piled into trucks and an open trailer and bumped through the mosquito-infested forest for two hours. They filled up water trucks at a pond and drove to the edge of a cliff overlooking the majestic Lena River, where they realised they had gone the wrong way: The fire was in the valley down below. Some of the men clambered down the slope, while others tried to connect fire hoses together to reach them. “There’s no firefighters here,” one man muttered. “No one knows how to use these things.” Working through the light northern night with backpack pumps, the volunteers appeared to be containing the small fire, which they had feared could threaten their village. But to Semyon Solomonov, one of the volunteers, one thing was clear: Any victory over the ravages of the changing climate would be temporary. “This is not a phase, this is not a cycle — this is the approach of the end of the world,” Solomonov said. “Mankind will die out, and the era of the dinosaurs will come.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
European Union environment ministers intend to set an ambitious, legally binding target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Tuesday. He told a news conference that the 27 ministers had backed in principle a proposed unilateral cut in EU emissions of 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, and the objective of cutting by 30 percent if other industrialised countries join in. "So as far as these two objectives are concerned, those are things we agree," he said. Gabriel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the targets would be binding. He said the goals would be based on 1990 as a reference year when calculating the cuts, but the EU would look in its internal discussions at using other base years for some new east European member states' emissions reductions. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said he was sure a formula could be found to address concerns by some EU states on sharing the emissions cuts. Some states, particularly in eastern Europe, want to use a base year that would make their required emissions cuts less severe. Gabriel said a burden-sharing agreement would be reached in which some states had to cut emissions more than others, but details would probably not be decided on Tuesday. | 0 |
The shift to a green economy is the biggest economic opportunity facing the United States since the military buildup to World War Two, former President Bill Clinton said on Thursday. Addressing the US Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Summit, Clinton said initiatives to combat global warming, such as the retrofit of old buildings and switching to more fuel-efficient cars, would create jobs and boost wages. "In my view for the United States, it is the greatest economic opportunity we've had since we mobilised for World War Two," Clinton said. "If we do it right, it will produce job gains and income gains substantially greater than the 1990s." Clinton spoke to a group of US mayors who have agreed to meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement for fighting climate change. President George W. Bush rejected Kyoto and its mandatory emissions caps in 2001, but more than 700 cities representing 75 million Americans have agreed to cut their heat-trapping gas emissions 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has spearheaded the movement. During the speech, the former president said the Clinton Climate Initiative would extend its purchasing consortium of energy-efficient and clean-energy products to 1,100 US cities to get volume discounts for items like green vehicles and alternative energy technologies. The purchasing consortium was set up for a group of some of the world's 40 largest cities, including New York and London. Cities account for 2 percent of the world's landmass, but produce 75 percent of the world's carbon emissions, according to Clinton. Most scientists link greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, to global warming that could lead to heat waves, stronger storms and flooding from rising sea levels. Bush rejected the Kyoto plan, saying it will cost US jobs and that it unfairly burdened rich countries while exempting developing countries like China and India. Clinton rejected the notion, saying America must prove to China, India and other developing nations that addressing the climate change problem will stimulate their economies. Al Gore, Clinton's vice president, shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for raising awareness of global | 0 |
The UN environment agency pressured Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday to call an emergency climate summit amid dire reports about the risks from global warming. A summit, tentatively planned for September, would focus on the hunt for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases widely blamed for forecasts of more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels. UN environment agencies are lobbying Ban to play a leading role in helping governments battle climate change after Kyoto expires in 2012. But he has yet to endorse his officials' proposal for a summit of about 20 key world leaders. On Tuesday, he was to discuss the plans in Nairobi with Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Earlier this month Ban also met Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Secretariat. "This is a critical year and we must bring developed and developing countries together towards a conclusion," said Steiner's spokesman Nick Nuttall. On Friday, the broadest scientific study of the human effect on the climate is set to conclude there is at least a 90 percent chance that human activities, mainly burning fossil fuels, are to blame for most of the warming in the last 50 years. In a previous report in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the link was at least 66 percent certain. IPCC experts are meeting in Paris to discuss and approve the draft report. The report is also set to warn that average global temperatures will rise to 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 8.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100, with a "best estimate" of a 3.0 C (5.4 F) rise, scientists say. Another section of the report, due in April, is expected to warn that between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people will face water shortages by the end of the century and hundreds of millions will go hungry, according to Australia's The Age newspaper. Coastal flooding will hit another 7 million homes. "It is now absolutely clear that we have to move together and we have to move now," UNEP's Nuttall said. De Boer has said the new secretary-general would be in an excellent position to help step up action on climate change, but would first have to assess whether he had enough political support to fulfil the role. Under Kyoto, 35 industrial nations agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Washington pulled out in 2001, arguing it cost jobs and wrongly excluded poorer nations. US President George W Bush last week called climate change a 'serious challenge'. The biggest challenge of the post-Kyoto era is to entice non-participants like the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil to join to make the process more effective. The last annual UN meeting of about 100 environment ministers in Nairobi in November made little progress on finding ways to broaden the protocol after it runs out. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Aug 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada -- also known as "the three amigos" -- begin a summit on Sunday in Mexico to talk about simmering trade issues and the threat of drug gangs. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are gathering in Guadalajara for dinner Sunday night followed by three-way talks on Monday. At the top of their agenda is how to power their economies past a lingering downturn, keep trade flowing smoothly and grapple with Mexican gangs dominating the drug trade over the U.S. border and up into Canada. Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones, doubted the leaders would announce major agreements, predicting the annual summit "is going to be a step in the continuing dialogue from which agreements will undoubtedly come." Obama is expected to get some heat from Calderon to resolve a cross-border trucking dispute. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican trucks are supposed to be allowed to cross into the United States, but American trucking companies charge Mexican trucks are not safe. The issue has festered for years. Mexico imposed retaliatory tariffs of $2.4 billion in U.S. goods in March after Obama signed a bill canceling a program allowing Mexican trucks to operate beyond the U.S. border zone. U.S. business groups have been pressing the White House to resolve the dispute, saying the ban threatens to eliminate thousands of U.S. jobs. "We would like to see a final closure and a final solution to the issue of trucking," said Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan. He said he would like an agreement by year's end. A top White House official, Michael Froman, told reporters the Obama administration is "quite focused" on the issue and was working with the U.S. Congress to resolve safety issues. CARTEL VIOLENCE Canadian officials are expected to raise their concerns about "Buy American" elements of a $787 billion economic stimulus bill that they fear could shut out Canadian companies from U.S. construction contracts funded by the stimulus. Canada is the United States' largest trading partner. Froman said the Obama administration was talking to Canada and other nations "to try and implement the 'Buy American' provision in a way consistent with the law, consistent with our international obligations, while minimizing disruption to trade." Obama took a potential sore point off the table ahead of his trip: That he might be willing to unilaterally reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) treaty as he had talked about on the campaign trail last year. Given the weakened economies of the three nations, he told Hispanic reporters on Friday, it is not the time to try to add enforceable labor and environmental protections to the treaty as some in his Democratic Party would prefer. "In terms of refining some of our agreements, that is not where everyone's focus is right now because we are in the middle of a very difficult economic situation," Obama said, although he added that he was still interested in learning how to improve the treaty. Another top issue at the summit is what to do about Mexican drug gangs who are killing rivals in record numbers, despite Calderon's three-year army assault on the cartels. The death rate this year from the violence is about a third higher than in 2008, and police in the United States and as far north as the western Canadian city of Vancouver have blamed the Mexican traffickers for crime. Obama is backing Calderon's efforts. "He is doing the right thing by going after them and he has done so with tremendous courage," Obama said. Obama promised full support to Calderon during a visit in April, but Mexico complains that anti-drug equipment and training are taking too long to arrive and hopes the summit will move things ahead. The leaders also promise a statement on H1N1 swine flu and will jointly address climate change as they prepare for major international talks in Copenhagen in December. | 0 |
The UN climate panel issued its strongest warning yet on Friday that human activities are heating the planet, putting extra pressure on governments to do more to combat accelerating global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative group on warming which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, droughts and heatwaves and a slow rise in sea levels. The final text of the report said it was "very likely" -- meaning a probability of more than 90 percent -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years. That is a shift from the last report, in 2001, when the IPCC said the link was "likely", or at least 66 percent probable. "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations," said the text, seen by Reuters. The talks among government representatives and IPCC scientists, meeting in Paris since Monday, ended after midnight after a wrangle over rising ocean levels. IPCC leaders will formally unveil the results of six years' work in Paris at 0830 GMT. A 20-page summary for policy makers outlines threats such as a melting of Arctic sea ice in summers by 2100 and a slowing of the Gulf Stream. UN officials hope the report will prompt governments and companies to do more to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, released mainly by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars. The report also predicted a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) in the 21st century with a likely range from 1.1 to 6.4 Celsius. Temperatures rose 0.7 degrees in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994. Many European countries have had their warmest January on record. "The IPCC's latest report provides the most conclusive evidence to date that human activities are causing dangerous climate change," said Camilla Toulmin, head of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a London-based research group. "Time is running out to cut greenhouse gas emissions," she said. "For those who are still trying to determine responsibility for global warming, this new UN report on climate change is a scientific smoking gun," Democratic Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts said. "We ignore it at the peril of our children and their children," he said. Thirty-five rich nations have signed the Kyoto Protocol that sets caps on emissions of greenhouse gases -- but Kyoto's first period runs only to 2012 and big emitters led by the United States, China and India have no targets. President George W Bush said last week that climate change was a "serious challenge". He pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying Kyoto-style caps were an economic straitjacket and that it unfairly omitted developing nations. Sea levels are likely to rise by between 28 and 43 cm (11-17 inches) this century, according to an earlier draft of the IPCC report. The range is lower than forecast in 2001 but delegates said they clarified that the projection did not include the possibility of an accelerating melt of Greenland ice, which some studies suggest is under way. | 0 |
"I'm really thrilled by the game changing announcement that Joe Biden has made," Johnson said, praising Biden "for returning the United States to the front rank of the fight against climate change." "It's vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct, green act of bunny hugging," Johnson said. "This is about growth and jobs." On Tuesday, Johnson said Britain would cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035 in what he hailed as the world's most ambitious climate change target that would put the country on track to become a net zero producer. The new timetable, nearly 15 years ahead of the previous UK target, will require a fundamental restructuring in the way Britain powers its homes, cars and factories, how it feeds its people and what it does to dispose of carbon dioxide. | 0 |
Biden also chose Tom Vilsack, who served as the secretary of agriculture for eight years under former President Barack Obama, to lead that department again, according to two people familiar with the president-elect’s deliberations. Vilsack, 69, a former governor of Iowa, is the seventh member of his Cabinet Biden has now chosen. If Fudge, 68, is confirmed by the Senate, she would join retired Gen. Lloyd Austin of the Army, who would be the first Black defense secretary, and Xavier Becerra, a son of Mexican immigrants and nominee for secretary of health and human services, as the embodiment of Biden's campaign pledge to assemble an administration that will “look like America.” But even as he rolls out his picks for the Cabinet and key White House jobs, Biden is under increasing pressure from a variety of interest groups, liberal activists and Democratic lawmakers who have different opinions on what it means to make good on that promise. For Biden and his transition team, the selection of key jobs has become a constantly shifting puzzle as they search for candidates who are qualified, get along with the president-elect, and help create the ethnic and gender mosaic that would be a striking contrast with President Donald Trump’s administration. Allies of Fudge, including Rep. James Clyburn, D-SC, one of Biden’s most prominent Black supporters during the 2020 campaign, had urged the president-elect to put Fudge at the Agriculture Department, where she had hoped to shift the agency’s focus away from farming and toward hunger, including in urban areas. Instead, Biden settled on Vilsack, who is white and from an important rural farming state. But the decision to instead put Fudge at HUD, which is viewed by some advocacy groups as a more traditional place for a Black secretary, has the potential to disappoint those pushing for her, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which she is a former chairwoman. The current housing secretary, Ben Carson, is Black. Just hours after Biden made official his historic choice of Austin for defence secretary, a group of Black civil rights activists urged Biden to nominate a Black attorney general and to make civil rights a higher priority. “He said if he won, he would do something about criminal justice, police reform and specifically mass incarceration,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader and talk show host, said in an interview on Tuesday before a meeting with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “He flew to Houston to meet before I did the eulogy for George Floyd. He made specific commitments. I’m saying, promises made, let’s see if promises are kept.” Biden has not said whom he will pick to lead the Justice Department, though he is considering Sen. Doug Jones, who lost his bid for reelection in Alabama; Sally Yates, a former deputy attorney general; and Judge Merrick Garland, whom Obama unsuccessfully nominated to the Supreme Court. But Jeh Johnson, who served as Obama’s secretary of homeland security, and is Black, took himself out of consideration to be attorney general on Tuesday, according to people familiar with his discussions. In an interview with CNN last week, Biden noted that “every advocacy group out there is pushing for more and more and more of what they want. That’s their job.” He defended his picks as “the most diverse Cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced.” But advocates are not leaving anything to chance. The meeting that the president-elect and vice president-elect held with Sharpton and other civil rights leaders lasted close to two hours and was an opportunity to make their case. In a news conference following the meeting, Sharpton said he told the president-elect that the only way to respond to the “most racist, bigoted administration in memory” was to appoint an attorney general “that has a background in civil rights.” He added, “My preference is to have a Black attorney general.” And during the meeting, Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, pressed Biden to create a civil rights envoy position in the West Wing that would report directly to the president. “He appointed John Kerry to be the climate envoy, reporting directly to him,” Johnson said in an interview before the meeting. “We believe a national adviser on racial justice should be something equivalent.” During the Democratic primary season, Biden benefited from Sharpton’s decision to stay neutral rather than endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. During the general election campaign, Harris was aided by Sharpton’s decision to advocate more generally a Black woman on the ticket, rather than to publicly endorse Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader, as he had been set to do. That has given Sharpton some leverage with the Biden-Harris transition team as it fills out the administration. Also on Tuesday, a group of more than 1,000 high-profile Black women signed a letter to Biden saying they were “deeply troubled” by the small number of Black women mentioned as possible candidates for top jobs in his administration. They urged him to do better. “It is long past time that the effective, accomplished leadership of Black women currently serving in areas of significant policy that impacts our nation are recognised and given full consideration for the statutory positions in your administration’s Cabinet,” the women wrote in the letter. Fudge, who has been in the House since winning a special election in 2008, was among the officials the women recommended and had openly campaigned to become Biden’s agriculture secretary, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer she would put her experience working on farm bills “against almost anybody’s.” But Fudge, a former mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, told reporters after news of her selection at HUD leaked out, that “if I can help this president in any way possible, I am more than happy to do it. It’s a great honour and a privilege to be a part of something so good.” In 2018, Fudge mulled a challenge to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, before ultimately dropping the idea and endorsing her. Fudge said she had changed her mind after Pelosi gave her the opportunity to play a key role in safeguarding voting rights and assured her that Black women would “have a seat at the decision-making table” in Congress. Now, she will leave to lead the nation’s sprawling housing agency instead. Her departure will add to another puzzle: how to maintain the Democratic Party’s slim majority in the House, which has shrunk to just a handful of seats since the elections in November. Biden’s decision to pick Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Black Democrat from Louisiana, to be a senior adviser in the White House, already meant the party would have to defend that seat. Biden’s decision to pluck Fudge for his Cabinet means Democrats must win another special election to fill her seat. © 2020 New York Times News Service | 2 |
At New York's Del Posto, diners can share a $130 entree of wild branzino fish with roasted fennel and peperonata concentrato and a $3,600 bottle of Dom Perignon. They cannot share a bottle of Perrier or San Pellegrino water. The Italian restaurant backed by celebrities Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich is one of several shunning bottled water, along with the city of San Francisco and New York state. "The argument for local water is compelling and obvious," said Bastianich, who is phasing out bottled water across his restaurant empire, which stretches to Los Angeles. "It's about transportation, packaging, the absurdity of moving water all over the world," he said. As environmental worries cut into sales from traditionally lucrative bottled water, beverage companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle and SABMiller are becoming more attuned to the risks of negative consumer environmental perceptions. Water is becoming scarcer, raising a fear that so-far manageable price increases could spike and leading drink companies to take action to maintain access to water and fight their image as water hogs. "Water is the new oil," said Steve Dixon, who manages the Global Beverage Fund at Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, repeating what has become a mantra as climate change and population growth tax water supplies. "As an investor, I'm not concerned about the reality," Dixon said, guessing there will always be enough water overall. "But I'm aware of the perceptions ... and you can't totally shrug it off because perceptions are important." About a third of the world's people now live in areas of water stress, said Brooke Barton, manager of corporate accountability for Ceres, a network of environmental groups and investors seeking to address sustainability challenges. By 2025, she said it will be more like two-thirds. COST Water is still cheap, but that is changing. "(Water) is currently not a very big cost. The issue is where it will it go in the future," said Andy Wales, head of sustainable development for brewer SABMiller, which used 94.5 billion liters of water in its latest fiscal year. That works out to 4.5 liters for every liter of beer it made. Water and energy combined only made up 5 percent of its costs, overshadowed by brewing ingredients, bottling materials and labor. Still the brewer said water costs at a Bogota, Colombia plant are rising some 12 percent a year from increased soil being washed into the river as cattle grazing upstream causes deforestation. New water pricing schemes are emerging, such as the European Union's Water Framework Directive that will tax water from 2010 to encourage more sustainable use. Some 70 percent of the water the world uses is for agriculture, while industry uses 20 percent. But any industry reliant on agriculture -- from meat to jeans -- has more to wade through than its own use. SABMiller is one of a few companies, including Coke and Pepsi, calculating "water footprints." It found that water used throughout its supply chain, such as to grow barley and hops, can be 34 times more than its use alone. With 139 breweries on six continents, the brewer's total water use can range from about 40 liters for a liter of beer in Central Europe to 155 liters in South Africa. Using the smaller ratio as a proxy, SABMiller's entire "water footprint" was roughly 8.4 trillion liters of water last year, more than double what the small nation of Iceland used in 2004. "In the long term we do see it as a risk," Wales said. REPUTATION As they face criticism, multinational drink companies are setting water conservation targets, building community wells and more efficient factories, working with locals on sustainable farming, water harvesting and reforestation and looking for new technologies to reduce their water consumption even as they make more drinks. "For our type of business, or any that have a very direct link to water ... We've got to play that role," said Greg Koch, Coke's managing director of global water stewardship. Within their own walls, nonalcoholic drink makers use one out of every 3,300 gallons, or 0.03 percent, of the groundwater used in the United States, according to the American Beverage Association. But its symbolism as a visible user puts the sector at the forefront of the fight over water resources, said Kim Jeffery, chief executive of Nestle Waters North America. "Picking on our industry is like a gnat on the elephant," said Jeffery, whose 2003 contract to build a bottling plant in McCloud, California has been derailed by opposition from residents and groups concerned about the environmental impact and the threat of water privatization. Nestle just began a 3-year study of the area's resources, but Jeffery said there is a good chance the project will never happen, due to changing economics and cold feet on both sides. "At the end of the day, if they don't want us there, we won't be there," he said. Tom Pirko, president of consulting firm Bevmark LLC, said it is key for companies to act in line with consumers' mindsets on such issues, since it is hard in such a crowded marketplace to regain support once it evaporates. Coca-Cola learned that the hard way, after a drought in the Indian state of Kerala led to the closure of its bottling plant there amid criticism that it was sucking the water table dry. Coke said its plant did not fuel the shortages, but an outcry still spread across the globe, with students in Britain and North America urging boycotts. Massachusetts' Smith College even severed a five-decade relationship with the company by refusing to let it bid for its soft drink contract. "What we lost there was the social license to operate," Koch said. Environmental and community groups are still fighting to kick Coke out of other villages in India. | 2 |
US President George W Bush will review the credit crunch and global market turmoil with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a two-day summit that starts on Monday. Once ensconced away from protesters at a luxury hotel in Montebello, Quebec, down the Ottawa River from the Canadian capital, the leaders are expected to review the global economy and examine progress towards integrating North America. They are meeting as partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, to develop what they have called a Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP. That was drafted in 2005 following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to try to ensure that North America is a safe place to live and to do business, seemingly innocuous but upsetting to activists on the left and the right who are concerned about a loss of national sovereignty. Fences three meters (10 feet) high have been erected around the hotel grounds to keep at bay the thousands of anti-capitalist protesters expected to descend on Montebello. Bush and the other leaders might have to go part way by boat if protesters block the way. On the agenda are global competitiveness, the safety of food and products -- including Chinese-made toys -- energy, the environment and secure borders. Christopher Sands, an expert on Canada at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the meeting was unlikely to produce major strides, but would show that the United States was tending regional ties. "The summit is a symbolic manifestation of the fact that Bush, the United States, is in fact paying attention to its neighbors and working on an agenda of mutual concern," he said. AGENDA Bush will have separate one-on-one meetings with Harper and Calderon on Monday. Canadian officials said they were likely to discuss Russia's symbolic laying of claim to the North Pole, where it placed a flag on the seabed, as well as the war in Afghanistan, where Canada has committed 2,500 troops through February 2009. The head of Canada's opposition, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, says Harper should demand that NATO start finding a replacement for Canadian troops. Bush and Harper were also expected to discuss the Middle East, Iran, climate change, and the Doha trade negotiations. Opposition politicians regularly accuse Canada's Conservative prime minister of being a Bush protege, but Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, pointed out that Liberal Paul Martin was in power when the SPP was set up. For Bush and Calderon, it will be their first face-to-face meeting since US immigration overhaul legislation collapsed in Congress and dealt a blow to a key issue for US-Mexico relations. The Bush administration said this month it would increase scrutiny and impose heftier fines on US businesses that employ illegal immigrants. The United States also will expand the visa term for professional workers from Mexico and Canada to three years from one year. "I don't think either country was clamoring for this. It's a gesture," Sands said of the visa change. | 0 |
Britain's greenhouse gas emissions rose last year, the government said on Thursday, despite the country's claims to be a world leader in the fight against climate change. Emissions of the total basket of six greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol on global warming last year rose 0.5 percent to 658.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Production of the commonest man-made greenhouse gas carbon dioxide was also up, by 1.25 percent year on year, mostly because power stations switched to high-carbon coal from gas because of higher gas prices. Britain claimed two weeks ago "international landmark" proposals to introduce legally binding emissions targets. "While these figures are provisional, they underline why concerted effort to tackle climate change, both from Government and wider society, is absolutely critical," said environment minister David Miliband. "Any increase in carbon dioxide emissions is worrying." The figures were based on emissions from Britain, and excluded emissions cuts overseas that UK companies had funded to help them meet targets under the European Union's emissions trading scheme. Under its Climate Change Bill earlier this month, the government proposed a legally binding target of a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. Britain is still on course to meet its obligations under Kyoto to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 percent on 1990 levels by 2012. "We're still on track to almost double our Kyoto commitment, with an estimated 23.6 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on 1990 levels by 2010, and we expect the long-term downward trend to continue," said Miliband. Net carbon dioxide emissions rose to 560.60 million tonnes in 2006, but were down 5.25 percent from 1990, according to the preliminary government data. Figures issued on Thursday did not include international aviation and shipping emissions, which are not covered by Kyoto. | 0 |
On the sixth day, she again rose at 3 am to fetch water from a communal borehole. By the early afternoon, she was still waiting her turn at the tap with her six buckets and cans. Much of the city had the same idea. More than half of the 4.5 million residents of Harare’s greater metropolitan area now have running water only once a week, according to the city’s mayor, forcing them to wait in lines at communal wells, streams and boreholes. “It is causing us serious problems,” said Kaitano, a 29-year-old jeans wholesaler who was down to her last clean outfit last week. “We have to stop ourselves from going to the toilet.” Zimbabwe’s acute water shortage is a result of a particularly bad drought this year, a symptom of climate change. Poor water management has wasted much of the water that remains. Two of Harare’s four reservoirs are empty from lack of rain, but between 45 and 60% of the water that’s left is lost through leakage and theft, said Herbert Gomba, mayor of Harare. But the water crisis is only a microcosm of Zimbabwe’s malaise. Years of mismanagement under Robert Mugabe, who governed Zimbabwe for 37 years until he was finally ousted in 2017, have left the economy in tatters. Residents are battling daily blackouts that last between 15 and 18 hours; shortages of medicine, fuel and bank notes; and inflation of more than 175%. Zimbabwe has become a country of queues. In recent weeks, drivers have typically lined up for about three hours to refuel their cars with gasoline that has been diluted with ethanol, which makes it burn faster. Workers wait for hours in long lines outside of banks to receive their pay in cash because of a shortage of Zimbabwean dollars. The price of bread has increased sevenfold in the past year, and some medicines are now 10 times more expensive, even as most wages remain stagnant. “It is a nightmare,” said Norman Matara, a physician and board member of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, a medical watchdog. Some of Matara’s patients can no longer afford medication, while others take it “once every three days instead of once a day,” Matara said. The shortage of water has become an annual problem in Zimbabwe, but this year’s drought is particularly serious because it has occurred earlier in the summer and affected even more people than usual. The level of rainfall this year has been about 25% less than the annual average, according to Washington Zhakata, director of the Climate Change Management Department in the Zimbabwean government. A cyclone inundated the country in March, but it didn’t raise the water table and isn’t included in this year’s rainfall tally. Although the field of attribution science — which studies how climate change influences individual weather events — is still evolving, it has been well established that global warming can make extreme weather events, including drought, more frequent and more intense. Harare, a city of quiet suburbs with clusters of low-income tenements, all circling a compact central business district, has been hit hard. “So much time spent waiting — it affects the productive part of the economy,” Gomba said. “It affects the whole cycle of life.” Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa took over the country after leading the coup that toppled Mugabe. Mnangagwa had served as the former president’s right hand man. Mnangagwa’s government says it is in the process of improving Zimbabwe’s economy, pointing to austerity measures that led to a rare budget surplus in the first quarter of the year. “Zimbabwe is on a journey of reform,” the finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, wrote in a recent article. “We are heading in the right direction,” he added. But the government has so far been unable to arrest spiralling inflation, currency devaluation and import costs. Its decision in June to ban the use of foreign currency, in an attempt to stabilise the value of the newly created Zimbabwean dollar, has instead made it even harder for firms to import goods from abroad. “We had a window of opportunity when Mugabe left power,” said Kipson Gundani, chief economist at the Zimbabwean National Chamber of Commerce. “But we missed that window.” Mnangagwa denies the fault lies with his own administration. In an interview, he blamed the water mismanagement on local politicians from opposition parties, like Gomba, Harare’s mayor. The national government is in the process of procuring a $71 million loan from the Chinese government to renovate the Zimbabwean water system, Mnangagwa said. “When that is done,” he said, “the works will begin.” But authorities’ record is hardly promising. The construction of a new dam, first proposed during the early years of Mugabe’s rule, has been repeatedly delayed. Broken municipal boreholes are often left unreplaced. And excessive construction of informal housing at the city limits has led to the overuse of springs and wells by an influx of new residents. At a spring in the scrubland on the southern fringes of Harare, the water this week had slowed to a trickle, forcing residents to wait for about three hours to fill their buckets. This time last year, several residents said, the same process took just a few minutes. But since then, a municipal borehole in a nearby township broke — it has yet to be replaced — and several wells dried up, compelling more residents to trek to the farther spring. “We always have problems with water shortages,” said Patience Chiwakata, a 35-year-old subsistence farmer. “But this year it is much worse.” The most desperate scenes this week were in the more formal settlements closer to the city centre, where the waits were far longer and where scuffles broke out after some tried to force their way to the front. Residents said they were washing less, drinking less and relieving themselves less. Many take time off from work to make sure their families have enough water. Kaitano, the jeans wholesaler, had only once been able to take her clothes to market since the taps last dried up, losing around a week’s income. Her friend, Susan Chinoda, allowed her three children just one cup of drinking water a day and one toilet break. “We’re seriously restricted from living our lives,” Chinoda, 32, said. “Water is life.” c.2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Nay Pyi Taw, Dec 11 (bdnews24.com)--The seven-nation BIMSTEC grouping on Friday adopted a convention to combat terrorism and insurgency. The step is expected to add teeth to India's action against militancy, particularly in its northeast, reports the Press Trust of India. Foreign ministers of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Thailand and Nepal signed the Convention on Cooperation in Combating International Terrorism, Trans-National Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking at the 12th BIMSTEC Ministerial meeting in the Myanmar capital. The ministers also agreed to include climate change as a key area of cooperation for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries. Inaugurating the ministerial meet, Myanmar prime minister Thein Sein stressed cooperation in combating terrorism and trans-national organised crime. "As you heard the Prime Minister of Myanmar in his inaugural address did stress on terrorism. I think terrorism has become a hot issue for discussion." Regional connectivity was to be high on the agenda of Friday's summit of BIMSTEC foreign ministers. "Connectivity will be one of the main issues to be discussed at the meeting in Myanmar," a director general of the foreign ministry told bdnews24.com on Thursday. "BIMSTEC will devise a route plan for the connectivity in the region at subsequent meetings of transport ministers of the member countries," said the DG. The economic bloc was established by member states -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanks and Thailand -- in 1997. Its connectivity plan will link six South Asian countries with South East Asian countries such as Thailand and Myanmar. The plan is an alternative approach for integrating the South Asian region, without Pakistan and Afghanistan. | 1 |
Canada will use an Asia-Pacific partnership to try to bring the United States, China, India and other big greenhouse gas emitters into an eventual agreement on climate change, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday. Harper told reporters at the United Nations that Canada has been invited to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which also includes Australia, Japan and South Korea. "These are discussions we want to get involved in because these are the people that have to get involved in an effective international protocol, or we won't have such a protocol," Harper said. "This will be another international forum where Canada can pursue its objectives in terms of fighting climate change." Former US Vice-President Al Gore and other critics have panned the Asia-Pacific Partnership as a sham substitute for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change but advocates say it works for practical and realistic ways of fighting global warming. It is dedicated to tackling climate change through cleaner energy technologies without sacrificing economic progress. Ottawa remains a party to the Kyoto Protocol but Harper, whose Conservative government was elected last year, has said Canada would not be able to make the cuts of about 25 percent in emissions that would be required by next year without causing major economic dislocations. Like the United States, Canada under Harper has said there is little point of a climate change agreement if China and India are not participants. | 0 |
Lack of employment opportunities is India’s biggest problem, said more than three-quarters of those polled, and that had not changed through most of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure, the survey found. The survey published on Monday said concerns about terrorism and Pakistan loomed large even before last month’s crisis triggered by an attack on a security convoy in Indian Kashmir that Pakistan claims as its own. Three-quarters of Indians believe Pakistan to be a threat and 59 percent said terrorism had become worse. “But despite these worries, most Indian adults are satisfied with the direction of their country and the economic prospects of the next generation,” Pew said, summing up the survey result. Of those polled, 54 percent said they were satisfied with the way democracy is working in India. But satisfaction had declined 25 percentage points from 2017, when 79 percent voiced approval. Men are more likely than women to give Indian democracy a thumbs-up, though one in five women decline to offer an opinion, it said. There were 2,521 respondents in the Pew Survey run from May 23 to July 23, 2018, the final year of Modi’s term before the election, at which about 900 million people are eligible to vote. Modi is considered the frontrunner to win the election that begins on April 11, but his lead is narrowing and several polls have suggested his Hindu nationalist-led group may fall short of a clear majority required to rule. Renewed tension with arch foe Pakistan has shifted attention somewhat from bread-and-butter issues to national security over the past month, to the advantage of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Critics have accused the BJP of creating a climate of fear among India’s Muslim minority by promoting a Hindu-first agenda and targeting it for the slaughter of cows they consider sacred and have sometimes questioned its allegiance to India. The BJP denies bias but says it opposes appeasement of any community. Muslims make up about 14 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion. | 2 |
Trump used his annual address to the United Nations to attack Iran's "corrupt dictatorship," praise last year's bogeyman North Korea and lay down a defiant message that he will reject globalism and protect American interests. But much of his 35-minute address was aimed squarely at Iran, which the United States accuses of harboring nuclear ambitions and fomenting instability in the Middle East through its support for militant groups in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. "Iran's leaders sow chaos, death and destruction," Trump told the gathering in the green-marbled hall. "They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations." Rouhani, addressing the assembled world leaders later, sharply criticised Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran. He said he had "no need for a photo opportunity" with Trump and suggested the US president's pull back from global institutions was a character defect. "Confronting multilateralism is not a sign of strength. Rather it is a symptom of the weakness of intellect - it betrays an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world," he said. Trump's address was met largely by silence from world leaders still not comfortable with go-it-alone views that have strained US relationships with traditional allies worldwide. His speech, while delivered in a low-key fashion, was nonetheless a thunderous recitation of his "America First" policies. He has disrupted the world order by withdrawing the United States from the nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, and threatened to punish NATO nations for not paying more for their common defense. "We will never surrender America's sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy," Trump said, in language popular with his political base. "America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism." Besides calling out Iran, Trump also criticized China for its trade practices but made no mention of Russia's interference in Syria's war or its suspected meddling in US elections. Rouhani was defiant in his speech to the world body. "What Iran says is clear: no war, no sanctions, no threats, no bullying; just acting according to the law and the fulfillment of obligations," Rouhani said. MACRON'S ALTERNATIVE VIEW Offering an alternative view when it was his turn at the podium, French President Emmanuel Macron told the delegates that the law of the survival of the fittest, protectionism and isolationism would only lead to heightened tensions. Defending multilateralism and collective action, he said nationalism would lead to failure and if countries stopped defending basic principles, global wars would return. "I do not accept the erosion of multilateralism and don't accept our history unraveling," Macron told the assembly, at times raising his voice. "Our children are watching." Macron, citing the example of Iran, said that this unilateralism push would lead directly to conflicts. Trump, who begins his political rallies with boasts about his economic record in less than two years in office, used the same rhetoric before the crowd of world leaders and diplomats, telling them he had accomplished more than almost any previous US president. The remark led to some murmuring and laughter in the crowd, taking the president slightly aback. "I didn’t expect that reaction, but that's OK," he said. Trump attempted to drive a wedge between Iran's leadership and its people, days after an attack in southwestern Iran on a military parade killed 25 people and unsettled the country. In remarks to reporters on his way to his speech, Trump said he would not meet the Iranians until they "change their tune." Though he held out the possibility of a better relationship in the future, he made clear economic pressure on Iran would not abate. Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, addressing a group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, called the 2015 accord "the worst diplomatic debacle in American history" and had a warning for "the mullahs in Tehran." "If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be HELL to PAY," he said. In May, Republican Trump withdrew the United States from the deal to put curbs on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions. France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union were part of the accord with Iran. Foes for decades, Washington and Tehran have been increasingly at odds since May. The accord with OPEC member Iran was negotiated under Democratic US President Barack Obama. "Additional sanctions will resume November 5th and more will follow and we are working with countries that import Iranian crude oil to cut their purchases substantially," Trump said. He said the United States would help create a regional strategic alliance between Gulf nations and Jordan and Egypt, a move the United States sees as a bulwark against Iran. Trump compared US relations with Iran to what he called improved ties with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who Trump had met in Singapore in June as part of a still-unfulfilled drive to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. In his address last year to the UN, Trump insulted Kim as a "rocket man" bent on nuclear destruction. On Tuesday, Trump praised Kim for halting nuclear and missile tests, releasing Americans held prisoner and returning some remains of US soldiers killed in the 1950s Korean War. The two leaders are trying to arrange a second summit. Trump has said sanctions on North Korea would remain for now. Delivering a harsh message to OPEC members, Trump called on them to stop raising oil prices and to pay for their own military protection. He threatened to limit US aid only to countries that are friendly to the United States. Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said oil prices were driven only by markets, by supply and demand. "These are not things that can be manipulated by a decision here or there," said Gargash, whose country is an OPEC member. Crude oil prices shot to a four-year high on Tuesday, catapulted by imminent US sanctions on Iranian crude exports and the apparent reluctance of OPEC and Russia to raise output to offset the potential hit to global supply. | 2 |
The UN conference, which is meant to spur countries to make bigger commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions, is due to start in Glasgow on Oct 31. "We're still concerned about the possibility of getting our delegates to COP26, to negotiate key issues about the global response to climate change that will have such a profound effect on our people," Bhutan's Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi, who is chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group, told Reuters. Britain said last week that government ministers travelling to COP26, plus two staff members, would be exempt from quarantine requirements when they arrive. But other delegates from countries in Britain’s coronavirus "red list", such as Angola, Ethiopia and Haiti, must quarantine in a hotel for up to 10 days before attending the summit. Wangdi said some countries' delegations are not led by ministers, meaning they would need to visit a visa centre to complete their application to attend COP26. Delegates from 25 of the poorer countries would have to leave their territories to go to visa centres in another state - a challenging process during the pandemic. "Whether or not a minister is attending COP26 should not determine the possibility of technical negotiators and government representatives getting to Glasgow," Wangdi said. Asked about the LDC group's concerns, a COP26 spokesperson said, "The participation of ministers from all nations in all parts of the world will be fundamental for achieving global agreement on climate outcomes." Britain has resisted calls from campaigners to delay the COP26 summit over concerns that poorer countries battling COVID-19 will struggle to attend. COP26 was already postponed by a year because of the pandemic. The British government has said it will cover the cost of hotel quarantines for delegates from poorer countries when they travel to COP26. But the LDC group said it was unclear if the UK would also pay for extended hotel stays and rearranging flights, if delegates caught COVID-19 at the summit and had to self-isolate before returning home. "Without this assurance it will be difficult for delegates to accept that financial risk," the group said. The British government did not immediately respond to a request to confirm if it would cover costs of LDC delegates who are required to self-isolate in the UK. | 0 |
Climate change could cost some countries up to 19 percent of their gross domestic product by 2030, a panel including major insurance, banking and consulting companies as well as the European Commission said on Monday. Developing nations will be most vulnerable to the effects of climate change but a lot of their economic loss could be avoided, a report by the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) Working Group said. Together with prevention and mitigation measures, risk transfer like insurance or catastrophe bonds can play an important role by capping losses from catastrophic events, increasing willingness to invest and providing price signals to financial markets, the working group said. The ECA working group is a partnership between reinsurance group Swiss Re, consulting firm McKinsey & Co., the Global Environment Facility, ClimateWorks, the European Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation and Standard Chartered Bank. Current adaptation measures like sea barriers, improved drainage and building regulations could prevent 40 to 100 percent of risk to 2030, from current and future climate conditions, the working group said. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has estimated that the world will spend an extra $36 billion to $135 billion each year by 2030 to address the impact of climate change. "If current development trends continue to 2030, the locations studied will lose between 1-12 percent of GDP as a result of existing climate patterns," the report said. When future threats and the effects of economic growth are taken into account, the total potential loss rises to as much as 19 percent of GDP. The group's research focused on vulnerable areas in northern China, Georgetown in Guyana, Maharashtra in India, Mopti in Mali, the island of Samoa, Tanzania's central region, Hull in Britain and South Florida in the United States. The group calculated that Maharashtra alone could lose between $370 million and $570 million a year from drought by 2030, but climate resilience measures could reduce that by 80 percent. Hull could suffer an annual loss of over $50 million from flooding, storms and rising sea levels. This could be partially avoided by new engineering and policy measures, as well as insurance. | 0 |
- Manchester United want to bring in one more player for next season but are not planning major changes to their squad despite losing the Premier League title, manager Alex Ferguson said on Tuesday. "There may be one signing," he told a news conference pr | 5 |
The world's top tobacco groups fear if new rules on plain packaging take hold in Australia and Britain they may spread to higher growth and potentially more lucrative emerging markets and put a curb on their future profits growth. Health campaigners are pushing for tobacco companies to package their cigarettes in plain packs displaying the product name in a standard typeface and with graphic health warnings as a way of discouraging youngsters from taking up smoking. Australia aims to become the first nation in the world to force tobacco groups to sell cigarettes in these plain, brand-free packets by December this year, while Britain this week launched a three-month consultation over the issue. "It seems inevitable that should Australia succeed in easily implementing plain packs, that other regulators will explore the potential to do likewise," said analyst Chris Wickham at brokers Oriel Securities. Analysts say that if Australia adopts these plans then the next battlegrounds are likely to be Britain, Canada and New Zealand, and will cause concern to tobacco companies which have seen their shares performed strongly so far in 2012. "With tobacco stocks back on high relative valuations and fears of a plain packaging contagion spreading from Australia, we see a risk that the sentimental climate on tobacco once again becomes more questioning and skeptical," said analyst Martin Deboo at brokers Investec Securities. Analysts say the real risk from plain packaging to industry profits would be if it spreads to emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia and so slow the process of smokers moving to more pricey and profitable cigarette brands. Emerging market smokers aspire to westerns brand such as Marlboro, Lucky Strike and Camel, which confer status on the individual, and these mean bigger margins to the cigarette makers than the local brands that smokers are abandoning. Smokers in mature markets like Western Europe and North America are more fixed in their habits and reluctant to change brands and so changes to packaging are likely to have a relatively low impact on smoker's choices, analysts added. With falling smoking levels in these mature markets the world's big four tobacco groups Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco have offset this by looking to fast-growing emerging markets to drive overall growth. This growth has been helped by tobacco groups introducing innovative packaging to attract consumers, and if this avenue is closed by plain packaging rules, the cigarette companies will find it harder to push smokers towards more expensive products. The industry is fighting against the proposed plain packaging legislation in Australia taking its battle to the high court and have been giving evidence over the last three days as analysts say tobacco groups are fearful that many other governments are looking to Australia as a test case. Australia has some of the toughest anti-smoking rules in the world banning tobacco advertising, smoking in public places and the public display of cigarettes in shops, while in some states it is illegal to smoke in a car with children present. Under these tough Australian rules only around 15 percent of adults smoke compared with 23 percent a decade ago, while in Britain the current figure is around 22 percent, analysts said. The British market is in slow decline like many other mature ones but Britons still smoke around 56 billion cigarettes a year, which the government says is responsible for over 100,000 deaths a year and puts pressure on the public health system. This is why Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced his consultation process to run for 12 weeks up to July 10, and Lansley has insisted that he is keeping an open mind. | 1 |
After weeks of closed-door negotiations, Biden strode to the cameras on the White House driveway on Thursday, flanked by an equal number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to proudly announce an overall infrastructure agreement totalling $1.2 trillion over eight years that could cement his legacy as a bipartisan dealmaker. Biden and his top aides had successfully struck a limited agreement with key centrist senators to rebuild roads and bridges while carefully signalling to liberals that he still intended to embrace a measure — likely to gain only Democratic support — to spend trillions more on climate, education, child care and other economic priorities. It was an “I told you so” moment for a president who is supremely confident in his ability to navigate legislative negotiations. But in a stray comment during a news conference an hour later, the president blurted out that he would not approve the compromise bill without the partisan one. “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he said, answering a question about the timing of his legislative agenda. “I’m not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest.” It may not seem like much, but it was enough to upend Biden’s proud bipartisan moment. On the one hand, he was saying out loud what liberals in his party wanted to hear. But to the centrist senators and Republicans, it made explicit a notion that had only been hinted at before — that Biden not only intended to sign a second, more ambitious package, but that he would also go so far as to veto their bipartisan plan if the larger bill did not materialise. “We never had an inkling that there would be any kind of linkage,” Sen Susan Collins, a key negotiator, said in an interview. “We always knew that there’d be another bill, but not that the success of the infrastructure package was going to be in any way dependent on the other bill.” For more than 24 hours, the White House engaged in damage control, with top advisers calling senators from both parties. On Friday, the president’s spokeswoman gently tried to distance the administration from his comments. It was not enough. And on Saturday, as lawmakers and aides continued to stew and the prospects of a legislative victory seemed to fade, Biden conceded that he had misspoken. The drama does not appear to have sunk the deal, but Biden admitted that his comments on Thursday left “the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to.” That was “certainly not my intent,” he added. TEMPERS, THEN A DEAL The agreement Biden heralded on Thursday initially looked like an unfettered triumph for a president who promised voters he could deliver legislation that was both boldly progressive and widely bipartisan. It was weeks in the making. By late May, Sens Rob Portman and Kyrsten Sinema had cobbled together eight other centrist colleagues to discuss the possibilities of a bipartisan framework that could replicate the success that led to the passage of a $900 billion coronavirus relief bill in December. “The easy stuff, I could just put a check mark on it and move on to the next one,” Sinema said in an interview. “The hard stuff is where you spend your time.” Looming over the talks was the likelihood that liberal Democrats would use a fast-track process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Meetings grew ever more tense, and the senators invited Steve Ricchetti, a top adviser to Biden; Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council; and Louisa Terrell, director of the Office of Legislative Affairs. For days, they crisscrossed the Capitol — including Sinema, who broke her foot running a marathon, on a crutch — to haggle in back rooms, often ordering in pizza, salads and wine. Portman’s hideaway grew so cramped with the additional staff that an aide to Sen Mitt Romney, braved the Senate bureaucracy to secure a fan for the room. During one late-night session, Ricchetti took it upon himself to walk around the table and pour wine for each senator, according to two people familiar with the moment. Tempers flared, senators and aides acknowledged in interviews, as the senators clashed over how to finance the framework amid a Republican refusal to increase taxes and the White House’s objections to user fees for drivers. On Wednesday, many of the centrist senators joined Biden at a funeral for former Sen John Warner of Virginia, before returning to the Capitol for what would be a final round of meetings with his legacy of striking bipartisan accords on their minds. “What would John Warner do?” said Sen Mark Warner, who is of no relation, but who considered him a friend. “John Warner would have hung in. I think probably almost everybody in that room went through some level of that reflection.” Around 7 pm, the 10 senators began to emerge with a unified message: They had a framework and they would be going to the White House the next day. THE PLAN: GO IN TANDEM After weeks of closed-door negotiations, it appeared to be a moment of validation for a president certain in his ability to navigate difficult legislative negotiations, after months of talks that his own party had begun to worry were turning into a quagmire for his economic ambitions. Biden’s team believed that by winning a bipartisan agreement, they would secure the support of centrist Democratic senators for the larger bill to provide paid leave, fight poverty and climate change and address a host of other liberal priorities, funded by tax increases on corporations and the rich. Some Republicans, egged on by business leaders, hoped to stop the larger bill by arguing to moderate Democrats that the more limited infrastructure bill was all that was needed. Both lawmakers and Biden agreed it was also a significant moment to prove that the government could still function. (Sen Jon Tester, contended that failure would show “we’re really, really, really dysfunctional.”) “The message it sends to the American people, and also to our friends and adversaries around the world, is so important,” Warner said. “In a post-Jan 6 world, it shows that people who come from different political views can still come together on national priorities.” Progressive lawmakers had long sounded alarms, worried it was insufficient and would close off a larger bill. On Thursday morning — even as the president and the lawmakers prepared to make their deal public — Sen Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor to defuse their concerns by underscoring the plan that he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi had worked out with the president. “These two efforts are tied together. Let me make that clear,” Schumer said. “Speaker Pelosi agrees that we cannot do one without the other. All parties understand that we won’t get enough votes to pass either unless we have enough votes to pass both.” In his prepared remarks Thursday in the East Room, soon after celebrating with the senators in the White House driveway, Biden echoed that strategy. “I’m going to work closely with Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer to make sure that both move through the legislative process promptly and in tandem,” he said. “Let me emphasise that — and in tandem.” ADMITTING A MISTAKE Democrats had expected a statement of that sort. They did not expect what Biden did moments later. During the news conference in the East Room, a reporter sought clarification: “Mr President, you said you want both of these measures to come to you ‘in tandem.’ Did you receive any assurances that that would happen?” Biden said he expected that Congress would work on passage of both the bipartisan infrastructure measure and the bigger Democratic bill at the same time, echoing Schumer’s earlier comments. But then he went even further again. “But if only one comes to me, I’m not — and if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he said. “It’s in tandem.” With senators leaving Washington on Thursday afternoon for a two-week recess for Fourth of July, it was not until later in the evening that some in the group of negotiators saw Biden’s comments, which Republicans in particular interpreted as an implicit veto threat. Senators and their staff members began texting and calling one another and the White House. Liberal Democrats scoffed at the Republican frustration and accused their counterparts of looking for an excuse to oppose the deal, even though the Democrats’ pursuit of reconciliation had long been public. On Saturday, Biden finally acknowledged his mistake as lawmakers and aides signalled they would move forward with writing text and securing support. “The bottom line is this,” he said. “I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan, and that’s what I intend to do. I intend to pursue the passage of that plan, which Democrats and Republicans agreed to on Thursday, with vigour. It would be good for the economy, good for our country, good for our people. I fully stand behind it without reservation or hesitation.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 1 |
Australia said on Sunday the coming Asia-Pacific leaders' summit in Sydney, which will focus on global warming, would set no binding targets for greenhouse gas reduction but might agree on a post-Kyoto consensus. "We won't reach agreement nor do we imagine for a moment that we could reach agreement on binding targets amongst the member countries of APEC," said Prime Minister John Howard, as official-level talks began at the start of a week of meetings of the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum. APEC leaders including US President George W Bush converge on the city for a summit on Sept 8-9. Howard said developing nations, such as China, were opposed to setting binding targets and each nation should set its own greenhouse gas reduction programme. Howard opposes setting binding targets, preferring what he calls "aspirational targets". Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz, who will attend APEC, said last week that the failure of Australia and the United States to ratify the Kyoto Protocol meant they lacked the credentials to lead climate change talks in Sydney. Australian police arrested 12 Greenpeace activists on Sunday after an APEC protest at Newcastle, the world's biggest coal export port north of Sydney, called for binding cuts to greenhouse gases. Green groups and Australia's Labor opposition said the APEC summit would be a failure if it did not set greenhouse reduction targets. Authorities expect violent protests at APEC, as thousands rally against the Iraq war and global warming, and are staging Australia's biggest ever security operation for APEC. In its protest on a coal ship in Newcastle, Greenpeace unfurled a banner written in Chinese urging Beijing to be aware of efforts to undermine Kyoto by Australia and the United States. "Real action on climate change means moving away from coal and shifting to clean, renewable energy, and we don't have the luxury of time for expensive talkfests that have no concrete outcomes," said Greenpeace campaigner Ben Pearson. Howard announced A$70 million ($58 million) in Asia-Pacific climate change initiatives on Sunday, which will help fund the development and deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies in the region. POST KYOTO Australia and the United States oppose the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that its binding greenhouse targets are flawed because major polluters, such as India, are excluded from the protocol. "We do not believe that continuing down the Kyoto path is going to provide a solution to the problem," Howard said. "What I would like to see the APEC meeting in Sydney do is develop a consensus on a post-Kyoto international framework that attracts participation by all emitters," he said. Howard, who only acknowledged climate change in late 2006, opposes setting targets, arguing that this would damage an Australian economy heavily reliant on coal-fired power. "Howard has spent his entire political career as a climate change sceptic and now he seeks to pretend to be part of a climate change solution," said Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who leads Howard in opinion polls ahead of a national election expected within months. "Howard will not be fair dinkum (honest) on climate change until he ratifies Kyoto, until he accepts greenhouse gas targets for Australia and a fixed timetable for achieving those reductions," Rudd told reporters. After the initial official-level meetings which began on Sunday, APEC foreign and trade ministers will meet later in the week before their presidents and prime ministers arrive. Authorities have erected a 5-km (3-mile) security fence across Sydney's central business district to isolate the leaders in the harbourfront Opera House and nearby hotels. Australian security officials say they have received no intelligence of a terrorist threat to APEC, and the nation's counter-terrorism alert remains unchanged at medium, which means a terrorist attack could occur. Australia, a staunch US ally, has never suffered a major peace-time attack on home soil. Fighter aircraft and police helicopters are enforcing a 45-nautical-mile restricted air space over Sydney and will intercept any unauthorised aircraft. A total of 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the city centre. | 0 |
The US climate change bill expected to be unveiled on Monday contains incentives to spur development of a dozen nuclear power plants, but delays emissions caps on plants that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, industry sources said on Friday. The draft bill, led by Democratic Senator John Kerry, has loan guarantees, protection against regulatory delays and other incentives to help companies finance nuclear plants, which can cost $5 billion to $10 billion to build, the sources said. "I think it's a start that combined with a price on carbon" should help the power companies build new nuclear capacity, said one source briefed on a call held by Kerry on Thursday night with industry representatives. Nuclear power plants emit almost no carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. But no new plants have won government approval in three decades, due partly to high costs and concerns about nuclear waste. The compromise bill, also being written by Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent, is easier on big emitters than previous legislation, a move an environmentalist said could help win its passage. The senators face a narrowing window of opportunity to win the necessary 60 votes to avoid procedural hurdles before congressional elections in November. Signing a new energy and climate law is a priority for President Barack Obama, who would like the United States to be a leader in moving to a low-carbon economy. The Copenhagen Accord he helped devise in the Danish capital last year seeks to limit a rise in temperatures to below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) over pre-industrial levels. The bill contains a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that would begin in 2013, a year later than outlined in previous legislation, the source said. The draft also takes a sector-by-sector approach rather than creating an economy-wide market for emissions, an approach favored in the climate bill that cleared the House of Representatives in June. It would create a regulated market in which polluters and speculators would be allowed to buy and sell emissions permits. Polluters who cut emissions would earn permits they could sell. Initially the price of permits in that market would be limited to a maximum of $25 per ton, to help reduce costs for polluters. Previously, the senators had been aiming for a price ceiling of $30 a ton. REALITY CHECK Even with the breaks, the bill seeks to reduce US emissions 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, the same level talked about for months. It is also about the level of cuts that Obama favors. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said the bill would likely contain items considered necessary to get votes. Asked if the bill might be weakened too much from an environmental standpoint in order to lure Republican support, Claussen said: "No. People whose major concern is climate change have to temper their ambitions." "The reality is you have to get 60 votes for anything to happen," Claussen said. Claussen also said Monday's draft bill would include legislation already passed by the Senate Energy Committee that calls for incentives for offshore oil drilling, a better transmission grid and minimum levels of power from clean sources like solar and wind power. Shares in a number of power and nuclear utilities closed higher on the day as the Dow Jones Utility Average index, rose 0.95 percent to 388.52, slightly higher than gains in the broader market. The bill will be supported by the Edison Electric Institute, a leading power industry group, and three oil companies, sources said. BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips. They did not immediately return calls. The American Petroleum Institute will not say whether it supports the bill until the bill is unveiled. The API's Lou Hayden said his group would continue to support Energy Citizens, a coalition of industry and local advocacy groups that generated grass-roots opposition to the climate bill passed by the House, known as Waxman-Markey. Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said members of his party would focus largely on the impact the bill would have on consumer gasoline prices. "Republicans will make sure the public understands the price of gas at the pump is going to go up if Kerry-Graham-Lieberman passes," Dempsey said. While full details of the transportation part of the bill were not yet available, it might contain a provision requiring oil refiners to obtain pollution permits based on the amount of carbon in their motor fuels. Such a provision could cause prices to rise, which likely would be passed on to consumers. There also could be protections to help consumers with higher energy prices. | 0 |
Francis
spoke in his yearly address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican,
sometimes called his "State of the World" address because it is a
broad survey of the global situation. His words to
diplomats from nearly 200 countries marked the closest he has ever come to a de
facto backing of vaccine mandates, which have become controversial in Italy and
other European countries. "We
have realised that in those places where an effective vaccination campaign has
taken place, the risk of severe repercussions of the disease has
decreased," he said. "It is
therefore important to continue the effort to immunise the general population
as much as possible". Francis, who
dedicated about a fifth of his six-page address to the pandemic, warned against
ideological statements regarding vaccinations. "Sadly,
we are finding increasingly that we live in a world of strong ideological
divides. Frequently people let themselves be influenced by the ideology of the
moment, often bolstered by baseless information or poorly documented
facts," he said. "Vaccines
are not a magical means of healing, yet surely they represent, in addition to
other treatments that need to be developed, the most reasonable solution for
the prevention of the disease," he told the diplomats gathered in the
Vatican's frescoed Hall of the Benedictions. By saying
that "health care is a moral obligation" in the context of a speech
supporting vaccinations, Francis appeared to be responding to Catholics and
other Christians, particularly in the United States, who say they have a
religion-based right of conscientious objection to vaccines. Francis, who
is fully vaccinated, called for a global political commitment "to pursue
the good of the general population through measures of prevention and
immunisation". He renewed
his appeal for the equitable distribution of vaccines to poor nations, saying
that "monopolistic rules" regarding patents should be put aside for
the greater good. Francis also
reiterated his defence of migrants, saying each country should accept as many
as possible and that responsibility for their integration should be shared. On climate
change, he said the results of last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow were
"rather weak in light of the gravity of the problem" and hoped that
action on global warming could be consolidated at COP27 planned for Egypt in
November. He repeated
calls for dialogue in areas of conflict or crisis such as Lebanon, Ukraine and
Myanmar as well as his call for a ban on the possession of nuclear weapons. The Vatican,
the world's smallest state, has diplomatic relations with 183 states. | 0 |
The Nobel Peace Prize panel on Thursday defended its award to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo as based on "universal values," rejecting Beijing's accusation that it is trying force Western ideas on China. China maintained its combative tone on the eve of the prize ceremony in Oslo, and announced the award of its own "Confucius Peace Prize" to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan, though his office said he was unaware of the award. China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state. Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told a news conference the award of the prize to Liu was not a protest. "It is a signal to China that it would be very important for China's future to combine economic development with political reforms and support for those in China fighting for basic human rights," he said. "This prize conveys the understanding that these are universal rights and universal values, they are not Western standards," he added. His comments were unlikely to placate Beijing, where Communist Party ideologists consider "universal values" to be code words for Western liberalization. CHINA ATTACKS U.S. CONGRESS Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu criticized the US House of Representatives for calling on China to release Liu and his wife Liu Xia, who is under house arrest. Jiang told a regular news briefing any attempts to pressure or "deter China from its development" would not succeed. "China urges the relevant US lawmakers to stop the wrong words and activity on the Liu Xiaobo issue and to change their arrogant and rude attitude," Jiang said. "They should show respect to the Chinese people and China's legal sovereignty." "The US Congress' so-called resolution distorts the truth, it is widely meddling in China's internal affairs," she said. "Liu Xiaobo was not convicted because of his remarks," she said. "Liu wrote and published inflammatory articles on the Internet, organizing and persuading others to sign it, to stir up and overthrow China's political authority and social system." US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said freedom of expression was at the core of human rights. "We continue to encourage the Chinese to open up their own political space for greater exchange of opinions and advocacy of ideas," she told reporters in Washington. China's crackdown on dissidents, rights activists and friends and family of Liu has continued. Police barred lawyers, scholars and NGO representatives from attending a seminar on the rule of law at the European Union's embassy in Beijing, the EU's ambassador to China said. "It is a pity and in fact it is a shame," Serge Abou said. China has flexed its economic muscle in drumming up support for a boycott of the Oslo award ceremony for Liu on Friday. Most of the 18 or 19 states joining the boycott have strong commercial ties with China or share its hostility toward Western human rights pressure. China said the "vast majority" of nations would boycott the ceremony. The Norwegian award committee says two-thirds of those invited would attend. "WESTERN CRUSADE" The Chinese delegation to UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, has refused to meet Oslo's team, led by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Environment Minister Erik Solheim. "There is no doubt that China sees the Peace Prize as a part of a Western crusade against their form of government," Solheim was quoted as saying. Chinese state-run media accused the West of "launching a new round of China-bashing." A number of countries and international human rights organizations have criticized Beijing for its sweeping crackdown on dissent ahead of the Oslo ceremony, preventing Liu's friends and family from attending. "The Chinese government should be celebrating this global recognition of a Chinese writer and activist," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of rights group Amnesty International. "Instead, the government's very public tantrum has generated even more critical attention inside and outside China -- and, ironically, emphasized the significance of Liu Xiaobo's message of respect for human rights," Shetty said. Beijing has briefly blacked out BBC and CNN reports on Liu and his supporters over the past few days, though foreign news channels are generally only available in upmarket hotels and apartment buildings mostly inhabited by foreigners. | 0 |
The one trillion tonne iceberg, measuring 5,800 square km, calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica sometime between July 10 and 12, said scientists at the University of Swansea and the British Antarctic Survey. The iceberg, which is roughly the size of the US state of Delaware or the Indonesian island of Bali, has been close to breaking off for a few months. Throughout the Antarctic winter, scientists monitored the progress of the rift in the ice shelf using the European Space Agency satellites. "The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict," said Adrian Luckman, professor at Swansea University and lead investigator of Project MIDAS, which has been monitoring the ice shelf for years. "It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters," he added.
The ice will add to risks for ships now it has broken off. The peninsula is outside major trade routes but the main destination for cruise ships visiting from South America. In 2009, more than 150 passengers and crew were evacuated after the MTV Explorer sank after striking an iceberg off the Antarctic peninsula. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, was already floating before it broke away so there is no immediate impact on sea levels, but the calving has left the Larsen C ice shelf reduced in area by more than 12 percent. The Larsen A and B ice shelves, which were situated further north on the Antarctic Peninsula, collapsed in 1995 and 2002, respectively. "This resulted in the dramatic acceleration of the glaciers behind them, with larger volumes of ice entering the ocean and contributing to sea-level rise," said David Vaughan, glaciologist and director of science at British Antarctic Survey. "If Larsen C now starts to retreat significantly and eventually collapses, then we will see another contribution to sea level rise," he added. Big icebergs break off Antarctica naturally, meaning scientists are not linking the rift to manmade climate change. The ice, however, is a part of the Antarctic peninsula that has warmed fast in recent decades. "In the ensuing months and years, the ice shelf could either gradually regrow, or may suffer further calving events which may eventually lead to collapse – opinions in the scientific community are divided," Luckman said. "Our models say it will be less stable, but any future collapse remains years or decades away." | 0 |
COLUMN
Paul Taylor Washington Apr 5 (bdnews24.com)—A year ago, mere mention of the notion of a multipolar world was a sure way to lose friends and dinner invitations in Washington. The London G20 summit shows just how far power has ebbed from the United States, and from the West in general. Until late 2008, the Group of Eight mostly Western industrialized nations — the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Russia and Japan — was the key forum for economic governance. The new, unwieldy top table has emerged faster than anyone dared predict because a humbled America and a chastened Europe need the money and cooperation of rising powers such as China, India, Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia to fix the world economy. The United States remains the pre-eminent military and economic power, and how it manages to clean up its banking system will be the biggest factor in the length and severity of the crisis. But how the emerging countries manage their currency reserves, exchange rates, trade policies and energy exports will also determine whether we recover from recession in the next 18 months or slide into a depression. U.S. President Barack Obama, on his maiden foray in global diplomacy, showed he understands the new dispensation by paying respects in prior bilateral meetings to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The Europeans acted as midwives to this new world (dis)order, but they have yet to accept that they too need to be cut down to size. To make way for the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing nations in international financial institutions, the number of Europeans at the table will have to shrink. This should force them to pool their representation under the European Union, as they do in trade negotiations. That may be unpalatable not just for Britain but even for core euro zone members such as Germany and France. Yet French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the best case for a single EU seat by working like a tag team to pressure the United States and Britain into stricter regulation, notably of hedge funds, and tougher action against tax havens. Managing the new power constellation won't be easy and may not work. It will take trade-offs between Washington and New Delhi to clear the path for a global trade pact, among Western nations, China and India to fight climate change, and between industrialized and developing powers to reallocate power in the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations. At least now almost all the key players are at the table, except for Iran. But that's another story. Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own | 0 |
But President Joe Biden will face his own challenges when he departs on Wednesday, especially as the United States confronts a disruptive Russia and a rising China while trying to reassemble and rally the shaken Western alliance as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. Biden, who will arrive for a series of summit meetings buoyed by a successful vaccination programme and a rebounding economy, will spend the next week making the case that America is back and ready to lead the West anew in what he calls an existential collision between democracies and autocracies. On the agenda are meetings in Britain with leaders of the Group of 7 nations, followed by visits to NATO and the European Union. On Biden’s final day, in Geneva, he will hold his first meeting as president with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Biden’s overarching task is to deliver the diplomatic serenity that eluded such gatherings during four years in which Trump scorched longstanding relationships with close allies, threatened to pull out of NATO and embraced Putin and other autocrats, admiring their strength. But the good will Biden brings simply by not being Trump papers over lingering doubts about his durability, American reliability and the cost that Europe will be expected to pay. At 78, is Biden the last gasp of an old-style, internationalist foreign policy? Will Europe bear the cost of what increasingly looks like a new Cold War with Russia? Is it being asked to sign up for a China containment policy? And will Biden deliver on climate? Those questions will loom as he deals with disagreements over trade, new restrictions on investing in and buying from China and his ever-evolving stance on a natural gas pipeline that will route directly from Russia to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. Throughout, Biden will face European leaders who are now wary of the United States in a way they have not been since 1945 — and are wondering where it is headed. “They have seen the state of the Republican Party,” said Barry Pavel, the director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at The Atlantic Council. “They’ve seen Jan. 6. They know you could have another president in 2024.” White House officials say that stable American diplomacy is back for good, but of course they cannot offer any guarantees after January 2025. European officials are following the raging domestic political arguments in the United States, and they note that Trump’s grip on his party is hardly weakening. Days before Biden’s departure, Republicans in Congress rejected the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine the Capitol riot. Republican lawmakers embrace Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Democrats are faltering in their efforts to pass sweeping legislation to counter Republican attacks on voting rights at the state level. Through it all, Trump keeps hinting at a political comeback in four years. “There’s an anxiety about American politics,” said Ian Lesser, a vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Simply, what is going to happen in the midterm elections? Whether Trumpism will prove more durable than Mr. Trump. What is coming next in American politics?” If the future of the United States is the long-term concern, how to manage a disruptive Russia is the immediate agenda. No part of the trip will be more charged than a daylong meeting with Putin. Biden called for the meeting — the first since Trump embraced Putin’s denials of election interference at a summit in Helsinki, Finland, three years ago — despite warnings from human rights activists that doing so would strengthen and embolden the Russian leader. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has noted that American presidents met with their Soviet counterparts throughout the Cold War, and their Russian successors afterward. But on Monday, he said Biden would warn Putin directly that without a change in behavior, "there will be responses." Yet veterans of the struggle between Washington and Moscow say disruption is Putin’s true superpower. “Putin doesn’t necessarily want a more stable or predictable relationship,” said Alexander Vershbow, who was an ambassador to Russia under President George W. Bush. “The best case one can hope for is that the two leaders will argue about a lot of things but continue the dialogue.” White House officials say the president has no intention of trying to reset the relationship with Russia. Having called Putin a “killer” this year, Biden is cleareyed about his adversary, they said: He regards Putin more as a hardened mafia boss, ordering hits with the country’s supply of nerve agents, than a national leader. But Biden is determined to put what Sullivan calls “guardrails” on the relationship, seeing out some measure of cooperation, starting with the future of their nuclear arsenals. But there is a dawning awareness in Europe that while Putin cherishes his growing arsenal, Russia’s nuclear ability is a strategic remnant of an era of superpower conflict. In what Putin recently called a new Cold War with the United States, the weapons of choice are cyberweapons, ransomware wielded by gangs operating from Russian territory and the ability to shake neighbors like Ukraine by massing troops on the border. Biden will embrace NATO and Article V of its charter — the section that commits every member of the alliance to consider an armed attack on one as an armed attack on all. But it is less clear what constitutes an armed attack in the modern age: a cyberstrike like the SolarWinds hacking that infiltrated corporate and government networks? The movement of intermediate-range missiles and Russian troops to the border of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member? Biden’s associates say the key is for him to make clear that he has seen Putin’s bravado before and that it does not faze him. “Joe Biden is not Donald Trump,” said Thomas E Donilon, who was a national security adviser to President Barack Obama and whose wife and brother are key aides to Biden. “You’re not going to have this inexplicable reluctance of a US president to criticise a Russian president who is leading a country that is actively hostile to the United States in so many areas. You won’t have that.”
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, as they depart for Europe where President Biden is scheduled for a series of meetings with leaders from NATO, the European Union, and the Group of 7. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
When Biden defines the current struggle as “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” though, he appears to be worrying more about China’s appeal as a trading partner and source of technology than Russia’s disruptions. And while Europeans largely do not see China as the kind of rising technological, ideological and military threat that Washington does, it is an argument Biden is beginning to win. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, as they depart for Europe where President Biden is scheduled for a series of meetings with leaders from NATO, the European Union, and the Group of 7. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) The British are deploying the largest fleet of its Navy warships to the Pacific since the Falklands War, nearly 40 years ago. The idea is to reestablish at least a visiting presence in a region that once was part of its empire, with stops in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. But at the same time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signed on to the effort by Washington — begun by Trump and accelerated by Biden — to assure that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, does not win new contracts to install 5G cellular networks in Britain. Some in Europe are following suit, but Biden’s aides said they felt blindsided last year when the European Union announced an investment agreement with China days before Biden’s inauguration. It was a reflection of fears that if the continent got sucked into the US-China rivalry, European companies would bear the brunt, starting with the luxury auto industry in Germany. The future of the agreement is unclear, but Biden is going the other way: Last week he signed an executive order banning Americans from investing in Chinese companies that are linked to the country’s military or that sell surveillance technology used to repress dissent or religious minorities, both inside and outside China. But to be effective, the allies would have to join; so far, few have expressed enthusiasm to join the effort. Biden may be able to win over skeptics with his embrace of the goal of combating climate change, even though he will run into questions about whether he is doing enough. Four years ago, at Trump’s first G7 meeting, six world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate accord while the United States declared it was “not in a position to join the consensus.” Biden is reversing that stance, pledging to cut US emissions 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade and writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post before the summit that with the United States back at the table, countries “have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress.” But world leaders said they remained wary of the United States’ willingness to enact serious legislation to tackle its emissions and deliver on financial promises to poorer countries. “They have shown the right approach, not necessarily to the level of magnitude that they could,” said Graça Machel, the former education and culture minister of Mozambique. Key to reaching ambitious climate goals is China, which emits more than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. Peter Betts, the former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said the test for Biden was whether he could lead the G-7 countries in a successful pressure campaign. China, he said, “does care what the developing world thinks.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Reuters has placed the director of International Centre for Climate Change and Development or ICCCAD on the 208th position on the list. Dr Huq is the only Bangladeshi scientist to get this recognition on Earth Day, Apr 20. The ranking recognises Dr Huq's and IUB’s ongoing efforts to propel Bangladesh as a crucial contributor to global knowledge on climate change, the institution said in a media release. The Reuters Hot List identifies world’s 1,000 most influential climate scientists on the basis of research papers, citations of the papers, and references to the papers. Dr Huq is an expert on adaptation to climate change in the most vulnerable developing countries and was one of the principal authors of the third, fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. He also advises the least developed countries in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Under his leadership, ICCCAD at IUB has recently won a six-year project from Norway Higher Education under NORAD on “Co-creating knowledge for local adaptation to climate change in the LDCs” with four other partners – the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Pokhara University in Nepal, the University of Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique the Makarere University of Uganda. The project proposal was submitted under the LDC Universities’ Consortium on Climate Change LUCCC, which is now an official programme of the 47 LDC governments. IUB is a founding member of LUCCC. | 2 |
At an evening ceremony in the famed Maracana soccer stadium, Brazil will declare open the 31st Summer Olympic Games and the first ever in South America. They will run until Aug 21. Organisers are hoping the start of the Games will erase months of bad publicity for Rio - from polluted water to faulty plumbing at the athletes village to worries about the Zika virus - all against the backdrop of a brutal economic downturn. Security challenges in the sprawling beachside city are at the forefront of many people's mind, not only because of Rio's decades-old reputation for violent street crime, but also after a spate of deadly attacks at big and small celebrations from Europe to the United States. With many of the Games' 11,000 athletes and dozens of heads of state in attendance, the first major test of preparedness comes at Maracana, where the biggest security operation of the Games will be deployed.
Some 50,000 spectators are expected while more than 3 billion people tune in around the world as Brazil hosts its second major sporting event in two years, after the 2014 soccer World Cup. "I think it's going to be great," said Braulio Ferreira, 38, who runs a small shop in the Jardim Botanico neighbourhood, near the lagoon where rowing and canoeing races will be held. "Like the World Cup, it'll be great to throw a good party and mix with the people from all over." Like many in Rio, however, Ferreira said citizens had not received benefits like better transport and sanitation promised in the Olympic bid: "It cost a lot of money, but I don't see much of the legacy that was promised." Brazil's political crisis could crash the party as interim President Michel Temer opens the Games. In a bitterly divided country, protesters are encouraging spectators to boo Temer, who took over after the Senate voted to subject leftist President Dilma Rousseff to an impeachment hearing this month. Brazil won its bid for the Games back in 2009, when the economy was booming and Rio's coffers swelled with royalties from its offshore oil. The economy is now on track for its worst recession in a century and Rousseff is expected to be permanently ousted this month.
In what organisers have called a low-tech ceremony constrained by the dire economy, Brazil will showcase its natural treasures and the cultural riches created by one of the world's most diverse nations. Samba, Carnival and the famously fun Brazilian spirit are expected to play heavily into the three-hour ceremony, as will a call to save the planet from climate change. One of the most anticipated moments will be seeing which famous Brazilian will light the Olympic cauldron. The odds-on favorite is soccer legend Pele. Spokesmen for Pele said he had received the green light from his sponsors and doctor, but the 75-year-old was waiting to see if he felt well enough. Before the ceremony, the Olympic torch will travel to some of the most well-known landmarks of the "marvellous city" - from the Christ the Redeemer statue atop the lush green mountains to the striking Pao de Acucar or Sugar Loaf rock formation on Guanabara Bay. | 0 |
By Julian Hunt and Charles Kennel - Julian Hunt is former director general of the UK meteorological office. Charles Kennel is distinguished professor of atmospheric science, emeritus and senior advisor to the sustainability solutions institute, UCSD. The opinions expressed are their own. -
Dec 23 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)—The non-legally binding "deal" agreed at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen among the U.S., China, Brazil, South Africa and India, has brought to a conclusion what has proved an extraordinarily complex set of negotiations.
The outcome has been criticised on numerous grounds and, in U.S. President Barack Obama's own words, "We have much further to go". In effect, the agreement may ultimately amount to no more than a long-term climate change dialogue between Washington and Beijing. While global action to tackle emissions of carbon dioxide must remain a priority, the fact remains that we may be heading towards a future in which no long-term, comprehensive successor to the Kyoto regime is politically possible. One of the chief flaws in the Copenhagen negotiations was the fact that the overly-ambitious political deals being discussed were not realistic, nor framed to inspire people to act and collaborate with each other across the world on both a local and regional level. Going forwards, national governments will need to be more honest about future likely emissions and also of future temperature changes. In this crucial debate, scientists must be free to state their estimates without political bias. In the absence of a new global deal, it is now crucial that the centre of gravity of decision-making on how we respond to climate change moves towards the sub-national level. This may also have the effect of re-energising future global climate change talks as environment diplomacy could certainly be furthered by policies decided at the local and regional level. The need for such a paradigm shift from a "top-down" to a "bottom-up" approach is becoming clearer by the day. Over the last decade, records of weather and climate trends have revealed larger and more unusual regional and local variations — some unprecedented since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Among such warning signs are the disappearing ice fields around the poles and on all mountain ranges, more frequent droughts in Africa and now in wet regions (such as the 2006 drought in Assam India, previously one of the wettest places in the world), floods in dry regions (as recently, the worst floods in 50 years in northwest India), and ice storms in sub-tropical China in 2008 (for the first time in 150 years). Such extreme events threaten sustainable development around the world, natural environments are destroyed irreversibly, and economic growth is slowed. One of the most compelling advocates this month at Copenhagen for sub-national solutions for tackling climate change was California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As the state of California, and legislators in Globe and city governments are putting into practice, adaptation needs to build on existing knowledge and infrastructures in local settings. Forming loose collaborative networks will enable regional facilitation centres, their experts and decision makers to learn from one another and also draw upon the resources of existing national and international databases and programmes, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and the growing number of consortia linking major cities, local governments, and the private sector. Experience shows that this 'bottom-up' approach works very effectively as it is only generally when sub-national areas learn how they will be specifically affected by climate change that widespread, grassroots political action can be aroused. Although regional variations in climate change are approximately predicted by IPCC global climate models, more local measurements and studies are needed for sub-national governments, industry and agriculture to better understand their local climatic situation and develop reliable and effective strategies to deal with all the ways that climate change affects their activities and well being. Hence, the increasing numbers of regional monitoring centres which, by communicating and interpreting these predictions and uncertainties, are contributing towards local adaptation plans: • In China, where provinces require targets for power station construction, regional environmental and climate change centres are now well developed.
• In the United States, a recent report has highlighted the value of non-official centres, such as a severe storm centre in Oklahoma, which gives independent advice to communities and businesses, while relying on government programmes for much of the data.
• In Brazil, a regional data centre is providing data and predictions about agriculture and deforestation and informs legislation about policy options. What this activity points to is the need for a global network of such centres to support national climate initiatives, and to facilitate international funding and technical cooperation in delivering the right information to the right place, at the right time. Local actions can only be effective if measurements of climate and environment are made regularly and are publicised as well as information about targets, and projections of emissions. Experience shows that full exposure is needed about what is happening, what is planned, and how every individual can be involved (as the Danes show by their community investment in wind power). Historically, it is cities that have helped lead the vanguard towards tackling major environmental challenges. It is therefore unsurprising that it is individual cities that are seeking to adopt some of the most innovative ways of adapting to worsening climate hazards, including showing how to integrate these measures with considerable savings in costs — such as putting windmills on dykes as in Rotterdam. For instance, a recent "civic exchange" meeting in Hong Kong considered solutions for how major cities in China will strive to reach targets for reductions in emissions as stringent as those in developed countries. This is a very ambitious objective, since in China the carbon emission per person per year is 6 tons, compared with 10 tons in the EU, and 25 tons in the United States. Taken overall, the cumulative effect of such sub-national actions may well determine the speed and effectiveness of global responses to climate change. The message is clear. 'Localisation of action and data' must be the post-Copenhagen priority if we are to tackle the global warming menace. | 0 |
- Climate change is the outcome of global corruption, but its worst victims are the least developed countries like Bangladesh, speakers have told a seminar. "The industrialised nations are largely responsible for the rapid climate change, harming the coun | 4 |
“How can a party win if its leadership is in such a state?” the prime minister said, responding to a question at a media briefing organised on Monday to highlight her recent visit to the US. “One of them is convicted of stealing money from orphans, while another is accused in the 2004 grenade attack and has emigrated outside the country.” "Why would the people vote for such a party?" Hasina asked. “They can’t even contest the elections.” The opposition party has lost its confidence because it knows there is no way for them to gain power, Hasina said. As there is no possibility of victory, the BNP seeks to undermine the election and cast aspersions on it to court controversy and divide the people, Hasina said. The prime minister started the press conference at 4 pm on Monday from her official residence Ganabhaban in Dhaka. Hasina was in the US for a two-week visit, her first overseas trip after the coronavirus pandemic began. She attended the UNGA and other high-profile events from Sept 19-23. The prime minister attended the UNGA virtually last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She delivered a speech at the UNGA on Sept 24, calling on the international community to act together on global common issues and create space for new partnerships and solutions to tackle emergencies. In her address, Hasina said the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the inadequacy of the global response to emergencies. It has also put a spotlight on the 'critical need' for global solidarity and collaboration, according to her. She joined a high-level meeting on climate change in New York on Sept 20 at the invitation of her British counterpart Boris Johnson and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. She planted a sapling at the UN Headquarters the same day to mark the birth centenary of Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The same day, the prime minister joined a virtual event titled ‘Sustainable Development Solution Network’. On Sept 21, Hasina joined the inaugural session of the general debate in the UN Headquarters. She also joined the event ‘Business Roundtable: US-Bangladesh Business Council’ that day. The prime minister addressed the ‘White House Global COVID-19 Summit: Ending the Pandemic and Building Back Better’. She joined an event on imperatives for a sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis on the sidelines of the UNGA. She held bilateral meetings with Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Vietnam President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, and UN chief Guterres, and many other leaders in New York.
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A Reuters/Ipsos online poll this month asked 2,809 Americans to rate how much of a threat a list of countries, organizations and individuals posed to the United States on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being no threat and 5 being an imminent threat. The poll showed 34 percent of Republicans ranked Obama as an imminent threat, ahead of Putin (25 percent), who has been accused of aggression in the Ukraine, and Assad (23 percent). Western governments have alleged that Assad used chlorine gas and barrel bombs on his own citizens. Given the level of polarization in American politics the results are not that surprising, said Barry Glassner, a sociologist and author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things." "There tends to be a lot of demonizing of the person who is in the office," Glassner said, adding that "fear mongering" by the Republican and Democratic parties would be a mainstay of the US 2016 presidential campaign. "The TV media here, and American politics, very much trade on fears," he said. The Ipsos survey, done between March 16 and March 24, included 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans. Twenty-seven percent of Republicans saw the Democratic Party as an imminent threat to the United States, and 22 percent of Democrats deemed Republicans to be an imminent threat. People who were polled were most concerned about threats related to potential terror attacks. Islamic State militants were rated an imminent threat by 58 percent of respondents, and al Qaeda by 43 percent. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un was viewed as a threat by 34 percent, and Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by 27 percent. Cyber attacks were viewed as an imminent threat by 39 percent, and drug trafficking was seen as an imminent threat by a third of the respondents. Democrats were more concerned about climate change than Republicans, with 33 percent of Democrats rating global warming an imminent threat. Among Republicans, 27 percent said climate change was not a threat at all. The data was weighted to reflect the US population and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for all adults (3.4 points for Democrats and 3.4 points for Republicans.) | 1 |
Under climate-change sceptic Donald Trump, the US government did provide finance for things like building solar power systems in Africa and protecting people from storms and floods in Asia, as part of its international development aid. But Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement and refused to deliver two-thirds of a $3-billion pledge made by his predecessor to the Green Climate Fund, set up under UN climate talks to help developing nations tackle global warming. Environmental groups this week delivered a petition signed by more than 50,000 US residents, urging the administration under new US President Joe Biden to do its "fair share" in cutting emissions and providing climate finance. Brandon Wu, director of policy for ActionAid USA, said that, as the biggest long-term contributor to climate-heating emissions, the United States had a moral and legal responsibility to help vulnerable communities now bearing the brunt of extreme weather and rising seas in a warming world. "Doing our fair share of climate action means addressing the injustices we have visited on those communities – starting with providing real financial support for just and equitable climate action in developing countries," he said in a statement. Earlier this month, ActionAid and 45 other development agencies and green groups issued an open letter calling on Biden's government to pledge and support appropriation of at least $8 billion for the Green Climate Fund. That amount includes the $2 billion owed plus a doubling of the initial US pledge for the coming three years, in line with commitments by other wealthy governments such as France and Germany. The groups also said the US government should provide $400 million over four years to the smaller Adaptation Fund, another UN-linked fund that boosts climate resilience in poor nations. That would mark a first-ever US contribution to the fund.
John Kerry speaks at an event in Wilmington, Del, Nov 24, 2020, where he was introduced by then President-elect Joe Biden as his choice to be global envoy for climate change. Serious efforts to address global warming might mean big changes for America’s trade, foreign relations and even defense strategy. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times)
CLIMATE FINANCE PLAN John Kerry speaks at an event in Wilmington, Del, Nov 24, 2020, where he was introduced by then President-elect Joe Biden as his choice to be global envoy for climate change. Serious efforts to address global warming might mean big changes for America’s trade, foreign relations and even defense strategy. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) Hopes are high that Biden's government will make up for lost time after US climate envoy John Kerry promised in January his country would "make good" on its climate finance promise, without specifying when or how. Most experts took that to mean the United States would deliver the money Trump withheld from the Green Climate Fund. In an executive order on climate change, signed on Jan. 27, Biden also instructed government departments to craft a climate finance plan to help developing countries reduce emissions, protect critical ecosystems and build resilience to climate change impacts. The plan is due to be submitted by the end of April, but experts hope it will land before a leaders' climate summit Biden has convened for major-emitting nations on April 22. Joe Thwaites, a sustainable finance associate at the Washington-based World Resources Institute, said commitments to specific climate funds could be announced before or in the plan, but it should also give a broader view of how the United States intends to approach climate finance over Biden's term. That would help other countries know what to expect in terms of levels of financial support and where it will go, he added. "That makes it much easier to plan," he said - both for those seeking to receive the money and for donors working out where best to add value with their own assistance. 'LAGGING BADLY' A lack of climate finance, particularly that reaching the most vulnerable countries, has been a big sticking point in UN climate negotiations. In December, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned rich governments were "lagging badly" on a longstanding pledge to channel $100 billion a year in funding from 2020 onwards to help poorer nations develop cleanly and adapt to climate change. He pointed to a new report by climate finance experts estimating that the $100-billion promise would not be kept by the deadline. Due to a lag in how governments report international climate funding, the total provided in 2020 may not be known until early 2022. The latest figures, released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last November, said climate finance for developing states rose by 11% to $79 billion in 2018 - about $20 billion short of the flagship 2020 goal. And in January, the Climate Policy Initiative think-tank said finance for adaptation - already deemed highly inadequate - was likely to have dropped in 2020 as the pandemic hit budgets. The figures collated annually by the OECD have been criticised for including loans, which must be paid back, and donor aid given for broader development projects not fully dedicated to tackling climate change. An international team of researchers wrote in Nature Climate Change on Thursday that the ambiguity of the original $100-billion promise and "questionable claims" by donors about their contributions "make it impossible to know if developed nations have delivered". They called for negotiations on a new climate finance goal- starting at the COP26 UN climate conference in November - to set clear rules on what can be counted. The new goal, due to kick in from 2025, should be decided in a way that is accountable and builds trust, as well as being based on "realistic assessments of developing countries' needs". In addition, "real plans" should be drawn up to meet the new funding targets, such as tapping innovative finance like levies on international airline passengers and shipping fuels, they said. Co-author Romain Weikmans, of Belgium's Université Libre de Bruxelles, said other changes for 2025 could include setting separate goals to fund climate adaptation or to channel more money to the poorest nations and threatened small-island states. He also suggested an independent body, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could be tasked with defining new climate finance guidelines, to depoliticise the process. "There needs, absolutely, to be more progress on the way we account for climate finance," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. | 0 |
Dhaka, Aug 25 (bdnews24.com)—President Iajuddin Ahmed on Monday highlighted the huge challenge global warming posed for Bangladesh with a third of the country at threat of inundation due to rising sea-levels. Experts, at an international conference on climate change and food security in the capital, said better information could assist communities in facing the threat to land and food. "Scientist have projected that low lying land, particularly in the coastal areas of the world, will be inundated owing to rises in sea level," said Iajuddin at the inauguration of the event. "Therefore, the entire South Asian coastal belt will be severely affected … this region faces intense natural disasters in the form of floods, cyclones, storm surges and drought," he said. Iajuddin, quoting World Bank figures, said up to 30 percent of Bangladesh's rice production could be affected owing to climate change. "The (UN's) Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has also stated that Bangladesh may lose as much as one-third of its landmass due to rises in sea level." Dhaka University, Ohio State University, the World Meteorological Organisation, UNESCAP, and the Food and Agriculture Oragnisation (FAO) have jointly organised the six-day "International Symposium on Climate Change and Food Security" being held at Hotel Sonargaon. Ratan Lal, a soil science professor at Ohio State University, said Bangladesh was particularly vulnerable to climate change as a low-lying landmass. Around 80 percent of its land was than 6 metres above sea level, he said. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud, mentioning that droughts, floods, frosts, and heat waves all caused crop and livestock losses, stressed: "It is the changing frequency of these events due to climate change that is the main concern in South Asia." "Better information on climate can assist agricultural communities in making better decisions," he said. | 0 |
Long regarded as the world's worst business address, Africa is attracting an upsurge in foreign investment drawn by high commodity prices, more peace and democracy, lower corruption and good economic growth. Resource-rich former war zones such as Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique have become amongst some of the fastest growing economies on earth, some even outstripping China -- albeit from very low bases. The International Monetary Fund estimates Angolan growth at over 30 percent in 2007, mainly due to soaring oil revenues. The African Development Bank (AfDB) says a handful of economies are still contracting but it sees overall African growth at 6.5-7.0 percent next year. This remains some way behind China's 10-11 percent but is within striking distance of Asia's other major emerging economy, India, which has averaged 8.6 percent growth in recent years. More stable African countries such as Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania are also seen making improvements and having benefited from recent debt relief. And with worries of a global downturn in the developed world, investors say there is renewed interest in the world's poorest continent. "In some ways, we are where India was in the early 1990s," AfDB President Donald Kaberuka told Reuters. "We are at the point where Africa is no longer an object of just pity and aid." Africa remains exposed to a global economic downturn -- particularly if this hits demand for the commodities it produces such as copper. But some economists say it is more insulated than other emerging markets such as eastern Europe. "I think the attitude of investors has completely changed in the last few years," said Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at London emerging markets brokerage Exotix. "Part of it is a change in fundamentals -- good economic growth, debt relief -- and also perhaps that as some of the other emerging markets have become more mainstream, people are looking elsewhere." Local African consumer demand is seen almost inevitably rising, as is demand for African products from the growing economies of Asia, particularly China -- which is now a huge player in many of the continent's economies. China's biggest lender IBBC <1398.HK> is buying 20 percent of South Africa's Standard Bank , while Ghana and Gabon have launched international bonds and Angola and Rwanda intend launching new stock markets. NO LONGER HOPELESS The AfDB estimates foreign direct investment into Africa at $46-47 billion a year, although it says that assessing Chinese inflows in particular is extremely difficult. At an investment conference in London last month organised by Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital, which is trying to become the leading investment bank in Africa, Africa was touted as the world's biggest opportunity. Speakers sketched a rosy picture of a continent that for decades suffered from falling prices for its commodities and rising costs of its imports from Europe and North America, but which was now reaping the benefits of high commodity prices and low import costs from Asia. Most African countries have seen their currencies strengthen against the dollar, somewhat mitigating soaring oil prices -- although high fuel and rising global food prices are a worry. Corruption remains a huge concern. Anti-corruption pressure groups, companies and officials say it is broadly falling although some countries including Angola lag behind. The number of wars has dwindled drastically in the last decade. Several conference speakers complained about how Western media and aid agencies focused attention on Africa's disasters and remaining wars. This risked making outsiders think the whole continent was like Zimbabwe, which is mired in economic crisis, or Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur, and painted Africa as dangerous, corrupt and needing salvation from outside. Increasingly, however, both campaigners and government donors such as Britain's Department for International Development have moved to calling for more straightforward investment to help reduce poverty. Soaring commodities prices have been a big draw. Gold has doubled in the last four years and oil has quadrupled since 2002, while copper has jumped from $1,500 a tonne in 2004 to $6,600 now. But some investors remain doubtful. One European fund manager told Reuters he believed most of the money from Africa's new commodity boom would end up in Swiss bank accounts. In some countries, despite double-digit growth, not enough seems to get through to the poor. While the last decade has seen the end of many wars, some experts fear climate change in particular might spark more. Others warn Africa's markets are simply too shallow and new to withstand much investor interest. "It wouldn't take much before someone like Fidelity (Investments) owns the entire country," said another investment expert, referring to one of the world's largest fund managers. | 0 |
Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna travels to China next week to consolidate ties, recently improved by a trade boom and cooperation over climate change that shifted the focus away from a border dispute. The world's two most populous nations are putting the global financial crisis behind them more quickly than developed countries and want to build on a decade of commercial growth that has pushed China to the top of India's list of trade partners. While Beijing is deep into a spat with the United States over the strength of the yuan currency and Google's battle with Chinese censors, Indian analysts say India and China have much to gain from keeping each other onside. A turning point seems to have been last December's climate conference in Copenhagen, where India and China helped patch together a deal while facing accusations that they were obstructing a more ambitious agreement. "The climate did change in Copenhagen. There is a new warmth in China's tone towards India," Sanjaya Baru, former media adviser to India's prime minister, wrote in the Business Standard. The largest and fourth-largest emitters, China and India want rich nations to take the lead to slow global warming, and will not let their own climate commitments stifle economic growth. Krishna starts his four-day visit on Monday -- scant months after tempers flared over reports of border incursions and a row over the Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh. MISTRUST OVER BORDER Nearly half a century after war broke out between them, mistrust persists, especially over the 90,000 sq km (35,000 sq. miles) of land in Arunachal Pradesh state claimed by Beijing. China was incensed when the Dalai Lama visited the state last year and saw it as proof of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader's separatist machinations. "After the brinkmanship of 2009, on Arunachal Pradesh and Dalai Lama, both sides seem to want to return to a more normal template of pragmatic engagement," Baru wrote. Ahead of his trip, Krishna said only that India had "some concerns" about its border. "There's a sense I get, of both sides trying not to escalate the war of words," said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper. Trade Minister Anand Sharma has called the Chinese currency a concern for Indian industry. But unlike Washington, New Delhi has refrained from putting pressure on China, the world's fastest growing economy, to let the yuan strengthen. The bilateral trade boom has been a mixed blessing for India, now grappling with a deficit in China's favour which ballooned from $1 billion in 2001-2 to $16 billion in 2007-8, according to Indian central bank data. They can still cross swords over tariffs and perceived protectionist barriers, with India of late initiating more anti-dumping investigations against China than any other country. But both sides say bilateral trade and investment lag far behind their potential and have agreed to even out trade flows. The two countries are expected to lead a 9.5 percent expansion in global trade volumes projected by the World Trade Organisation in 2010. Lurking in the background will be Indian suspicions over China's growing military clout. Underscoring Indian jitters, the outgoing National Security Adviser earlier this year said his computers had likely been targeted by Chinese hackers. Also on the list of talking points could be Afghanistan, where India worries it might be losing a struggle for strategic influence with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan. | 1 |
This divide, a wetter East and a drier West, reflects a broader pattern observed in the United States in recent decades. One map, created using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows the Eastern half of the country has gotten more rain, on average, over the last 30 years than it did during the 20th century, while precipitation has decreased in the West. (Thirty-year averages are often used by scientists to glean big-picture climate trends from temperature and precipitation data that varies substantially year-to-year.) It’s not yet clear whether these changes in precipitation are a permanent feature of our warming climate, or whether they reflect long-term weather variability. But they are largely consistent with predictions from climate models, which expect to see more precipitation overall as the world warms, with big regional differences. Broadly: Wet places get wetter and dry places get drier. “There’s variability from year to year,” and even decade to decade, said Andreas Prein, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “But climate change is slowly pushing this variability” toward wetter and drier extremes, he said. Increase in Extremes How much it rains or snows, averaged over time, is one way of analyzing changing precipitation patterns. Another way is to look at changes in the heaviest rainfalls and snowstorms. That’s where the biggest impacts can be felt. The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation across the country have increased more than average precipitation, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, with the largest increases seen in the Midwest and Northeast. (Because heavy precipitation is more variable than average precipitation, trends have to be measured over broader geographical regions.) Stronger downpours are a hallmark of climate change. As the climate warms, increased evaporation pumps more moisture into the air. And warmer air can hold more moisture — about 7 percentmore with every degree Celsius of warming, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (which is about how much the world has warmed since preindustrial times). That means when it rains, it tends to rain more. “We’re seeing warmer temperatures and warmer oceans,” said David R. Easterling, director of the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit. “So, you have more moisture in the atmosphere that’s able to rain out in these storms.” As the planet continues to warm, he said, “we just expect that it’s going to get worse.” A Global Pattern Similar patterns can be seen worldwide: On average, global land areas have seen more precipitation since 1950. But even as much of the world has become wetter, some regions have become drier. Most of Asia has gotten wetter, driven by a rise in heavy precipitation. Average precipitation has increased in Northern and Central Europe, while the Mediterranean has gotten drier, on average, and is experiencing water scarcity. Much of Africa has gotten drier. So has eastern Australia. Extreme precipitation is also on the rise around the world. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that heavy precipitation has increased since the 1950s across most land areas with detailed weather records, a trend the report said is likely driven by human-caused global warming. This summer has seen heavy downpours wreak havoc around the world, from Germany to India and China, with floods causing many hundreds of deaths. This week, a team of scientists reported that Germany’s extreme flooding was made more likely by climate change. “Precipitation is one of the key climate variables,” said Aiguo Dai, a professor of atmospheric science at the University at Albany, SUNY. “The direct impacts from a warming temperature are important, but the indirect impact through changes in precipitation and storm intensity will be even bigger.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
At least 63 people have been confirmed dead in the Camp Fire, which erupted a week ago in the drought-parched Sierra foothills 175 miles (280 km) north of San Francisco and now ranks as one of the most lethal single U.S. wildfires since the turn of the last century. Authorities attributed the high death toll in part to the staggering speed with which the wind-driven flames, fuelled by desiccated scrub and trees, raced with little warning through Paradise, a town of 27,000. Nearly 12,000 homes and buildings, including most of the town, were incinerated last Thursday night hours after the blaze erupted, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has said. What was left was a ghostly, smoky expanse of empty lots covered in ash and strewn with twisted wreckage and debris. Thousands of additional structures were still threatened by the blaze, and as many as 50,000 people were under evacuation orders at the height of the blaze. An army of firefighters, many from distant states, laboured to contain and suppress the flames. The revised official roster of 630 individuals whose whereabouts and fate remained unknown is more than double the 297 listed earlier in the day by the Butte County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Kory Honea said nearly 300 people initially reported as unaccounted for had been found alive. He said the list of missing would keep fluctuating with names being added and others removed, either because they turn up safe or are identified among the dead. The higher confirmed death toll, and rising number of those unaccounted for, were revealed at an evening news briefing by Honea, who said the remains of seven more Camp Fire victims had been located since Wednesday's tally of 56. DNA SAMPLES The sheriff has asked relatives of the missing to submit DNA samples to hasten identification of the dead. But he acknowledged some of those unaccounted for may never be conclusively found. The Butte County disaster coincided with a flurry of smaller blazes in Southern California, including the Woolsey Fire, which has been linked with three fatalities and destroyed at least 500 structures in the mountains and foothills near the Malibu coast west of Los Angeles. The latest blazes have capped a pair of calamitous wildfire seasons in California that scientists largely attribute to prolonged drought they say is symptomatic of climate change. The cause of the fires are under investigation. But two electric utilities have said they sustained equipment problems close to the origins of the blazes around the time they were reported. The White House said on Thursday that President Donald Trump, who has been criticized as having politicized the fires by casting blame on forest mismanagement, plans to visit the fire zones on Saturday to meet displaced residents. Cal Fire said that 40 percent of the Camp Fire's perimeter had been contained, up from 35 percent, even as the blaze footprint grew 2,000 acres to 141,000 acres (57,000 hectares). Containment of the Woolsey fire grew to 57 percent. But smoke and soot spread far and wide. Public schools in Sacramento and districts 90 miles (145 km) to the south, and as far away as San Francisco and Oakland, said Friday's classes would be cancelled as the Camp Fire worsened air quality. TENT CITY Those who survived the flames but lost homes were moving in temporarily with friends or relatives or bunking down in American Red Cross shelters. At a shelter set in a church in nearby Oroville, a bulletin board was plastered with dozens of photos of missing people, along with messages and phone numbers. Church officials posted lists of names they received in phone calls from people searching for friends and family. Evacuees are asked to check the boards to see if their names appear. Many others found haven at an encampment that sprang up in the parking lot outside a still-open Walmart store in Paradise, where dozens of evacuees pitched tents or slept in their cars. Part of the lot was roped off as a distribution centre for clothes, food and coffee. Portable toilets were also brought in. Evacuees milling in the parking lot faced morning temperatures that dropped to just above freezing and many wore breathing masks for protection from lingering smoke. Nicole and Eric Montague, along with their 16-year-old daughter, showed up for free food but have been living with extended family in the neighbouring city of Chico, in a one-bedroom apartment filled with 15 people and nine dogs. They recounted being stunned at how swiftly the fire roared through Paradise the first night. "We didn’t have any time to react," Eric said. "The news didn’t even know the fire was coming. It just happened so quick." Nicole said she fled once her home's mailbox caught fire and neighbours’ propane tanks began exploding. Facing walls of flames and traffic gridlock, her evacuation with her daughter was so harrowing that she called her husband to say farewell. "I called him and said, 'Honey, I'm not going to make it. I love you," Nicole said. | 0 |
Australia's ruling Labor party is heading for a narrow election victory on Saturday, with a lead of just 2-4 percent over the conservative opposition, according to exit polls by two broadcasters. The vote, which has ended in eastern Australia but is still underway in some states, is shaping up as the closest election in decades with Australians divided on whether to give Labor a second term or opt for conservative rule, raising a real risk of a minority government unpopular with investors. An early exit poll by Sky News showed Labor on 51 percent to the opposition's 49 percent, on a two-party preferred basis, while another by Nine Network indicated a 52-48 result. "The poll says a narrow Labor win...," said John Armitage of Auspoll which conducted the exit poll. He said he could not rule out an opposition victory, given the tight margin. At stake was not only the political future of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the opposition's Tony Abbott, both new and untested leaders, but also Labor's plans for a 30 percent resource tax and a $38 billion (24 billion pounds) broadband network. From surf club polling booths along Australia's coast to dusty outback voting stations, where political banners swayed in the hot breeze, Australians stood in line to vote. But even after five weeks of campaigning, many Australians remained undecided as to whom they wanted to run their country. "I will get fined if I don't vote. I don't think it makes any difference who is in power...," said one disgruntled voter. Voting is compulsory in Australia. Financial markets were unsettled on Friday by the prospect that no major party would win enough votes to form government --- a scenario which would see the Australian dollar sold off and possibly result in policy gridlock and investment paralysis. Investors are also worried about the likelihood the Greens party will win the balance of power in the upper house Senate and stifle policy and force the next government to increase spending. The poll may be determined in marginal seats in mortgage-belt areas of Sydney and Melbourne, where there are worries over immigration, as well as in resource states of Queensland and Western Australia, where there is bitterness over the mining tax. "It will be tough. Let's just get through the day and see how the vote goes tonight," said Gillard after casting her ballot at a polling booth in a Melbourne school. Conservative leader Abbott, who cooked sausages at his local surf club in Sydney before voting, said: "This is a big day for our country, a day when we can vote out a bad government." The first polls have closed in the big, populous states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, which are expected to decide the election. Voting in other states continues with Western Australia the last to close at 11:00 a.m. British time. About 40 percent of the local share market is owned by foreign investors and one analyst has tipped a fall of 2-5 percent in the Australian dollar if a minority government is elected. Without a clear winner, the next government would have to rely on a handful of independent or Green MPs to rule. AFGHANISTAN DEATHS OVERSHADOW VOTING Abbott's Liberal-National coalition, which ruled for 12 years before Labor won the last election in 2007, has pledged to scrap Labor's three key policies: a new mine tax, fibre-optic broadband network and a future carbon price to tackle climate change. But with no dominant election theme, the election is expected to be decided on various issues in important marginal seats, mainly in the resource states of Queensland and Western Australia and the mortgage belts of Sydney and Melbourne. A uniform swing of only 1.7 percent would unseat Labor. The deaths of two Australian soldiers in Afghanistan cast a shadow over polling, with both leaders stopping to reiterate a bipartisan commitment to Afghanistan. Abbott was regarded as unelectable nine months ago when he became opposition leader and with the poll so close, the result may come down to whether voters like Gillard or Abbott better. Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, is unmarried, childless, and does not believe in God. Abbott is a former seminarian, who is now married with daughters. | 0 |
According to a study published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, a non profit research organisation, climate change that is causing more hot days is bringing down the birth rate in the US.To understand the impact of global warming on declining birth rates, the investigators estimated the effects of temperature shocks on birth rates in the US between 1931 and 2010.The innovative approach allowed for presumably random variation in the distribution of daily temperatures to affect birth rates up to 24 months into the future."We found that additional days above 27 degrees Celsius caused a large decline in birth rates approximately eight to 10 months later," the authors noted.The initial decline is followed by a partial rebound in births over the next few months, implying that populations can mitigate the fertility cost of temperature shocks by shifting conception month, the study observed.This dynamic adjustment helps explain the observed decline in birth rates during the spring and subsequent increase during the summer."The lack of a full rebound suggests that increased temperatures due to climate change may reduce population growth rates in the coming century," the authors wrote.According to lead author Alan Barreca, associate professor of economics at Louisiana-based Tulane University, he got interested in conducting the study after he started thinking about seasonal patterns in birth rates."I, like many people, was interested in why there are these peaks in birth rates -- why most of my friends tend to be born in August or September," Barreca told Mashable.com in a report.According to the study, as an added cost, climate change will shift even more births to the summer months when third trimester exposure to dangerously high temperatures increases."Based on our analysis of historical changes in the temperature-fertility relationship, we conclude air conditioning could be used to substantially offset the fertility costs of climate change," the authors concluded. | 0 |
Australia's conservative opposition moved further to the right on Tuesday, paving the way for a bruising 2010 election fought over climate change and tougher immigration and government spending. New conservative leader Tony Abbott, who last week wrestled the leadership from moderates, announced an opposition frontbench of climate change sceptics and backers of tougher immigration and labour laws. "I think the government is vulnerable," Abbott said, pointing to weekend by-elections in two conservative heartland seats that showed voters backing the opposition defeat of key emissions trade laws promised by centre-left Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. "Ordinary families are unsure of what is happening to them under this government, and the government is very vulnerable on economic management," Abbott told reporters in Canberra. In a dramatic week in Australian politics, Rudd's landmark carbon trade plan was last week rejected by parliament and the opposition dumped moderate leader Malcolm Turnbull, who was considered too close to Rudd on climate policies that have split voters. SHARPEN CHOICES The opposition elected the social conservative Abbott, a former boxer and Rhodes scholar who once studied for the priesthood, in a move political analysts said would sharpen the choice voters face at elections due by late 2010. Abbott confirmed those expectations, appointing maverick upper house senator and trenchant emissions trade opponent, Barnaby Joyce, as his finance spokesman, while naming another climate change sceptic, Nick Minchin, as his resource spokesman. Their appointments make it more unlikely that Abbott's conservatives can be swayed to back emissions laws when they are returned to the parliament in February, with their earlier rejection already giving Rudd a trigger for early elections. "The last thing we should do is go into a giant new emissions tax without a full public debate. He is the prime minister, it's his A$120 billion ($110 billion) money-go-round that needs to be explained," Abbott said. Another opposition hardliner, Eric Abetz, will take on Rudd's Labor over the relaxation of workplace laws, in a move which could draw crucial business support from the government, but polarise voters, who punished the conservatives on the issue in 2007. Moderate opponent Scott Morrison was tapped by Abbott to take on immigration, laying the ground for a battle over recent asylum boat arrivals and a possible replay of divisive 2001 elections which carried then-ruling conservatives to an unexpected victory. Abbott's reshuffle signalled a bitter coming election campaign that could unsettle both business and voters anxious for economic recovery and emissions trade certainty. Rudd and his Labor Party have led in opinion polls since he won office in late 2007, but Abbott's election is likely to lead to a short-term revival of opposition support, which would dampen speculation of an early election. | 0 |
Britain's chief scientist said on Tuesday genetically modified crops should not be shunned as agriculture sought to respond to rising food demand and climate change threatened production. "It seems to me to be insanity to throw away potential solutions of scientific problems and to practical problems that the (farming) industry have," the UK government's chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, said. Beddington told the National Farmers Union's annual conference that, however, it was vital to assess any potential harm the crops could do to the environment while downplaying concern they might damage human health. "GM produce has been eaten for the last decade or so in Brazil, the USA, China, Argentina without as far as I am aware any undue health consequences. In terms of some of the concerns that were properly raised 10 years ago, I think there has been a real move on," he said. There has been significant opposition in Britain and some other parts of Europe to genetically modified crops. Beddington said demand for food was rising, particularly in China and India, while climate change was likely to reduce agricultural production. "The demand from these two major countries as well as the rest of Asia and Africa will mean that prices for feedgrain and livestock are likely to go up," he said. "The level of Chinese consumption is extraordinary." Beddington said there had been very substantial increases in grains and oilseed prices as stocks fell. "The dropping down (in grain stocks) to somewhere below 60 days of consumption is startling," he said. He said there was real potential in biofuels but also significant concerns. "Quite clearly some biofuels are just ludicrously unsustainable and actually make things worse. One of the areas which seems to me to be just mind-blowingly dumb is to actually cut down rainforest to grow crops for biofuels," he said. "Hopefully we will be moving away quite quickly from that." He said the valuable by-products could be produced by some biofuel plants such as high protein animal feed, improving, for example, the potential for using grains to make bioethanol in Britain. "These things are not likely to be really workable unless there is some change in wheat or some change in the price of biofuels," he said. Biofuels can produce fuel from grains, vegetable oils or even waste produce such as used cooking oil. They are seen by advocates as a way to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Beddington succeeded David King as Britain's chief scientific adviser as the start of this year. | 0 |
The world may have to wait until the dying seconds of a UN climate summit in December for a global deal to channel business dollars into low-carbon energy, industry and analysts said on Wednesday. Senior executives warned progress so far in UN-led climate talks was inadequate to guarantee the future of low-carbon markets which could transform how the world gets its energy. Political posturing may delay a deal until midnight on the last day of the Dec. 7-18 talks, said the head of the UN climate panel Rajendra Pachauri -- who was nevertheless hopeful of a deal to put the world "on the right path". "The wiggle room is there even at the stroke of midnight when the conference is ending," said Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). International Energy Agency head Nobuo Tanaka was unsure of the outcome of the UN talks, which re-convene in Barcelona on Nov. 2, but said recession had given the world a head start by causing the biggest drop in carbon emissions in 40 years. "Usually, the real outcome in negotiations comes out at the last minute, so we don't know. We feel this economic crisis provides a window of opportunity," he told an IEA meeting in Paris. Business leaders said measures taken so far were inadequate to mobilise the billions of dollars needed to convert the global economy to leaner, low-carbon energy like wind and solar power. "We can't ... expect companies to invest billions and billions of dollars when we're not convinced there's going to be a market," said General Electric Co energy chief John Krenicki, adding that US renewable energy tax breaks, for example, would expire in two years. He said governments must agree in Copenhagen on carbon-cutting targets: "We don't have much right now." "DANGEROUS DIRECTION" Fulvio Conti, chief executive of Italian utility Enel SpA, said talks were "taking a dangerous direction" against business-friendly carbon markets allowing industry to offset emissions by funding carbon cuts in the developing world. The European Union is a hub of such markets and its executive Commission has said it wants developing countries to reach certain targets before qualifying for offsets. "We now face the risk of increasingly restrictive criteria," Conti told Reuters on the sidelines of the Paris conference. GE's Krenicki said businesses would fight to hold on to their patents on clean energy technologies. A major stumbling block in the UN talks has been a demand by poorer nations for access to advanced solar power and bigger wind turbines. "We're totally opposed to compulsory licensing, it'll crush innovation in the green sector," said Krenicki, who added new discoveries of vast gas reserves would enable quick wins in cutting carbon compared with high-carbon coal. Protecting marine life, from plankton to sea grasses and mangrove forests, could help offset up to 7 percent of current fossil fuel emissions, a UN report said on Wednesday -- by nurturing organisms which absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. | 0 |
Jeff Bezos, until very recently the world’s richest human, has been applying himself dutifully if a bit cautiously to the task, giving money to food banks and homeless families while pledging $10 billion of the fortune he earned through the online retailer Amazon to fight climate change. The latest richest human, Elon Musk, has taken a rather different tack. There was the public spat with the director of the World Food Programme on Twitter, for instance, announcing, “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.” There was the online poll asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares in order to pay taxes on at least part of his wealth, like most people do without running a survey first. And, of course, there is the ongoing insistence that his moneymaking efforts, running both the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX are already bettering humankind, thank you very much. Musk is practising “troll philanthropy.” That’s what Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, has called it, noting that Musk seems to be having fun with this novel approach. “He doesn’t seem to care much about using his philanthropy to curry public favour,” Soskis said. “In fact, he seems to enjoy using his identity as a philanthropist in part to antagonize the public.” Before this year, one estimate put his giving at $100 million, a lot by almost any standard, except for multibillionaires like Musk. Most wealthy people do the opposite. They use philanthropy to burnish their image or distract the public from the business practices that earned them their enormous wealth in the first place. When, how and why the ultrarich choose to give their fortunes away matters more than ever because so much money is concentrated in their hands and so little of it is taxable under current rules. Society is to some extent presently stuck relying on voluntary disbursements from those with the greatest means. “The idea that philanthropy, that any single individual, has enough money to affect something at a global scale is a very new phenomenon,” said Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Most billionaires have “accumulated their wealth because the world economy is now globalized, but to sustain a globalized world economy we need to have more inclusive growth.” There are many different kinds of givers, like Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has focused her billions on diversity and equity. There are the self-declared “effective altruists,” like the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, part of a movement searching for evidence-based approaches to find causes where their money does the most good. And there are the traditionalists, like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who have built institutions to handle their funding. Musk and Bezos are, with $268 billion and $202 billion respectively, the two richest Americans for the time being, drawing sharper contrasts between their approaches to giving back. Earlier this year, Bezos took the stage with United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina J Mohammed and listened as former US Secretary of State John Kerry sang his praises, saying, “He is stepping up in a way that an awful lot of people who have the wherewithal do not step up.” Musk, meanwhile, replied to a tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders demanding “that the extremely wealthy pay their share,” by replying, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.” Musk’s nontraditional approach to giving doesn’t stop people who need his donations, like David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, from seeking his help. “The resources at his disposal are so vast and potentially consequential that we have to engage him, and accept some of that trolling, if we want to try to exert some pressure on him and shape his somewhat inchoate philanthropic priorities,” Soskis said. Musk did not respond to an email asking him to discuss his philanthropic giving. The notion that rich people have a moral obligation to give is an ancient one. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy, notes that wealthy citizens in ancient Rome tried to outdo one another paying for public baths and theatres. The inscriptions on those edifices could count as a form of early donor lists. The idea that the richest might need charity to improve their public relations is also longstanding, driven home in the Gilded Age by the 1882 outburst by railway magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, “The public be damned!” that shadowed him to the end of his days. Efforts to track the charitable giving of the very wealthy in the United States date to the late 19th century, when the ranks of millionaires exploded. Before long, newspapers were running front-page lists of who had made the biggest gifts. The original duo to capture public attention were John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, whose feelings on publicizing philanthropy were diametrically opposed. Cartoons from the era showed Carnegie, often dressed in a kilt to reference his Scottish origin, showering coins from enormous bags of money. “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie wrote in “The Gospel of Wealth,” his treatise on giving. Rockefeller preferred to keep his giving more private and had to be convinced to announce his gifts. To those who think the trolling started on Twitter, philanthropy was never quite as polite as we imagine today. George Eastman, one of the founders of Eastman-Kodak, called those who did not give their money away during their lifetimes “pie-faced mutts.” Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and a major philanthropist in his day, insisted that the accumulation of wealth had nothing to do with smarts, adding, “Some very rich men who made their own fortunes have been among the stupidest men I have ever met in my life.” But the idea that giving helps the reputation is at best only partially true. Givers are celebrated at times but just as often the higher profile means their motives and choices are picked apart. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $120 billion, per Forbes, but none of them receives the level of scrutiny that Gates does, for instance. “If you put your head above the philanthropic parapet and say, ‘I’m interested in the environment,’ or whatever cause area, people can start to question it,” said Beth Breeze, author of the recent book “In Defence of Philanthropy.” Breeze has pushed back against the recent trend of criticizing philanthropists, who, she says, are regularly described as “tax dodging, egotistical, irritating” — criticism they may earn, but not comments that she views as useful to the greater good. “My concern is not for the thin skins of the rich people. They can take care of themselves. My concern is if the money dries up,” said Breeze, who was a fundraiser for a youth homeless centre before becoming an academic and identifies as a left-wing Labour Party supporter in Britain. A troll philanthropist might be an easy target for criticism. But donating money in all the usual ways is no break from critical rebukes. There are several different schools of criticism deployed for different kinds of givers. There is the structural argument that philanthropy serves as another means of using wealth to cement power and influence. Large grants are often compared with the giver’s total net worth to show that as a percentage of their wealth the gifts are much smaller than they appear in absolute terms. Gifts to cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ivy League schools are now regularly assailed for reinforcing the status quo. Even gifts to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after it caught fire earned significant blowback. Technocratic institutions that set exacting benchmarks for gifts and place strict limits on how their money can be spent are tagged as controlling and hierarchical. In contrast, general operating support without guidance on how the money can be used has been applauded by many lately as the best approach. Bezos was named by the Chronicle of Philanthropy this past February to the top spot on its 2020 “Philanthropy 50” list, even though most of that was for his $10 billion pledge to his own Bezos Earth Fund, which had barely gotten up and running. It was a bit like Barack Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his presidency in the way that it seemed to sharpen critiques rather than dull them. But after a slow start to his giving, Bezos has begun to look like the good pupil. He gave $100 million to the Feeding America food bank network and another $100 million to Obama’s presidential center. The money has been flowing more quickly out of the Bezos Earth Fund as well. Just this past week he announced another 44 grants worth a total of $443 million to groups working on issues including climate justice and conservation, part of that $10 billion pledge. “You need to have a pretty sharp pencil of analysis in order to allocate funds well,” said Andrew Steer, president of the Bezos Earth Fund, in an interview. Musk himself started out with what seemed like a somewhat conventional approach to giving. He created the Musk Foundation in 2002 and signed the nonbinding Giving Pledge to give away half his wealth in 2012. (The Musk Foundation website could, itself, be considered a bit of a troll, with its 33 words in black text on a white background.) For the fiscal year ending June 2020, the Musk Foundation made donations of a little less than $3 million to nine groups, mostly related to education, and gave $20 million to Fidelity Charitable, which operates the kind of donor-advised funds that critics say can function as a parking lot for charitable dollars. That was out of nearly $1 billion available in the Musk Foundation coffers by the end of the fiscal year. Since then he has announced $150 million in gifts, including a $100 million innovation prize for carbon removal and $30 million to nonprofits in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those may have been at least as much about a legal requirement as a newfound sense of munificence. Tax laws require private foundations to pay out roughly 5% of their endowments annually. “The particular barrier for donors from a tech background is they don’t just think their genius has made them good at what they do, they also think what they do commercially also makes society better,” said Rhodri Davies, a philanthropy commentator who wrote a piece on Musk called “The Edgelord Giveth.” Musk, for instance, has said that getting humankind to Mars through SpaceX is an important contribution and has written and spoken acerbically about what he calls “anti-billionaire BS,” including attempts to target taxes at billionaires. “It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government,” Musk said Monday at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, Kharas said a more charitable reading of Musk’s exchange with the World Food Programme is possible. He could just genuinely want to know how the money will be spent and is putting in public, on Twitter, the due diligence work that institutional giving does behind closed doors. “I think this idea that he was willing to engage was really good,” Kharas of the Brookings Institution said of Musk. “I think his response was extremely sensible. It was basically, ‘Show me what you can do. Demonstrate it. Provide me with some evidence. I’ll do it.’” The WFP published a breakdown of how they would spend the $6.6 billion, but there’s no word yet on whether Musk will make a donation. MacKenzie Scott’s latest letter about her giving included a lot of philosophical musings most billionaires do not routinely share. But she left out precisely the details everyone was waiting for — how many billion dollars went to which groups? Instead she said, stop paying so much attention to billionaires and think about what you can give. In a winking gesture to everyone waiting for the latest cash tally, she wrote the whole thing without using a single dollar sign. Classic troll move. ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
In the Italian version of the 192-page document, posted on Monday by the weekly magazine l'Espresso, the pope again backs scientists who say global warming is mostly man-made and that developed countries have a particular responsibility to stem a trend that will hurt the poor the most. That position has been contested by conservatives, particularly in the United States, who have excoriated the first pontiff from Latin America for deploying scientific arguments. The Vatican condemned the leak but did not deny the document's authenticity. It later informed veteran journalist Sandro Magister that his media credentials within the Holy See were being suspended indefinitely because the leak had caused "great turmoil". A spokesman said the final version would remain under embargo until its scheduled release on Thursday. Still, Italy's major newspapers published pages of excerpts in their Tuesday editions. "If the current trend continues, this century could see unheard-of climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with grave consequences for all of us," Francis writes, according to the leaked version. By making environmental protection a moral imperative, Francis' intervention could spur the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues. The pope has said he wants the document, called "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home", to be part of the debate at a major UN summit on climate change this year in Paris. He said on Sunday the document was addressed to all people, regardless of religion. According to the leaked excerpts from the pope's six-chapter document, destined to become a signature document of his papacy, Francis speaks of "symptoms of a breaking point caused by the great speed of change and degradation". It was not clear how advanced in the writing process the leaked document was nor how similar it would be to the final version. The leaked document bore the pope's signature in Latin. ‘Immense garbage dump’ It confirmed what people familiar with the final version told Reuters last week about how the document addresses climate change and the man-made causes of global warming. "The Earth, our home, increasingly seems to be transforming itself into an immense garbage dump," the pope writes. He confronts climate change deniers head-on, saying there is a "very consistent scientific consensus that we are experiencing a worrying warming of the climactic system". While acknowledging there are other factors, he says numerous studies have shown that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases emitted mainly because of human activities. The encyclical urges rich nations to re-examine their "throw-away" lifestyle, an appeal Francis has made often since his election in 2013. "Enormous consumption in some rich countries has repercussions in some of the poorest places on Earth," he says, according to the leaked draft. The pope calls for a reduction in carbon emissions, an increase in policies that favour renewable energy and warns of the long-term effects of continuing to use fossil fuels as the main source of global energy. He also rejects suggestions that population control would solve the environmental crisis, saying one of the main causes is "extreme consumerism". | 0 |
Scientists made an impassioned appeal to governments and businesses worldwide to confront "vested interests" they said were blocking reforms in farming, energy and mining needed to save the Earth's ecosystems. "If we want to leave a world for our children and grandchildren that has not been destroyed by human activity, we need to act now," said Robert Watson, who chaired the study, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which groups 130 countries, including the United States, Russia and China. "If we do not act now, many of the million threatened species will become as extinct as the dodo on this tie," Watson told a news conference in Paris, gesturing to his tie, which bore a design of the flightless bird. Known as the Global Assessment, the report found that up to one million of Earth's estimated eight million plant, insect and animal species is at risk of extinction, many within decades. It identified industrial farming and fishing as major drivers of the crisis, with the current rate of species extinction tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the last 10 million years. Climate change caused by burning the coal, oil and gas produced by the fossil fuel industry is exacerbating the losses, the report found.
A man snorkels in an area called the "Coral Gardens" near Lady Elliot Island, on the Great Barrier Reef, northeast of Bundaberg town in Queensland, Australia, Jun 11, 2015. REUTERS
"We are facing a human extinction crisis," said Hoda Baraka of 350.org, a climate change campaign group based in the United States. "We must work together to push back against the fossil fuel industry fuelling the climate crisis and for long-lasting and meaningful change." A man snorkels in an area called the "Coral Gardens" near Lady Elliot Island, on the Great Barrier Reef, northeast of Bundaberg town in Queensland, Australia, Jun 11, 2015. REUTERS INTENSE NEGOTIATIONS The largest, most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the conjoined fates of human wellbeing and the natural world, the report was finalised in Paris after intense negotiations between IPBES members that concluded at 0300 am on Saturday. The report represents a cornerstone of an emerging body of research that suggests the world may need to embrace a new "post-growth" form of economics if it is to avert the existential risks posed by the cascading effects of pollution, habitat destruction and climate change. Compiled over three years and based on 15,000 scientific papers, the report identified a range of risks, from the disappearance of insects vital for pollinating food crops, to the destruction of coral reefs that support fish populations and the loss of medicinal plants. The threatened list includes more than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef-forming corals, sharks and shark relatives, and more than a third of all marine mammals. The picture was less clear for insect species, but a tentative estimate suggests 10 per cent could become extinct. Publication of the report has coincided with an upsurge in environmental activism by groups including Extinction Rebellion, whose civil disobedience campaign forced the British parliament this month to declare a climate emergency. The report's blunt language echoed the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said in October that profound economic and social changes would be needed to curb greenhouse gases quickly enough to avert the most devastating consequences of a warming world. The findings will also add to pressure for countries to agree bold action to protect wildlife at a major conference on biodiversity due to take place in China towards the end of next year, reinforcing a growing recognition among policy-makers that the extinction and climate crises are deeply interconnected. "We have reconfigured dramatically the life of the planet," said Eduardo Brondizio, a professor of anthropology at Indiana University in the United States who co-chaired the report. "The key message: business as usual has to end." | 0 |
GENEVA, Dec 8, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Climate change stands to drive as many as one billion people from their homes over the next four decades, the International Organisation for Migration said in a study on Tuesday. The IOM report, launched on the second day of international climate talks in Copenhagen, estimated 20 million people were made homeless last year by sudden-onset environmental disasters that are set to amplify as global warming increases. But it found that few of the "climate refugees" are able to leave their countries, lacking the means and the ability to travel to wealthier places. Instead, the report found the displaced people were moving in droves to already-crowded cities -- putting extra pressure on the poorer countries at highest risk from environmental stress and degradation associated with climatic shifts. "Aside from the immediate flight in the face of disaster, migration may not be an option for the poorest and most vulnerable groups," it said. "In general, countries expect to manage environmental migration internally, with the exception of small island states that in some cases have already led to islands disappearing under water, forcing international migration." The IOM cited a wide range of projections for numbers of people likely to be displaced. "Estimates have suggested that between 25 million to 1 billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years," the report said. However, it noted that the lowest projection was dated. The number of natural disasters has more than doubled in the past 20 years, and the IOM said desertification, water pollution and other strains would make even more of the planet uninhabitable as greenhouse gases keep building up. "Further climate change, with global temperatures expected to rise between 2 and 5 degrees centigrade by the end of this century, could have a major impact on the movement of people," the report supported by the Rockefeller Foundation said. It also identified "future hotspots" where large numbers of people are expected to flee as a result of environmental and climate pressures. These include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, most of central America, and parts of west Africa and southeast Asia. The IOM conclusions compound concerns expressed this week by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who said half of the world's refugees are now living in cities where xenophobic tensions are on the rise. Guterres warned that cities such as Kabul, Bogota, Abidjan and Damascus were struggling to absorb the new arrivals who have driven up costs of food and accommodation and made it harder for local people to scrape by. The resultant pressure "can create tensions between local and refugee populations, and in worst cases, can fuel xenophobia with catastrophic results", he said. | 0 |
A decade ago, a week's work painting could bring in 6,000 rupees ($84), the 43-year-old said. But over the last five years, increasingly blistering summer temperatures in his home state of Odisha mean working all day is no longer possible, even if he starts at 7 am to get a jump on the heat. "Today my weekly earnings have fallen to just 2,500 rupees($35), a measly 350 rupees ($5) a day. How can a family survive on this?" asked Sahoo, the father of two boys. As climate change brings ever-more-wilting heat in some of the world's already hot spots, the future for outdoor workers like Sahoo may be bleak, scientists say. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at current rates, by 2100 Odisha will get as many as 48 extremely hot days every year, up from only 1.5 such days in 2010, warned the Climate Impact Lab (CIL), a nonprofit consortium of scientists, in a report released this month. The study's researchers classified a day as extremely hot if the outside temperature reaches above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). The report, on heat deaths in India, was conducted in collaboration with the Tata Centre for Development at the University of Chicago and examined the human and economic costs of climate change and weather shocks in India. "Weather and climate shape India's economy and society," said Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and one of the authors of the study. "Temperature and precipitation affect diverse outcomes such as human health, labour productivity, agricultural yields, crime, and conflict," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via email. 'KILLING EFFECT' The study projected that average summer temperatures in Odisha will go from about 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) in 2010 to over 32 degrees Celsius (89 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. That would give Odisha the biggest jump in extremely hot days of all of India's 29 states. The national average increase will be from 24 degrees Celsius to about 28 degrees, researchers said. Meteorologists point to the state's location, its geographical features - such as its 480-km-long (290-mile-long) coastline - and the rise of concrete buildings and asphalt roads in its towns as reasons it can become particularly hot and humid. As temperatures soar, the study said, Odisha's economy will suffer as people find it increasingly difficult to work. No one has yet calculated what rising heat might do to the state's productivity, Jina said. The Climate Impact Lab plans to provide those projections in a later study. But a report released by the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO) in July predicted that, by 2030, India as a whole could lose nearly 6% of working hours to heat stress. That would be the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs, the ILO said. Extreme heat also can be deadly, health experts warn. Ambarish Dutta, an Odisha expert at the Indian Institute of Public Health in the state's capital Bhubaneswar, said in Odisha the "killing effect" kicks in when the ambient temperature reaches over 36.5 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit). In the decade up to 2017, a total of 630 people died as a result of heat waves in Odisha, a state where nearly three-quarters of the working population is in the informal labour sector, most of them working outdoors, according to government data. But by the end of the century, the heat-related death toll could reach as high as 42,000 per year in Odisha, the CIL study predicted. Income inequality is partly to blame for the state's vulnerability to the rising heat, said Jina, the environmental economist. On average, a person in India starts investing heavily in cooling technologies such as air-conditioning once they make at least 983,000 rupees ($13,700) a year, noted another Tata Centre for Development study published last month. Government data shows that in Odisha the annual per capita income is much lower, at 75,800 rupees (just over $1,000), putting air conditioning out of reach for most people. "The capacity to adapt better is proportional to higher incomes," Jina said. Only with more money can people buy air conditioning and make changes to their homes that "may offer better protection", he said. THE COST OF HEAT There is still time to stop rising heat from destroying lives and livelihoods in Odisha, environment and development experts said. Dutta, of the public health institute, said the government should more strictly enforce existing regulations that prohibit employers making outdoor labourers work during the hottest part of the day. The law also obliges employers to provide water, shade and head coverings to protect workers from the heat. Pradeep Kumar Nayak, chief general manager of the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, said the state needs to seriously examine the impact of extreme heat on self-employed people's livelihoods and on economic productivity and state GDP. "Those who lose most are those with subsistence earnings," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone. For Sahoo, losses are already adding up. In 2017, the painter was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, which he attributes to years of working in intensely hot weather. He said he had often pushed his body to its limits to get work done, becoming dehydrated because he worried that taking water breaks would put him further behind schedule. His wife left him when he was diagnosed, "because, perhaps, she believed I would not survive", he said. Sahoo is now in remission but has been left too weak to work more than 15 days a month. He can no longer tolerate the heat so only takes interior painting jobs. "The changing weather has unravelled my life," he said. | 0 |
The heat has been not only widespread, but also intense, in some places surpassing records by double digits. In Vancouver, British Columbia, this past weekend’s temperatures were far above norms for this time of year, and a town in British Columbia reached nearly 116 degrees, the highest recorded temperature for any place in Canada in its history. In Seattle, there have been only two other days in the last 50 years with temperatures in the triple digits: in 2009 and 1994. The heat has resulted from a wide and deep mass of high-pressure air that, because of a wavy jet stream, parked itself over much of the region. Also known as a heat dome, such an enormous high-pressure zone acts like a lid on a pot, trapping heat so that it accumulates. And with the West suffering through drought, there’s been plenty of heat to trap. In Seattle, Portland and other areas west of the Cascades, hot air blowing from the east was further warmed as it descended the mountains, raising temperatures even more. Climate is naturally variable, so periods of high heat are to be expected. But in this episode scientists see the fingerprints of climate change, brought on by human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Karin Bumbaco, Washington’s assistant state climatologist, said that any definitive climate-change link could be demonstrated only by a type of analysis called an attribution study. “But it’s a safe assumption, in my view, to blame increasing greenhouse gases for at least some portion of this event,” she said. On a global average, the world has warmed about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. “When you have that warmer baseline, when you do get these extreme events it’s just going to get that much warmer,” she said. This heat wave is also unusual because it occurred earlier than most. Those two previous triple-digits days in Seattle, for example, happened in late July, about 30 days later. This one occurred just a few days after the summer solstice, which may have contributed to the extreme conditions. “The days are longer, and we’re not getting that cool-off at night,” she said. Extreme temperatures are getting more common Climate change is also making episodes of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense, said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. In Seattle and Portland, days with temperatures that are well above historical averages have increased, particularly starting in the 2010s. “We can say extreme weather is happening more as climate changes, and will continue to happen more,” she said. “This heat wave is extraordinary, but this in a sense is not likely to be the last.” Heat waves eventually end, and for the coastal cities what’s called a “marine push,” when cooler air blows in from the Pacific, is already moderating temperatures. For inland areas, however, the high heat will remain. Eastern Washington might exceed 118 degrees Tuesday, Bumbaco said, which would set a record for the state. And temperatures are still expected to be quite high for the next two or three weeks, she said — not 30 or 40 degrees higher than normal, but 10 to 15. “That might actually have more implications for our agriculture and potential wildfires,” she said. The heat wave won’t be as extreme, she said, “but it’s going to last longer.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
"India irrigates its deserts and dumps extra water on Pakistan without any warning," the bearded Saeed told Reuters, as he surveyed a vast expanse of muddy water from a rescue boat just outside the central city of Multan. "If we don't stop India now, Pakistan will continue to face this danger." His comments will surprise few in India, where Saeed is suspected of helping mastermind the 2008 Mumbai massacre which killed 166 people, a few of them Americans. Saeed, who also has a $10 million US bounty on his head, denies involvement. But his presence in the flood-hit area is part of a push by Pakistani Islamists, militants and organisations linked to them to fill the vacuum left by struggling local authorities and turn people against a neighbour long viewed with deep mistrust. Water is an emotive issue in Pakistan, whose rapidly rising population depends on snow-fed Himalayan rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture. Many Pakistanis believe that rival India uses its upstream dams to manipulate how much water flows down to Pakistani wheat and cotton fields, with some describing it as a "water bomb" designed to weaken its neighbour. There is no evidence to prove that, and India has long dismissed such accusations as nonsense. Experts say this month's floods, which also hit India's part of the disputed Kashmir region, were caused by the sheer volume of rainfall. In fact, some Pakistanis accuse their own government of failing to invest in dams and other infrastructure needed to regulate water levels through wet and dry seasons. But others agree with the narrative pushed by Saeed and Syed Salahuddin, head of the militant anti-Indian Hizbul Mujahideen group and also one of India's most wanted men. "India wants to turn Pakistan into an arid desert," Salahuddin told Reuters in a telephone interview, describing another scenario feared by some Pakistanis - that India will cut off supplies of water in times of shortage. "If this continues, a new Jihad will begin. Our fighters and all of Pakistan's fighters are ready to avenge Indian brutality in whatever form." CHARITY BRINGS FOOD, IDEOLOGY Saeed's charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has sent hundreds of workers to areas of Pakistan worst affected by the floods, where they distribute food and medicine at the same time as spreading the organisation's hardline ideology against India. JuD is believed by many experts to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group which India says carried out the Mumbai attack. Saeed was a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, but he has played down his links to the group in recent years. "This is a premeditated plan by India to make Pakistan suffer," Abdur Rauf, who has worked as a JuD volunteer for 16 years, told Reuters, as he prepared to distribute medicine and syringes at a relief camp near Multan. "Don't be fooled. This water bomb is no different from the atom bomb. It's worse." Officials in India's water resources ministry this week declined to respond to charges of "water terrorism", saying they were being stoked by militants, not the Pakistani government. Much of the Indian-held side of Kashmir has also been hit by flooding, the worst in that region for more than a century, and officials have put the death toll there at more than 200.
However, in a country rife with conspiracy theories, large numbers of Pakistanis buy into the idea of sabotage. "This is not a mistake: this is a deliberate act to destroy Pakistan and make its people suffer," said Syed Ali, a farmer, as he looked forlornly at the murky waters covering his village of Sher Shah in central Pakistan. Disagreement over how to share the waters of the Indus river, which flows from India into Pakistan, has dogged the nuclear-armed rivals since independence in 1947. The neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir and observers are worried that the next conflict could be over water. CLAIMS ARE "DOWNRIGHT ABSURD" The lives of more than two million people were affected by this month's floods in Pakistan, and more than 300 were killed. Some are critical of their own government, saying the mass devastation caused by the latest floods was a result of Pakistan's own inefficiencies. "Some people will say India released the waters," Yousaf Raza Gillani, a former Pakistani prime minister, told Reuters. "But my question is: even if there was a timely warning from India that this was about to happen, would we have heeded it? Would this government have taken the right steps? I doubt it." Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the United States and now a director at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., said that water issues are being exploited to keep relations between the two countries tense. "The Pakistani militants' claims about floods in Pakistan being the result of India releasing torrents of water are downright absurd," he said. "It is part of propaganda rooted in the belief that Pakistanis must be made to see India as their permanent enemy. Blaming India also covers up for Pakistan's own failure in water management." CLIMATE CHANGE Disputes over water-sharing are a global phenomenon, stoked by rapidly growing populations and increasingly unpredictable climate patterns. In South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity, the problem is particularly acute. "Regional flooding in South Asia is certainly linked to climate change effects. In recent years there has been major glacial recession on Pakistani mountains, and monsoon rains have been unusually and even unprecedentedly intense," said Michael Kugelman at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. "At the same time, I’d argue that ... human-made actions are making things even worse. Deforestation in Pakistan, for example, has caused floodwaters to rage even more," he said. The region's three major rivers - the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra - sustain both countries' breadbasket states and many of their major cities, including New Delhi and Islamabad. In Pakistan, agriculture contributes to about a quarter of its gross domestic product, and the country still relies on a network of irrigation canals built by the British. Hoping to resolve the issue once and for all, the two countries signed the Indus Water Treaty in 1960, but India's ambitious irrigation plans and construction of thousands of upstream dams continued to irk Pakistan. India says its use of upstream water is strictly in line with the 1960 agreement. According to a 2012 Indian government report, the country operates 4,846 dams in the region - a huge number compared with just a few dozen on the Pakistani side of the disputed border. "We can't blame India for our own mistakes," said Malik Abdul Ghaffar Dogar, the ruling party lawmaker from Multan. "We turn every dam project into a political deadlock and a stick to beat our political opponents with, but the truth is this country needs dams and it's just not building any." | 0 |
When Seema Shrikhande goes to work, she drives. When she takes her son to school, they drive. And when she goes shopping, to the bank or to visit friends, she gets into her car, buckles up and hits the road. Driving is a way of life for Americans but researchers say the national habit of driving everywhere is bad for health. The more you drive, the less you walk. Walking provides exercise without really trying. Ideally, people should take 10,000 steps a day to maintain wellness, according to James Hill, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado. But for those who only walk from their home to the car and from their car to an office and back again, that figure can sink to only 1,000 steps. A car culture forces people to make time to exercise and driving long distances reduces the time available to work out. "If it (Atlanta) was a city where I walked more I would automatically get a lot of the exercise I need. Now I have to ... schedule it into my life. Sometimes it's very difficult because I'm busy," said Shrikhande, a professor of communications at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. Obesity and heart disease are two of many problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Car dependence makes it harder to get the 75 minutes of intense weekly exercise or the 150 minutes of moderate exercise the government recommends, said Dr. Dianna Densmore of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia has even quantified the link between the distance people drive each day and their body weight. "Every additional 30 minutes spent in a car each day translates into a 3 percent greater chance of being obese," he said. "People who live in neighborhoods with a mix of shops and businesses within easy walking distance are 7 percent less likely to be obese." READJUSTING THE BALANCE Older cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago contain neighborhoods built around a grid of densely populated streets and tend to have more public transport. But fast-growing newer cities like Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix are surrounded by sprawling suburbs that can only be navigated behind the wheel, not least because fiercely hot summers limit the attraction of walking. Shrikhande said that as a student in Philadelphia she didn't own a car and walked a lot but in Atlanta car reliance was a small price to pay for a lifestyle whose benefits include better weather and living in a leafy suburb. Health is just one factor that has caused town planners to seek alternatives to driving-only towns. High gas prices, a desire for more tightly knit communities and environmental concerns also play a role. Atlanta is seeing a rise in inward migration as people move back into neighborhoods around the city center. But the question of how to readjust the balance away from car dependence and toward sidewalks, cycle lanes and denser communities is intensely political. Groups worried about climate change and others promoting a healthier lifestyle are lobbying for a new federal transport bill that shifts policy toward alternatives to car use. "We have designed cities to suppress walking," said David Goldberg of Smart Growth America, a coalition of nonprofit groups that works to improve town and city planning. "It's much easier to widen highways in an ... exurb than to get money to retrofit an over-wide highway for non-driver.." In a country where the car is a symbol of freedom, efforts to promote alternatives are caricatured as social engineering or a bid to undermine the country's spirit by powerful lobbies representing the transportation and construction industries. Even so, efforts are underway. In Atlanta, local governments have devised strategies to promote urban living, said Dan Reuter of the Atlanta Regional Commission. The city is also exploring building light rail to connect northern suburbs with the center and has embarked on a project to link a disused "Beltline" tram loop around the city center with parks, communities and business, he said. "A CULTURAL THING" In interviews, commuters reflected on the impact of spending hours each week in their cars. "It's a total drain on my children," said Krystal Barrett, who drives her two sons to school each morning across Atlanta's northern suburbs -- a 45 minute journey on a good day. Barrett and her husband want to move closer to work, school and church. Meanwhile, she often breaks the long journey home to let her two mall boys burn off energy at a playground. But other commuters said they drove out of habit so ingrained it became a state of mind. Francis Charfauros, a coffee shop manager in Scottsdale, Arizona, said he would drive to work at his previous job even though it was just a few yards away. "I don't know why," he said. "It's a cultural thing." | 0 |
Modi initially sent his congratulations to Biden in a social media message soon after US television networks projected him to be the winner of the Nov. 3 election even though President Donald Trump has refused to concede defeat. Modi followed that up with a phone call to congratulate Biden and reaffirm his commitment to a strategic partnership between the two big democracies, Modi said on Twitter late on Tuesday. "Prime Minister Modi warmly congratulated President-elect Biden on his election, describing it as a testament to the strength and resilience of democratic traditions in the United States," the Indian foreign ministry said. Modi had built close ties with Trump. The two leaders held a joint rally in the US city of Houston last year and again in Modi's home state of Gujarat this year, during a visit to India by Trump. Modi's critics said the prime minister had come dangerously close to endorsing Trump's candidature, which they said could hurt India's prospects under a Democratic administration. India and the United States drew closer during Trump's presidency as both countries aimed to counter China's expanding military and economic influence in the region. During the telephone call, Modi also extended his best wishes to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant whose election to the second highest public office in the United States has been cheered in India. The two leaders also discussed their priorities, including containing the novel coronavirus pandemic, promoting access to affordable vaccines and tackling climate change, the foreign ministry said. | 0 |
China must swiftly decouple its rapid economic growth from rising carbon dioxide emissions for global greenhouse gas levels to stay manageable, the authors of a new study said, urging sweeping support to help that transition. The study from Britain's Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research by Tao Wang and Jim Watson finds China can transform into a "low-carbon economy" with the right mix of clean energy, carbon storage technology and development policies. But at the release of the report to officials and experts in Beijing on Wednesday, Wang said the task of turning the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter into a green economy will be difficult, even in the easier scenarios. And it would require big commitments of technology and funding from wealthy countries. "It's very crucial to slow the growth as early as possible and to reach a peak as early as possible," Wang, a researcher at the University of Sussex, told the meeting. "It's vital for China to have the technical and financial assistance to make the fast transition which is necessary," he told Reuters in a separate interview. Wang and Watson said their study suggested China's CO2 output should peak between 2020 and 2030, because keeping accumulated emissions within tolerable levels would be increasingly difficult if output keeps growing beyond then. "What we're not saying is that China should take on a target now," Watson, a researcher at the Tyndall Center, told Reuters. But, he added, "slowing the trajectory from the steep rise it's been on is needed, whatever future you conceive of." Their study can be found on the Centre's website (www.tyndall.ac.uk). LESS AMBITIOUS Chinese climate change policy officials and experts are developing the government's position for negotiations aiming to agree the outlines of a new pact on fighting global warming by the end of the year. China is mankind's biggest source of CO2, the main greenhouse gas. On a per-capita basis, China's 1.3 billion people produce about 4 tons of greenhouse gases, compared with the U.S. average of about 20 tons per person. The Tyndall study will add to debate here and abroad about how China can balance hopes for prosperity with efforts to contain greenhouse gases from industry, vehicles, farming and land clearance. China produces about 80 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power stations and is also the world's largest producer of power from coal. The Chinese government is exploring pathways to a low-carbon economy, but the emissions growth reductions envisaged by Chinese studies are less ambitious than those Wang and Watson examine. "How low is low?," Lu Xuedu, a Chinese environment policy official said at the release of the report, speaking of a low-carbon economy. "To do this well, and not treat it as a mere slogan, will not be easy." Wang and Watson take the total "budget" of CO2 emissions throughout this century that a UN scientific panel concluded was likely to keep average global temperature rises 1.9 to 4.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. They then tested how China might be able to grow while staying within the "carbon budget" it could receive in an international apportionment of emissions. Of global CO2 emissions throughout this century equal to 490 gigatonnes of pure carbon, China may potentially get to emit 70 to 111 gigatonnes, they wrote. Emissions are also often estimated in tons of CO2, which weighs 3.67 times as much as pure carbon. China can stay within carbon bounds and keep growing if it adopts sweeping measures to divert energy generation away from dirty coal to clean sources, and puts increasingly wealthy consumers on a path to less carbon-intensive homes and transport, said Wang and Watson. Under various energy and development settings, China's economy could expand to between 8 and 13 times its current size by 2050 while sticking within the emissions budget, they found. But while China's massive market might help speed the spread of wind and solar power, other bigger technological challenges such as mastering carbon capture and storage would be expensive, and wealthy nations should pitch to help, said Watson. Such trade-offs will be at the heart of the global climate negotiations culminating in Copenhagen in December. "They would not be signing up to just a number," Watson said of China. "They'd be signing up to a huge set of infrastructural changes, behavioral changes, institutional changes." | 0 |
Over more than 35% of North America, Europe and East Asia, the chance of record-breaking rainfall will increase by more than threefold. And this will happen even if the world’s nations honour the commitments they have already made to contain global warming by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. That would result in an average rise in global temperatures of between 2°C and 3°C by 2100. If the 195 nations that signed a climate accord in Paris in 2015 actually honour their collective vow to contain planetary average warming to about 1.5°C above historic averages, there will still be record-breaking temperatures and more intense extremes of wet and dry – but over a smaller proportion of the globe, according to a new study. That is, a difference of even 1°C in outcome means a huge difference in impact across the planet. The study confirms once again, with a different methodology, that action planned now to meet the Paris targets is not enough: nations must do more. Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University in California and colleagues report in the journal Science Advances that they took a statistical framework already tested on drought in California and floods in northern India and applied it to the entire planet to see what difference global action might make. The point of such research is to prepare national and civic authorities for extremes to come, and Professor Diffenbaugh and his fellow researchers have already used their statistical approach to connect human-induced global warming with drought in California, and changes in monsoon rainfall in Asia.
A street in Dhaka's Mohammadpur is overrun with excess rainwater as heavy showers continue under the influence of a depression in Bay of Bengal. Photo: md asaduzzaman pramanik
Conflict link A street in Dhaka's Mohammadpur is overrun with excess rainwater as heavy showers continue under the influence of a depression in Bay of Bengal. Photo: md asaduzzaman pramanik They have also applied mathematical techniques to connect climate change to the greater likelihood of conflict and violence. The scientists warn that their methodology is conservative, and based not just on sophisticated computer simulations of climate, but also direct observations of climate extremes of temperature, drought and flood. “Damages from extreme weather and climate events have been increasing, and 2017 was the costliest year on record. These rising costs are one of many signs that we are not prepared for today’s climate, let alone for another degree of global warming,” said Professor Diffenbaugh. “But the good news is we don’t have to wait to play catch-up. Instead we can use this kind of research to make decisions that both build resilience now and help us be prepared for the climate that we will face in the future.” | 0 |
The private sector must be encouraged to help developing countries combat climate change now, before it becomes too severe to handle, the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said. Kemal Dervis said that while public transfers in form of official development assistance should be used to assist in "adaptation", or protection against potential catastrophes, the private sector should help finance long-term solutions. "The shared mitigation costs will have to go through market mechanisms and will have to involve very strongly the private sector," he said on Thursday evening after giving a lecture on climate change. "If there is no mitigation....then the impact on developing countries 20-30 years from now will become much more severe and the adaptation needs, climate proofing, building dams against floods, changing agricultural crops...will become huge and impossible to handle." Developing countries such as India and China are already trying to reduce their carbon emissions, mainly to save on energy, but have baulked at doing more without technological and financial help from Europe, Japan and the United States. Dervis also said that while the private sector involvement could come from the developing countries themselves, it should be supported by international financing mechanisms. "We must build incentives that if you come up with a technology that does reduce emissions, you profit from it," he said, adding that by doing so rich countries would win as well. "If rich country companies can get some of the emission reductions indirectly by investing in poor countries, you have a solution whereby they continue to produce more profitably at home, but also lead towards cleaner energy work." | 0 |
TOKYO Fri Nov 13, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama arrives in Tokyo on Friday for a summit where the two allies will seek to put strained security ties on firmer footing as they adjust to a rising China set to overtake Japan as the world's No. 2 economy. Tokyo is the first stop in a nine-day Asian tour that will take Obama to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific summit, to China for talks on climate change and huge trade imbalances and to South Korea where Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions will be in focus. Washington's relations with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's new government, which has pledged to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on its long-time ally and forge closer ties with Asia, have been frayed by a feud over a US military base. Obama and Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party ousted its long-dominant rival in a historic August election, were expected to turn down the heat in the dispute over the US Marines' Futenma air base on Japan's southern Okinawa island, a key part of a realignment of the 47,000 US troops in Japan. "I want to make this a summit that shows the importance of Japan-US relations in a global context," Hatoyama told reporters on Friday morning ahead of Obama's arrival. But assuaging anxiety and beginning to define a new direction for the five-decade-old alliance will be a difficult task. No breakthroughs were likely in the feud over Futenma during Obama's visit, although Hatoyama said on Thursday he would tell the U.S. leader that he wants to resolve the issue soon. U.S. officials have made crystal clear they want Tokyo to implement a 2006 deal under which Futenma, located in a crowded part of Okinawa, would be closed and replaced with a facility in a remoter part of the island. Replacing Futenma is a prerequisite to shifting up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam. REDEFINING THE ALLIANCE But Hatoyama said before the election that the base should be moved off Okinawa, fanning hopes of the island's residents, reluctant hosts to more than half the US forces in Japan. Entangled with the feud are deeper questions about whether Obama and Hatoyama can start to reframe the alliance in the face of changing regional and global dynamics. China is forecast to overtake Japan as the world's second-biggest economy as early as next year, raising concerns in Japan that Washington will cosy up to Beijing in a "Group of Two" (G2) and leave Tokyo out in the cold. While Obama begins his Asian trip in Tokyo, he will spend just 24 hours in the Japanese capital compared to three days in China, where he will discuss revaluing the yuan, encouraging Chinese consumers to spend and opening Chinese markets further. Some in Washington are equally worried by signs Japan is distancing itself from its closest ally by promoting an as yet ill-defined East Asian Community, despite Hatoyama's assurances the US-Japan alliance is at the core of Tokyo's diplomacy. Hatoyama has said he wants to begin a review of the alliance with an aim to broadening ties longer term, and the leaders could agree at the summit to begin that process. The two leaders will also call for an 80 percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and issue a statement pledging to cooperate to promote nuclear disarmament, Japanese media said. | 0 |
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits China next week looking to forge common ground on issues such as climate change and energy security, but lingering mistrust and a border dispute makes them unlikely partners. The world's fastest growing major economies and most populous nations face many of the same challenges, including stability in Asia and the struggle against terrorism. Yet in practice, the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant are very different creatures. They may have learned to live together, but they may always be more rivals than friends. On Thursday, Singh called the relationship an "imperative necessity", and dismissed talk that India was ganging up with the United States, Japan and Australia against China. "I have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that India is not part of any so-called contain China effort," Singh told reporters, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Annual summits between the former foes may be slowly breaking down decades of wariness, but a "strategic partnership" announced three years ago has yet to take off. "If you compare this visit to previous years, it is a very welcome departure that there is no attempt to project some grand achievement," said Alka Acharya, the head of East Asian studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "There is a certain normality coming about in terms of high-level interaction ... but there is considerable depth in the relationship which has yet to be explored." Singh aims to do exactly that on his visit. "When you talk about broader global issues, we have a lot in common," said one Indian official, who declined to be named. COMMON GROUND AND DISPUTED LAND In their reaction to climate change, India and China sound at their most harmonious. Both resist calls for mandatory curbs on emissions for developing nations and insist that the greater burden for mitigation be borne by the already developed West. "We have a similar approach, maybe not identical, but there is a fair amount of congruence," the official added. And yet there remains a lack of cooperation in many areas, and bilateral irritants such as a festering border dispute and trade barriers, said Zhang Li, at China's Sichuan University. "This visit probably won't bring breakthroughs in those issues, but it could set a more positive tone for dealing with them," he said. The economic relationship between Asia's engines of growth falls far short of potential. Bilateral trade has crossed $30 billion and is growing fast but non-tariff barriers remain high. India is unhappy the trade balance is increasingly skewed in China's favour, and would prefer to be exporting more finished goods and less raw materials such as iron ore. China complains of barriers to direct investment in India and wants a "level playing field", according to its ambassador to India, Zhang Yan. But there is a more fundamental problem with Sino-Indian relations, a border dispute that led to war in 1962. China still claims much of India's vast northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, land it says is rightly part of Tibet. Decades of glacial negotiations have produced little more than a commitment to solve the problem through dialogue. Last year, China even seemed to harden its position by restating its claim to the Buddhist monastery at Tawang, and Indian troops complain of frequent border incursions last year. It's an issue that still jangles Indian nationalist nerves. "There is...a strong need for them to develop a relationship of cooperation, but they won't be able to do that until the border issue is out of the way," said Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, emeritus fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi. There are other concerns too, including China's longstanding relationship with India's estranged brother Pakistan. China's old policy of balancing India by supporting Pakistan looks outdated given India's growing clout, analysts say. But the prospect of them working together to promote stability in trouble spots such as Pakistan and Afghanistan still looks remote. Beijing eyes uneasily India's burgeoning friendship with the United States and its traditional support for Tibetan refugees. Jian Yang, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, says China does not treat India as a threat but India does. "For China, the biggest concern is to make sure that India doesn't feel threatened by China's rise, and that India won't move too close to countries like the United States and Japan as a kind of balance against China," he said. | 0 |
Noah's Ark, built to save humanity and the animal kingdom in the face of a great flood, is being reconstructed in model form on Mount Ararat as a warning to mankind to act now to prevent global warming. Environmental activists are behind the initiative in the lush green foothills of the snow-capped mountain in eastern Turkey, where the Bible says the vessel came to rest after a flood had wiped out corrupt humanity. Volunteers are racing to complete the wooden vessel under bright sunshine by end-May, to coincide with a summit of leading countries next month in Germany where climate change will be high on the agenda. "This is directed mainly at the politicians of this earth, to world leaders who are primarily responsible for the climate catastrophe which is taking place and for the solution," said Wolfgang Sadik, campaign leader for Greenpeace, which is behind the project. "The aim is to put on Mount Ararat a memorial, a warning sign that also gives hope, to shake up the world and to say that if we don't react now it is too late," he said, as carpenters hammered away at the Ark's bow at an altitude of 2,400 metres. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned carbon dioxide emissions should at least be halved by 2050 to avoid climate changes which the European Union says would be dangerous. Rising seas are a central concern of climate change. The UN climate panel says seas are set to rise 18-59 cms this century, up from 17 cms in the 20th century. But there are deep divisions on ways to tackle the threat. Germany wants G8 countries at next month's meeting to agree to the IPCC target and promote carbon trading as a way to penalise greenhouse gas emissions. But US chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson said last week the United States will continue to reject emissions targets or cap-and-trade schemes, and will fight climate change by funding clean energy technologies.
PUNISHMENT In the Biblical Noah's Ark story -- well-known to Jews, Christians and Muslims -- God decides to punish humanity's sins by destroying life on Earth with a flood. He chooses righteous Noah to preserve life by saving his family and pairs of all the world's animals -- which board the boat two by two. Such a menagerie would strain the model Ark, which at just 10 metres long and four metres high would barely house Noah's family. The Bible says the original ark was 300 cubits (about 140 metres) long -- longer than a soccer pitch. The model will even be a tight fit for climbers if, as planned, it ultimately becomes a mountain hut. Timber for the boat was hauled by horse up the mountain last week and the volunteers face logistical problems working at high altitude in a remote place. They are also working against the clock for a May 31 ceremony, when doves will be released from the boat and an appeal made to world leaders to counter global warming: Noah sent a dove out from the Ark to see if the flood had subsided. "A boatbuilding master said they would not have the courage to do this given the short period of time," said German carpenter Rainer Brumshagen. "But I had the feeling that it could work." "It all feels very good with the energy people are bringing here, uniting those from different countries to work together." The political wrangling feels a world away from the idyllic slopes of Mount Ararat, where shepherds graze their sheep and swallows circle the brightly coloured tents of the two dozen activists involved in the Greenpeace project. "But", one of Brumshagen's carpenter colleagues said of the model Ark, "I am not so sure that it will float." | 2 |
COPENHAGEN, Dec 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The impacts of climate change have worsened almost every year since 1980, according to a study on Wednesday inspired by the Dow Jones stock index that distils global warming into a single number. The new climate change index is based on world temperatures, Arctic sea ice extent in summer, and concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and sea levels, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) said. "The climate system is changing in the direction of a warming planet," Sybil Seitzinger, executive director of the IGBP, told a news conference on the sidelines of Dec. 7-18 talks in Copenhagen due to agree a UN deal to fight climate change. She said that the idea was to give the public a snapshot of global warming to help understand the issues. She said that scientists had taken four easily understood factors, reported by governments, and denied favouring elements that might bias the findings. The index went back to 1980, when satellite records begin. The idea was inspired by stock market indices such as the Dow Jones or the FTSE 100, she said. According to the index, climate change got worse every year since 1980 except 1982, 1992 and 1996, perhaps because large volcanic eruptions those years threw sun-dimming dust high into the atmosphere and curbed temperatures. "The dip in the curve in 1992 may have been caused by the massive Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991," a statement said. Other eruptions occured in Mexico in 1982 and Monserrat in 1996. Scientists might in future expand the index to other factors such as deforestation, ocean acidity or the frequency of extreme weather events, she said. | 0 |
The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others' policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs - as expected - but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by US officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise. "We expected to have tough and direct talks on a wide range of issues, and that's exactly what we had," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters moments after the Chinese delegation left the hotel meeting room. Members of China's delegation left the hotel without speaking to reporters, but China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi later told China's CGTN television network that the discussions had been constructive and beneficial, "but of course, there are still differences." "China will firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and development," Yang said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was not surprised that the United States got a "defensive response" from China after it raised allegations of Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong as well as cyberattacks and pressure on Taiwan. But Blinken said the two sides also had intersecting interests on Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, and climate change, and that the United States had accomplished during the meetings what it had come to do. "On economics, on trade, on technology, we told our counterparts that we are reviewing these issues with close consultation with Congress, with our allies and partners, and we will move forward on them in a way that totally protects and advances the interests of our workers and our businesses," Blinken said. China's State Councilor Wang Yi, who joined the meetings, was quoted by Chinese state television as saying they had told the US side that China's sovereignty was a matter of principle and not to underestimate Beijing's determination to defend it. POINTED OPENING REMARKS After pointed opening remarks on Thursday from Blinken about China's challenge to a rules-based international order, Yang had lashed out with a long speech criticising US democracy, and foreign and trade policies. The United States accused China of "grandstanding" for its domestic audience, and both sides suggested the other had broken diplomatic protocol. The rebukes played out in front of journalists, but a senior US official told reporters that as soon as media had left the room, the two sides "immediately got down to business" and held substantive talks. While much of Biden's China policy is still being formulated, including how to handle the tariffs on Chinese goods implemented by his predecessor Donald Trump, his administration has so far placed a stronger emphasis on democratic values and allegations of human rights abuses by China. "I am very proud of the secretary of state," Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday morning when asked about Thursday's meeting. Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first phone call as leaders last month and appeared at odds on most issues, even as Xi said that confrontation would be a "disaster" for both nations. Biden, who referred to Xi as a "thug" during his election campaign, said after the call that the United States needed to raise its game in the face of the Chinese challenge, or China would "eat our lunch." In recent weeks, top Republicans have given a nod to efforts by Biden, a Democrat, to revitalize relations with US allies in order to confront China, a shift from Trump's go-it-alone 'America First' strategy. Biden has partially staked his approach on China to rebuilding American domestic competitiveness, and several top Republicans, whose cooperation will be crucial to the success of those plans, backed his administration in the face of the heated exchanges from the first day of talks. "I have many policy disagreements with the Biden administration, but every single American should unite against Beijing's tyrants," Republican Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement. While Biden's two-month old administration is still conducting China policy reviews, Yang and Wang by contrast are veteran diplomats with decades of combined experience handling US-China relations at the highest levels of the Chinese government. They are also fresh off of dealing with the Trump administration and its unorthodox approach to US foreign policy. China's social media carried comments saying Chinese officials were doing a good job in Alaska, and that the US side lacked sincerity. "My sense is that the administration is testing the question of whether it is possible to get real results from these dialogues," Zack Cooper, who researches China at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said of the US side. China on Friday put a Canadian citizen on trial on spying charges and is set for another Canadian's trial on Monday, cases embroiled in a wider diplomatic spat between Washington and Beijing. US State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter reiterated calls for China to release the two men, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, from "arbitrary and unacceptable" detention during a regular briefing in Washington. A senior administration official said the United States had raised the issue with the Chinese in Alaska, including their concerns that Chinese authorities didn't allow any diplomats to enter the courtroom. | 0 |
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