Hundreds of mangrove seedlings are growing in a small bay of an island south of Fiji's main island Viti Levu. The Pacific Island Countries are vulnerable to climate change and need resources to adapt. Credit: Tom Vierus/Climate Visuals

By Labanya Prakash Jena
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) – 14 small island developing nations in the Pacific Ocean – comprise one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to climate change and natural calamities. The region did not cause this climate crisis; the crisis stemmed from heavy carbon emissions by developed countries. Yet paradoxically, the countries in the region are also the least resourced to adapt to climate change.

The IMF estimates that the PICs need an additional investment of an average of 9% of GDP on developing climate-resilient infrastructure over the next ten years. Some countries’ climate-resilient infrastructure needs more than 10% of their GDP. However, this much capital mobilisation is impossible for the region with low per capita income, volatile economy, lack of fiscal space, and low saving rate. Besides, these countries have also committed to ambitious targets to decarbonize their economies.

In this scenario, international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make the region resilient and prosperous. The longer the delay in building the much-needed climate-resilient infrastructure, the higher the cost and greater the risk of exposing these countries to extreme events for a longer time.

Labanya Prakash Jena, Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser, Indo-Pacific Region, argues international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make Pacific Island Countries resilient and prosperous. Credit: Commonwealth

Tackling the bottlenecks

There are two primary bottlenecks to international climate flows: institutional structure and lack of capacity at various levels. The PIC region’s institutional structure is plagued by limited administrative and financial capabilities, inadequate program management and accountability, and an obscure audit system to mobilise international public climate finance.

In addition, these countries lack the capacity to design and structure projects and develop a robust and tangible climate adaptation project pipeline. Besides, the region is not strategically allocating available capital, including budgetary outlays, international climate finance, development aid, and private finance. The primary focus of international institutions must be to address these challenges quickly.

Options for international climate finance: Grants, debt, equity

The total GDP of the PIC region is only about USD10 billion, with an average per capita income of approximately USD4,000 and a gross capital formation rate of 20%, according to the World Bank. This translates to a maximum domestic capital mobilisation of USD 2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that the region needs an additional capital of USD 1 billion per annum for climate resilience infrastructure investment.

International grant capital is the only option to fund climate adaptation projects in the region. The reason is that any form of debt capital, even if in the form of concessional debt capital over the long term, is not an economical one. The PIC region cannot pay back debt, and it is unlikely the region’s economic size will increase at a rapid rate in the future to pay back debt.

Although the region’s primary sources of international climate finance – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) – provide grants, it is only for project preparation and capacity development. These financers mostly provide debt financing, albeit at a better rate than private financers.

However, the low debt servicing ability of the region arrests them, raising foreign debt capital. It is even more problematic if the debt capital is in foreign currency (e.g., USD) – the borrowers face huge foreign currency due to expected and unexpected devaluation in the local currency, and borrowers face currency risk.

Equity capital is not the best form of financing for climate adaptation projects. Unlike climate change mitigating projects, they do not generate clear cash flows as the beneficiaries are difficult to identify to monetize climate adaptation projects. Hence, equity capital is not an efficient source of capital for climate adaptation projects.

Strategic allocation of capital is key

Unlike developed and developing countries, the PIC region does not have a have strong domestic financial and banking sector, and it rarely attracted foreign capital for large-scale investment. So, it is futile to expect large-scale private financing flows to bridge the financing gaps for their climate actions.

Moreover, the public goods nature of climate adaptation projects does not attract private financers. Hence, public financing, including capital Government budgetary outlays, international climate finance, and other development aids must be spent judiciously.

The crux is strategically allocating the available capital and aligning projects’ needs with the mandates of the public finances. One of the most efficient ways is to carve out the climate financing as a separate portfolio and decide where and how the capital would be used in various climate adaptation projects.

In addition, the climate change divisions of these countries can work closely with the Ministry of finance to mainstream climate adaptation in national development plans and sector policies and bring climate change perspectives in economic decision-making. The countries can also need to identify the projects which offer dual benefits of climate migration and adaptation, which brings a lot of attention to global climate financers.

For example, nature-based carbon sequestration through ocean conservation, forestry, and wilding (wetland, grassland) sequestrates carbon, offers natural shields, and protects human life and properties in extreme weather events. The global impact investors will find these projects attractive as they help the region become climate-resilient and create a global public good, helping everyone, including the financer’s country.

Way forward

International institutions must support Pacific Island countries to strengthen administrative and financial structures for better transparency and accountability, which can help the PICs access global public capital. In addition, Governments in the region must strategically allocate climate finance, prioritise climate actions in decision-making, integrate adaptation projects with national climate action plans, and identify suitable projects offering dual climate mitigation and adaptation benefits.

The international institutions can also help the countries identify and design projects to develop pipeline projects for funding. There is a dire need to develop institutional and local capacity to meet the needs of climate change-related economic activities in the region. But if addressed, the region will be able to finally make headway in addressing the deep adaptation challenges they face due to climate change.

• Labanya Prakash Jena is the Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser for the Indo-Pacific Region.

IPS UN Bureau

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Nature-based solutions for climate change was a major outcome of the COP26 summit. These include people working with nature to manage forests, mangroves and farm sustainably. Credit: Yoel Kahssay - Unsplash

By Ruth Kattumuri
London, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

A key outcome of COP26 climate summit is the enhanced focus on “nature-based solutions” – the plans for people to work closely alongside nature to avert a planetary catastrophe.

While there is emerging consensus around nature-based solutions (NbS), the overarching concept encompasses a wide range of approaches and actions that involve the ecosystem, which address societal and biodiversity challenges while also benefitting human well-being and nature.

In terms of climate change, it implies working with nature’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases that cause global warming. This includes sustainable land-use practices and management of forests that can remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it for millions of years. It can also entail transformations in major sectors such as agriculture, livestock, land, water and waste management to ensure the protection of our planet.

Nature-based solutions not only help to mitigate climate change by expanding natural carbon sinks, they enhance biodiversity, provide food and water, help clean the air and sustain other resources, as well as provide job opportunities, whilst also protecting communities against flooding and landslides. Some estimates state that NbS have the potential to supply up to 37 percent of our climate change mitigation needs.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Across the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, governments, communities and the private sector are keenly adopting NbS approaches, with most countries incorporating NbS actions in their national climate plans. Some examples of NbS include Pakistan’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programme, which aims to restore about 600,000 hectares of forest and create thousands of jobs; Sri Lanka’s response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by rehabilitating vast areas of mangrove swamps; and the “We Plantin’” campaign of Barbados to plant one million trees.

To make natural climate solutions truly effective, there are several issues that we must address. One key challenge is the lack so far of an agreed framework or standard as to what constitutes an effective NbS. As IUCN points out, “misunderstanding and misuse of NbS have led to applications that cause harm to biodiversity and communities and threaten to erode stakeholders’ trust in the approach.” Examples include mass reforestation of single-species or non-native species, land grabbing for reforestation, and curtailing of rights of Indigenous peoples through conservation projects.

Further, NbS should not support or encourage carbon offsetting by polluting industries, as a way to justify their continued or growing emissions. A strong framework and standards have to be developed to guard against the misuse of “nature-based” to ensure effective climate action.

There is also a need to enhance awareness and knowledge about the different ways to include NbS in national climate plans. A recent study suggests that though large-scale tree planting and reforestation have become the most popular route for many governments, other solutions such as sustainable farming and animal-rearing practices, sustainable land and water conservation and management, reducing food waste and engaging indigenous communities in NbS would be more beneficial. The conservation of high-carbon ecosystems – such as peatlands, wetlands, rangelands, mangroves and forests – also deliver the largest and most timely climate benefits.

Finally, there is a massive financing gap to be filled, for, despite our significant dependence on nature, the sector receives very little investment. Estimates by UN environment shows that if our world is to meet targets for climate change, biodiversity and land degradation, it needs to close a US$4.1 trillion financing gap, requiring tripling investments in NbS over the next 10 years and quadrupling them by 2050. This amounts to an estimated US$536 billion worth of funding required every year.

There were some promising announcements at COP26, including a US$12 billion pledge in public financing for ending deforestation, however, we are far short of the required target. At the moment, the total falls significantly short, and private sector funding, in particular, needs to be scaled up.

Former CYEN Special Envoy for Climate Change Jevanic Henry with fellow delegates at the Youth4Climate Summit 2021. Involving people in finding solutions for climate change is at the heart of Nature-based Solutions adopted during COP26 climate summit. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Of the estimated US$133 billion per year directed towards NbS globally, only 14 percent is private sector finance, compared to 86 percent from public funds and subsidies. Lack of private sector funding is partly related to the complex nature of NbS projects and financial instruments and the long-time frame for returns on investments. The public sector thus has a crucial role to play in leveraging increased private sector funding by de-risking investments in NbS.

Innovative financing mechanisms such as green bonds, credit swaps for climate, debt-for-nature swaps, and carbon markets are also being actively explored in Commonwealth countries.

The Commonwealth through its ‘Call to Action on Living Lands’ is leading on tackling the climate change challenges. Addressing the issues in the context of meeting the targets of the three Rio conventions, leaders from member countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific expressed their support during the COP26 summit for a proposed Commonwealth Living Lands Charter.

The proposed Charter is a progression of the on-going programme on land, biodiversity and climate change of the Secretariat since 2017. The Charter will be discussed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda in 2022, with a potential to spur cooperation among all 54 Commonwealth nations to manage land use sustainably, protect the natural world and fight climate change. Focus areas being explored include climate resilient agriculture, soil and water conservation and management, sustainable green cover and biodiversity, low carbon livestock management and active engagement of indigenous people.

Nature-based solutions for acceleration of action around land, climate change and biodiversity need judicial attention and support, not least in terms of finance. NbS do not offer a silver bullet to resolve the climate crisis, but they are extremely vital to drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions and meet the Nationally Determined Contributions to 2030.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

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Gladys Acosta, a Peruvian lawyer and sociologist who is the chair of the CEDAW Committee, considered the fundamental charter of women's rights in the world, stands on a stretch of the Costa Verde boardwalk in Lima after her interview with IPS. The Convention celebrated its 40th anniversary in September 2021. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Dec 10 2021 (IPS)

“The level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this…I am not pessimistic about the future,” said Gladys Acosta, president of the CEDAW Committee, in an interview with IPS in the Peruvian capital.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) celebrated its 40th anniversary in September of this year as the binding legal tool for women’s rights for all 189 states parties.

Acosta, a Peruvian feminist lawyer and sociologist, chairs the Committee of 23 independent experts with four-year mandates to monitor the implementation of the Convention.

After an intense period of sessions, Acosta is in Lima and will return in 2022 to her duties in Geneva, where the Committee operates, to finish her term. Until then, she will enjoy her view of the Pacific Ocean and the soothing murmur of the waves for a few weeks.

After stating that she is not pessimistic about the future, she adds that, on the contrary, “I am very critical and pessimistic about what is happening today.”

“We are reaching the limit of an era that is in its death throes because the level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this,” said the expert, who has previously held senior regional positions in United Nations agencies.

Among the issues addressed in her conversation with IPS, Acosta mentioned the importance of analyzing gender-based violence as part of the systemic discrimination against women, and said the pandemic is marking a before and after not only in relation to this problem, but also a change of era where the question of caring for people becomes much more of a priority.

IPS: Do you consider that the covid-19 pandemic marks a before and after in relation to discrimination against women, a step backwards in terms of achievements? Is it possible to make this interpretation?

GLADYS ACOSTA: I think that this will be the case for everything, not just for women, discrimination or human rights; I dare to think that it will be seen as a change of era. We are coming from an era with the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the world, with a population in growing poverty, which is reaching unsustainable levels.

It is very important to develop this awareness, because we have been sold the idea that having money or buying goods is the non plus ultra of everything. We are in a post-neoliberal world and nobody knows for sure how far we have come, but we are at a breaking point because this economy based on the exploitation of territories, of people, of knowledge is a constant illicit appropriation of everything, and today with the pandemic it has come to light that human beings need care.

This has become a central focus and has been put on the agenda; the pandemic has clearly demonstrated that the presence of this virus has been exacerbated in the absence of care.

(Acosta vehemently recalled that many years ago feminist economics proposed that the economic system could not live without women’s work, especially unpaid work. And she called for an analysis of the current situation with fresh eyes and making better connections in order to, for example, “stop looking at the growing problem of violence against women as something dislocated, a loose wheel”.)

When we in the Committee took a position regarding Nov. 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), we saw that three forms of violence have been exacerbated: femicides, domestic violence and violence online, which has become widespread.

So, yes, there are some new things, but it is very clear that we have not resolved the basic forms of discrimination that are at the basis of society, which include social, political, economic, racial and cultural violence – and in places where there are castes: caste-based violence. There is a discriminatory base that is at its peak and I think it is a serious moment of very unequal and very unjust power relations that I view with great concern.

IPS: At the moment you describe, there is resistance put up by different population groups – young people, feminists, indigenous people – but it is difficult to bring them together in a concerted effort, as seen in Peru and other Latin American countries. Is this a great challenge?

GA: We are living in a highly conflictive time, it is not that we are being swept away by a right wing with no resistance. No. We are in a time of open conflict between political sectors, economic sectors, social sectors and there is a very clear resistance. And I am thinking on a global level, more globally as part of the Committee, not only with regard to what is happening in Peru. The environmental crises are very serious and covid has to do with that.

This is not an epidemic that can be seen as detached from human aggression against nature. Environmental crises accelerated in the twentieth century due to the model of industrialization, production and economic development. Now they are trying to reverse the situation, but global agreements are not easy and do not bear the desired fruits quickly because there are enormous economic interests involved.

Interests that are prepared to kill the planet! They say: “What does it matter, in thirty years we won’t be here.” Just like that, with an atrocious pragmatism. And within these environmental conflicts, we women bear the brunt.

Secondly, there is the social conflict that takes place within and outside these circumstances. And there is an atmosphere of conflict, I would say violent, armed, in different parts of the world and it has to do with this madness of arms production, because this is a war-economic model that produces and sells arms left and right.

And the big countries, even those that seem very democratic and progressive – and I say this because I see it in the Committee – are big producers of arms and sell them to countries that have conflicts and this has repercussions on women’s lives.

(Acosta explained that the Committee would address this problem with arms-producing nations and expects the resistance movement to grow. “The problem I find is that this perversity in the economy is unfortunately linked to a dominance in mass media and with a top-level technology. And I think that these elements, which are more macro, have to be included in the analysis of women’s issues”.)

Gladys Acosta sits on Lima’s malecon or boardwalk after an intense year as chair of the CEDAW Committee, made up of 23 independent experts who monitor compliance with the Convention against all forms of discrimination against women. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

IPS: Ecofeminists warn of the risk to the sustainability of life, indigenous peoples warn of the threat to nature as long as there are weak or complicit States. How does the Committee contribute to this reflection?

GA: First of all, States still exist. Although the economic power of transnational corporations is enormous, this is the sphere in which we move, we discuss with the States Parties, of which there are 189 in this Convention, in an interesting dynamic of pressure to respect international human rights standards, among which international standards for the protection of women’s rights are very important.

Women’s rights have an enormous connection with the sustainability of life, but not from an essentialist point of view. You brought up the issue of indigenous peoples and it seems to me that in many ways we are discussing a general recommendation on the rights of indigenous women and girls. There is an ancestral indigenous wisdom, especially that of women, which must be protected in a more effective sense.

There is an enormous knowledge about nature, food, seeds and seed reproduction; knowledge about how nature is suffering – they know the symptoms of this suffering and how we could do things differently. It is knowledge that has been handed down through the generations and that fortunately still exists and must be protected.

IPS: In another interview with IPS, in 2009, when you were regional representative of the predecessor organization of UN Women, you said that policies should not see women as a vulnerable sector; do you think there has been progress against that vision described as paternalistic?

GA: I would say there are both. It seems to me that the mobilization today in the world in favor of women’s rights is much more powerful, broader and more political. I think that in different countries you find everything, equality policies that have been very positive and that have opened the way for greater respect of women’s rights and greater access to education, university and work.

I would even say that the issue of parity has advanced despite the fact that something that worries me is also appearing, which is that some very retrograde sectors are taking advantage of the issue and want to make it their own when in reality the only thing they are looking for is more power for themselves. Women end up being nothing more than decorative elements within their political stance.

(Acosta highlighted in this context the emergence of younger movements, of young people who demand more power, and who have more vision about which direction to take than adults and older people, and said she had confidence in these movements, while clarifying that she meant the ones that take a “critical stance”.)

That is why I am not pessimistic about the future. I am very critical and pessimistic about what is happening today, but I do not think that this will remain the same. That is why I say that we are reaching the limit of an era that is in its death throes because the level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this.

This is going to explode and hopefully the damage to people will be minimal. But I know that the level of conflict will not remain unchanged.

Excerpt:

Sibonisiwe Hlanze is one of 600 women who are allowed to harvest reeds from the Lawuba Wetland in Lawuba, Eswatini. Hlanze’s income and security is dependent on reliable weather patterns. The Commonwealth has deployed top climate finance advisors to Eswatini, Belize, Seychelles and Zambia assist with the NDCs. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Samuel Ogallah
Eswatini, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

There is no country today that has not experienced the effects of climate change, from changing weather patterns to extreme, devastating weather events.

The Kingdom of Eswatini is no exception.

Climate change is already affecting the country and key sectors of its economy. It is already having to adapt to pronounced climate change impacts, including significant variations in precipitation patterns, higher temperatures, and increasing frequency and intensity of severe weather events such as droughts, floods, and cyclones.

In 2015, at the United Nation’s annual global climate summit COP 21, the Paris Agreement was hammered. In 2016 Eswatini joined many other countries in signing up to the Paris Agreement, a landmark agreement committing nations to a global effort to tackle climate change.

Article 4 of that agreement commits national governments to provide a National Determined Contribution (NDC) every five years.

The Government of Eswatini submitted its first NDC to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015. But since then, technology, policies, partnerships, data, and stakeholder engagement for climate action have all advanced.

In preparing its second NDC, the government looked to take these advances into account. It went back and reviewed what it had done in 2015 and sought to this time provide an NDC with even greater ambition.

Over a period of 18 months, an inclusive process of assessment, analysis, and modelling of climate change, informed by data and science, was implemented to revise the NDC.

Climate change will affect everyone, and as such, the government put stakeholder participation at the heart of the revision process.

Adopting ‘a whole of government and society approach’ it held over twenty stakeholders’ consultations including virtual and physical workshops. A review of national gender policy to integrate climate change was also carried out.

The process was not always smooth though. There were significant hurdles, not least the Covid-19 pandemic which not only delayed the expected submission of NDCs at the end of 2020 but impacted Eswatini’s technical capacity to undertake such a nationwide participatory stakeholder’s consultative process.

However, these challenges were overcome, and the revised NDC, submitted to the UNFCCC just days ago ahead of COP26, represents an ambitious step-up from its 2015 predecessor.

It adopts an economy-wide GHG emissions reduction target of 5% by 2030 compared to the baseline scenario[1] to help achieve low carbon and climate-resilient economic development. It also includes a provision to raise this target to 14% with external financing, technology, and technical support. This translates to 1.04 million tonnes fewer GHG emissions by 2030 compared to a baseline scenario.

Meanwhile, the revised NDC sets out clear mitigation and adaptation targets along with a comprehensive roadmap, and incorporates new sectors for mitigation and adaptation action.

Alone, however, the ambition of this NDC will not be enough.

The opportunity created by the Paris Agreement comes with an important challenge – to transform the NDC into tangible actions that lead to long term zero-carbon and climate-resilient development.

The effective implementation of the revised NDC is contingent on several factors, key among these being the availability of external support in terms of the provision of means of implementation (finance, technology development, and transfer and capacity building) and domestic resources.

Climate finance must be mobilised at scale to address the adaptation and mitigation component of the NDC.

The revision process delivered a number of key lessons, one of which was that wide-ranging support and partnership – a long list of external groups including the Commonwealth Secretariat, United Nations’ bodies (UNEP, UNDP, FAO), and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) among others, provided help during the process – is crucial to achieving goals.

And it will only be with similarly broad co-operation with, and support from, international and domestic sources that Eswatini will be able to fully achieve the ambitious potential of its NDC.

The total estimated cost of NDC action for Eswatini is between $950 million and $1.5 billion by 2030.

The support of developed country governments, development partners, international organisations, the private sector, and civil society organisations will be critical to help deliver on Eswatini’s revised NDC targets.

Eswatini’s NDC process has shown that with partnership and help, ambitious plans can be laid.

The country calls on partners, fellow governments, and all those with a similar commitment to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient future, to help Eswatini turn its NDC plans into tangible achievements – for the good of the whole planet.

Support from the Commonwealth Secretariat: The Commonwealth Secretariat partnered with the NDC Partnership under its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) Programme to support four Commonwealth member countries – Belize, Eswatini, Jamaica and Zambia – through in-country technical expertise, capacity building and targeted support on climate finance for expediting the implementation of each country’s NDCs.

Technical and institutional support was provided through the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH).

The CCFAH and the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Advisers supported these countries through different and complementary interventions, by developing and deploying different climate finance tools and strategies tailored to the strategic priorities of the member countries.

These have included climate finance landscapes and mapping, the Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (CPEIR), developing strategies such as Climate Finance Strategy and Private Sector engagement strategy, mapping of climate finance for NDC implementation, measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate finance, developing climate-sensitive gender policy, as well as climate change project concepts and proposals.

These interventions provided a vital experience for future NDC processes.

• The baseline scenario was developed based on historic GHG emissions between 2010 and 2017 and an updated scenario showing the change in GHG emissions between 2018 and 2030
• The author is the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Adviser to Eswatini.

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Dr Shafi Bhuiyan with colleagues. He and his colleagues argue that COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

Access to quality healthcare is a basic human right, but for many, especially those in vulnerable communities, the right is not fully realized.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this systemic inequality and gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

While surgical backlogs and delayed appointments may be prominent features of the healthcare crisis, the indirect impacts of Covid-19 must be considered. These include a halt in preventive programs, such as cancer screenings, declining health among Indigenous and aging people and for those with chronic illnesses, as well as worsening mental health among health care workers, to name just a few.

Canada already possesses a significant number of educated, qualified, and experienced Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMDs) who can help fill gaps in the healthcare system. For example, Immigration Refugee Citizenship has reported that over 5,000 physicians came to Canada between 2015 and 2021, and this number does not include ITMDs who immigrated via a different method.

Many ITMDs possess much-needed cultural diversity, linguistic skills, and cross-cultural patient care talents. These can be utilized in the long-term care sector, for chronic disease prevention, and with Indigenous peoples and ethnic-racial groups, especially those residing in remote and rural areas across the country. Although 20% of the Canadian population lives in rural areas, only 8 percent of physicians work cfin these areas. Many ITMDs are well suited to provide quality healthcare for some of these communities.

Canada’s annual immigration intake plan is to welcome more than 400 000 immigrants per year in 2021-23, in keeping with the national plan for population growth. Based on data trends from Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada (IRCC), this will likely include at least 900-1000 physicians each year. The need for diversity among physicians will continue to rise to provide culturally sensitive and quality care for all Canadians. ITMDs can provide culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population.

Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) Calls to Action were created in 2014, most healthcare calls have yet to be addressed. ITMDs can help address the long-standing shortcomings for this communities’ access to equitable healthcare and could contribute to rebuilding trust in the healthcare system.

The underutilization of immigrants’ education and qualifications has been reported to cost Canada $3 billion per year. Supporting the incorporation of internationally educated health professionals into the healthcare system would benefit Canada’s healthcare system and positively impact the economy.

Integration of internationally educated health professionals / ITMDs into the healthcare system requires a national strategy with a multi-stakeholder approach that focuses on scalable solutions. This strategy needs the engagement of governmental policymakers, regulatory bodies, employers, educational and training entities, service delivery agencies, and ITMDs themselves.

Once ITMDs have proven their expertise, they still require a bridging program to integrate their skills and expertise into the healthcare labor force. A recent survey of selected ITMDs who had participated in a career bridging program showed one-third had passed their licensing exams. These exams assess candidate’s clinical knowledge and skills to ensure they are comparable to Canadian medical graduates. Despite this achievement, another hurdle remains, to secure licensure. This is the residency program, which ranges from 3 to 5 years depending on the field of specialty.

The residency application process is complicated, but to describe it simply, medical students apply – via the Canadian Resident Matching Service, or CaRMS – for residency positions at universities across the country in one or more specialties of their choice. Not only are the total number of residency slots limited, but there are caps on the number of slots reserved for internationally trained versus Canadian medical graduates. The available slots for ITMDs are considerably smaller.

With the 2021 residency match results, data clearly illustrates the inequity i.e. a total of 2,852 Canadian medical graduates were matched. On the other hand, 410 internationally trained medical doctors were matched to residency positions. Over 90% of ITMD’s who have passed their qualifying exams cannot secure a residency due to their limited number and inequitable distribution of the residency slots.

An immediate solution is developing and delivering bridging programs, including in-class training and practicum placements, to support ITMDs’ employment in work commensurate with their skills, training, and experience, such as clinical assistant, research associate, and healthcare manager. Incorporating ITMDs into the healthcare system as licensed physicians can be further achieved via Practice Ready Assessments, increased residency opportunities, and increased post-graduate public health education and training.

Developing a clear roadmap will facilitate ITMDs’ integration into the Canadian healthcare system and foster diversity and equity in health research, management, and patient care.
There is a worldwide health crisis. If we cannot save a life despite having a huge pool of foreign-trained physicians ready to serve any time, we are neglecting untapped human resources to the detriment of our health.

The inclusion of ITMDs in the health system will benefit the healthcare system, patients, and the community and have a positive impact on society by reducing wait times and ensuring a better quality of life.

ITMDs are here, ready, willing, and qualified to serve Canadians as we work together to strengthen our healthcare system. There is no better time than NOW! Let’s work together to make healthcare more available and accessible to all Canadians so that no one is left behind.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.  
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Orin M, Krivova A, Fathima S, Walters J, Uzonwanne G, McGuire M, Mohammad A, Alamgir AKM, Radwan E, Tasnim N, Tazrin T, Parungao J, Saad W, Shalaby Y.

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Immigrant Health Professionals have lots to offer Canadian society, but often face barriers.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

Albert Einstein said, “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” The year 2020 was a year of crisis across many sectors in Canada, especially the health care sector. There was a severe strain on the health care system through long waiting lists for family physicians, specialists, and vaccination clinics, and Intensive Care Units were working at a high level of capacity.

People’s Charter for Health describes health as a reflection of a society’s commitment to equity and justice. Health equity is not complete without equity in opportunities for medical professionals from all backgrounds to practice medicine.

Canada’s healthcare system has faced many challenges, including but not limited to long waiting times, geographical disparities, an aging population, and limited access to personal doctors and specialists. The COVID-19 pandemic further brought to light the gaps in healthcare and how opening career pathways for internationally trained medical doctors on the front lines could only be beneficial.

The Canadian demographic pattern is changing through globalization and immigration policies – hence diversity matters. There are increasing numbers of internationally trained medical doctors (ITMDs) who can work in Canada’s health care system but struggle to pursue their careers after moving to Canada due to bureaucratic and other obstacles. The ITMDs can contribute to our health care system alongside Canadian graduates. They also bring culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population. 

Systemic barriers exist in Canadian healthcare for immigrants; hence, inequity in the system needs to be addressed by providing culturally respectful services. ITMDs can ensure equal opportunities to contribute to health services (i.e., indigenous community, aging population, immigrants, and migrant workers).

There is a rising demand for health care talent across the globe. Canada will face increasing competition with other countries to attract such a talented and qualified workforce. Without proper pathways for ITMDs to pursue their careers in Canada, ITMDs will eventually choose to migrate to countries that would enable them to have fair and clear pathways of integration into the healthcare system that will utilize their expertise.

Systemic barriers and inequity exist, and as a result, over 13 000 immigrant doctors are not called ‘Doctor’ in Canada. Only 26.4% of the total number of physicians in Canada are internationally trained medical graduates.

However, In Ontario, hospital care is overwhelmed with an estimated backlog of almost 257,000 surgeries. Also, Canada is the 12th lowest among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries in the number of doctors per 1000 population. This implies the need for more doctors in Canada, which can be achieved by opening more opportunities for the thousands of international medical graduates in Canada to practice medicine.

However, it can be argued that the number of doctors has increased by 1.8% from 2018, with a total of 5.2% between 2015 and 20191. Additionally, the number of international medical graduates becoming family physicians in Canada has increased from 28.7% in 2015 to 30% in 20191. Can this be interpreted as increased opportunities for internationally trained medical doctors? The answer to this question requires further exploration of opportunities and residency match processes. Internationally trained specialists with multiple years of training and expertise choose to do family medicine in Canada as the process gets extremely difficult for the specialists to do their respective courses in Canada. This is also evidenced by ITMDs being only 17% of practicing surgical specialists compared to 30% of practicing family physicians.

Furthermore, we cannot ignore that international graduates with specialty training from only certain countries are recognized to pursue Royal College Certification in their respective specialties. However, graduates with specialty training from all other countries have to undergo compulsory residency training despite years of experience in their respective fields.

A recent survey conducted in 2021 by the Internationally Trained Medical Doctors program at Ryerson University showed that 35% of the international graduates who participated in the survey have completed all necessary licensing exams but have not yet been able to secure a residency position. Likewise, 47% of immigrants with internationally obtained post-secondary health education credentials are underutilized: they are either unemployed or work in non-health occupations that require only a high school diploma. Also, the World Health Organization projects a worldwide shortfall of approximately 18 million health care workers by 2030, with certain consequences for patients, economies, and communities. This shortage may fuel global competition for skilled health workers.

Internationally educated and licensed doctors face differential access to opportunities to meet the requirements to practice medicine compared to those trained in Canada. While most immigrant doctors are required to do additional residency training here, there are very limited spaces available. In 2020, only 418 ITMDs obtained a residency position, while 2,895 medical graduates trained in Canada were matched to residency programs. At the end of the match, 56 residency positions were unfilled, 49 of which were in Family Medicine. Furthermore, of the spaces reserved for ITMDs, a majority were filled by Canadians who went abroad to study medicine. On the brighter side, however, 83% of Canadians agree that we should do more to ensure that doctors trained internationally have a fair and reasonable opportunity to practice medicine in Canada.

Hopefully, we will soon reach a stage where we, ITMDs, could look back and say that our time has finally come! Policymakers need to consider existing barriers and take steps forward in utilizing immigrants’ skills to address our society’s demands. ITMDs, let’s stay strong together–tomorrow is a new day! Diversity matters. Together, let’s act now to make our Canadian health system equity-focused and accessible to all.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Azam S, Krivova A, Orin M, Mukoko P, Radwan E, Adelekan O, Abdulhameed M, Mehrotra M, Anuradha D, Gaby V, Tasnim N, Abolurin A, Dare A, Telchi J, Mariano K, Bukhari S.

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In a 1974 article, Woody Allen poked fun at biblical stories presenting ludicrous paraphrases of The Book of Job, Abraham´s intended sacrifice of his son Isaac, as well as The Book of Proverbs. One of Allen´s invented proverbs was: “The wicked at heart probably know something”, thus implementing that the “pure of heart”, i.e. credulous people, know nothing. ¹

Giuliano da Empoli, a well-known Italian politician, culture personality and founder of the influential think tank Volta makes use of this Woody Allen quote to introduce his book Gli ingegneri del caos,² The Engineers of Chaos. da Empoli describes that everywhere in Europe and elsewhere the rise of populism takes the form of a frenzied spectacle, overthrowing established rules and political decency by converting them into their opposite. In the eyes of their supporters, unscrupulous and power-hungry demagogues are currently transforming what previously was considered as political incorrectness and abuse into a desirable quality of fearless truth-seekers. To their followers, the inexperience of populists becomes proof of their unattachment to corrupt, elitist circles, while their incompetence is considered to be a sign of authenticity. The tensions such populist politicians create at national and international levels are by disenfranchised citizens assumed to be manifestations of their independence, their ability to think “out of the box” and a capacity to express the inner feelings of an otherwise silent majority.
da Empoli assumes that populism, like Communism once was, now has become a spectre not only haunting Europe but the entire world. However, da Empoli does not consider current populism to be just an expression of spontaneous dissatisfaction. He points to the fact that much of the emotions stirred up in support of populist parties have been devised by behavioral sciences and smart marketing, something he calls “quantum politics”. Techniques that originally were developed to sell goods and services are to a much greater extent than before now being used in politics. In what da Empoli denominates as the Selfie-era unscrupulous politicians are exploiting people’s need to manifest their personality in social media, allowing experts to apply sophisticated technologies to record and manipulate people’s thoughts and behavior. It is such experts da Empoli labels as “engineers of chaos”, spin doctors, ideologues, scientists and data experts without whose assistance populist leaders never would have come to power.

da Empoli introduces his readers to stories about a small, web-marketing company that created a powerful Italian political party, to web technicians who ensured the Brexit victory, to communication experts transforming the political landscape of Eastern Europe, and to the American right-wing theoreticians who propelled Donald Trump to the White House. An almost carnivalesque cavalcade of colourful characters, many of them almost unknown to the general public. A small group of people is by da Empoli accused of changing the rules of the political game and the face of our societies. He uses the Italian Five Star Movement as a conspicuous example of how a “non-organization” with a “non-leader” and without any statues or charter and no ideology in a short time could become one of Italy´s most powerful political parties.

Gianroberto Casaleggio (1954-2016) was an Italian entrepreneur and politician, who together with the comedian Beppe Grillo founded the political party Movimento 5 Stelle, Five Star Movement. Casaleggio is generally considered to be the brain, the guru, behind this movement. He created its network strategies and edited a highly influential blog written by Beppe Grillo. By the beginning of his political career, Casaleggio had been managing director of Webegg, a “multidisciplinary group for consulting companies and public administration on the net [with an] objective to position companies on the network.” ³ In 2004, he founded Casaleggio Associati, with customers such as Hewlett Packard, Philip Morris, JPMorgan Chase, PepsiCo, Marriott, IBM, and Best Western. In 2005, Casaleggio began to publish Beppe Grillo’s books and the following year Casaleggio Associati carried out comprehensive studies of the role and importance of e-commerce while publishing books and videos about the effectiveness of the web when it comes to convincing people to buy anything and even change their views and opinions. In June 2012, Casaleggio had a private meeting with Michael Slaby, Chief Integration and Innovation Officer for Obama’s electoral campaign, explaining his theories about how the internet could be an essential tool for “direct democracy”. Casaleggio implemented his ideas in support of Beppe Grillo and his populist party. He is now credited with designing a first-rate entrepreneur plan adapting the internet to market strategies influencing political choices of network users. One of Casaleggio´s many controversial methods was the use of ”fake news” and unsubstantiated “facts”.

Casaleggio Associati´s innovative use of the internet for political purposes was only one of many such endeavors. The British company Cambridge Analytica, established in 2013, was until its bankruptcy in May 2018 involved in several political elections, not the least Donald Trump´s presidential campaign. Trump´s infamous advisor Steve Bannon served for a while as Cambridge Analytica’s vice-president. In 2014, British behavioral scientists presented on Facebook a “personality test” called This is Your Digital Life. About 270,000 people activated this Facebook application and unaware provided Cambridge Analytica with their personal data. Methods developed from these data were then used all over the world, sold to political parties and thus allowed to influence electoral processes in countries like Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, Kenya, and India. Cambridge Analytica was also contracted by campaign managers who tried to convince people to leave the European Union. Ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, Cambridge Analytica was hired by Donald Trump’s campaign to advise on how to influence voters by using the company´s comprehensive data bank and efficient, manipulative methods.

In March 2018, former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie went out in the media with information on how the company had acted to influence elections. The same year, a video was released in which Cambridge Analytica´s CEO, Alexander Nix, was captured by a hidden camera while revealing how his company had been involved in elections in about 200 countries and how it had laid traps for politicians by luring them into compromising situations. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom authorized a house search to examine Cambridge Analytica’s servers and could thus prove that accusations leveled against the company had actually been based on unequivocal facts.

In a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, Brittany Kaiser, a former senior director of Cambridge Analytica tells her story; how she as an idealistic intern had been working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and after that obtained a Ph.D. in international law and diplomacy at the Middlesex University in London. In 2014, Kaiser was hired by Cambridge Analytica to ”help commercial and political clients use data insights to solve problems and achieve campaign goals.”

In April 2018, Kaiser was summoned to give evidence to a British Government committee investigating Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. She confirmed that Cambridge Analytica had indeed used Facebook data to influence elections around the world, admitting that the true scope of the abuse was likely to be “much greater” than the number of 87 million accounts that had been suggested by other whistleblowers, declaring:

Now I’m blowing the whistle on the whole industry. The problem starts with the Silicon Valley tech platforms, which track our every movement and make us easy to target.

da Empoli is probably right when he states that it is not enough to draw attention to similarities between the catastrophic rise of xenophobic and fascist parties of pre-war Europe and today´s populist parties, what we now are witnessing is partly an entirely new phenomenon fuelled by innovative and manipulative technocrats who sell their expertise to unscrupulous politicians. The wicked at heart probably know something that the pure of the heart do not comprehend.

However, are companies based on technical expertise on mass communication evil entities? I doubt if they can be characterized like that. More likely they are like most other big companies trying to find answers to their clients’ demands while expanding and increasing profits for their shareholders. They are part of a complex system, which is extremely difficult to scrutinize and regulate. For example, Wall Street’s collapse in 2008 was not the result of some vicious plan, but of thousands of actors’ self-serving behaviour within an unregulated financial market. The mass manipulation staged by communication companies like Casaleggio Associati and Cambridge Analytica is perhaps just the beginning of a Brave New World where the financial market controls politics to an even greater extent than today. A liquid world described by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman – an existence dominated by a diffuse fear, fragmented and non-anchored, freely floating around without any clear cause or destination, where threats are perceived everywhere, without being clearly defined.⁴

¹ Allen, Woody (1974), “The Scrolls,” The New Republic, August 31.
² da Empoli, Giuliano (2019) Gli Ingegneri del caos: Teoria e tecnica dell´Internazionale populista. Venezia: Marsilio.
³ Orsatti, Pietro (2010) ”Grillo e il suo spin doctor: La Cassaleggio Associati,” MicroMega No. 5, September 30.
⁴ Bauman, Zymunt (2007) Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Lensmatter

By Omair Ahmad
Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate.

It has been a month since India cut off communications and implemented a security lockdown in the part of Kashmir it governs. While India has explained that the governance changes it is implementing – rendering significant legislative changes in territory it governs – as an internal matter, the move has drawn strong reactions from Pakistan and China, both of which claim the territory, at least in some part. The political outcome of these changes are a matter for both international relations and domestic politics within the various countries, but this move is one of many political factors that will make cooperation over the environment in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) far more difficult.

The Indus, a river of troubles

The impact of any political troubles will be felt the most along the Indus, which rises in Tibetan territory controlled by China, winds through the part of Kashmir under Indian control, enters Pakistan, with one stretch entering and exiting Afghanistan, before reaching the sea after traversing Pakistani territory. The two countries where most of the Indus basin is located are India and Pakistan, and their management of the river is largely governed by the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960. The Treaty has survived the outbreak of the 1965 war and the 1971 war between the two countries, as well as a host of skirmishes and conflict, and it is unlikely to be negatively affected now, as it was not affected in the last such crisis in 2017.

The problem, though, is less about the treaty as it has functioned in the past, but how it will function in the future. The IWT was a product of its times, and thus issues like environmental impact were not covered. The recent Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) project led by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development highlighted that climate change impacts – everything from irregular rainfall to glacier retreat – in the HKH region would be felt most within the Indus basin. These are new factors that the treaty is not designed to cover. The hope that these could be brought into the treaty has now receded. With the Pakistani government withdrawing its High Commissioner from India, and lowering its diplomatic engagement, it seems unlikely that these issues will get the attention they deserve.

More importantly the Kabul river, part of the Indus, is not covered by any treaty. Pakistani policymakers have been hoping for an IWT-type treaty between Pakistan and Afghanistan would deal with many outstanding issues. But with lowered cooperation between India and Pakistan, the IWT looks less and less like a good example to follow. The idea of including China as well, so that the four countries could all be involved in the joint management of a river basin that they all share now seems almost impossible to imagine.

In the meanwhile conflict will continue to degrade the environment, while also limiting scientific access to the more remote parts of the HKH region. Both Indian and Pakistani troops continue to be deployed on the Siachen glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, costing both countries significant amounts of expenditure and significant loss of lives due to the harsh climatic conditions. The material and garbage accumulated on a glacier has significant negative effects for the environment, not to mention cutting off areas like this from any kind of scientific assessment. Reports like HIMAP, dependent on the cooperation of the various governments, will have to continue to deal with these blind spots.

The dangers of over-centralisation

By its very nature, conflict centralises decisionmaking, as security issues take precedence over everything else. This can have disastrous results on the local environment. This was most clearly demonstrated by the Rohingya crisis in Mayanmar and Bangladesh. The million refugees created due to the crisis led to the environmental destitution of the areas where the refugees were settled in camps.

By laying mines across the areas the routes that the Rohingya took, the Myanmarese military may have meant only to restrict human movement, but these were also traditional elephant corridors. Insurgency and civil war in India’s northeast and Nepal, had a deleterious impact on the rhino population, as poachers found it easy to operate. All 30 rhinos translocated to the Bardiya National Park where killed during the Nepalese civil conflict. In Kashmir, the decades of conflict have led to extensive poaching, the destruction of delicate habitats, and a timber mafia operating with impunity. With militarised borders, populations of key species, such as the yak, will find it difficult to travel freely, leading to limited cross breeding, and the decline of their populations.

The centralising tendencies of governments when it comes to “internal security” issues can possibly be best seen in the Tibetan region, where Beijing insisted on implementing agricultural and animal husbandry practices out of sync with local cultures. The local practices had evolved in consonance with the environment of the region, and had been more sustainable, something that China is now discovering, decades after putting into place self-harming practices. Nevertheless this sidelining of local populations remains a significant part of China’s investments abroad, with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor offering a very clear example. Due to its high political value for Pakistan, the investments are handled at high government levels with military support. Local factors are rarely factored in, so the heavy investment at the Gwadar port being built at the end of CPEC has managed to isolate and marginalise local fisherfolk.

Making the mountains poorer

Lastly, there are significant financial costs of the conflict on local people. Fear of violence undermines the confidence of outsiders willing to invest in a region, leaving people dependent on either government funds or their own limited means. The HKH region is one of the most biodiversity rich regions on the planet, and yet its mountain population are significantly poorer than their fellow citizens in their own countries. Despite potential opportunities for innovation and investment, the remoteness of the communities means that other than heavy infrastructure such as dams – which tend to marginalise local communities even more – investment does not reach these areas.

Fear of conflict will only make this more difficult, depriving the 240 million people that live in the mountainous areas of the HKH region that much poorer. This is at a time when climate change is already negatively impacting traditional crops such as apples, and half of the springs in the HKH region have either dried up, or become seasonal from perennial. Desperate people, who have few options, and whose involvement in governance is limited, make for poor caretakers of the environment.

While discussion of conflict between the countries of the Himalayan region is often spoken of in the same breath as nuclear war, the clear and present danger of a breakdown of cooperation in the region may be simpler. The price of conflict may simply mean that the environment is degraded, species are lost, scientific enquiry is stifled, investment is hobbled, and the hundreds of millions of people dependent on the delicate ecosystem of the HKH region will be made poorer and more miserable. It may not be a global catastrophe, but it will certainly be a series of local catastrophes.

This story was first published on thethirdpole.net and can be found here.

Excerpt:

The little shop owned by Leean Saan, close the monument with the lions. "Business is going down, Chinese people don't buy from me," she says. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS

By Kris Janssens
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia, Sep 19 2018 (IPS)

The new Macau. That’s what the Cambodian coastal city Sihanoukville is called nowadays. Chinese investors are building casinos there on a massive scale.

The southern port city lies on the new Silk Road (the so called ‘One Belt, One Road’) and is therefore interesting for China.

The Cambodian government is happy to accept the money. And Beijing never asks difficult questions.

“Things are happening so fast in Sihanoukville; the city has changed completely in only a few months time,” a friend tells me.

My last visit there was in December.

And so I wanted to see these ‘spectacular changes’ with my own eyes.

My friend was right. When you enter the city, you see casinos everywhere. There could be about a hundred by now, and new ones are constantly being built. Some of them are big showy palaces, but there are also obscure gambling houses.

Alongside those casinos you still find the typical Cambodian shops, where people drink tea and where food is skewered and cooked on the barbecue.

Tourists at the beach enjoy their cocktails or take a dip in the gulf of Thailand.

But all those elements are in disharmony with one another.

There is clearly no urban planning here.

It seems the builders got carte blanche to satisfy the hunger for gambling.

Gaudy lions

The statue of two golden lions, at a roundabout close to the sea, is a beacon in the city. Leean Saan (76) has a tiny little shop close to the lions. She sells soda water, cigarettes and fuel for motorbikes.

Ten years ago, when the tourists came, she started selling drinks. “But the business is going down,” she says. “There are more and more Chinese people and they don’t buy in my shop.”

“They are gangsters!” says a tuk-tuk driver who comes to buy fuel. “They promise for example to pay three dollars, but when we get to the destination they only give two. And when I complain, they threaten me with violence. They always travel in groups, so they feel superior.”

Making good money

I walk down the street and see some Cambodian youngsters who are queuing to buy coffee. They are more positive about the recent developments.

Rath (22) has been working for five years as a receptionist in a hotel casino. “My first salary was 80 dollars a month. Two years ago it was raised to 200 dollars and since last year I make 500 dollars a month. They need experienced staff.”

But there is a flip side to the coin: prices have gone up in a short period of time. “I used to pay 30 dollars a month to rent a room, nowadays they ask up to 250. But at the end of the day I still earn more than before.”

O Fortuna

It is time to get an inside look into one of those casinos, ‘Golden Sand’. I am the only white person and the security staff watches me closely.

At the entrance of the hall the song ‘O Fortuna’ taken from ‘Carmina Burana’ is being played repeatedly. A screen shows an animated movie with Chinese dragons and philosophers.

The game room is big but feels cold, in spite of the wall-to-wall carpet and the leather and fabric seats. There are Chinese wall ornaments.

Croupiers in red costumes are sitting at big card tables. You see a lot of security agents here as well. Young girls in blue outfits wander down the hall carrying fly swatters to kill annoying insects.

Remarkable: Cambodians are not allowed to gamble, by law. So all customers are Chinese.

Also remarkable: they don’t come dressed in suits and ties, but are dressed in shorts and t-shirts.

“Most customers here are builders,” says Wu, who works himself at one of the numerous construction sites in Sihanoukville. “They come here to spend the money they just earned.”

Wu is here for six months. He earns 700 dollars a month. He could make as much money in China, but here he has more job security.

Recruiting

Srun (28) works as a recruiter. He’s Cambodian but has Chinese roots and works as a tour guide for Chinese tourists. “They often asked me where they could go to gamble.” So Srun went to talk to several casino managers and he has an agreement to work on commission.

“You have to talk face to face to Chinese people,” he says. “I understand some Cambodians think they are gangsters, because they always talk so loudly. But that is simply their way of negotiating.”

Srun gets one percent of the money customers spend on gambling. “That doesn’t seem much, but in some cases we are talking about 10,000 dollars for a group of four people. The casino opens a special VIP-room and I get a 100 dollars.”

Rental prices

It is lunchtime. I decide to go for a noodle soup in a…Chinese restaurant.

“We only have Chinese people,” says manager Zong, “I don’t even speak Khmer.” She followed her husband about one year ago, coming from Hangzhou, in the eastern part of China. “Customers pay about seven times more here for the same dish. So the decision was easily made.”

She pays 3,000 dollars in rent for her restaurant. “That’s a lot of money, but it still is an interesting deal. That also goes for the owner. He could never get this amount of money from locals. So everyone is satisfied.”

This house owner is actively helping the Chinese settlement in Sihanoukville. His fellow citizens, who might have been born here, have no other option than to leave the city and try to find affordable business premises elsewhere.

As long as money talks here, the Chinese population will continue to grow.

Maybe I should make the same trip in another six months from now, to document the new changes to this area.

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of IPS. 

Excerpt:

The US/Mexico Border is becoming more dangerous. Credit: Hans Maximo Musielik/Amnesty International

By Madeleine Penman
MEXICO CITY, Mar 29 2017 (IPS)

The sight of one of the most infamous borders on earth – roughly 1,000 kilometers of porous metal fence dividing lives, hopes and dreams between the USA and Mexico, is undoubtedly overwhelming, but not in the way we expected it to be.

While it has been one of the most talked about issues since last year’s USA election campaign, the stretch of land that separates the USA and Mexico now lies eerily quiet.

The stream of men, women and children US President Trump predicted would be flooding the area are nowhere to be seen. There is no one working on the “big, powerful wall” Trump promised to build along the entire length of more than 3,000 kilometers of the border. The 5,000 additional border patrol agents that are meant to be “increasing security” in the area have yet to be deployed.

What we recently witnessed along the border, however, is increasing confusion and utter fear. As many advocates described it “the quiet before the storm”. This is not a new situation, things have been building up in the area but they are likely to get devastatingly worse.

Because although President Trump’s promises have not yet been fully acted upon, the machine has been set in motion, building up on years of bad policies and practices along the border. The potential impact the most recently enacted border control measures will have on the lives of thousands of people living in terror of being sent back to extreme violence is becoming notable.

This is how the Trump administration is stirring up what could dangerously become a full blown refugee crisis:

1. Sow a discourse of hate and fear

Since the start of his campaign for the Presidency, Donald Trump has repeatedly described migrants and asylum seekers, particularly people from Mexico and Central America, as “criminals and rapists”.

He has failed to acknowledge the plight of the thousands of women, children and men who live in “war-like” situations in some of the most dangerous countries on earth, particularly El Salvador and Honduras, and who are effectively forced to flee their homes if they want to live.

Credit: Hans Maximo Musielik/Amnesty International

2. Pass confusing orders with no advice on how to implement them

In the initial raft of Executive Orders passed by President Trump during his first days in office, the administration effectively sought to close the borders to immigrants, including asylum seekers looking for a safe haven in the USA.

The Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements Executive Order of 25 January aims at ensuring that the process of detaining and expelling migrants and asylum seekers is as swift as possible – fully ignoring the fact that some of these people face mortal danger if sent back to their countries.

Furthermore, since the order was issued, it appears border agencies have been left in the dark about how to implement it. We arrived in Arizona just two days after the Department of Homeland Security had released its 20 February Memo detailing how to roll out Trump’s border security executive order. We were told that at least one high-level member of border control had received the memo the same time as the press had, and was none the wiser as to how to implement it.

3. Turn people back, no questions asked

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people from Central America and other countries around the world cross Mexico’s land border with the USA to seek safety and a better life. As well as Mexicans, many of these people are seeking protection as they are fleeing extreme violence in their home countries (including El Salvador and Honduras).

But we received multiple reports and evidence that rather than allowing people to enter the USA and seek asylum in order to save their lives, US Customs and Border patrol are repeatedly refusing entry to asylum seekers all along the border.

From San Diego, California to McAllen, Texas, we were told that even before Trump arrived on the scene, from as early as 2015, border agents have been known to take the law into their own hands by turning back asylum seekers, telling them they cannot enter. This is not only immoral but also against international legal principles the USA has committed to uphold and USA law itself, which stipulates the right and process to ask for asylum.

One human rights worker on the Mexican side of the border with Arizona, told us how a border patrol agent scorned her for accompanying Central Americans to the border to ensure that their rights were not violated. “How do you feel, aren’t you ashamed to be helping ‘terrorists’?” she was asked.

4. Turn a blind eye to criminal groups terrorizing asylum seekers

Crossing into the USA without papers means risking your life, as it makes people more vulnerable to gangs and drug cartels who control the border area and are primed to profit from people in desperate situations.

We have received many reports that people smugglers have hiked their rates dramatically since Trump was elected. US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly recently announced that since November 2016 the rate charged by people smugglers in some areas along the US southwest border has risen from US$3,500 to US$8,000. Yet what Kelly fails to recognize is how this will put people’s lives at further risk. People will not stop fleeing their countries and moving north in search of safety, despite Trump’s border control measures. Criminal groups will only gain more power once the border wall is built, charging vulnerable people fortunes to leave their country and make their way to the USA.

5. Outsource the responsibility

Multiple questions remain regarding the USA’s plans to further militarize its southern border and deny entry to asylum seekers. One of the biggest questions involves Mexico’s role in this equation.

In recent weeks, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray announced that Mexico would not receive foreigners turned back from the USA under Trump’s 25 January Border Control Executive Order. Yet no one we spoke to on the border understood what this would look like in practice. Would Mexico start raids along its border? Would it carry out more deportations? Or, would Mexico’s refusal to host migrants lead to even more people locked up in immigration detention centres on the US side? Or, would we see ad hoc refugee camps along the Mexican side of the border as asylum seekers wait for their claims to be heard in US immigration courts? Already acutely vulnerable people would be exposed to further harm and human rights abuses by both criminal groups.

Amnesty International spoke to four Mexican government officials stationed at border cities, and it was evident that confusion reigns. “We are going along with our work in a normal way,” one official in Tamaulipas told us. “I don’t think we have any plans regarding how to receive those being turned back,” another official in Chihuahua said.

In this climate of uncertainty and fear, migrants and asylum seekers are more vulnerable to coercion and violations of their rights to due process. Fearful of a USA government that appears quick to detain and deport them, and uncertain of their situation while on Mexican soil, the desperation of migrants and asylum seekers and the abuses they are forced to endure, are bound to rise.

Excerpt:

A scared child shows fear in an uncertain environment. Credit: D Sharon Pruitt. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Wikimedia Commons

By Robert J. Burrowes
DAYLESFORD, Australia, Mar 15 2017 (IPS)

A recent report from Equality Now titled ‘The World’s Shame: The Global Rape Epidemic‘ offered a series of recommendations for strengthened laws to deter and punish sexual violence against women and girls.

However, there is substantial evidence that legal approaches to dealing with violence in any context are ineffective.

For example, the empirical evidence on threats of punishment (that is, violence) as deterrence and the infliction of punishment (that is, violence) as revenge reveals variable impact and context dependency, which is readily apparent through casual observation.

There are simply too many different reasons why people break laws in different contexts. See, for example, ‘Crime Despite Punishment‘.

Moreover, given the overwhelming evidence that violence is rampant in our world and that the violence of the legal system simply contributes to and reinforces this cycle of violence, it seems patently obvious that we would be better off identifying the cause of violence and then designing approaches to address this cause and its many symptoms effectively.

And reallocating resources away from the legal and prison systems in support of approaches that actually work.

So why do some men rape?

All perpetrators of violence, including rapists, suffered enormous violence during their own childhoods.

Robert J. Burrowes

For a full explanation, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

This violence inflicts enormous damage on a child’s Selfhood leaving them feeling terrified, self-hating and powerless, among other horrific feelings.

However, because we do not allow children the emotional space to feel their emotional responses to our violence, these feelings of terror, self-hatred and powerlessness (among a multitude of others), become deeply embedded in the child’s unconscious and drive their behaviour without their conscious awareness that they are doing so.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’.

For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system.

When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others).

However, parents, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioural responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioural outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behaviour that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings.

This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviours, including some that are violent towards themselves, others and/or the Earth.

So what is happening psychologically for the rapist when they commit the act of rape? In essence, they are projecting the (unconsciously suppressed) feelings of their own victimhood onto their rape victim.

That is, their fear, self-hatred and powerlessness, for example, are projected onto the victim so that they can gain temporary relief from these feelings.

Their fear, temporarily, is more deeply suppressed. Their self-hatred is projected as hatred of their victim. Their powerlessness is temporarily relieved by a sense of being in control, which they were never allowed to be, and feel, as a child.

And similarly with their other suppressed feelings. For example, a rapist might blame their victim for their dress: a sure sign that the rapist was endlessly, and unjustly, blamed as a child and is (unconsciously) angry about that.

The central point in understanding violence is that it is psychological in origin and hence any effective response must enable the suppressed feelings (which will include enormous rage at the violence they suffered) to be safely expressed.

For an explanation of what is required, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’ which is referenced in ‘My Promise to Children‘.

The legal system is simply a socially endorsed structure of violence and it uses violence, euphemistically labeled ‘punishment’, in a perverse attempt to terrorise people into controlling their behaviours or being treated violently in revenge by the courts if they do not.

This approach is breathtakingly ignorant and unsophisticated in the extreme and a measure of how far we are from responding powerfully to the pervasive problem of violence in our world. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent‘ and ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive‘.

So what are we to do?

Well we can continue to lament violence against women (just as some lament other manifestations of violence such as war, exploitation and destruction of the environment, for example) and use the legal system to reinforce the cycle of violence by inflicting more violence as ‘punishment’.

Or we can each, personally, address the underlying cause of all violence.

It might not be palatable to acknowledge and take steps to address your own violence against children but, until you do, you will live in a world in which the long-standing and unrelenting epidemic of violence against children ensures that all other manifestations of human violence continue unchecked. And our species becomes extinct.

If you wish to participate in the worldwide effort to end human violence, you might like to make ‘My Promise to Children’ outlined in the article cited above and to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘.

You might also support initiatives to devote considerable societal resources to providing high-quality emotional support (by those expert at nisteling) to those who survive rape. This support cannot be provided by a psychiatrist. See ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry‘. Nisteling will enable those who have suffered from trauma to heal fully and completely, but it will take time.

Importantly, the rapist needs this emotional support too. They have a long and painful childhood from which they need a great deal of help to recover.

It is this healing that will enable them to accurately identify the perpetrators of the violence they suffered and about whom they have so many suppressed (and now projected) feelings which need to be felt and safely expressed.

You need a lot of empathy and the capacity to nistel to address violence in this context meaningfully and effectively. You also need it to raise compassionate and powerful children in the first place.

The statements and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

Excerpt:

The World Economic Situation and Prospect report 2017 calls for a complete revamp of the international financial system to address development finance issues and ensure needed resource transfers to developing countries. Credit: IPS

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 14 2017 (IPS)

Recent disturbing trends in international finance have particularly problematic implications, especially for developing countries. The recently released United Nations report, World Economic Situation and Prospects 2017 (WESP 2017) is the only recent report of a multilateral inter-governmental organization to recognize these problems, especially as they are relevant to the financing requirements for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Resource outflows rising
Developing countries have long experienced net resource transfers abroad. Capital has flowed from developing to developed countries for many years, peaking at US$800 billion in 2008 when the financial crisis erupted. Net transfers from developing countries in 2016 came close to US$500 billion, slightly more than in 2015.

Most financial flows to developing and transition economies initially rebounded following the 2008 crisis, peaking at US$615 billion in 2010, but began to slow thereafter, turning negative from 2014. Such a multi-year reversal in global flows has not been seen since 1990.

Negative net resource transfers from developing countries are largely due to investments abroad, mainly in safe, low-yielding US Treasury bonds. In the first quarter of 2016, 64 per cent of official reserves were held in US$-denominated assets, up from 61 per cent in 2014.

High opportunity costs
By investing abroad, developing countries may avoid currency appreciation due to rising foreign reserves, and thus maintain international cost competitiveness. But such investment choices involve substantial opportunity costs as such resources could instead be used to build infrastructure, or for social investments to improve education and healthcare.

The African Development Bank estimates that African countries held between US$165.5 and US$193.6 billion in reserves on average between 2000 and 2011, much more than the infrastructure financing gap estimated at US$93 billion yearly. The social costs of holding such reserves range from 0.35% to 1.67% of GDP. Investing about half these reserves would go a long way to meeting infrastructure financing needs on the continent.

This high opportunity cost is due to the biased nature of the international financial system in which the US dollar is the preferred reserve currency. As there is no fair and adequate international financial safety-net for short-term liquidity crises, many developing countries, especially in Asia, have been accumulating foreign reserves for ‘self-insurance’, or more accurately, protection against sudden capital outflows or speculative currency attacks which triggered the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

Foreign capital inflows falling
Less volatile than short-term capital flows, foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries was rising from 2000, peaking at US$474 billion in 2011. But since then, FDI has been falling to US$209 billion in 2016, less than half the US$431 billion in 2015.

Most FDI to developing countries continues to go to Asia and Latin America, while falling commodity prices since 2014 have depressed FDI in resource rich Sub-Saharan and South American countries. Falling commodity prices are also likely to reduce FDI flows to least developed countries (LDCs), which need resource transfers most, but only receive a small positive net transfer of resources.

Bank lending to developing countries has been declining since mid-2014, while long-term bank lending to developing countries has been stagnant since 2008. The latest Basel capital adequacy rules also raise the costs of both risky and long-term lending for investments.

Portfolio flows to developing countries have also turned negative in recent years. Developing countries and economies in transition experienced net outflows of US$425 billion in 2015 and US$217 billion in 2016. The expected US interest rate rise and poorer growth prospects in developing countries are likely to cause further short-term capital outflows and greater exchange rate volatility.

Aid trends disappointing
Although aid flows have increased, aid’s share of GDP has declined after 2009. The recent increase has been more than offset by counting expenditure on refugees from developing countries as aid. When refugee expenditures are excluded from the aid numbers, the 6.9 per cent increase in 2015 falls to a meagre 1.7 per cent. In five DAC countries, aid numbers fell once refugee costs were omitted. Thus, WESP 2017 emphasizes the importance of decomposing aid components and of separately tracking country programmable aid (CPA).

At 0.30 per cent of the gross national income (GNI) of OECD DAC members, official aid falls far short of the 1970 commitment by developed countries to provide aid equivalent to 0.7 per cent of GNI. Only six OECD countries – namely Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom – met or exceeded the UN target in 2015. But aid to LDCs has been declining since 2010; even bilateral aid declined by 16 per cent in 2014.

Meanwhile, disbursements by multilateral development banks only increased marginally in 2015 while new commitments declined. Commitments by the World Bank’s concessional lending arm, the International Development Association (IDA), which relies on donor contributions to provide concessional credits and grants to low-income countries, declined in real terms during 2014-2015.

Reversing resource outflows
Developing countries also lost an estimated US$7.8 trillion in illicit financial flows (IFFs) between 2004 and 2013 through tax avoidance, transfer-pricing, trade mis-invoicing and profit shifting by transnational corporations (TNCs). Over the past decade, IFFs were often greater than combined aid and FDI flows to poor countries.

Hence, WESP 2017 calls for a complete revamp of the international financial system to address these development finance issues and ensure needed resource transfers to developing countries. Failing to do so will put the SDGs at risk.

Excerpt:

By Johan Galtung
ALICANTE, Spain, Mar 14 2017 (IPS)

Wikipedia has much to offer under “aging”. Highly recommended are the 10 points by the world’s oldest living man, 114, Walter Breuning.

Johan Galtung

Rule no. 1: Keep mind and body active; maintain a good nutrition.

Obvious to counteract aging. However, equally important:

Rule no. 2: Be open to the positive sides and advantages of aging.

Bertrand Russell’s “On Being 90” in the Observer dispenses with the disadvantages as obvious, in favor of his advantage: the overview. At the age of 5 he sat on the knee of a man who had fought Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815-=-. The longer the lives we have lived, the more events have impinged upon us. An “overview” identifies some link, a narrative, a common factor. That identification is often referred to as “wisdom”.

However: thigh muscles weaken, walking falters, fatigue, seeing and hearing impaired. Exercise helps, but aging is unavoidable.

Rule no. 3: At least do not fall; not breaking fragile bones, no ending up bedridden in a hospital, contracting new diseases. Equip the room, the home, the context with handles and handrails.

Then the mental aspects of aging: memories failing, not only of recent events, less ability to handle many and simultaneous stimuli. As a result, many and more mistakes reinforcing the sense of aging.

Rule no. 4: Simplify the context, contract the circle of living. Be realistic, change the structure of daily life, narrow the circle to what can be handled easily: the ward, the village, the context, the home, the room–but then equipped with a maximum of music, books, social media, as enriching as possible. If driving, then on known roads with little traffic, in small towns, villages.

Rule no. 5: Togetherness. A society with much loneliness for young or old is a bad society. Get old together, with a spouse, a cooperating partner. Much conversation will be about pains suffered. But cut it short. Focus on positives, beautiful landscapes, gardens, music, literature. Enjoyment together is more than double enjoyment.

Make shared meals as much of a feast as possible. The ability to enjoy good food lasts; our senses of smell and taste are more solid. No smoking of course and moderation with alcohol, sugar and cereals. Let good food and drinks stay a while in the mouth where the taste buds are, tied to the smell; do not just swallow and “wash it down”.

Rule no. 6: Live both real and virtual lives. Postmodern life has two realities; not only what we sense but also a virtual, IT, reality with friendship and enriching exchanges activating the mind. IT offers all of that–with no risks of falling!–in the simple context of a ca computer. Particularly when adding Skype, and even free!

Rule no. 7: no retirement. Go for a job where the older can share experiences with the younger, even if no longer showing up at work. A work place closed to the older is a bad work place. In post-modernity this is possible in ways unthought-of, for mutual benefit. How much, paid or unpaid, can be negotiated. Being productive is what matters.

Negate this. Retire, cut all links, live only one reality, alone/lonely, in a complex world with physical and mental risks, nothing positive, passively, no exercise, bad nutrition. Brutish, nasty, and short.

Better contract from the macro-society of country-region-world to a rich micro-society of a circle around oneself and the partner(s), relating to other circles. But it does not have to be that micro.

We can argue: high time. To be born into micro-society, then the macro-society of education and work, and then a poor micro-society of retirement is not good enough. Traditionally, women continue working longer than men, living more human lives. Is this why women live longer?

Due to better health, and family planning favoring 2 children, we now have aging populations and even more return into micro-society in old age homes.

Some time ago, huge macro-society growth swallowed such micro-societies as villages; now there is a return to villages and a return to childhood at old age. And macro becomes even more macro, regional, global, marginalizing the old even more. Inhuman; a far cry from retired farmers still living on the farm for care and experience.

Major structural changes, hence this structural theory of aging.

In those micro-societies of the aged, with nurses and others for “assisted living”, all know that the purpose of still living is dying. And before that there may be physical and mental suffering. Inhuman!

Fight it; practice Rules 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Aging is nothing to be afraid of, but foresight and planning are indispensable. Some macro can be created. A married couple here and an unmarried there, each managing in their ways, can relate, exchange experiences, also to old-age homes that may be the longer term answer to the aging. Virtually this micro to micro can even cross borders. Reconquering macro life.

Let me end on a subjective note. Having lived an eventful rich life, including meeting many people “high up”, I remember thinking “how can I live without this when I get older”? I find myself, older, thinking “how could I live without the wonderful life I now have”? Deluding myself, in both cases, closing the eye to all the negatives? Maybe. But then, maybe some selection is part of a good life.

I find myself floating, navigating through time and life, trying, not always successfully, to do more good and less harm. Not concluding that the present is the best period although it often feels like that. It is different, and very good. One positive aspect is obvious: with less work in the sense of a job there is more time for work in the sense of being creative. With hands and the mind. On the computer.

Thanks, Life, the best of all gifts. For every day.

Johan Galtung’s article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 13 March 2017: TMS: A Structural Theory of Aging

The statements and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

Excerpt:

By Nikhil Seth and Paloma Duran
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2017 (IPS)

Just this year, public and private stakeholders from around the globe marked the one-year anniversary of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The milestone served as an important reminder of the fifteen-year framework that is now in place.

The SDGs were built around a common, global agenda with a clear set of 17 development objectives designed to alleviate poverty by 2030. The result of the broadest consultation process ever undertaken by the UN.

However, in order for the 2030 Agenda to be truly successful, both the public and private sector must embrace its framework for policy and investment.

That said, beyond the confines of the United Nations, it is becoming increasingly evident from extensive, external consultation with both the public and private sector—that there is still a great deal of practical education and advocacy work to be done.

Many companies are still grappling with what exactly the SDGs are and with planning efforts to address them. Learning from our ongoing experience it is essential that we cast a wider net and continue to help companies understand and translate the SDGs into meaningful action.

There is a critical need to determine how we unpack the SDGs in a way that they are no longer mysterious to the private sector, diplomatic community and governments. For those who have been not been involved in the implementation and preparatory discussion of the goals, there is a real need to help educate a larger community of practice and facilitate knowledge sharing at all levels.

With this in mind, UNITAR, and the Sustainable Development Goals Fund have prepared an important online training course to deliver innovative training to address the needs of business and institutions. The course will increase understanding and provide expert insight as part of a new e-Learning tool and curriculum to provide specialized training modules to promote grounded knowledge about the SDGs.

By breaking down the 17 goals to meet the needs of business, the SDGs can be firmly adapted to showcase clear and meaningful targets and plans. The course also provided case studies, examples and indicators of how public-private partnerships for achieving SDGs can be shaped. It is based mainly in the experience shared by the SDG Fund´s Private Sector Advisory Group and partners.

What’s needed now is for the UN to allow for governments, civil society and companies is to understand the key principles so they can build on their own internal systems of management, performance indicators and actual methodologies.

We also recognize that companies are learning from their peers and like their public sector counterparts have begun to see the benefit in building stronger community relations, fostering employee engagement, and continuous learning.

We must expand our often “UN-centric” communications and provide the basic understanding of the goals to a larger network, including those not traditionally working on the subject of development or the global goals. This requires some fresh thinking.

Given the complexities of the agenda, for example with the multitude of targets and indicators, we must break it down and offer concrete and hands-on examples of projects and areas for collaboration. We must work harder to demonstrate the value proposition for implementing the goals.

More broadly– how can the UN help the public and private sector understand the nuances and complexities of what is considered the new 2030 Agenda? Quite simply, there are numerous areas where individuals and business can benefit. What are some of the solutions or best practices for building partnerships– especially at global and national levels?

There seems to be no better time to truly highlight the compelling story of the SDGs’ especially their intrinsic value and how the SDGs can be turned into public and private strategies that work to everyone’s advantage.

If we are to fully advocate for more sustainable development around the world, then we must continue to work with external partners, using new tools and through educational training. We are no longer bound by silos and recognize the need for expanded collaboration with government partners and new actors for successful implementation of the new agenda. There is a clear role for everyone to play and an opportunity to build new and effective SDG partnerships.

For more information on the online training course and modules which are free to registrants, please register at www.unitar.org

https://www.unitar.org/event/full-catalog/business-2030-agenda-working-together-towards-sustainable-future

Excerpt:

South-south cooperation represents a progressive alternative to the Washington Consensus. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LAMPUR, Feb 16 2017 (IPS)

Over the last four decades, the Washington Consensus, promoting economic liberalization, globalization and privatization, reversed four decades of an earlier period of active state intervention to accelerate and stabilize more inclusive economic growth, associated with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes.

The Golden Age
The US Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression, which in turn engendered two important policy responses in 1933 with lasting consequences for generations to come: US President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the 1933 Glass-Steagal Act.

While massive spending following American entry into the Second World War was clearly decisive in ending the Depression and for the wartime boom, the New Deal clearly showed the way forward and suggested what could be achieved if more public money had been deployed consistently to revive economic growth.

Michal Kalecki and Keynes provided robust analytical justification for counter-cyclical fiscal and other policies to maintain aggregate demand, very much contravening earlier received wisdom. Post-war decolonization gave birth to the academic field of development economics from the 1950s, initially pioneered by Central Europeans striving not to be left behind by the earlier ascendance of Western Europe and then the United States of America after its Civil War.

For about a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, the post-war ‘Golden Age’ saw rapid post-war reconstruction in Western Europe. This was crucially supported by the generous Marshall Plan, arguably the first, largest and most successful development cooperation program, triggered by the beginning of the Cold War. Similar economic development policies and assistance were introduced in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, following the Korean War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

US Secretary of State General George Marshall understood that inclusive economic development would help ensure a cordon sanitaire against the Soviet-led camp. Thus, thanks to the Cold War, Western Europe and Northeast Asia recovered quickly, industrialized rapidly and achieved sustained, rapid growth with interventionist policies which would be widely condemned by today’s conventional wisdom. While national economic capacities and capabilities had to be nurtured to ensure sustainable development, Marshall also recognized that aid should be truly developmental, not piecemeal or palliative.

Washington Consensus
The ‘Washington Consensus’ – uniting the American government and the Bretton Woods institutions located in the US capital city – emerged from the early 1980s to prescribe neo-liberal economic policies for developing countries for the ‘counter-revolutions’ against development economics, Keynesian economics and progressive state interventions.

Macroeconomic policies became narrowly focused on balancing annual budgets and attaining predictably low inflation – instead of the earlier post-colonial emphasis on achieving and sustaining rapid growth and full employment without runaway inflation. A ‘neo-liberal’ wave of deregulation, privatization and economic globalization followed, supposedly to boost economic growth. Economic growth was expected to trickle down to reduce poverty, with broader sustainable development and inequality concerns consigned to the garbage bin.

But the Washington Consensus policies not only failed to sustain economic growth, largely due to the greater instability and volatility associated with financial liberalization, especially across borders. But premature trade liberalization also undermined existing production and export capacities and capabilities without enabling the development of new ones. For the poorest countries, the loss of tariff revenue also undermined government revenues, expenditure and hence, the capacity to provide badly needed infrastructure, social protection and support for developmental initiatives.

Globalization’s Contradictory Discontents
Instead, those developing countries which achieved rapid growth and structural transformation were typically those which defied conventional wisdom by adopting pragmatic ‘heterodox’ developmental economic policies appropriate to their respective circumstances. Meanwhile, financial and other economic crises of various types became more frequent and disruptive, undermining sustained growth.

In the meantime, the more liberal developed economies experienced spurts of rapid growth as well as greater volatility and instability while most developed economies became more vulnerable to institutional stasis as they abandoned Keynesian policies for neo-liberal policies demanded by markets and their champions.

With European social democrats turning their backs on Keynes in favour of neoliberal economics, and often barely distinguishable from the centre-right in this regard, dissent against economic liberalization and its discontents moved to the ‘extremes’. With the left often on the backfoot in most developed economies for more than a quarter century, it has been the right which has successfully mobilized against cultural ‘others’ often divided among themselves.

While the rhetoric of the national chauvinist ‘new right’ rejects globalization and multiculturalism, it also rejects international solidarity, cooperation and multilateralism. Its rejection of the neoliberal Washington Consensus does not imply opposition to contemporary imperialism, but rather threatens a return to old — and new — forms of domination, economic and otherwise.

More than ever, it will be crucial for developing countries to work together, not only to ensure that South-South and ‘triangular’ (with the North) cooperation represents a progressive alternative to the Washington Consensus and its national chauvinist successors. Such solidarity will determine how well the South — and the world as a whole — will fare during the coming eclipse.

Excerpt:

A growing realization in the West that economic conditions for working people have been slowly, but steadily deteriorating in recent decades. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 10 2017 (IPS)

The 2008-2009 financial breakdown, precipitated by the US housing mortgage crisis, has triggered an extended stagnation in the developed economies, initially postponed in much of the developing world by high primary commodity prices until 2014. Yet, the financial crisis and protracted economic slowdown since has not led to profound changes in the conventional wisdom or policy prescriptions, especially at the international level, despite global economic integration since the 1980s.

To be sure, the spread of the crisis caused the G20 group of US-selected important economies to convene for the first time at a heads of government level in a mid-November 2008 White House summit instigated by then French President Sarkozy. Various national initiatives to save their financial sectors were followed by a Gordon Brown UK initiative to significantly augment IMF resources. Soon, however, the appearance of supposed ‘green shoots of recovery’ led to premature abandonment of fiscal recovery efforts, reinforced by Eurozone fiscal rules, the powerful influence of financial rentier interests and bogus academic claims of impending doom due to public debt growth.

Weak response, weak recovery
The uneven and lacklustre economic recovery and worsening conditions for many in the world since then have been accompanied by a tremendous new concentration of wealth. Meanwhile, there has been a growing realization in the West that economic conditions for working people, which had been rising rapidly in the post-war decades, have been slowly, but steadily deteriorating in recent decades.

This has been associated in the popular imagination with globalization and some of its major manifestations, including increased inflows of cheaper goods and migrants. Widespread political, social and cultural reactions were summarily dismissed by political and media establishments as unfounded populisms of one kind or another.

To be sure, the dominant tendencies have often been xenophobic, culturally chauvinist and intolerant, and sometimes, downright racist. Ostensibly to secure electoral majorities and to move with the times, most European social democrat leaders have joined the consensus of the financial rentiers, discrediting the ‘centre-left’ and strengthening the ‘popularity’ of the ‘far right’ and exceptionally, the left.

Despite this vortex of globalization, financial crisis, stagnation, rising inequality and populism, somewhat reminiscent of the 1930s, there has been no comparable policy or analytical response, and most certainly, no leadership comparable to, say, Roosevelt’s New Deal or the Marshall Plan.

Some rethinking, but to no end
Besides the brief rediscovery of Hyman Minsky’s work, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Shiller, Thomas Piketty and other dissenters have received far more attention than if not for the crisis. Meanwhile, some distinguished mainstream economists have been forced by recent realities to reconsider elements of the conventional wisdom, without requiring abandonment of the creed.

Since the leadership of IMF Managing Director Dominic Strauss-Kahn, the Fund’s Research Department has contributed to such rethinking, especially on financial regulation, fiscal policy and income inequality. The Fund has been re-legitimized in the eyes of some of its critics elated by its research findings and their policy implications. In some instances, the nature and significance of the research findings have been exaggerated by erstwhile critics pleasantly surprised by the researchers’ apparently critical turn.

Such research results have broadened the scope of what is deemed acceptable economic policy discourse. But in fact, these research findings have had rather limited and mixed consequences for its operations, including its policy advice and conditionalities.

Meanwhile, the Fund has already begun to back-pedal on some of its bolder critical publications, e.g., on neo-liberalism’s responsibility for slower growth and greater inequality in its Finance and Development periodical in June 2016. Thus, while there has undoubtedly been a welcome shift in the Fund’s research findings, it is important not to exaggerate their actual significance for its role, impact and operations.

Before his passing a decade ago, neoclassical economics guru Paul Samuelson had raised concerns about the biased, one-dimensional and exaggerated claims of the benefits from international trade liberalization. But even now, the Washington Consensus presumption that trade liberalization raises all boats without any need for compensatory mechanisms, continues to be the conventional wisdom.

One step forward, two steps back
Worse still, so-called free trade agreements have less and less to do with reducing barriers to trade, but instead have become major instruments for advancing powerful corporate interests abroad, and certainly not for enhancing prospects for sustainable development and food security. Meanwhile, as Jagdish Bhagwati has long emphasized, the prospects for multilateral trade liberalization are being undermined by non-trade conditionalities as well as bilateral and plurilateral agreements driven by other considerations.

Much more remains to be done if economic research and policy advice are to rise to meet the challenges of our times. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is not clear that political conditions and leadership are conducive to such shifts in the near future.

To be sure, some of the recent rethinking is significant, with important policy implications, and could lead to state and collective international intervention mechanisms to rein in the neo-liberal paradigm in extremis. But most actual policy and regulatory reform initiatives have been limited in scope so far, and continue to be deeply compromised by powerful rentier interests and their proponents in the ‘deep state’, academia and the media.

Excerpt:

"Trump's Defensive tariffs propose to effectively deal with China's ‘trade cheats’ "

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3 2017 (IPS)

New US President Donald Trump has long insisted that its major trading partners having been taking advantage of it. Changing these trade terms and conditions will thus be top priority for his administration, and central to overall Trump economic strategy to ‘Make America Great Again’.

Quit WTO solution
Candidate Trump’s trade policy paper was written by Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross. Ross will now be Commerce Secretary while Navarro will head the National Trade Council. They view economic policy as integrated, including tax cuts, reduced regulations as well as policies to lower energy costs and cut the chronic US trade deficit. In just 21 pages, they suggest how US growth will increase during a Trump administration, with millions of new jobs and trillions in additional income and tax revenues.

One view is that President Trump can implement most of the policies advocated without obstruction by either the US Congress or court system. Internationally, no country will take on the US for a “very simple reason: America’s major trading partners are far more dependent on American markets than America is on their markets”.

Navarro and Ross argue that the US has already lost out, mainly due to badly negotiated trade deals and poor enforcement resulting in trade deficits. They claim that because the US does not use a value-added tax (VAT) system, everyone else has an unfair trade advantage, that, they believe, the World Trade Organization (WTO) should have rectified. As the world’s largest economy, consumer and importer, the US has the leverage to correct this by pulling out of the WTO. As the WTO would become irrelevant without the US, the damage would be minor.

According to the plan, reducing the US trade deficit will put more money in the hands of American workers who will then be able to afford higher prices for US made products. As American products become more competitive over time, prices will fall, raising consumer welfare.

China myths
Defensive tariffs are proposed to deal effectively with ‘trade cheats’. With China identified as the “biggest trade cheater” in the world, it gets special attention. In the US public mind, China remains ‘the world’s workshop’, where hundreds of millions of lowly paid workers mass produce consumer goods while its artificially low exchange rate and production subsidies ensure their goods remain competitive internationally. While perhaps true over a decade ago, the situation has changed radically since.

At the height of global trade imbalances over a decade ago, China’s trade surplus was more than ten percent of GDP. However, with the sudden slowing of world trade growth during the 2008-2009 Great Recession, growth of the US trade deficit with China slowed significantly. While the US still has a large trade deficit with China, China is also among its largest export markets.

In 2014, services overtook manufacturing as the biggest component of China’s economy. Net exports were equivalent to 1.7% of growth, tiny compared to domestic consumption and investment. China will want to continue exporting to the US, but the structural transformation of its economy and greater demand for various services now generates more new jobs, not only in China, but also elsewhere, including the US.

Undervalued renminbi?
On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to declare China a currency manipulator and to impose tariffs of up to 45 percent on Chinese imports during his first 100 days in office. Under US law, Trump can easily cite currency manipulation to impose defensive and countervailing tariffs against others as well. Navarro and Ross not only point at China, but also Japan and the euro, with the Germans getting special mention.

Washington has long claimed that China artificially depresses the value of its currency to benefit exporters. While a plausible case could have been made to this effect a dozen years ago, the renminbi has greatly appreciated since then, following tremendous US pressure, much amplified by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Most serious economists today doubt the renminbi remains undervalued. While stable for about a decade before 2005, and arguably undervalued for some of that period, the renminbi has risen by 30-40 percent since, prompting the IMF to repeatedly declare that it is no longer undervalued.

Indeed, weakening export demand and strong capital outflows have put tremendous downward pressure on the Chinese currency, forcing its central bank to use its US dollar reserves to artificially support its currency. Thus, recent Chinese currency manipulation has kept the renminbi over-valued rather than undervalued.

All this suggests that the Trump team is proposing remedies that, at best, rely on a long outdated diagnosis. The current situation is very different. Failure to make progress with wrongly prescribed measures may lead to even more aggressive efforts, which risk leading to economic war in which most, even spectators, will become victims.

Excerpt:

By Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Oxfam’s latest estimate that just eight super-rich people – down from 62 last year and 388 just six years ago – own more wealth than the poorest half of the world population is a clarion call to change the way we think about and try to tackle inequality.

Twenty years ago, as a young economics student, I was taught to look at the distribution of resources within and between nations. Most of the measures we looked at were averages: what is the average per capita income in a country; or what is the average rate of growth. Even when looking at inequality we used measures like the Gini coefficient that looked at distribution across a whole population. Oxfam’s work shows just how poor these standard economic measures have been at tracking what has really been going on when it comes to wealth.

Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah

A little bit of inequality is to be expected; indeed one could argue it a normal part of economic life in a market-based system. But the tragedy of the current economic order is not just the extreme levels of inequality but also the social attitudes that have normalized it.

There are those who argue that efforts to reduce inequality will stifle competition and constrain enterprise and growth. Greed is good, they say. Haven’t you heard about trickle-down economics? Well, I’ve heard and, along with a growing number of others, I’m not buying it.

Even the World Economic Forum’s own Global Risk Report cites severe income inequality as the single greatest threat to social and political stability around the world. Contemporary capitalism is creating deeply unstable growth. The inequality it engenders is bad for humanity, not only in the sense that it is unjust, but in that it leads instrumentally to negative outcomes for society as a whole. It is a corrosive force, hampering our fight against poverty and sowing the seeds of social unrest.

The mandates of our governments are heavily, disproportionately, influenced by the priorities of this wealthy elite. The super-rich are rigging the rules of the game in their favour.

Governments are going to be neither able nor willing to tackle inequality until mass social mobilisation demands that they do so. We need to examine the attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate and increase inequality. We need to stop believing that what is happening now is normal, inevitable even. It’s not. We need to make extreme personal wealth an unacceptable reality and its defenders, pariahs. What matters most in the fight against inequality is how we think. We need to establish new norms around inequality, wealth and poverty.

A growing number of civil society organisations, trade unions and faith groups have come together to form a new Fighting Inequality Alliance. Our aim is to build upon work already begun by grassroots movements such as Occupy to change social norms around wealth accumulation. Only a global peoples’ movement can begin to counterbalance the power and influence of the 1%. Only a growing tide of peaceful protest can challenge inequality as a global social norm and force governments to respond.

Until we achieve this change in attitude, governments will not fundamentally alter the way they manage our economies. We won’t see tax havens eliminated, or all workers receiving a living wage. We won’t see increased government spending on public services funded by more progressive tax systems. We won’t see more transparent policymaking or meaningful strengthening of financial regulations.

We need a new global economy that works for the majority. But until the majority stand up and make themselves heard – until their influence overwhelms that of the wealthy elite – we will not achieve it.

Already, we are beginning to see exciting new thinking around wealth redistribution, such as this from Laurence Chandy at the Brookings Institute. But, what if, instead of focusing on redistribution solutions, we look to prohibit the accumulation of enormous personal wealth in the first place? While it is commendable that some of the world’s richest people including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg will give away much of their fortunes not all billionaires will follow suit.

Were we to establish new rules, or norms, around how much wealth one individual can legitimately amass, some would no doubt argue that we would damage the economic growth incentive. But, we’re talking about marginal billions here. The innovators, the technology pioneers of our age, are not going to alter their investment decisions or risk tolerance should they stand to gain 1 billion rather than 10.

Nor is all this quite so radical as it might sound. Take the example of inheritance taxes. While the details of these law’s application may be contested, the legitimacy of its existence is not. We accept that there should be limits to how much wealth is hoarded inter-generationally. Why not something similar at the global level? My point is this: if we limit our thinking to taxing the super-rich or trying to encourage more billionaires to behave like Gates, Buffet or Zuckerberg, we may achieve some redistribution but not address the drivers of inequality. As the world heads towards its first trillionaire, we need to change the rules of the wealth game.

Excerpt:

By Johan Galtung
ALICANTE, Spain, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Attacking the Affordable Care Act; the “global gag rule” against abortion; the federal regulation and hiring freeze; canceling the TPP; restarting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline; limiting entry with the Mexican Wall; the 90-day travel ban on seven countries; more undocumented people prioritized for deportation; no federal funding for cities refusing to cooperate; communications blackout from federal agencies; Guantánamo torture continued–What does it add up to?

Johan Galtung

Fascism? Too early to say; but in that direction. It opens for questions about the inner workings of Donald J. Trump. Who is he?

A Johns Hopkins psychologist sees Trump suffering from “malignant narcissism“. A Norwegian historian, Öystein Morten, in a detailed analysis of Norwegian king crusader Sigurd Jorsalafare (1103-1130)–clearly crazy–has a Norwegian psychiatrist diagnose him as suffering from “bipolar depression”, manic-depressive. Is Trump only manic?

This column early on saw Trump as suffering from “autism”, living in his own bubble, speaking his babble with no sense of reciprocity, the reaction of the other side. The column stands by that.

However, this column drew a line between his words and deeds; denouncing his rhetoric as grossly insulting and prejudicial, but pinning some hope on his deeds. Wrong, and sorry about that. After one week, Trump clearly means every word he says, and enacts them from Day 1; even what he once retracted in a New York Times interview.

Combine the two points just made: autism and immediate enactment. He acts, and from his bubble does not sense how others will react, and increasingly proact. He assumes that others will accept his orders, obey, and that is it. It is not. His orders my even backfire.

As many point out, terrorism in the USA after 9/11 is almost nil. But his actions may change that. Some Mexicans may hit back, not only against the wall but the border itself, drawn by USA grabbing 53% of Mexican territory in 1846-48, then soaking Mexico in debt and violence importing drugs and exporting arms, even unaware of the harm they do.

Take the seven countries targeted by Trump for collective punishment: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen; the old seven with state central banks targeted by Bush, with Yemen substituted for Lebanon. All mainly Muslim.

Imagine them reacting by cooperating, learning from China to raise the bottom up, starting building a West Asian community with links across the Red Sea, and “Saudi” Arabia soon joining?

If their governments do not do that, imagine the Islamic State doing exactly that? What a gift to the Islamic State/Caliphate!

As a minimum, the 7 might reciprocate and block US citizens’ entry for the same period. How would that affect US military operations? Would it force Trump to use force? In fact, are his demands on other countries so extreme, not only in words but in deeds, that there are no more words and deeds left short of force? Does his extremism limit his range of options, making war as probable as under Hillary Clinton?

And yet what he has done so far, firing and backfiring, is little relative to what other US presidents have done of harm.

Take FDR spending much of his presidencies on beating Japan, scheming to provoke Japan into war, defeat and permanent occupation to eliminate Japan as a threat to US economy and polity. That policy is still being enacted, now as “collective self-defense.”

Take JFK getting USA into the Vietnam War in 1961.

Take Eisenhower eliminating Lumumba, maybe Hammarskjöld.

They caused devastation of Japan, of Vietnam and set back Africa on its way to freedom, autonomy, independence. Trump is retracting, contracting, away from others, but not expanding into them. So far.

The reaction inside the USA has been from judges challenging the legality of the orders and launching court suits. The market has been ambiguous but generally down with heavy protests from Silicon Valley. Trump claims the orders are working. What else will happen?

It is difficult to imagine that there will not be a CIA response, being challenged and provoked by Trump, not only for accusing Russia of intervening to his advantage.

There are probably at this moment countless meetings in Washington on how to get rid of Trump. Yet, he has command over not only his Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court, but also over the overwhelming number of states in the union.

US presidents have been assassinated before Trump when the forces against are sufficiently strong. Could somebody from the Travel ban 7 be hired to do the job, making it look as a foreign conspiracy?

Another and more hopeful scenario would be nonviolent resistance. Difficult for border officials. But inside the USA people to be deported may be hidden, protected by their own kind and by others–with care though, Trump also has some good points.

More constructive would be alternative foreign policies by cities, at present not by the federation, nor by most of the states. Reaching out to the seven and above all to Mexico for dialogue; searching for better relations than at present and under Trump.

Preparing the ground for something new, under the Democratic Party or not. Not a third party, impossible in the USA it seems, but as general approach. The relation between New York and Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, Tripoli, Khartoum, Mogadisciu and Sana’a as an example. Still some space!

There is no greatness in what Trump does, he makes USA smaller. Trying rebirth instead of rust, canceling stupid deals like TPP: OK. But retracting into a self-glorifying strong state is not greatness, it is isolation. Greatness is not in what you are but in how you relate. And Trump relates very badly.

Johan Galtung’s article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS): TMS: The Trump Presidency: The First Week

The statements and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

Excerpt:

Now that Donald Trump has announced that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, an increase in US trade protectionism is expected, possibly triggering serious trade conflicts with unpredictable consequences. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 19 2017 (IPS)

US President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement on the first day of his presidency in January 2017. Now, it is widely expected that Trump’s presidency will increase US trade protectionism, and consequently by others in retaliation, possibly triggering serious trade conflicts with difficult to predict consequences.

After decades of denial by ‘free trade’ advocates, it is now widely agreed that many manufacturing jobs in the US have been lost to both automation and offshore relocation by US corporations. Free trade agreements (FTAs) are also being blamed for the US’s large trade deficits.

Trump trade strategy?
With the global economic slowdown of the last eight years associated by many with the slowdown of trade expansion, the surprise election of President-elect Trump has become the subject of much speculation and some dire predictions. Many are concerned that Trump has made various contrarian pronouncements on FTAs, while his appointments to trade related portfolios seem to contradict his trade rhetoric.

In early December 2016, the Wall Street Journal noted the unexpectedly high number of TPP advocates joining the Trump administration to serve in trade-related capacities. Although the hopes of some TPP advocates of a last-minute reprieve are probably misplaced, there is no indication that some amended version, perhaps with a different name, will not eventually emerge in its place.

If President-elect Trump lives up to his campaign rhetoric, other plurilateral free trade agreements will also be affected. Trump has referred to the TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as disasters for the US, and has vowed to renegotiate NAFTA. His announced preference for negotiating “fair” bilateral trade deals favourable to the US has not given much comfort to prospective negotiation partners.

And while Trump’s main preoccupations have been with US manufacturing jobs and the related international trade in goods, he is also expected to promote US corporate interests more generally, e.g., on intellectual property, financial liberalization, investor rights and dispute settlement.

Already, most US FTAs include ‘non-trade issues’, many of which have raised costs to consumers, e.g., by further strengthening intellectual property monopolies typically held by powerful transnational corporations, whose chief executives seem likely to be very influential in the new administration.

Currency manipulation
During the presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Trump accused China of being a “currency manipulator”, despite market consensus that the Chinese renminbi has been reasonably aligned for some time. Under US law, evidence of currency manipulation could be grounds to impose additional tariffs on imports from a country so deemed by the Treasury Department. Aware that this could exacerbate trade conflicts, President Obama avoided pressure to do so from many Congress members, lobbyists and economists.

However, Trump can easily revise this position on some pretext or other, by taking trade or other retaliatory actions against China on the ostensible grounds of alleged currency manipulation which would contravene World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, allowing China to successfully take a case against the US to the WTO for such an illegal action.

WTO trade rules abused
Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs of as much as 45% on imports from China and Mexico! But while an across-the-board tariff hike is unlikely, as it is prohibited by the WTO, the new administration is likely to consider invoking WTO trade-remedy actions on products from China, Mexico and other countries by claiming they are being dumped or subsidized. This has already happened, e.g., with solar panels and wind turbines from China, raising the costs of renewable energy, and thus undermining the global warming mitigation effort.

To be sure, WTO trade remedy rules have long been widely abused for protectionist purposes. A country can impose high tariffs on an imported item from another country by claiming its price has been artificially depressed or subsidized by the government in order to export – or ‘dump’ – them at a price lower than the domestic price. No deterrent is imposed against the offending country even if a WTO dispute settlement panel rules that the ostensibly anti-dumping tariff-raising action was wrongly taken, even though the exporting country has lost considerable export earnings in the interim.

Furthermore, similar actions can be repeated without impunity with no threat of penalty. Such ostensible trade-remedy actions are more likely than blatant tariff walls. These may, in turn, trigger retaliatory counter-actions by aggrieved governments, potentially leading to a spiral of trade protectionism, i.e., trade warfare.

Fair trade?
It is unclear how the new administration views FTAs more generally. The President-elect’s objection to the TPP and NAFTA focuses on the goods trade, and the loss of manufacturing jobs due to cheaper imports, often brought in by the same companies which have chosen to relocate production capacities abroad, and are already mobilizing to resist actions which may jeopardize their profits.
This view does not seem to recognize that technological change, particularly with automation, has been the major source of job losses. Many jobs remaining in the US have higher skill requirements, with fewer employees producing more goods with less labour-intensive techniques.

“Fair trade” will be subject to self-serving interpretations by the governments concerned, arguably further undermining trade multilateralism. While freer trade has undoubtedly improved consumer welfare with cheaper imports, it has seen some deindustrialization in the North and industrialization in the South in recent decades with important employment consequences which have been a major source of the current discontent over globalization.

Trade growth slower
To be sure, the trade growth slowdown following the 2008 financial crisis suggests that the U-turn has already taken place after an extraordinary period of trade expansion due to much greater international specialization with the popularization of international value chains.

In December 2015, Obama’s United States Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman threatened the already difficult Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations by trying to introduce TPP issues which had been kept off the agenda from the outset of the ostensibly Development Round after the Seattle WTO ministerial walkout of 1999.

Perhaps most worryingly, there has been no indication so far that the next US administration will not undermine multilateral trade negotiations under the auspices of the WTO. Trump’s much-trumpeted preference for bilateral deals favourable to the US is likely to test trade multilateralism as never before.

But President-elect Trump also has a penchant for the unpredictable, and may yet surprise the world with a new commitment to trade multilateralism to advance consumer, producer, and development interests for all.

Excerpt:

Trump's ‘Put America First’ alternative of negotiating bilateral trade deals will be problematic for its negotiating partners, especially smaller and developing countries with modest negotiating capacity. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 12 2017 (IPS)

So-called free-trade agreements (FTAs) are generally presumed to promote trade liberalization, but in fact, they do much more to strengthen the power of the most influential transnational corporations of the dominant partner involved. While FTAs typically reduce some barriers to the international trade in goods and services, some provisions strengthen private monopolies and corporate power.

Not surprisingly, FTA processes are increasingly widely seen as essentially corrupt. They are typically opaque, especially to the producer and consumer interests affected. The eventual outcomes are often poorly understood by the public and often misrepresented by those pretending to be experts.

For example, many economists from the Peterson Institute of International Economics and the World Bank have continued to claim very significant growth gains from trade liberalization due to the TPPA which have been refuted by US government economists from the Department of Agriculture and International Trade Commission.

And while many in the transnational elite who benefit remain committed to yet more FTAs as means to extend and expand their power and interests, public trust and hope have declined as people become aware of some of their most onerous provisions and likely consequences.

Thus, people are voting against the politicians held responsible for supporting FTAs regardless of their party affiliations. Brexit and the election of Mr. Trump are examples of such global trends.

Do FTAs promote freer trade?
While FTAs may increase trade and trade flows, but are they worth the effort, considering the paltry growth gains generated? There are considerable doubts that some FTA provisions — e.g., those strengthening intellectual rights (IPRs) or investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules unaccountable to national judiciaries — enhance international trade, economic growth or the public interest.

Greater trade and trade liberalization may potentially improve the welfare of all as well as accelerate growth and structural transformation in developing countries. But such outcomes do not necessarily follow, but need to be ensured through complementary policies, institutions and reforms.

Furthermore, trade liberalization on false premises has also undermined existing productive and export capacities and capabilities without generating new ones in their place, i.e., causing retrogression rather than ensuring progress. Such effects have not only set back economic development, but often, also food security, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Freer and fairer trade without FTAs
More people now realize that trade expansion compatible with welfare and development aspirations can happen without FTAs, e.g., through unilateral measures. This was evident when the US trade embargo on Cuba was dropped, and will happen if US trade relations with Iran improve. Similarly, US-Vietnam trade should expand rapidly in the absence of decades-long discriminatory and onerous US legislation imposed on Vietnam following the end of the War in 1975.

During the recent US presidential campaign, both presidential aspirants attributed the US trade deficit with China to the latter’s alleged currency manipulation. While many developing countries, especially in East Asia, manage their currencies for various reasons, the recent market consensus is that the renminbi has been reasonably aligned for some time, while the currencies of some other countries, mainly US allies in East Asia, are more significantly undervalued. US trade negotiators have long complained that they cannot get enforceable currency rules into any FTA as it is so easily prone to abuse.

More fundamentally, such a solution does not address the underlying problems of the international monetary system which confers an ‘exorbitant privilege’ on the US. With greatly liberalized capital accounts in recent decades, many ‘emerging market economies’ have experienced large and sudden outflows of capital. Hence, they have resorted to the expensive and contractionary practice of so-called ‘self-insurance’, by accumulating huge foreign exchange reserves in case of need for emergency deployment.

This has had substantial opportunity costs for emerging economies as these reserves could have been used more productively instead of keeping them in low-yield US Treasury bonds. Besides transferring seigniorage gains (to the currency issuing government due to the difference between the face value of currency and their production costs) to the US, emerging countries are, in effect, helping to finance US deficits and expenditure.

Multilateralism still best option
If President-elect Trump lives up to his campaign rhetoric, all plurilateral and multilateral free trade agreements will be affected. But his ‘Put America First’ alternative of negotiating bilateral trade deals favourable to the US is also hugely problematic because of the heavy demands it will place on the US as well as its negotiating partners, especially smaller and developing countries with modest negotiating capacity.

And while Trump’s main preoccupations have been with the goods trade and US jobs, there has been no indication so far that he will not continue to promote US corporate interests more generally, e.g., on intellectual property, investor rights, financial liberalization and dispute settlement, as part of ostensible comprehensive trade negotiations. Such concerns have been reinforced by the choice of recent appointees to senior trade-related positions in the new administration.

Determinants of trade flows and patterns are many and varied, including incomes (or, purchasing power), growth rates, tariffs, non-tariff barriers, exchange rates as well as import and export rules. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and other existing multilateral institutions can do much to facilitate greater trade in the interest of all if given a chance to succeed.

Worryingly, there has been no indication so far that the next US administration will not undermine multilateral trade negotiations under WTO auspices. Unfortunately, the current Doha Round of trade negotiations has been prevented by powerful corporate interests and the governments. Concluding a truly progressive trade agreement would not only meet developmental aspirations as well as advance national, public, consumer and producer interests, but would also help ensure a more balanced and robust global economic recovery.

Excerpt:

Rrealistic macroeconomic modelling has suggested that almost 800,000 jobs could be lost over a decade. Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations’ automation and relocation abroad. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 5 2017 (IPS)

President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) on the first day of his presidency. The TPP may now be dead, thanks to Trump and opposition by all major US presidential candidates. With its imminent demise almost certain, it is important to draw on some lessons before it is buried.

Fraudulent free trade agreement
The TPP is fraudulent as a free trade agreement, offering very little in terms of additional growth due to trade liberalization, contrary to media hype. To be sure, the TPP had little to do with trade. The US already has free trade agreements, of the bilateral or regional variety, with six of the 11 other countries in the pact. All twelve members also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO) which concluded the single largest trade agreement ever, more than two decades ago in Marrakech – contrary to the TPPA’s claim to that status. Trade barriers with the remaining five countries were already very low in most cases, so there is little room left for further trade liberalization in the TPPA, except in the case of Vietnam, owing to the war until 1975 and its legacy of punitive legislation.

The most convenient computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model used for trade projections makes unrealistic assumptions, including those about the consequences of trade liberalization. For instance, such trade modelling exercises typically presume full employment as well as unchanging trade and fiscal balances. Our colleagues’ more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national level.

Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations’ automation and relocation abroad. Thus, while most politically influential US corporations would do well from the TPP due to strengthened intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, US workers would generally not. It is now generally believed these outcomes contributed to the backlash against such globalization in the votes for Brexit and Trump.

Non-trade measures
According to the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), the US think-tank known for cheerleading economic liberalization and globalization, the purported TPPA gains would mainly come from additional investments, especially foreign direct investments, due to enhanced investor rights. However, these claims have been disputed by most other analysts, including two US government agencies, i.e., the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

Much of the additional value of trade would come from ‘non-trade issues’. Strengthening intellectual property (IP) monopolies, typically held by powerful transnational corporations, would raise the value of trade through higher trading prices, not more goods and services. Thus, strengthened IPRs leading to higher prices for medicines are of particular concern.

The TPP would reinforce and extend patents, copyrights and related intellectual property protections. Such protectionism raises the price of protected items, such as pharmaceutical drugs. In a 2015 case, Martin Skrelly raised the price of a drug he had bought the rights to by 6000% from USD12.50 to USD750! As there is no US law against such ‘price-gouging’, the US Attorney General could only prosecute him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.

“Medecins Sans Frontieres” warned that the agreement would go down in history as the worst “cause of needless suffering and death” in developing countries. In fact, contrary to the claim that stronger IPRs would enhance research and development, there has been no evidence of increased research or new medicines in recent decades for this reason.

Corporate-friendly
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also supposed to go up thanks to the TPPA’s ISDS provisions. For instance, foreign companies would be able to sue TPP governments for ostensible loss of profits, including potential future profits, due to changes in national regulation or policies even if in the national or public interest.

ISDS would be enforced through ostensibly independent tribunals. This extrajudicial system would supercede national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to appeal.

Thus, rather than trade promotion, the main purpose of the TPPA has been to internationally promote more corporate-friendly rules under US leadership. The 6350 page deal was negotiated by various working groups where representatives of major, mainly US corporations were able to drive the agenda and advance their interests. The final push to seek congressional support for the TPPA despite strong opposition from the major presidential candidates made clear that the main US rationale and motive were geo-political, to minimize China’s growing influence.

The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency as she came across as insincere in belatedly opposing the agreement which she had previously praised and advocated. Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.

The problem now is that while the Obama administration undermined trade multilateralism by its unwillingness to honour the compromise which initiated the Doha Development Round, Trump’s preference for bilateral agreements benefiting the US is unlikely to provide the boost to multilateralism so badly needed now. Unless the US and the EU embrace the spirit of compromise which started this round of trade negotiations, the WTO and multilateralism more generally may never recover from the setbacks of the last decade and a half.

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Garment workers in Bangladesh. Should Bangladeshis, Malaysians and others worry about their countries’ downward slide in the ‘Doing Business’ ranking? Credit: IPS

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 2016 (IPS)

Without any hint of irony, the World Bank’s most recent Doing Business Report 2017 promises ‘Equal Opportunity for All’. Bangladesh ranked 176th among 190 economies, below civil war-ravaged Iraq and Syria! Bangladesh even slipped two places from 174 in the 2016 ranking and is three places below its 2015 ranking.

Malaysia, too, slipped five places. The Doing Business Report (DBR) 2017 ranked Malaysia at 23, down from 18 in the previous two reports for 2015 and 2016. Incredibly, this had nothing to do with news of the biggest scandal ever in the country’s history.

Malaysia seems to have slipped because, it had “made starting a business more difficult by requiring that companies with an annual revenue of more than MYR 500,000 register as a GST payer,” and made tax payments more complex “by replacing sales tax with GST”.

Previously, Malaysia was recognized in DBR 2016 for reducing the property tax rate from 12% to 10% of the annual rental value for commercial properties in 2014, even though this contributed negatively to overall government revenue or public finance.

Thus, ‘be damned if you do, and be damned if you don’t’. Countries are asked to raise domestic revenue, but stand to slip in their rankings if they act to raise tax revenues. Taxation may reduce the incentive to invest, but low tax revenue would also hurt the business environment if it reduces government revenue needed to finance public infrastructure, education, healthcare and business services.

Rankings

Should Bangladeshis, Malaysians and others worry about their countries’ downward slide in the ‘Doing Business’ ranking? Should those doing better be elated about their elevation in the rankings? The simple answer is ‘no’, but it really depends.

What do the rankings imply? How does the World Bank compare countries with very different economic structures at different stages of development and with varied capabilities address very diverse problems? By ranking countries, the DBR ignores their heterogeneity and essentially treats them as comparable on a single scale.

This serious methodological problem was pointed out by an independent panel in 2013, headed by South Africa’s Vice President and former finance minister Trevor Manuel. It concluded that “The Doing Business report has the potential to be misinterpreted…. It should not be viewed as providing a one-size-fits-all template for development…. The evidence in favour of specific country reforms is contingent on many auxiliary factors not captured by Doing Business report topics.”

By ranking countries, the DBR ignores their heterogeneity and essentially treats them as comparable on a single scale. This serious methodological problem was pointed out by an independent panel in 2013, headed by South Africa’s Vice President and former finance minister Trevor Manuel.
The panel also noted that “the act of ranking countries may appear devoid of value judgement, but it is, in reality, an arbitrary method of summarising vast amounts of complex information as a single number.” It recommended dropping the overall aggregate ranking from the report.

The independent panel had been set up by the Bank in response to heavy criticism of the DBR. Yet, the Bank has chosen to ignore most of the independent panel’s recommendations, especially to drop overall country rankings.

In response to criticisms of overall country ranking, the Bank added a ‘distance to frontier’ measure. Thus, instead of the ordinal measures used for ranking, the ostensible (cardinal) ‘distance’ from the best performance measure for each indicator became the new basis for ranking.

Yet, it does not address the main concern – heterogeneous countries cannot be ranked mechanically. Thus, not surprisingly, the best performers are rich, developed countries.

Ignoring criticisms

Besides the external panel, the World Bank also ignored much of its own internal review. For example, its legal unit has been uneasy about the DBR process and findings.

The unit’s September 2012 internal review of the 2013 DBR questioned the ranking’s ‘manipulation’ and noted the ‘embedded policy preferences’ underlying some indicators. It went so far as to accuse the DBR of bias as it ‘tends to ignore the positive effects of regulation’.

For example, the ‘starting a business’ indicator uses the limited liability corporate form as the only ‘proxy’ for business creation. The legal unit considered this approach ‘deceptive’ as there is no evidence that easing “company formation rules leads to increases in business creation”.

The Bank’s legal unit also argued that the DBR methodology is seriously flawed, highlighting ‘black box’ data gaps, ‘cherry picking’ background papers, and ‘double counting’. The legal team even asked, “are high income the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries placed higher in the Doing Business rankings because they have implemented the (types of) reforms advocated by the report?” In its 26 September 2015 issue, The Economist, usually a cheerleader for pro-business reforms, argued that the DBR ranking did not provide a reliable guide to investors.

Countries have perversely amended regulations to try to improve their ranking in order to impress donors or prospective foreign investors, rather than to actually increase investments and growth. Countries are also likely to do more to favour foreign investments, rather than domestic investments, which are generally more likely to contribute to sustainable development.

Biases

The DBR survey is generally biased against regulations and taxes. Following earlier criticisms, ease of hiring and firing workers and flexibility of working hours are no longer used in the overall ranking, but nonetheless remain in the report, highlighting the authors’ appreciation of such regulations. Conversely, the DBR continues to look unfavourably on a country which seeks to enhance workplace regulations by improving wages, working conditions or occupational safety, or by allowing workers in export processing zones to unionize.

Surprisingly, the DBR does not cover security, corruption, market size, financial stability, infrastructure, skills and other important elements often deemed important for attracting business investments. Moreover, many DBR indicators are considered to be quite superficial. For example, the survey’s credit market indicator does not reflect how well credit is allocated. Similarly, the DBR survey focuses on how difficult it is to get electricity connected without taking into account the state of electricity generation or distribution, which often depends on a country’s level of development.

The DBR approach is very ‘legalistic’ as it mainly looks at formal regulations without considering how such regulations affect SMEs or other investors besides the stereotypical foreign investor. It also ignores, norms and other institutions including extra-legal processes. For example, Mary Hallward-Driemeier of the World Bank and Lant Pritchett of Harvard compared the DBR with the Bank’s firm surveys. They found large gaps between the DBR report and reality.

They also found ‘almost zero correlation’ between DB findings and other Bank surveys of business enterprises. For instance, the average amount of time that companies report spending on three tasks — obtaining construction permits, getting operating licenses and importing goods — is ‘much, much less’ than those cited in the DBR. [http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.121]

Pritchett, who once worked for the Bank, has argued that developing country policy makers focusing on improving their DBR rankings could divert scarce resources away from more important and urgent reforms, e.g., to help the government better administer, implement and enforce business regulations.

“The pretense that Doing Business measures the real rules, and that if we just modestly improve these Doing Business indicators, they would somehow become the reality of what the rules are and how business is really done — I think that’s a very dangerous fiction.” [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/04/is-the-world-banks-doing-business-report-at-odds-with-how-business-is-done-in-the-developing-world/].

In sum, the DBR assumes that there are universally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ policies regardless of context. This approach clearly misses the need for concrete analysis in specific contexts. Not surprisingly, the DBR continues to promote deregulation as the best strategy for promoting economic growth. To be fair, the Bank acknowledges that the DBR should not be seen as advocating a one-size-fits-all model, but the Bank’s own promotion and coverage of the report suggests otherwise.

Excerpt:

Eight of The World Bank's "Doing Business" report 2017’s ‘top 10 improvers’ including Kenya, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have, in fact, worsened workers’ rights, according to the International Trade Union Confederation. Credit: IPS

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 15 2016 (IPS)

The World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2017, subtitled ‘Equal Opportunity for All’, continues to mislead despite the many criticisms, including from within, levelled against the Bank’s most widely read publication, and Bank management promises of reform for many years.

Its Foreword claims, “Evidence from 175 economies reveals that economies with more stringent entry regulations often experience higher levels of income inequality as measured by the Gini index.” But what is the evidence base for its strong claims, e.g., that “economies with more business-friendly regulations tend to have lower levels of income inequality”?

Closer examination suggests that the “evidence” is actually quite weak, and heavily influenced by countries closer to the ‘frontier’, mainly developed countries, most of which have long introduced egalitarian redistributive reforms reflected in taxation, employment and social welfare measures, and where inequality remains lower than in many developing countries.

The report notes that relations between DB scores and inequality ‘differ by regulatory area’. But it only mentions two, for ‘starting a business’ and for ‘resolving insolvency’. For both, higher DB scores are associated with less inequality, but has nothing to say on other DB indicators.

Other studies — by the OECD, IMF, ADB and the United Nations — negatively correlate inequality and the tax/GDP ratio. Higher taxes enable governments to spend more on public health, education and social protection, and are associated with higher government social expenditure/GDP ratios and lower inequality. The DBR’s total tax rate indicator awards the highest scores to countries with the lowest tax rates and other contributions (such as for social security) required of businesses.

Bias
The DBR’s bias to deregulation is very clear. First, despite the weak empirical evidence and the fallacy of claiming causation from mere association, it makes a strong general claim that less regulation reduces inequality. Second, in its selective reporting, the DBR fails to report on many correlations not convenient for its purpose, namely advocacy of particular policies in line with its own ideology.

The World Bank had suspended the DBR’s labour indicator in 2009 after objections — by labour, governments and the ILO — to its deployment to pressure countries to weaken worker protections. But its push for labour market deregulation continues. For example, Tanzania’s score is cut in 2017 for introducing a workers’ compensation tariff to be paid by employers while Malta is penalized for increasing the maximum social security contribution to be paid by employers.

New Zealand beat Singapore to take first place in the latest DBR rankings following reforms reducing employers’ contributions to worker accident compensation. Nothing is said about how it has become a prime location for ‘money-laundering’ ‘shell’ companies.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Belarus, Serbia, Georgia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — eight of DB 2017’s ‘top 10 improvers’ –– have recorded poor and, in some cases, worsening workers’ rights, according to the International Trade Union Confederation. A DBR 2017 annex claims that labour market regulation can ‘reduce the risk of job loss and support equity and social cohesion’, but devotes far more space to promoting fixed term contracts with minimal benefits and severance pay requirements.

In support of its claim of adverse impacts of labour regulations, DBR 2017 cites three World Bank studies from several years ago. Incredibly, it does not mention the extensive review of empirical studies in the Bank’s more recent flagship World Development Report 2013: Jobs, which found that “most estimates of the impacts [of labour regulations] on employment levels tend to be insignificant or modest”.

DBR 2017 adds gender components to its three indicator sets — starting a business, registering property and enforcing contracts — concluding: “For the most part, the formal regulatory environment as measured by Doing Business does not differentiate procedures according to the gender of the business owner. The addition of gender components to three separate indicators has a small impact on each of them and therefore a small impact overall”.

Should anyone be surprised by the DBR’s conclusion? It ignores the fact that the policies promoted by the Bank especially adversely affect women workers who tend to be concentrated in the lowest paid, least unionized jobs, e.g., in garments and apparel production or electronics assembly. The DBR also discourages regulations improving working conditions, e.g., for equal pay and maternity benefits.

Despite its ostensible commitment to ‘equal opportunities for all’, the DBR cannot conceal its intent and bias, giving higher scores to countries that favour corporate profits over citizens’, especially workers’ interests, and national efforts to achieve sustainable development.

Sadly, many developing country governments still bend over backwards to impress the World Bank with reforms to improve their DBR rankings. This obsession with performing well in the Bank’s ‘beauty contest’ has taken a heavy toll on workers, farmers and the world’s poor — the majority of whom are women — who bear the burden of DBR-induced reforms, despite its proclaimed concerns for inequality, gender equity and ‘equal opportunities for all’.

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Group of participants community emergency work for debris management, Las Gilces. Credit: UNDP Ecuador

By Carlo Ruiz
QUITO, Ecuador, Dec 8 2016 (IPS)

No one is really prepared for an emergency until they’ve had to live through one. And the 16 April earthquake in Ecuador put us to the test.

With the drawdown in the humanitarian response phase that is providing relief to survivors and victims, the hustle and bustle is dying down. Remnants of the disaster can be seen everywhere, and an idea of what the near future will bring and people’s resilience – their capacity to cope – is taking shape.

During tours of the affected areas, I saw that people have, to a greater or lesser extent, a natural conviction that pushes them to overcome the situation they are in. Shortly after a catastrophe hits, whether from the need to survive or from attempts to recover the normality that has been ripped from them, men and women begin to help each other out.

After the earthquake, small merchants relocate and rebuild their outlets on the outskirts of the city of Manta. Credit: UNDP Ecuador

Disasters hit poor people the hardest. This is why it is crucial to work on recovery of livelihoods starting in the emergency response period. People who can manage to earn a living can overcome the psychological impact of adversity more quickly. This has been a key factor in the post-earthquake process in Ecuador.

The institutional structure is another element that affects how fast communities recover. Having a response system, with mechanisms to quickly and strategically identify needs, makes recovery efforts more effective.

Communities are more vulnerable if local authorities are absent and exercise less authority to ensure, among other things, compliance with building and land-use standards.

Nationally, strong institutions and clarity in carrying out specific roles have enabled timely and appropriate disaster relief to affected communities. This undoubtedly will influence how quickly the country will recover the human development gains and how well it will design mechanisms to alleviate poverty caused by the earthquake.

The third important element is coordination. The extent to which organizations and institutions contribute in an orderly and technical fashion to response and recovery efforts reflects directly on the effectiveness of relief efforts.

Starts emergency community work for the management of rubble, Las Gilces. Credit: UNDP Ecuador

As a result of all these efforts, UNDP has helped 533 families to get their businesses financially back on their feet in Manta, Portoviejo and Calceta (Manabí Province), and 490 people—half of them women—obtained emergency jobs on demolition and debris removal projects under our Cash-for-Work programme. Through this initiative, some 20,000 m3 of debris has been removed.

Additionally, 300 rice farmers and their families benefited from the repair of an irrigation canal; 260 families will restart farming, fishing and tourism activities; and 160 shopkeepers will get their businesses up and running again with the support of economic recovery programmes.

With regard to construction, UNDP supported development of seven guides for the assessment and construction of structures, to build back better and incorporate disaster risk reduction into urban development plans. And in Riochico Parish (Manabí Province), UNDP trained 500 affected homeowners on the principles of earthquake-resistant construction.

Poor people who have been hit by an earthquake live on the edge, where one thing or another can lead them to either give up or to survive. Therefore, it is crucial for actions to be fast, but also well thought-out.

Resilience is something that permeates survivors and is passed down to future generations. Building resilience should be one of our main objectives and responsibilities as institutions in a country such as Ecuador, where we live with the constant threat of natural disasters.

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José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO

By José Graziano da Silva
ROME, Nov 7 2016 (IPS)

Migration is part of the process of development. It is not a problem in itself, and could, in fact, offer a solution to a number of matters. Migrants can make a positive and profound contribution to the economic and social development of their countries of origin, transit and destination alike. To quote the New York Declaration, adopted at the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants on 19 September, “migrants can help to respond to demographic trends, labour shortages and other challenges in host societies, and add fresh skills and dynamism to the latter’s economies”.

So far this year, already more than 320,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean in search of a better future. Thousands have lost their lives doing so. Those that have survived face uncertain prospects at their destinations. Many are confronted with hostility and inhumane new realities. Migrants and refugees are often perceived negatively in their host communities, deemed to “steal’’ jobs and drain financial and social services. At personal and collective levels, this creates a certain sense of disquiet.

Tighter border controls are not the solution. They have instead resulted in more deaths at sea and more human rights violations. Without adequate policies that respond to migrants’ need to leave and that offer accessible, regular, safe and affordable avenues for migration, countries risk being left alone to deal with very complex challenges, possibly falling into chaos and disorganization.

In many cases, this translates into the adoption of less than desirable informal solutions, where the risk of abuses of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers is high. What has been happening in the Jungle camp near Calais in France shows that the most vulnerable, such as unaccompanied children, are those most at risk.

The challenge is huge. If we do not act in a timely manner, tensions will only rise further.

We need to address the root causes behind large movements of migrants and refugees, bringing together humanitarian and development responses. We also need channels for regular migration, facilitating migrants’ integration and contributions to development.

FAO argues that investing in sustainable rural development, climate change adaptation and resilient livelihoods is an important part of the solution, including in conflict-affected and protracted crisis situations.

Forty percent of international remittances are sent to rural areas, indicating that a large share of migrants originate from rural locations. Globally, three-quarters of the extreme poor base their livelihoods on agriculture. And by 2050, over half of the population in least developed countries will still be living in rural areas, despite increased urbanisation.

Agriculture and rural development can help address the root causes of migration, including rural poverty, food insecurity, inequality, unemployment, and lack of social protection, as well as natural resource depletion due to environmental degradation and climate change.

Agriculture and rural development can create sustainable livelihood options in rural areas. This kind of support can also help prevent the outbreak of conflicts over natural resources, and help host communities and displaced people cope with and recover from shocks by building their resilience.

Youth deserve particular attention. One-third of international migrants from developing countries are aged 15-34, moving mainly in search of better employment opportunities. By making agriculture a sustainable and attractive employment option and developing food value chains, millions of new and better jobs could be created.

Together with its partners, FAO supports global and country efforts on migration, bringing its specialized expertise on food security, resilience-building and sustainable agriculture and rural development. It does so by generating data on migration and rural development, supporting capacity development at country and regional level, facilitating policy dialogue and scaling-up innovative solutions to enhance agriculture-based livelihoods, social protection coverage and job opportunities in rural areas, as well as to build resilience in protracted crisis situations.

Since 2014, FAO has been a member of the Global Migration Group (GMG). The GMG has played an important role in coordinating inputs from different UN agencies for the process of intergovernmental negotiations that led to the adoption of the New York Declaration during the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants.

GMG will assume the same role in preparation of the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration by 2018. FAO stands ready to lend its technical expertise and share best practices, to ensure that the need to address the root causes of migration, including from rural areas, is taken into account in major global fora.

FAO will also enhance the collaboration with key partners in the area of migration and development, at global, regional and country level. In this regard, FAO is discussing ways to foster country-level collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Note on the terminology: FAO uses the term migration to refer to the movement of people, either within a country or across international borders. It includes all kinds of movements, irrespective of the drivers, duration and voluntary/involuntary nature. It encompasses economic migrants, distress migrants, internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and asylum seekers, returnees and people moving for other purposes, including for education and family reunification.

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Privatization has not provided the miracle cure for the problems (especially the inefficiencies) associated with the public sector. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Nov 3 2016 (IPS)

Privatization of SOEs has been a cornerstone of the neo-liberal counterrevolution that swept the world from the 1980s following the economic crisis brought about by US Fed’s sharp hike in interest rates. Developing countries, seeking aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, often had to commit to privatization as a condition for credit support.

The World Bank and the IMF then attributed developing countries’ inability to adjust to the external shocks of that time, inter alia, to their import-substituting industrial policy initiatives and the inefficiency of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Hence, their support came with conditions to undertake measures for ‘stabilization’ and ‘structural adjustment’.

Privatization was seen and advocated as an easy means to accelerate growth, improve efficiency and productivity, shrink the public sector and associated debt, as well as reduce governments’ financial and administrative responsibilities and activities. However, the privatization experiences of the last three and a half decades, especially for developing countries, have been anything but glorious.

Mixed experiences
Privatization has not provided the miracle cure for the problems (especially the inefficiencies) associated with the public sector. And the public interest has rarely been effectively served by private interests taking over public-sector activities. More recently, growing concern over adverse consequences of privatization has spawned research worldwide.

Privatization was supposed to free market forces and encourage competition in the economy, but the new owners have an interest in retaining the SOE’s ‘competitive advantages’, including monopoly positions. Hence, there has been widespread concern about: (i) formal and informal collusion, e.g. cartel-like agreements; (ii) collusion in bidding for procurement contracts and other such opportunities; and (iii) some interested parties enjoying special influence and privileged information.

Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Rod Sims, a strong supporter of privatization for three decades, recently confessed that “he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent” (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July 2016). According to him, selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy.

Adverse consequences
As a matter of fact, both the IMF and World Bank were aware of such likely adverse impacts of privatization. For example, a 1999 IMF research paper acknowledged that privatization “can lead to job losses, wage cuts and higher prices for consumers”. Similarly, World Bank research on the experiences of Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Malaysia, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Turkey in 1997 found large-scale employment losses when big SOEs were privatized.

Comparative data from the US, UK, Canada, Chile, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for 1999-2004 found that privatization disproportionately affected female workers. IMF and World Bank safety-net or compensation proposals were either too costly for the public exchequer or too administratively burdensome for many developing countries.

Privatization may postpone a fiscal crisis by temporarily reducing fiscal deficits, but the public-sector would lose income from profitable public-sector activities, and be left to finance and subsidize unprofitable ones. For example, Sydney Airport paid no tax in the first ten years after it was privatized even when it earned almost A$8 billion; instead, it received tax benefits of almost A$400 million!

No solution
Privatization in many developing and transition economies has primarily enriched a few with strong political connections who ‘captured’ profitable opportunities associated with privatization, while the public interest has been sacrificed to such powerful private business interests. This has, in turn, exacerbated problems of corruption, patronage, and other related problems.

In most cases, privatization did not solve the problem of governments’ fiscal deficits. Instead, governments lost vital revenue sources. In most cases, profitable SOEs were sold as prospective private owners were only interested in securing profits. Fiscal crises have often been exacerbated when new private owners used ‘creative accounting’ to avoid tax and secure tax credits. Thus, in most cases, privatization has been the problem, rarely the solution to the government’s fiscal crisis or SOE problems.

Excerpt:

By Sanam Naraghi Anderlini
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 2 2016 (IPS)

For those of us who ever feel conflicted about the United Nations, the past month has been an exercise in managing absurd cognitive dissonance. First, on October 21 2016, the United Nations announced that the 1940s comic book heroine, Wonder Woman would be its new mascot for promoting the empowerment of women and girls.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini

Then, on October 25th the UN Security Council held its annual open debate on the groundbreaking ‘Women, peace and security agenda’, now in its 16th year of existence – still full of promise, and yet barely realized. So what’s going on?

The story so far:
In the age of Trumpism, just weeks after women’s rights activists globally were disappointed to learn that a woman was not selected to head the UN, hard on the heels of a year when the outgoing UN Secretary General appointed men to 96% of the senior jobs in the system, some folks at the UN thought having Wonder Woman as the icon for gender equality for the global organization was a good idea. Not so much.

Here are a few reasons why not:
First off, the UN is a post-war institution, dedicated to ending the scourge of war and, by extension, violence. It is an institution founded on diplomacy and the principle of negotiating differences, not vilification and use of force. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, was a product of the World War II propaganda of superheroes that fight ‘evil’, using violence in the name of ‘good’.

Throughout history and geography, whenever women have mobilized around their shared identity as women, to fight for self-determination or against oppression, they have not used violence. Today, from Afghanistan to the DRC, from Syria to Colombia, despite all the risks and violence they face, the most courageous women are leading non-violent struggles. Many are mediating between armed actors, hiding and saving men and boys at risk of being recruited and killed, feeding and caring for kids, the sick and the injured. They use their brains, hearts and imagination not brute force.

This is where resolution 1325 on women, peace and security ‘kicks’ in. In 2000, after a mass global campaign, the UN Security Council acknowledged women’s peace activism and call for the inclusion of women at the tables where power is brokered.

The agenda has expanded over the years, and these days world leaders talk about ‘women at the peace table’ as if it is an obvious fact, even though it is still not the norm. The agenda has also become warped. In some countries – the ‘peace’ part has gotten lost in a haze of talk about women as soldiers.

Elsewhere, people think it is yet another instrument to promote equality in security institutions and in times of war. But if 1325 is limited to an ‘equality agenda’ we end up with women having equal rights and responsibilities as men in the current status quo.
That was never the intent of the original 1325-ers.

We did not fight for women’s equal rights to fight, die and kill alongside men. We fought so that neither women nor men had to live through the horrors of war. We fought so that women peacemakers could have equal space with the militias and politicians at the tables where the future of peace and security in their countries is determined.

We fought to end the wars that exist, and to prevent future wars. 9/11 changed the course of history, but the spirit and vision of 1325 shouldn’t get lost in the fog of perpetual war and hyper militarization.

So the choice of Wonder Woman kicking, punching and lassoing her opponents is downright offensive and simplistic.

Herein lies the irony: just ten days ago, Marvel comics unveiled a new digital comic with Syrian mothers as the story’s heroines. So we are living in an age where institutions dealing in fiction recognize and revere contemporary facts, but institutions dealing in reality are stuck in an imaginary past.

Second, if we need a mythical figure, how about Shehrzad of the 1001 Nights? She used her words, wit and imagination to save the lives of women and turn a despotic king into a compassionate wise ruler. She is recognized across many countries and cultures – still relevant across time, and far more representative of an iconic and emancipated woman than Wonder Woman. Or, as one long-time UN staffer suggested, if its fictional figures, why not Pippi Longstocking? She was strong, creative, and definitely no pin-up girl.

Third, why choose from fictional figures, when we have so very many real historic super heroes? Take the oft-forgotten Bertha Von Suttner. She was a formidable figure in early 20th century Europe. She was a renowned leader of the pacifist movement, and most importantly – the inspiration for the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was influenced by her thinking and actions. It’s time to revive and revere her memory as much as she deserves.

Others have already commented on the sartorial faux pas of selecting Wonder Woman. But there is a political and security dimension to this choice. Women are already fighting the backlash of conservative forces that believe their struggle for rights or voice in political spaces is a ‘western agenda’ designed to undermine their power structures.

Having a female figure in a low-cut bustier/corset covered in the American flag is just adding ammunition. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the kitsch Lynda Carter TV shows and comic books too. But Wonder Woman is clearly the figment of some 1940s male comic strip illustrator’s imagination.

If the purpose is to demonstrate women’s empowerment, how about reflecting the members of the very real Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL)? They live lives of extraordinary courage, vehemently rejecting weapons and arms and dedicating their lives to promoting rights, peace and pluralism, often in the face of extreme violence.

Here are just a few of the members: Fatima Al-Behadili of Iraq, who is deradicalizing young men and sending them back to school or getting them involved in social service. Visaka Dharmadasa of Sri Lanka who lost her son in the war against the Tamil tigers – but mobilized a group of mothers of missing servicemen to walk, unarmed into the jungle and meet the guerrillas face to face and open a back channel for peace talks. Hamsatu Alamin of Nigeria, who reaches into communities affiliated to Boko Haram and helps to reduce the stigma they experience, and get their kids into schools.

So to the UN Department of Comics (?): please get back to the drawing board or move over and let real women handle the situation.

Excerpt:

“I was a participant onboard the Zaytouna-Oliva boat | 29 Sep-5 Oct 2016,” Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

By Mairead Maguire
ROME, Nov 1 2016 (IPS)

A few weeks ago, the US government agreed to give Israel $38 billion dollars, the largest military funding package the U.S. has given any nation.

This $38 billion in military and other type of Aid will be used to imprison the Palestinians of Gaza, and continue Israel’s military occupation, and imposition of an apartheid state, upon the Palestinian people.

This money will be used in the training fields of Israeli military, which are in Gaza, where military experiments are done, using US military weaponry, by the Israeli Occupation Forces.

The U.S. military and government is complicit in the crimes against the people of Gaza and the Palestinian occupied territory by the use of military hardware given by USA and by the training that Israelis give to Americans and USA gives to Israel. It is also estimated that some 70% of European humanitarian aid to Palestine ends up in Israeli pockets.

Gaza continues to suffer from the continuing Israeli blockade, naval and land, and this 25-mile-long tiny strip, 5 miles wide, with l.9 million people, living in it, is a brutal blockade and Israel controls everything including electricity, food, etc.

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Indeed, everything that comes into Gaza comes through Israeli hands. Gaza’s only airport was completely destroyed in 2002 by Israeli jets and ground forces.

Egypt continues to be a part of this blockade as they have blocked Gaza’s southern border; and Egypt continues to receive USA military funding.

Medical authorities have reported that the time for operations in Gaza now goes up to 2025 as so many are awaiting health care, and the increasing issues around food, water, sewage, electricity, all of these mounting problems have led the U.N. to declare in their latest Report, that by the year 2020 Gaza will be uninhabitable.

What hope is there for the Palestinians of Gaza, the vast majority of whom are young people?

In order to give hope to the people of Gaza by showing solidarity and support the Women’s Boat to Gaza sailed in September 2016.

Also we sailed in order to challenge this illegal and immoral blockade and occupation of Palestine by Israel, and draw international attention to the fact that under Geneva Conventions it is illegal to punish civilians, which is what Israeli government policies continues to do.

The Women’s Boat to Gaza set sail from the Spanish Port city of Barcelona (Barcelona is twinned with Gaza) in mid- September 2016.

The three legs of the trip were 1715 miles from Barcelona to Ajaccio, Corsica, France and then down to Messina in Sicily, Italy. It was hoped to have two boats but when one developed engine trouble in Barcelona, the other 50’ sailing boat, Zaytouna-Oliva, continued alone.

At all Ports the women were greeted and hosted by mayors, officials, and supporters of the Free Palestine Movement. Over 40 women from around the world flew to Messina in hopes of being able to sail to Gaza.

I joined the boat in Messina, and was grateful to be chosen as one of the 13 women from thirteen countries, being finally chosen to sail to Gaza. It was sad for those of us sailing to leave behind so many wonderful women due to not enough boats to sail, but it is hoped the Palestinian Coalition will be able to get more sailings to accommodate those wishing to go on a future occasion.

The 13 chosen participants included Ann Wright, (boat leader) the captain and two crew, two Al Jazeera journalists, and women from USA, Ireland, Russia, UK, Spain, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden/Chile, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, and Algeria.

The third leg of the journey from Messina to Gaza was almost 1000 miles and a nine-day journey. On 29th September 2016, we set sail from Messina, Sicily, after a wonderful reception from the mayor, the Muslim community, and many Palestinian friends in Messina.

The first few days sailing the weather was rough and many of us were seasick, but several days into the journey we had got our sea-legs and busied ourselves helping with the tasks to be done such as cooking, reporting, night watches with the crew, etc.

We shared our stories and held nonviolence training. It was a wonderful experience getting to know the women whose courage was inspiring. Their love for the Palestinian people and their freedom was very deep.

Unfortunately, some 400 miles from Messina, with some 600 miles to go, we had problems with the boats rigging. An appeal to friends in Crete resulted in a boatful of people coming out to meet us, bringing many gifts of food, and four men to fix the rigging!

This was for me one of the most moving experiences of the journey, and it proved yet again, the magnificence of the human spirit.

Around 20 men and women answered our call for help and came to our aid, and all for the people of Gaza. After the men fixed our boat rigging, we passed greetings to our rescuers from Crete and sailed in a happy and hope filled mood towards Gaza.

On Wednesday 5th October, we were contacted by the Israeli navy by phone. A few hours earlier all communications via our own phones were cut off. The Israeli navy communicator told Captain Madeleine that we were nearing the 20-mile military Israeli security zone and were breaking Israeli law. They said if we did not turn back or agree to be escorted to Ashdod, they would confiscate our boat and take us to Israel.

However, we kept sailing towards Gaza. We saw several Navy military ships on the horizon. At 6 p.m., a Zodiac boat came alongside our boat.

There were 30 Israeli sailors including Israeli women sailors who were the first to come on board our boat. They were not in combat gear. They wore baseball caps, and long sleeved jerseys. In 2010, I had been on the Rachel Corrie Irish/Malaysian boat, which was part of the Freedom Flotilla and when we were boarded by Israeli sailors, they were in combat gear, with rifles, and sniffer dogs, and we were handcuffed and forcibly taken to Israel.

I was surprised when this different approach was used to confiscate our boat, the Zaytouna. In 2010, on the Mavi Marmara, the Israelis murdered nine people, and subsequently a 10th person died as 50 people were wounded. Therefore, the treatment of our women’s boat to Gaza participants was very different from what happened on previous ones where I had travelled.

On the Zaytouna, when the Israeli navy sailors confiscated our boat, took us under protest against our will to Israel, arrested, held us for several days without contact with our families, and deported us for ten years, it was all completely illegal under international law. However, it is sad to report that no governments or international bodies have taken up our case for being hijacked, and again the Israeli government has been allowed to break international laws.

All the women were deeply saddened as we knew many people in Gaza were preparing for our visit, and yet again Israel was denying our entry into Gaza. So as we watched the coastline of Gaza in complete darkness and then the coastline of Israel fully lit up against the night sky, we were again witnessing the injustice and unfairness of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. With this experience, many of us committed in our hearts to continue our support for the Palestinian people’s ongoing work to break the blockade and end the occupation.

We also saw just off the coast of Gaza two huge gas rigs fully lit up and whose gas is piped to Israel. Yet Gaza has only a few hours of light, as Israeli bombings have destroyed most of its electricity and sewage infrastructures.

When we reached Ashdod, Israel, after six hours sailing, we were processed by Israeli security and searched, taken to Prison and released two days later. All the women on board the Zaytouna, now have a ten-year deportation order. As this is my 4th time being given a 10-year deportation order, it will be 40 years before I can return to Israel or get into Palestine.

This thought reminds me that there are over 7 million Palestinian people who cannot return to their country, and this is why it is so important to campaign for the right to return for the Palestinian people.

I would like to thank the Freedom Flotilla Coalition who gave us the opportunity to participate on the journey to Gaza. Their work of joining in solidarity with the people of Gaza is so important and I thank them for all they do.

To the Palestinian people of Gaza, please keep your hopes high and believe that freedom and peace will come. Thank you for your perseverance and ongoing inspiration to us all.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 31 October 2016: TMS: International Women’s Boat to Gaza

The statements and views mentioned in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

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By Johan Galtung
ALICANTE, Spain, Nov 1 2016 (IPS)

The last one hundred years life expectancy has increased by about 25 per cent-from near 80 to near 100-in some countries. But, instead of increasing playful childhood, education, work and retirement by 25 per cent, the age of retirement has moved much less than the age at death.

Johan Galtung

Homo sapiens as homo ludens not homo faber.

Longer, but emptier lives.

A crime against humanity if there ever was any. However, with two clear remedies: continue working self-employed with pension as salary, or find meaning in dedication to something beyond oneself, some cause, volunteer work.

That should be planned well in advance before entering a “career” that peaks before, or at, retirement; the rest being downhill even steeply.

Life is expansion from a fertilized egg to a mature human being and contraction to ever narrower space around oneself till time is up.

Western history has many narratives about expansion from some little point to a full-blown empire and contraction to ever narrower spaces.

The two model each other with empire expansion giving meaning to life, and contraction, death of empires making life meaningless, with waves of massive suicide ending the Habsburg, Nazi, Apartheid empires.

Hitler, in 1940 the head of the largest European empire ever, in 1945 only of his bunker, may have been a suicide model. But it was deeper.

We are now living the accelerating history of the end of the US empire, in the wake of about 11 in Europe; and the general decline and fall of Western hegemony. Suicide waves on both sides of the Atlantic?

To the contrary, EU creates an EU Army HQ, USA elects a president known for belligerence, Brexit England revives symbols of an empire long since gone; finding meaning in war and domination. Far better would have been for all three to lift up the bottom living in misery.

But are we not at least living healthier lives, with lower mortality, and also with lower morbidity? The World Health Assembly of WHO in Geneva 23-28 May 2016 sheds some doubts on that.

The Director-General Dr Chan celebrates declines in infant and maternal mortality and in death from TBC and HIV.

But on the dark side are air pollution and climate change, drug-resistant pathogens, resurgence of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, chronic non-communicable disease, chemicals such as lead, pesticides, obesity, inappropriate marketing of unhealthy, sweetened food with gifts and free samples, and lack of access to affordable medicines and vaccines.

We sense profit before/above health, as evidenced by BRICS speakers mentioning TPP; and behind the waning US empire. Shall we die from all of the above, to save the West from transatlantic suicide waves?

From neither. There are good solutions, some medical-technical, some based on state power–laws, taxation, subsidies–some based on people defending themselves with information, boycotts, alternatives. And the USA may even join the world, leaving global hegemony behind.

However, “meaningful vs empty” goes deeper. Take the Internet; very much meaning can be derived from the screen. Or, is there a snag? Wendy HK Chun from “In the Depths of the Digital Age” (NYRB 23 Jun 2016):

“When you read on paper, you are more likely to follow the thread of a narrative or argument, whereas when you read on screen you are more likely to scan for keywords–and may end up with stronger feelings /like anger/ about them, not with the potentially different ideas”.

But cannot anger be as meaningful as ideas? Sure, but anger may produce more anger in a destructive polarization while ideas produce ideas in a constructive cooperation. More meaningful in the long run.

The review calls attention to software in “smart watches” telling the sate of health. Useful, but it reduces the wearer to an object rather than a subject, with “meaning” imposed, not proposed.

And among the leading diseases (Nºs 1 and 4) according to WHO, are increasing uni- and bi-polar depression, both meaning-killers.

Let me share experiences getting older, 86 on the day this is published. No doubt outer life, like work far from home, contracts, eg. to Skype. The circles grow smaller around the home. Work filling it with comfort, beauty and meaning is well spent. But inner life expands if not too much energy goes into health concerns.

I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s article in The Observer, “On Turning 90”: the disadvantages are obvious, but there is the overview, that long-time perspective from having lived long. Events, processes, the non-changes experienced accumulate. Their synergies come forth as wisdom.

“What did I learn from that” comes up frequently. Positive, inspiring answers may give more meaning than warnings. And younger people beware, we older know a little bit about love and all that.

When younger, I asked myself how I can, when older, live without such exciting activities; getting older how I could live with them. A life not disturbing endless mental and spiritual vitality opens for deep contemplation.

Togetherness with a spouse multiplies the richness: jointly enjoying nature, changing climates, wonderful people, delicious food, culture, in town or at home. Consciousness, a little work, much gratitude are needed. The happiest years of my life.

Childhood, adolescence, early adulthood pass review in thoughts and dreams; to be explored for positive messages, and for something that went wrong and can be remedied.

I dream summer and good weather, travel, some kind of mission, something going wrong and being fixed or in the process–in short, a life review. That enriches life by living two of them together, here-and-now and there-and-then. Fascinating.

And the bad things that happened?

They are there but go beyond, into here-and-now. Of course writing helps the processing and the search for new horizons. Also looking at a screen, without looking back in anger.

But maybe with a deeper understanding pointing forward to one more tomorrow, in that wonderful flow of expanding inner lives.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 24 October 2016: TMS: Longer, but Less Meaningful Lives?

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President Barack Obama drops by VP Joe Biden's meeting with former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in the Vice President's Office, West Wing | 20 March 2009 | The Official White House Photostream / Pete Souza | public domain | Flickr

By John Scales Avery
OSLO, Oct 28 2016 (IPS)

President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous tensions, which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.

In an October 10 interview with RIA Novosti, Gorbachev said: “I think the world has reached a dangerous point, I don’t want to give any concrete prescriptions, but I do want to say that this needs to stop. We need to renew dialogue. Stopping it was the biggest mistake.”

“It is necessary to return to the main priorities. These are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of an environmental disaster,” he continued. “Compared to these challenges, all the rest slips into the background.”

Later the same day, in Iceland, President Gorbachev said: “The worst thing that has happened in recent years is the collapse of trust in relations between major powers, The window to a nuclear weapon-free world…is being shut and sealed right before our eyes.”

John Scales Avery

Alyn Ware Agrees

Alyn Ware, the International Co-ordinater of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, commented:

“I would concur with the assessment of Gorbachev.”

“I have been at the UN General Assembly October sessions (Disarmament and International Security) every year since 1988. This year was the most acrimonious I have ever seen. The tensions between Russia and NATO/Ukraine/US spilled over into the deliberations with accusations and counter accusations flying in many of the sessions. And these were not the only tensions. Syria/Yemen/Middle East, India/Pakistan and North Korea v South Korea/Japan/USA were also vitriolic towards each other.”

“Tension reduction, confidence building and diplomacy are vital at this time”, Alyn Ware continued, “Without this, disarmament is unlikely to occur and further armed conflict is very likely.”

The New UN Secretary General

Hope that the current extremely dangerous tensions can be reduced comes from the appointment of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres as the new UN Secretary General. The Security Council was united in making this appointment, thus giving us hope for better cooperation in the future.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Guterres said that ending the conflict in Syria would be one of his greatest challenges. “I believe it is the international community’s first priority is to be able to end this conflict and use this momentum created by it to try to address all the other conflicts that are interlinked,”

“I hope people will understand that it’s better to put aside different opinions, different interests and to understand that there is a common, vital interest to put an end to these conflicts, because that is absolutely central if you want to live in a world where a minimum of securities are established, where people can live a normal life,” he said.

Nuclear War Would Be a Catastrophe

The danger of a catastrophic nuclear war casts a dark shadow over the future of our species. It also casts a very black shadow over the future of the global environment.

The environmental consequences of a massive exchange of nuclear weapons have been treated in a number of studies by meteorologists and other experts from both East and West.

They predict that a large-scale use of nuclear weapons would result in fire storms with very high winds and high temperatures, which would burn a large proportion of the wild land fuels in the affected nations.

The resulting smoke and dust would block out sunlight for a period of many months, at first only in the northern hemisphere but later also in the southern hemisphere.

Temperatures in many places would fall far below freezing, and much of the earths plant life would be killed. Animals and humans would then die of starvation.

Professor Bernard Lowen of the Harvard School of Public Health, one of the founders of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), said in a recent speech:

“…No public health hazard ever faced by humankind equals the threat of nuclear war. Never before has man possessed the destructive resources to make this planet uninhabitable… Modern medicine has nothing to offer, not even a token benefit, in the event of nuclear war…”

“We are but transient passengers on this planet Earth. It does not belong to us. We are not free to doom generations yet unborn. We are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past or dim its future. Social systems do not endure for eternity. Only life can lay claim to uninterrupted continuity. This continuity is sacred.”

The statements and views mentioned in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

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Employers are finally creating more jobs and paying higher wages than seven years after the Great Recession started following the 2008 financial crisis. Credit: IPS

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 5 2016 (IPS)

The new US census data released in late September show that 3.5 million people in the US climbed out of poverty, as the tepid economic recovery continues. Employers are finally creating more jobs and paying higher wages than seven years after the Great Recession started following the 2008 financial crisis.

This progress, while modest, debunks the claims of those who predicted a dire outcome following the increase in the legislated US minimum wage, especially without a robust recovery. The data show large employment and wage gains, particularly for the lower end of the jobs spectrum.

Raising the legal minimum-wage and other government programmes, such as social security, earned-income tax credit, and food stamps, have not only kept tens of millions from sinking into poverty. They also aided economic recovery by supporting household expenditure, and hence, aggregate demand, enabling a 1.2 percentage point decline in the poverty rate, the largest annual drop since 1999.

Every major demographic group benefited from the stronger economy and an expanding job market. Furthermore, wage increases were stronger at the bottom than in the middle. The poverty rate fell in 23 states, and stayed flat in the rest, not getting worse in any.

So, what is the lesson? Addressing poverty, inequality, and economic recession needs progressive counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies, with wage and social protection programmes.

Low growth trap
Meanwhile, the recent OECD Interim Economic Outlook worries that the world economy remains stuck in a low-growth trap, with poor growth expectations depressing trade, investment, productivity, and wages. It estimates that the “potential” growth rate per person for its 35 member countries has halved to one percent a year. It also warns that “exceptionally low and negative interest rates” are distorting financial markets – including share and housing price bubbles – and creating risks of future crises.

Hence, the OECD recommends switching the current policy stance from its sole dependence on expansionary monetary policy to fiscal stimulus. It also recognizes that fiscal stimuli always work better when countries act in concert, rather than in a ‘beggar thy neighbour’ fashion.

This has long been the message from the United Nations since the crisis began, especially after G20 countries prematurely switched to fiscal consolidation following the 2010 Toronto Summit. The UN also consistently argued that fiscal and structural measures are needed to boost demand and raise productive capacity.

Ensuring growth is likely to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio in the short term, by adding more to nominal GDP than to public debt. Thus, when fiscal measures raise output, a temporary debt-financed expansion need not increase debt ratios in the longer term.

UN tax and spending policy advice favours more growth by improving infrastructure spending, social protection, and progressive tax incidence. Better labour market programmes benefit both short-term demand, longer-term supply and inclusive growth.

Malaysia’s minimum wage policy
Khazanah Research Institute’s recent second State of Malaysian Households report, based on the 2014 Household Expenditure Survey by the Department of Statistics, suggests a significant increase in household income of the ‘bottom 40%’ from RM1761 in 2012 to RM2296 in 2014!

While partly attributable to higher commodity prices before the commodity price slump from late 2014, this impressive increase was probably also due to implementation of the 2012 minimum wage law from 2013.

The minimum wage law had long been sought by the labour movement and opposition political parties. Nevertheless, it continues to be opposed by some employers, especially in the plantation sector, and those of ‘neo-liberal’ economic persuasion as ‘populist’. Some of these critics claim, without supporting evidence, but by citing others of similar ideological persuasion, that such labour market distortions will result in greater unemployment and dissuade productivity growth.

In fact, the continued availability of immigrant workers prepared to work for lower wages has delayed the introduction of labour saving innovations which would increase labour productivity. Malaysia has to come to terms with its immigrant labour policy as it threatens economic progress and worker welfare.

By subjecting foreign workers to poor working conditions, Malaysians depress the welfare of all. By understating their numbers and contribution of 30-40 percent of the labour force, economic performance seems more impressive than is actually the case. This is especially so in the most dangerous, dirtiest and depressed jobs, weakening efforts to ensure ‘decent work’ for all.

Although Malaysia remains a very open economy, better working conditions will go a long way towards boosting aggregate demand. Lower income households are much more likely to spend most, if not all their additional income. In turn, their spending is more likely to be on goods and services produced within the national economy.

Thus, high commodity prices until 2014 and enforcement of the 2012 minimum wage law have helped economic recovery. But with the collapse of commodity prices and fiscal spending since, prospects for the economy are poorer.

An election budget may help improve public sentiment, but is unlikely to help address fundamental underlying problems, not least because so much will be syphoned off by political rentiers, ostensibly for campaign finance.

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By Dr. Shamshad Akhtar
BANGKOK, Oct 5 2016 (IPS)

Advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have been instrumental in shaping and leading socioeconomic transformations across Asia and the Pacific. One key to this transformation is the technology bundled around the “Internet of Things” (IoT), which enables billions of devices and appliances to connect over the Internet for more accurate, real time data collection and analysis in an unparalleled scale. For instance, through Internet-connected sensors attached to equipment, facilities and infrastructure, early-on maintenance alarms can be raised for potential problems, such as defects or wear and tear, thereby potentially saving the lives of those using them. Another example is devices on farms that remotely monitor soil conditions, weather and pesticide use for more rapid and better-informed decision making.

Dr. Shamshad Akhtar

A fundamental challenge related to new business opportunities and innovations that IoT and other ICT advancements generate is how to best connect those who are still unconnected, so that they too can reap the benefits of these advances. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) underscored the need to address this challenge in a recent report entitled the State of ICT in Asia and the Pacific 2016: Uncovering the Widening Broadband Divide. The report highlighted the alarming disparity in broadband connectivity within Asia-Pacific, with high-income countries experiencing a higher growth rate of broadband penetration relative to other countries. Twenty countries in the region have only 2% of fixed broadband subscription per 100 inhabitants, while ICT champions such as the Republic of Korea, enjoy over 40% broadband penetration. Further emphasizing regional disparities, 75 % of fixed broadband subscriptions were registered in North and North-East Asia, mainly in the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and Japan.

Broadband connectivity, especially reliable, affordable and resilient fixed broadband infrastructure, is a critical foundation which supports various applications and initiatives that are essential for the achievement of the SDGs, ranging from traffic and transport management, smart power management, trade facilitation, disaster management and financial inclusion, to name only a few. ICT is not only a growth sector which creates value-added services, products and employment opportunities, but it also acts as a development enabler which can accelerate efforts towards the implementation of the SDGs.

While success stories in e-commerce abound, such as China’s Alibaba, less is known about the use of ICT for socioeconomic benefits, such as mobile money in Pakistan and the Philippines where salaries and remittances are sent over mobile phones. Farmers and rural residents increasingly use the Internet, allowing them to gain unparalleled access to information and knowledge and helping to further develop multiple sectors, such as agriculture, education and health. ICT also plays a crucial role in disaster management. When a disaster strikes, it is the telecommunications infrastructure which provides the platform to communicate with those in need of help and collect and analyze data on losses and damage to facilitate disaster response and reconstruction. Moreover, ICT can facilitate social integration of marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities, by providing them with more effective means to communicate and engage in a wider variety of socioeconomic activities. At the same time, however, the region needs a development pathway to the digital economy and future prosperity for inclusive and sustainable development.

While significant efforts have gone towards expanding broadband connectivity at national and sub-national levels, the Internet is inherently regional as well as global, therefore affordable and reliable connectivity to regional and global telecommunications networks are indispensable for narrowing the digital divide through better connectivity. The Asia-Pacific region is particularly impacted by the widening digital divide due to its vulnerability to frequent catastrophic disasters, which cause massive destruction to life and property. Earthquakes, for instance, have disrupted submarine cables and subsequently access to the Internet among densely populated coastal areas and cities. Learning from the lessons and moving forward, the region urgently needs to improve, enhance and expand its broadband connectivity to provide alternative routes and networks to build greater regional resilience to disasters.

In this context, ESCAP supports the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS), a regional broadband connectivity initiative mandated by member countries that aims to enhance connectivity from Turkey to Kiribati in a holistic manner, with four pillars of enhancing physical connectivity, effective Internet traffic management, e-resilience and inclusive broadband access. Given the regional and global nature of the initiative, ESCAP provides an inter-governmental platform for member countries to discuss the regional cooperation framework and implementation of the AP-IS Master Plan to further deepen regional connectivity and maximize the socio-economic benefits for all.

ESCAP’s Committee on Information and Communications Technology, Science, Technology and Innovation, scheduled from 5 to 7 October 2016 in Bangkok, is one such regional platform to engage member countries and other stakeholders in discussions contributing to a regional vision of what ICT can and should do for the region’s future. It is imperative that we enhance connectivity, since without effective and viable “people connections,” the region’s full potential will not be realised.

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