12 November 2015, The Conversation, The Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a grave threat to sustainable development. This month’s long-awaited release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)text was the result of years of negotiations on trade ties between nations around the Pacific Rim. Some six weeks earlier, another set of deliberations came to an end as the United Nations unveiled its 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), which aim to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality by addressing critical issues such as food security, health care, access to education, clean and affordable water, clean energy, and climate action. Unfortunately, the two documents are incompatible. Several chapters of the TPP impinge upon the SDGs, potentially undermining the UN’s efforts to promote sustainable development and equality throughout the Pacific region. Moreover, many developing countries, least-developed countries, and small island states in the Pacific region are excluded from the preferential trade deal. What does the TPP say on development? The US Trade Representative has boasted that the TPP’s chapter on development will be a boon for developing Pacific nations, and that it will “focus attention on major development goals including inclusion of women, micro-enterprise, poverty reduction, and education, science, and technology”. But while the chapter is laden with aspiration, it lacks firm commitments or hard obligations. Here’s how it opens: “The Parties affirm their commitment to promote and strengthen an open trade and investment environment that seeks to improve welfare, reduce poverty, raise living standards and create new employment opportunities in support of development.” Read More here
Category Archives: Equity & Social justice
9 November 2015, Christian Science Monitor, World Bank: Global warming will drive 100 million people into poverty. Without swift action, 100 million people could fall into poverty within 15 years because of global warming, a new World Bank report says. More than 100 million people could fall into extreme poverty due to global warming, according to a World Bank report released Sunday. The 227-page report called “Shock Waves: Managing the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty,” warns those numbers could be reached in less than 15 years.As most of the world prepares for a global warming summit in Paris later this month, the report indicates only a change in strategy will spare the world’s poorest nations from the increasingly devastating effects associated with the Earth’s rising temperatures. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions most susceptible to the effects of climate change. “Climate change hits the poorest the hardest, and our challenge now is to protect tens of millions of people from falling into extreme poverty because of a changing climate,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. The debate over the role of rich and poor nations has already begun. Last week, a high-ranking summit member representing 134 developing nations involved in climate change talks said that, without financial support, poorer countries would not be able to meet the mandates likely to be imposed at the summit. Read More here
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4 November 2015, The Daly News, Time to Stop Worshipping Economic Growth. There are physical limits to growth on a finite planet. In 1972, the Club of Rome issued their groundbreaking report—Limits to Growth (twelve million copies in thirty-seven languages). The authors predicted that by about 2030, our planet would feel a serious squeeze on natural resources, and they were right on target. In 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Center introduced the concept of planetary boundaries to help the public envision the nature of the challenges posed by limits to growth and physical/biological boundaries. They defined nine boundaries critical to human existence that, if crossed, could generate abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. The global economy must be viewed from a macro-perspective to realize that infringement of the planetary boundaries puts many life support ecosystems in jeopardy. Without functional ecosystems, the very survival of life forms, as well as human institutions, is put in doubt, including any economy. There is no economy on a dead planet!. These boundaries apply to te economy because the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ecosystems that make life on earth possible. (Some understanding of ecology should be a prerequisite for an advanced degree in economics!) Scientists are concerned that we have already overstepped the boundaries on biogeochemical flows(nitrogen) and biosphere integrity (genetic biodiversity). Read More here
1 November 2015, Common Dreams, ‘Absolute Crap’ But Brilliant: Corporate America’s Plan to ‘Misbehave Without Reproach. ‘Only in the senile, decrepit, and unbelievably corrupt modern version of the United States would this sickening decadence even be considered possible, let alone doable.’ An independent investigation by journalists featured in the New York Times on Sunday offers an in-depth look at the way American corporations have used the inclusion of “arbitration clauses” within consumer contracts to strategically circumvent judicial review of their behavior and immunize themselves from class action lawsuits –”realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.” “You can’t shoot someone or rob a bank and say ‘It’s OK, I have a contract.'” —Paul Wallis, Digital Journal. What the Times found was a pattern of legal dead ends for consumers seeking to find redress for perceived injustices due to various forms of corporate fraud and malpractice. Often buried deep within lengthy and difficult-to-read contracts that purchasers of products or services are forced to sign, legal experts say the injection of these arbitration clauses “have essentially disabled consumer challenges to practices like predatory lending, wage theft and discrimination.” As the newspaper reports: Read More here