12 October 2015, Climate News Network, Climate cash flow to poorer nations is still too slow. Rich countries are failing to fulfil pledges to make billions of dollars available to help the developing world tackle climate change. World leaders are not delivering fully on agreements made at successive climate negotiations to channel US$100 billion annually from rich countries to poor in order to tackle and adapt to climate change. An analysis of cash flows by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) − which links the world’s wealthier countries − finds the target due to be reached by 2020 is still far from being met. The OECD says that, at present, the rich countries are channelling on average about $57bn each year to help poorer nations limit carbon emissions and deal with extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Complex business It has spent several months trying to gauge climate-related cash flows from rich to poor countries − a complex business involving analysis of foreign aid budgets, loans from public and private bodies, and other sources of cash. “Our estimates paint an encouraging picture of progress,” says Angel Gurria, the OECD secretary-general. “We are about halfway in terms of time and more than halfway there in terms of finance, but clearly there is still some way to go.” However, whether or not the wealthier countries are making sufficient commitments will be a key item on the agenda at the major negotiations on climate change being held in Paris in late November and early December this year. Read More here
Category Archives: Equity & Social justice
8 October 2015, The Conversation, FactCheck: does Australia co-operate with the UN on its human rights obligations? At its narrowest interpretation, Brandis is correct: at a purely procedural level, it is true that Australia does comply with its formal obligations to report to the UN, and has issued an open invitation for UN investigators called Special Rapporteurs to visit. However, taken more broadly, Brandis overstates Australia’s human rights record i relation to the UN. Australia has been widely criticised, including by the UN, for its weak compliance with substantive obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. Australia and the UN The “UN envoy” that Insiders host Barrie Cassidy mentions is United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Francois Crepeau. To understand Brandis’ reply, we must first understand the role of a Special Rapporteur. The UN Human Rights Council is a body established by the UN General Assembly to oversee human rights compliance by UN member countries (“states”). The UN uses what it calls “special procedures” for this purpose, such as Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and Working Groups, to investigate and report on human rights issues, or the situation in particular states. Current issues under investigation include education, food, freedom of expression, and indigenous peoples. A special procedures visit to a state is only by invitation, and so a request is made for an invitation from a state. Some states issue the requested invitation and some don’t. Some states have issued a standing invitation, indicating a willingness to receive visits at any time. Australia issued a standing invitation in 2008, before which it agreed to every request it had received. Under the standing invitation, Australia has received special procedure visits on Indigenous people, health, foreign debt, and people trafficking; previously it received visits on freedom of religion or belief, contemporary forms of racism, arbitrary detention, and adequate housing. Read More here
8 October 2015, Truthdig, Why the U.S. Owns the Rise of Islamic State and the Syria Disaster. Pundits and politicians are already looking for a convenient explanation for the twin Middle East disasters of the rise of Islamic State and the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. The genuine answer is politically unpalatable, because the primary cause of both calamities is U.S. war and covert operations in the Middle East, followed by the abdication of U.S. power and responsibility for Syria policy to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni allies. The emergence of a new state always involves a complex of factors. But over the past three decades, U.S. covert operations and war have entered repeatedly and powerfully into the chain of causality leading to Islamic State’s present position. The causal chain begins with the role of the U.S. in creating a mujahedeen force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden was a key facilitator in training that force in Afghanistan. Without that reckless U.S. policy, the blowback of the later creation of al-Qaida would very likely not have occurred. But it was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that made al-Qaida a significant political-military force for the first time. The war drew Islamists to Iraq from all over the Middle East, and their war of terrorism against Iraqi Shiites was a precursor to the sectarian wars to follow. Read More here
7 October 2015, The Conversation, Oh no, we forgot about China – the flaw at the centre of the TPP. Like many trade policy initiatives, the newly finalised 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is motivated by a desire to help domestic exporters get better foreign market access. The key idea is one of mutual concessions – in exchange for foreign market access we give up some of our own subsidies or protection. Despite the headlines, however, the TPP agreement has little to do with the economic argument for free trade. This is because the economic gains from trade trade don’t come from exporting more, or from preferential market access. They have nothing to do with mutual concessions. Rather the gains from trade are derived from being able to import at lower prices. This means that costs of trade barriers are incurred by consumers in the country that imposes the trade barriers. Consequently the benefits of free trade can be mostly gained by removing one’s own trade barriers. This is the approach the Australia took toward trade policy when it unilaterally reduced tariffs throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This generated economic gains to Australians and didn’t require armies of lawyers and bureaucrats to manage the preferential access as rules of origin or tariff schedules. When one thinks about the costs of trade barriers and the benefits of trade liberalisation in these terms, it is easy to see major flaws in the TPP as an economic policy. Firstly because tariff barriers are all already very low between the member countries, any economic gains that might be realised by mutual concessions are likely to be exceedingly small. Reasonable estimates come up with numbers like one tenth of a percent of GDP. This, as the Nobel Laureate and economist Paul Krugman notes, is hardly world-shaking. Second, the TPP is an international club with exclusive benefits for members. Like any selective club, it’s not so much about who you let in, but who you keep out – like China. Read More here