Call for Civil Society’s Participation
In the 2nd ASEAN Peoples’ Forum / 5th ASEAN Civil Society Conference
18-20 October 2009
Cha-am, Phetchaburi Province, Thailand
http://aseanpeoplesforum.net
Asian People's Solidarity for Climate Justice
The Gr8 Climate Sale
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The issue of climate change has come to the forefront and people both in the North and the South have been feeling the devastating effects of global warming. However, the links between the neo-liberal system and the model of over consumption to the climate crisis are not clearly stated.
THE G8 COMMUNIQUE ON CLIMATE: REGRESSION, NOT A FORWARD MOVEMENT
Statement of organizations affiliated with the G8 Action Network
WALDEN BELLO IN SAPPORO:
Civil society’s choice at the G8 summit: the road of Genoa or the road of Gleneagles?
Japan follows Singapore in dealing with foreign activists
CLIMATE CULPRITS – TRADING AWAY THE PLANET FOR PROFITS
Joseph Zacune
CHALLENGE TO THE G8 GOVERNMENTS
A statement to the G8 signed by more than 150 movements, networks and organisations
THE PERILS OF A DOHA DEAL ON SERVICES
Walden Bello
THE G8 COMMUNIQUE ON CLIMATE: REGRESSION, NOT A FORWARD MOVEMENT
Statement of organizations affiliated with the G8 Action Network
Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, July 9, 2008: The G8’s communiqué regarding their action on climate is actually inaction being masked as movement. It is a great fraud being perpetrated on the global community that would significantly reduce its capacity to contain climate change. We fully agree with the statement of the Government of South Africa that “[W]hile the Statement may appear as a movement forward, we are concerned that it may, in effect, be a regression from what is required to make a meaningful contribution to meeting the challenges of climate change.”
RETREAT FROM BALI
The announcement of the agreement among the G8 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by 50 per cent by 2050 is actually a step back from the minimum action that was demanded by the global community during the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in Bali last December. In Bali, opposition from the US, Japan, and Canada almost killed a developing consensus that should commit industrialized (Annex 1) countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. That developing consensus also projected the minimum cut needed by 2050 to be in the range of 80 to 90 per cent if the rise in global temperature was to be kept below 2 degrees centigrade in the 21st century.
The G8’s 50 per cent formula is objectionable on several counts:
First, the G8 formula is a global cut, not one undertaken by the industrialized or Annex One countries, so big polluters like the US can actually free-ride on the rest of the world.
Second, the cut has no clear baseline. It was revealing that in announcing it, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda initially said it was from 1990 levels, then had to take back that statement and subsequently mentioned a 2000 baseline.
Third, this declaration of intent is not binding and there is no indication that the G8 want to bring their “commitment” fully under the United Nations climate negotiations framework that would bind its signatories. Indeed, the G8 announcement reinforces the G8 as a site for climate action that rivals the UN process and effectively subverts it. Not surprisingly, the G8 declaration emerged as part of a parallel process known as the “Major Economies Meeting.” The Major Economies Meeting is a US initiative to wrest decision-making on climate from the United Nations framework and process.
All in all, the G8 announcement is one giant step away from meaningful mandatory reductions and significantly increases the chances of the planet slipping into uncontrolled climate change.
SUPPORTING THE WRONG AGENCY
Another setback to the cause of effective climate action was the G8’s endorsement of the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, to which the communiqué said certain countries had already pledged $6 billion. Civil society groups monitoring the Bank’s environment program had already warned the G8 that there are very serious concerns that the funds would be heavily oriented toward funding large-scale coal plants. Without a clear definition of clean technology, the funds may be used to finance projects that do not clearly mitigate climate change or may take up resources that bring only minor or incremental change at a time that fundamental change is needed.
Just as the G8 undermines the UN as the site for climate action, so does the World Bank subvert an already established UN mechanism. An Adaptation Fund under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in Bali by the Conference of Parties in December 2007 precisely to provide technological assistance to developing countries. Instead of funding this mechanism, the G8 countries may now divert their contributions to the World Bank Climate Investment Funds to maintain control of the process of technology transfer. Not surprisingly, the developing countries have criticized the World Bank mechanism as a threat to serious efforts to assist the global South to deal with climate change.
After failing as a development bank, the World Bank is now trying to create the image that it is the “climate bank.” This is indeed the height of hypocrisy. With $2 billion already spent on coal, oil and gas projects over the last year, the World Bank has broken its own record as the world’s largest multilateral financier of greenhouse-emitting energy initiatives. Even as it pretends to deal with climate change with its Climate Investment Funds, the Bank is actually exacerbating it with its massive fossil fuel extraction lending.
We must call a spade a spade. The G8 declaration does not constitute an advance but a step backward in the global community’s ability to deal with climate change. Saying that it is better than nothing or that it is realistic given the Bush administration’s opposition to significant action is to lend legitimacy to a dangerous charade.
The G8 has once again lived up to its reputation of being an obstacle to the global community’s efforts to come to grips with the challenges of our times. We repeat our call to disband this unelected body of rich country governments that acts as if it were the government of the world.
G8 Action Network
Partial List of Endorsers
Attac Japan
CADTM
ESK-Basque Country
Focus on the Global South
Freedom from Debt Coalition
Friends of the Earth International
FSU-France
Institute for Policy Studies, US
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network
Via Campesina
CIVIL SOCIETY’S CHOICE AT THE G8 SUMMIT: THE ROAD OF GENOA OR THE ROAD OF GLENEAGLES?
Walden Bello*
The Group of Eight came into being in 1975 as the G7 at a time that the world was embroiled in deep economic crisis, much like today. Its main aim was to coordinate the macroeconomic policies of the rich countries at a time of stagflation as well as to forge a common strategy vis-a-vis the developing world, which had loosened its political and economic dependency on the First World during the heady days of decolonization, national liberation struggles, and the emergence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as an economic power.
The G7 were not successful in coordinating their policies, with the US under Ronald Reagan aggressively pursuing a cheap dollar policy that brought on recession in Germany and Japan. They did, however, come together in a united front against the developing countries, putting their weight behind the neoliberal structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and IMF on more than 90 developing and transition (post-socialist) economies. The structural adjustment programs rolled back the economic gains achieved by the South in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the 1990s, the G7 became the main promoters of corporate-driven globalization, for which the road had been paved by the radical deregulation, radical liberalization, and radical privatization that took place in developing countries under structural adjustment. The G7 also provided strong support for the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the main agency for the process global trade and investment liberalization demanded by their corporations.
The late 1990s, however, brought about, not the increasing prosperity for all promised by neoliberal, pro-market policies but rising absolute poverty, increasing inequality, and the consolidation of economic stagnation in the South. The collapse of the third ministerial of the WTO in Seattle in December 1999 marked the achievement of a critical mass by the forces of opposition created by the contradictions of globalization.
With the realities of globalization exposed, the summits of the G7 -- now G8 with the incorporation of Russia -- became a lightning rod for the rising global opposition. At the G8 Summit in Genoa in June 2001, three hundred thousand people came together under the uncompromising program of “No to the G8.” The battle lines were clearly drawn, with the Italian police or carabineri contributing immensely to the polarization that erupted in a riot that took the life of one activist and injured scores of others.
Elements within the G8 realized that the image of being a hegemonic directorate of globalization was not good for the future of the body. Led by the New Labor government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Britain, the G8 underwent a facelift. A new discourse was forged, the key substantive elements of which were debt forgiveness for the poorest countries, the raising of aid levels to 0.7 per cent of the GDP of the G8 countries, a massive aid package for Africa, making trade serve development, and tackling climate change. The new watchwords when it came to process were “partnership,” “consultation,” “global social integration,” and the “millennium development goals.” The battle was for the soul of global civil society. The high point of this new look was the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, which was choreographed by an alliance between the Labor Government, entertainment superstars Bob Geldof and Bono, and influential British NGO’s. Several hundred thousand people who journeyed to Scotland found themselves manipulated into becoming a chorus for the glittering Aid for Africa concerts that were staged simultaneously in different parts of the globe.
By the time 2007 came along, the glitter was gone. The idea of global civil society partnering with the G8 had soured as none of the G8 governments reached the 0.7 of GDP target, aid to Africa fell short of the $20 billion promised at Gleneagles, the “Doha Development Round” had become a big joke, and serious action on climate was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the G8 communique at the Heiligendamm or Rostock Summit emphasized techno-fixes for climate change, lectured developing countries about not restricting investment by transnational corporations, and issued a thinly veiled warning about China getting preferential access to raw materials in Africa. Under the leadership of civil society in Germany, militant denunciation and confrontation of the G8 was the preferred civil society response, with thousands of demonstrators trying to penetrate the site of the leaders’ meeting to shut it down. With the dominant cry being “G8 -- Get out of the way,” the Heiligendamm protests retrieved the militant tradition of Genoa that had been suppressed at Gleneagles.
So we come to the G8 Summit here in Hokkaido, Japan. We have not only in Bush, Sarkozy, Brown, and Fukuda a group of discredited leaders with very low ratings at the polls in their own countries. We have as well a G8 that is, more than ever, lacking in legitimacy as the typhoon unleashed by the project of globalization that it has promoted is wracking the globe in the form of the simultaneous crises of skyrocketing oil prices, rising food prices, global financial collapse, and worsening climate change. Against this backdrop, Japanese and Asian social movements are faced with the choice of taking either the Road of Genoa or the Road of Gleneagles -- that is, to deepen the G8’s crisis of legitimacy or, as in Gleneagles, to salvage the G8 once again. The greatest gift that the Japanese movement can give to global civil society is by leading the struggle to make the Hokkaido Summit the final summit of the G8.
* Speech at the opening plenary of the People’s Summit, Sapporo Convention Center, July 6, 2008. Walden Bello is president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition and senior analyst of Focus on the Global South.
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JAPAN FOLLOWS SINGAPORE IN DEALING WITH FOREIGN ACTIVISTS
By Walden Bello*
Trade, climate change, skyrocketing oil prices, and debt have been the topics of discussion in the parallel civil society events to the Group of Eight Summit, but the issue that has drawn the greatest attention is the Japanese authorities’ heavy handed approach to security for the official gathering.
21,000 police personnel have been deployed to the island of Hokkaido, most of them to the city of Sapporo and nearby Toyako, where the meeting will take place next week. Large numbers of them, including contingents of riot police dressed up in Darth Vader gear, were stationed along the route of the Peace Walk staged by several thousand protesters on Saturday, July 5. To show they meant business, police smashed the window of a vehicle and arrested two of its occupants for playing music that they said was interfering with their operations. One photojournalist and a participant in the demonstration were also apprehended.
That same morning, 24 activists were flown back to Korea after being held for over 24 hours at Hokkaido’s Chitose Airport. Nineteen of them belonged to the international peasant group Via Campesina and four to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). As a result of this action, several events were disrupted, including a symposium on free trade agreements that I was supposed to speak at that had been organized by the Korean trade unionists who had been deported.
An unofficial list of those not given visas to Japan included two Bangladeshis, one Indian, and one Kenyan. Japanese immigration authorities still have to act on the visa applications of several other NGO activists. Susan George, one of France’s leading intellectuals, was interrogated by immigration authorities in a small windowless room for four hours. Lidy Nacpil, chairperson of the Jubilee South-Asia Pacific, was subjected to the same petty questioning for three and a half hours.
It took nearly ten days after filing my before the Japanese Foreign Ministry agreed to give me a visa, and only after strong daily pressure from the G8 Action Network and other groups. Despite my possession of a visa, the border police still stopped me for questioning when I arrived at Narita International Airport on July 4. Peppered with silly questions, like why I was going to Sapporo and what qualifications I had to speak on the G 8, I finally told my interrogators that they should be the ones providing the answers since they had obviously been already briefed on my case by the Foreign Ministry. It was probably this staged display of great irritation that persuaded them to release me after an hour.
Having attended several parallel gatherings around previous G 8 summits, I can say that the border controls imposed on foreign activists by the Japanese government have been the most restrictive and punitive. Japan seems to be following the example of the Singapore government, which refused entry to and deported scores of civil society representatives who arrived to attend NGO events around the World Bank-International Monetary Fund Fall Meeting in September 2006. Some people say that the arrest and continuing detention of two Greenpeace activists in Tokyo about ten days ago on still vague charges is really connected to the security tightening around the G 8 summit.
It was this “Singaporeanization” of Japanese border policy that representatives of scores of civil society organizations probably had in mind when they said in an open letter to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda: “We are disappointed that Japan, as host of the G8 Summit, is criminalizing freedom of expression. It is unacceptable for Japan, the G8 or any other countries to prevent healthy, critical debates from taking place alongside international meetings where decisions are being made that will affect the lives of millions of people around the globe.”
* President of the Freedom from Debt Coalition and Senior Analyst of Focus on the Global South.
CLIMATE CULPRITS – TRADING AWAY THE PLANET FOR PROFITS
Joseph Zacune*
During the climate talks in Bali last December, NASA scientist James Hansen presented new data showing that serious climate change impacts are already happening more rapidly and at lower global ttemperature rises than previously projected, indicating that the atmosphere is more “sensitive” to greenhouse gases than previously assumed. (1)
Based on this more rapid pace of change, eight million squares kilometres of ice sheet at the North Pole – an area as large as Australia – is likely to be entirely lost during the summer within five years. This may trigger the melting of the Greenland ice-sheet whose total disintegration would raise sea levels by seven metres. Hansen stated that we need to move towards a post-fossil fuel clean energy system and cool the planet.
Unfortunately, these dire warnings are not being met by action by the G8 nations, which represent just 13 per cent of the world’s population but are responsible for 45 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
These industrialised countries have caused this crisis while benefiting economically and accruing a climate debt to the South.(2) Yet they are continuing to push unfair free trade and reliance on carbon trade initiatives which could accelerate climate change and further exacerbate developing countries’ vulnerability to its impacts.
Those least responsible for creating the current crisis such as Indigenous Peoples, peasant farmers and fisher peoples will be hit hardest by climate change and also these dangerous, corporate-driven initiatives which are being perversely branded as climate solutions.
To illustrate: Indigenous Peoples and forest-dwelling communities are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, owing to their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources. Of the 350 million Indigenous People in the world, half live in tropical rainforests, which are known to harbour 80 per cent of our planet's biological diversity. (3) Most of these rainforests are the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples.
Both the United Nations Declarations on Right to Development (4) and the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples (5) assert Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty over their natural resources. However, Indigenous Peoples continue to be marginalised in international decision-making processes including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (6) UNFCCC negotiations are now taking place on ways to reduce emissions of deforestation in developing countries (REDD) that will have direct impacts on the lives of millions of Indigenous Peoples.
Member Parties nations that have ratified the UNFCCC have agreed that they will conserve and enhance forests, and also provide financial assistance to developing countries to achieve these obligations.(7)
However, the UN definition of forests includes plantations and this poses major concerns as the expansion of monoculture plantations is a major driver of deforestation – undermining Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and damaging the environment through pesticides usage, water stress and biodiversity loss. In addition – according to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – at the most, plantations store only one-fifth of carbon compared to untouched primary forests.
There is conserted lobbying by both some governments and conservation-based NGOs for REDD mechanisms through the UNFCCC to implement carbon trading for forests, instead of a fund-based approach to community-based forest management, let alone other reliable non-money-based approaches such as strengthening land rights, leaving fossil fuels in the ground and bans on deforestation.
The central idea of carbon trading for forests is that developing countries reduce their deforestation rates and this will allow them to sell the carbon stored in their forests to the North. This allows Northern countries and corporations to buy their way out of emission reductions and continue business-as-usual polluting. It is also based on a false premise that the inactive underground carbon cycles (coal, oil and gas in stable underground reservoirs) and the active land-based carbon cycles are the same. This false assumption enables the protection of one carbon cycle to offset the exploitation of the other.
So at best this should theoretically lead to zero global emission reductions if it were not for the fact that the different carbon cycles vary hugely, making it impossible to actually verify whether or not emissions have actually been reduced.
If our last remaining forests are to be included in carbon markets, the question naturally arises of who owns those trees and what happens to those forest-dwelling communities that have depended on them for generations? There are huge risks for a dramatic expansion of exclusionary models of forest conservation that violate Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities’ customary and human rights on a global scale.
The World Bank is at the helm in the trading of forest carbon credits and its portfolio is rapidly expanding with its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) which was launched amidst protests at climate talks in Bali last December. At the G8 in Japan, the Bank’s multi-billion dollar climate investment funds – which include carbon finance for forests – are being formally launched and these funds are already casting a dark shadow over United Nations climate negotiations.(8)
The World Bank’s conflict of interests is all too apparent since the majority of its carbon finance portfolio has been channeled toward polluting industries and it has even been supporting industrial logging. (9) The Bank must be excluded from the UN talks or the integrity of a post-2012 Kyoto agreement will be severely undermined.
In a similar vein to carbon trading for forests, trade liberalisation is also being promoted as a solution to the climate crisis when in reality it also threatens communities that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change by accelerating the commodification of their natural resources. Hundreds of millions of people rely on the world’s last remaining forests and are dependent on them for their livelihoods, medicine and food.
The European Commission has stated that: “Trade liberalisation can accentuate negative sustainability trends unless appropriate forest governance systems are in place and enforced”. Such systems are clearly not operating in many countries and further liberalisation should therefore not take place.
The report also points out that in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries such as the Congo Basin countries and Papua New Guinea, possible negative impacts on biodiversity can be irreversible. A United Nations Environment Program study reinforces by highlighting how trade liberalisation in Tanzania led to a rapid increase in deforestation as exports for forest-based products rose dramatically.(10)
Another of the EU’s impact assessment states that Central African countries should consider the environmental costs of trade liberalisation such as increased deforestation resulting from timber exports and environmental degradation linked to oil exploration.(11)
The liberalisation of energy markets – a key demand by the European Commission – is also going to have obvious climate change impacts and undermine community-based campaigns to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
The European Union is so often portrayed internationally as a force for good – a enlightened voice of reason in a world dominated by an intransigent and deeply unpopular Washington administration. Yet often below the media radar and away from the gaze of the general public, the EU has been bullying 77 ACP countries to sign unfair trade deals misnamed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
Leaders of ACP Ministers issued a joint statement deploring “the enormous pressure that has been brought to bear on the ACP States by the European Commission to initial the interim trade arrangements, contrary to the spirit of the ACP-EU partnership”. The Pacific’s lead negotiator, Jo Keil has slammed the EC’s aggressive bully-boy approach to the negotiations stating: “None of that will ever happen again to the Pacific to suffer that indignity that was forced upon us by Commissioner Mandelson”.(12)
The Pacific region is holding out, the Caribbean region has agreed to an EPA and many African countries have relented to the EU’s bullying. A Nambian diplomat reportedly lamented: ‘‘The pressure was too much. …. Bully tactics are used with the threat ‘you either sign or you don’t have the market.” (13)
Millions of peasant farmers and fisherfolk are facing the combined threat of climate change and unfair trade impacts. In Senegal, trade liberalisation exposed its waters to heavily subsidised fleets. Ecologists claim that some 11,000 tonnes of fish caught in Senegalese waters are discarded annually by EU trawlers. UN studies show that in Mauritania fishing stocks have been devastated largely as a result of trade liberalisation with certain species such, as sawfish, disappearing altogether.(14)
Studies by the United Nations Environmental Programme highlight that further trade liberalisation threatens small-scale rice farmers and the environment in countries such as Senegal and Nigeria.(15)
Friends of the Earth Ghana has warned that EPAs are likely to undermine agricultural sectors. Rice and poultry farmers have already suffered from trade liberalisation and unfair competition from subsidised imports. An increase in cheap EU imports of frozen chicken and cheap rice would force rice farmers out of work and could lead to the collapse of the poultry industry.
Both carbon trading and trade liberalisation have appalling track records. The corporate takeover of the climate agenda – cloaked in philanthropic, planet-saving rhetoric and backed up with billions of dollars of financial support – poses new grave dangers that will be resisted from the corridors of international negotiations to communities struggling for survival on the ground.
A radical shift away from neo-liberalism must take place. We need to radically reduce our unsustainable consumption, secure peoples’ food sovereignty, leave fossil fuels in the ground, promote community-based forest conservation and invest in clean energy generated from the sun, wind and sea to help us cool the planet and attain sustainable societies. The North must repay its ecological debt to the South – it’s time for climate justice.
* Joseph Zacune is Friends of the Earth International Climate and Energy Coordinator,
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NOTES
1. James Hansen and seven fellow scientists’ report is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 November 2007; See also David Spratt, Philip Sutton, “Climate Code Red” http://www.climatecodered.net February 2008
2. See Friends of the Earth International’s report “Climate Debt – Making historical responsibility part of the solution” http://www.foei.org/en/publications/pdfs/climatedebt.pdf December 2005
3. United Nations Environment Program, “Environment and cultural diversity” http://www.unep.org/GC/GC23/documents/GC23-INF23.pdf November 2004
4. United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development: adopted by General Assembly resolution 41/128 of 4 December 1986 http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/74.htm
5. Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 61/295 on 13 September 2007 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html
6. Estebancio Castro Diaz, Global Forest Coalition “Climate Change, Forest Conservation and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, April 2008..
7. "All Parties, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, shall: ...Promote sustainable management, and promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, including ..., forests ...” (UNFCCC Article 4.1 d).
"The developed country Parties and other developed Parties included in Annex II shall provide new and additional financial resources to meet the agreed full costs incurred by developing country Parties in complying with their obligations under Article 12, paragraph 1. They shall also provide such financial resources, including for the transfer of technology, needed by the developing country Parties to meet the agreed full incremental costs of implementing measures that are covered by paragraph 1 of this Article and that are agreed between a developing country Party and the international entity or entities referred to in Article 11, in accordance with that Article. The implementation of these commitments shall take into account the need for adequacy and predictability in the flow of funds and the importance of appropriate burden sharing among the developed country Parties.“ (UNFCCC Article 4.3)
8. Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) “The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility: Facilitating the weakening of indigenous peoples’ rights to lands and resources.” February 2008; “Seeing RED – ‘Avoided deforestation’ and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities” June 2007. Available at: www.forestpeoples.org/documents/forest_issues/bases/forest_issues.shtml SEEN “World Bank Climate Profiteer” http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#292 April 2008 See information on the World Bank climate investment funds http://action.foe.org/t/3877/content.jsp?content_KEY=4176
9. SEEN “World Bank Climate Profiteer” http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#292 April 2008 http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/s-Stop%20the%20carve%20up%20of%20the%20Congo%20forests
10. The Institute for Development Policies and Management University of Manchester, Savcor Indufor Oy “Sustainability Impact Assessment of Proposed WTO Negotiations: Final Final Report for the Forest Sector Study”, 2005 www.sia-trade.org/wto/Phase3B/Reports/ForestFR19June05.pdf United Nations Environment Program, “Economic Reforms, Trade Liberalization and the Environment: A Synthesis of UNEP Country Projects”, November 2001 www.unep.ch/etu/doha/pdfs/papers/synthesisround2.pdf
11. PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements: Financial Services in Central Africa,” 11 September 2006 www.siagcc. org/acp/download/sia_fs_cemac_finalreport_11sept2006.pdf
12. http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/news/news_detail.php?5846
13. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40486
14. United Nations Environment Programme, “Economic Reforms, Trade Liberalization and the Environment: a Synthesis of UNEP Country Projects”, 2001 www.unep.ch/etu/doha/ United Nations Environment Programme, “UNEP briefs on economics, trade and sustainable development”, May 2002 www.unep.ch/etu/publications/UNEP_Fisheries.pdf
15. http://www.unep.ch/etb/publications/intAssessment/RapSynRice.pdf
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CHALLENGE TO THE G8 GOVERNMENTS
A statement to the G8 signed by more than 150 movements, networks and organisations
The gathering of the most powerful countries of the world is an occasion for the people of the world to demand that this G8 Summit address the twin ‘tsunamis’ that plague humanity today – the food and climate crisis – and the continuing problem of Debt that has contributed significantly to these two crises and exacerbate their impacts.
THE INJUSTICE OF THE DEBT BURDEN AND THE PROBLEM OF ILLEGITIMATE DEBTS
The payment of huge amounts of debt service amplifies the effects of the food and climate crises and hampers the ability of countries and peoples of the South to deal with these crises. This is part of the injustice of the debt and for this alone debt cancellation is urgent.
But the debt is more than just the problem of losing much needed resources to debt payments. Debts
used for harmful projects or to impose harmful conditionalities such as those which contributed to the food and climate crises are illegitimate debts and should not be paid.
THE FOOD CRISIS
The high price of oil, worsening climate conditions and price manipulation by domestic and international trading cartels and speculators have certainly contributed significantly to the abrupt, massive increase in the prices of food. But the food crisis can be also be traced to economic policies that have been imposed on the countries of the South for decades, with the use of debt, access to credit and debt relief as instruments for coercion.
The combination of several policies that have been part of conditionality packages of the IMF and World Bank have resulted in falling productivity in basic food agriculture, steep increase in the costs of food production, the huge reduction in land used for producing staple food for domestic consumption, and less sustainable agricultural practices.
Fiscal and monetary conditionalities included the removal of state subsidies for production of basic food crops and reduction in spending for public infrastructures such as irrigation systems. Prescriptions for export-oriented high growth economic strategies led to heavy reliance on expensive imported fertilizers and pesticides, massive shifts to non-staple and non-food export crops, and the conversion of agricultural lands to export processing zones. Liberalization of trade gave rise to unfair competition from subsidized food products from the north. Liberalization of finance capital further fueled real estate industries, expanding land use conversion from production of food to private housing estates, golf courses and resorts. The privatization of public services and utilities also meant greater cost of food production and distribution.
In addition, the effects of huge debt payment on government resources include the deterioration and neglect of many public infrastructures needed to boost agricultural production, such as irrigation systems, and farm to market roads.
The ability of many countries of the South to produce sufficiently for their own food needs and keep prices accessible to the domestic market have thus been steadily and dramatically eroding since the 1980’s. There has been a significant increase in the number of net food importing countries in the past two decade, diminishing capability to maintain adequate buffer stocks of staple grains, and increasing vulnerability to world food market supply and price dynamics.
CHALLENGE TO THE G8 GOVERNMENTS
Small farmers and landless peasants have had no real benefits from the spiraling increases in of food prices, as farm gate prices continue to be low. It is the trading cartels and speculators that have been generating big profits.
The G8 governments bear primary responsibility for the debt burden and the debt-related policy conditionalities that contributed to the food crisis and magnify its impacts. They are the biggest bilateral lenders and the most influential members of international financial institutions. They should act immediately and decisively for the cancellation of all illegitimate debts. The imposition of conditionalities through loans debt and debt cancellation must stop. The G8 governments and the international financial institutions should respect the action of Southern countries to reverse the policies that have led to the food crisis.
The G8 governments also share responsibility for other factors behind the crisis — as governments of countries which are home to the biggest multinational food corporations and food commodities speculators, and as powerful governments shaping bilateral and multilateral trade agreements affecting food. The G8 governments should regulate their predatory corporations and investors, ban speculation on food commodities, and stop pushing unfair trade agreements.
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The G8 governments also bear primary responsibility for the climate crisis. Half of the world’s green house gas emissions come from the G8 countries. Most, if not all, of the G8 countries are lagging behind the reduction targets of GHG emissions. Even the European Union, with its bold plan of being the first de-carbonized economy in the world, has undermined its own claims by planning to build 40 major new coal power plants in the next five years.
And again, as the most powerful members of international financial institutions, they are accountable for debt-related projects and policies that exacerbate the climate crisis.
The World Bank and the regional development banks are major lenders to projects involving fossil fuel industries, paid for by peoples of the South. The Export Credit Agencies of G8 countries also provide financing to these industries, part of which translates to liabilities of South governments, again paid for by peoples of the South.
Since the signing of the Climate Convention in 1992, and even after instituting “environmental policies,” the World Bank approved more than 133 financial packages to oil, coal and gas extraction projects, comprising mainly of loans but also including equity investments, guarantees and some grants. The total amount exceeds US$28 billion dollars. Fossil fuel corporations based in G8 countries benefit from almost every project finance package. The International Finance Corporation of the World Bank is increasing its fossil fuel lending portfolio.
The Asian Development Bank, to which Japan and the United States are the biggest shareholders, is a major lender to coal, oil and gas projects in Asia, approving close to US$2 billion worth of loans since the year 2000.
Other loan-financed projects and policy conditionalities of international financial institutions have led to massive deforestation, another major factor to climate change. These include, for instance, the building of large-scale dams, road development in tropical forests, and the promotion of palm oil production for export.
It is indeed ironic and deplorable that with such a record, the G8 governments is granting the World Bank a pre-eminent role in global financing of climate mitigation and adaptation and the promotion of “clean technology” and “clean development.” In the July 2005 Summit, the G8 declared that the “The World Bank will take a leadership role in creating a new framework for clean energy and development, including investment and financing.” The regional development banks are claiming similar roles.
The World Bank announced recently that it will establish Climate Investment Funds (CIFs). Aside from the obvious inappropriateness of the World Bank as manager of these Funds given its role in worsening the climate crisis, the concepts, design and intentions of the funds are seriously flawed.
The G8 governments are not only promoting false solutions through the different facilities under the auspices of these international financial institutions, they are intending to finance these through loans, thus adding to the debt burden of developing countries. The UK government has been leading the call for other governments to contribute to funds to be administered by the World Bank as loans.
Instead of extending loans for climate mitigation and adaptation – the G8 governments should begin with the recognition of the huge ecological debt that they owe the countries and peoples of the South.
They should finance climate mitigation and adaption in the South as part of restitution and reparations for the environmental damage and destruction their policies and programs, their economies and corporations have caused. These funds should be managed by democratic and accountable institutions.
CALLS AND DEMANDS
We urge all peoples’ movements and organizations (labor, farmers, women, youth, indigenous peoples), social and political movements, community and citizens’ groups, and faith-based organizations, to challenge the governments of the G8 countries to acknowledge their responsibility for the food and climate crises and the continuing problem of debt, and take decisive action to:
1. Cancel all illegitimate debt.
2. Stop financing projects and policies that contribute to climate change
3. Respect the South countries efforts to reverse harmful policies that led to the food crisis.
4. Ban speculation on food prices.
5. End the practice of using loans and debt cancellation to impose conditionalities.
6. Pay restitution and reparations for the huge ecological debts owed to the South.
7. Facilitate the return of stolen assets kept in the banks in the G8 countries.
Signatories:
INTERNATIONAL and REGIONAL NETWORKS and ORGANIZATIONS
Jubilee South
European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD)
CADTM International
JS – Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development
Africa Jubilee South
Jubileo Sur Americas
Asia/Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty (APNFS)
AFRODAD
LATINDADD
Least Developed Country (LDC) Watch
South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE)
Southern Peoples Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance
Migrant Forum in Asia
EUROSTEP
OilChange International
Friends of the Earth International
Platform of Filipino Migrant Organisations in Europe (Platform Europe)
Action Aid International
Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development (APWLD)
Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA)
International Gender and Trade Network -Asia (IGTN-Asia)
Focus on the Global South
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women - Asia/Pacific (CATWP-AP)
Convergencia De Movimientos delos Pueblos delas Americas (COMPA)
NORTH AMERICA
Jubilee USA Network - USA
Sustainable Energy & Economy Network - USA
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns - USA
Washington Office of Public Policy, Women’s Division, United Methodist Church - USA
Center for Third World Organizing - USA
Global Exchange - USA
Medical Mission Sister’s Alliance for Justice - USA
Gender Action - USA
Halifax Initiative Coalition - Canada
Development Gap - USA
EUROPE
Jubilee Debt Campaign – UK
Jubilee Scotland
"¿Quien debe a Quién?” Campaign – Spain
Observatorio de la Deuda en la Globalización – Spain
Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale (CRBM) - Italy
CADI (Comitato Antirazzista Durban Italia) - Italy
Norwegian Coalition for Debt Cancellation (SLUG) - Norway
11.11.11. - Coalition of the Flemish North-South Movement - Belgium
Debt and Development Coalition - Ireland
Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz - Switzerland
ATTAC - France
Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers (CFMW) - The Netherlands
PACIFIC
Jubilee Australia
JAPAN
Jubilee Kyushu - Japan
Jubilee Kansai Network - JapanATTAC Japan
Society of St Columban - Japan
Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC) - Japan
Japan Network on Debt & Poverty
Food Policy Center Vision21 - Japan
Kansai Action Center on Philippine Human Rights Issues - Japan
ATTAC Hokkaido - Japan
ATTAC Kyoto - Japan
ATTAC Kansai Group, Japan
Altermonde - Japan
Yokohama Action Research Center - Japan
Solidarity Network Migrants Japan
Global Peace and Alternative Media - Japan
Lencaena Communication Japonesia - Japan
KALAKASAN Empowerment Center - Japan
ASIA/PACIFIC
Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) – Philippines
KALAYAAN! ( Movement for People’s Freedom) - Philippines
Solidarity of Filipino Workers (Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino) - Philippines
Bisig - Philippines
Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement - Philippines
Aniban ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura`(Union of Agricultural Workers)-Philippines
Resource Center for Sustainable Development (GITIB) - Philippines
Center for Migrant Advocacy - Philippines
Task Force Food Sovereignty - PhilippinesCenter for Popular Empowerment (CPE) – Philippines
Center for Women’s Right and Development -
SANLAKAS - Philippines
Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (Democratic Association of the Youth) SDK – Philippines
Kanlungan Centre Foundation Inc. - Philippines
Youth Against Debt (YAD) - Philippines
Assalam Bangsa Moro People’s Association - Philippines
Ecological Waste Coalition of the Philippines (Ecowaste Coalition) - Philippines
Global Alliance for Incinerators Alternatives (GAIA) - Philippines
Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) - Philippines
Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP)-Philippines
Womanhealth - Philippines
ODA Watch - Philippines
Management and Organizational Development for Empowerment (MODE) - Philippines
Anti Debt Coalition (KAU) - Indonesia
Nadi - IndonesiaI
International Forum for Indonesian Development (INFID)-Indonesia
Institute for Essential Services Reform – Indonesia
Anjuman Asiaye Awam – Pakistan
Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization - Malaysia
NUBE - Malaysia
Luta Hamutuk Institute - East Timor
Centre for Human Rights and Development – Mongolia
Rural Reconstruction Nepal
NGO Federation of Nepal
All Nepal Women’s Association - Nepal
Center for Environmental Justice – Sri Lanka
Equity & Justice Working Group - Bangladesh
Unnayan Onneshan - Bangladesh
Community Development Library- Bangladesh
Jatiyo Sramik Jote - Bangladesh
Group of Liberal Debaters (GOLD) – Bangladesh
WARBE Development Foundation - Bangladesh
Anjuman Asiaye Awam - Pakistan
Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) - India
Alternatives Asia - India
Centre for Education and Communication - India
People´s Union for Civil Liberties - India
Narmada Bachao Andolan - India
Campaign for Judicial Accountability - India
Gender, Livelihoods and Resources Forum - India
Bihar Social Institute - India
ALternatives/Badayl- India
Intercultural Resource - India
National Centre for Dalit Human Rights, India
Centre for Education and Communication, New Delhi, India
Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, India
Vikas Samvad, MP – India
Human Rights Law Network – India
Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants Trade Union - Korea
Bahrain Center for Human Rights - Bahrain
AFRICA
African Forum on Alternatives - Senegal
Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center - Kenya
Center for Promotion of Economic and Social Alternatives - Cameroon
Umzabalazo We Jubilee - South Africa
Jubilee South Africa
CRAPR / NAD - RD - Congo
LATIN AMERICA and the CARIBBEAN
Jubileu Sul Brasil - Brazil
PACS - Instituto Politicas Alternativas Para o Cone Sul - Brazil
Bloque Popular - Honduras
Jubileo Peru
Marcha Mundial delas Mujeres - Peru
Alianza Social Continental Capitolo - Peru
Dialogo 2000 - Argentina
ATTAC - Argentina
Periodico El Espejo - Argentina
Jubileo Sur - Mexico
Movimiento Mexicana de Afectados por las Presas y en Defensa delos Rios - Mexico
Cactus Coaxaca - Mexico
Otros Mundos, A.C/Chiapas - Mexico
RED Mexicana de Accion Frente al Libre Comercio - Mexico
Centro de Documentacion en Derechos Humanos (Segundo Montes Mozo S.J.) - Ecuador
RED Ecuatoriana de Defensores de Derechos Humanos - Ecuador
Mesa de Trabajo Sobre Migraciones Laborales - Ecuador
PAPDA - Haiti
INDIVIDUALS
Eisuke Naramoto, Japan
Hidenori Ao - Japan
Hiroshi Yamashita, Japan
GATA Kazumasa -Japan
Kalyani Menon Sen, India
Kazue Tanaka – Japan
Miki Fujimori - Japan
Mikiko Okiyama - Japan
Mituko Ogawa - Japan
Miyow Ogawa - Japan
Muto Ichiyo - Japan
Naomi Horihama - Japan
Makie Hatori - Japan
Nomura Osami - Japan
Okuno Takumi - Japan
Shigeki KONNO - Japan
Shindi Inoue - Japan
Sachiyo Tanahashi - Japan
Naoko Ishioroshi - Japan
Tadashi SETTSU (PAFF) - Japan
Watanabe Michie - Japan
Yasue Tanaka - Japan
Yukio Gibo – Japan
Rie Kawahito - Japan
Takako Nobuhara - Japan
Yasuaki Matsumoto, Palestine Solidarity in Sapporo - Japan
Misako Ogawa, Kagoshima City Council Member - Japan
Takaaki Osato, Midori Fukuoka - Japan
Yukio Giho, Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum - Japan
Takaaki Hashino, Japan Christian Organization - Japan
Rie Kawahito – Japan
Noel Cabangon - Philippines
Aaron Rom O. Moralina - Philippines
Atty. Romeo Gerochi - Philippines
Ted Aldwin Ong - Philippines
Gloria S. Canama – Pakistan
Sophea Chrek – Cambodia
Hemantha Withanage, Center for Environmental Justice – Sri Lanka
Bieniada Yerzy
Manfred Bergmann - Italy
Medha Patkar, Narmada Bachao Andolan - India
Ambrish Rai, Lok Sangharsh Morcha - India
Kavita Srivastava, People´s Union for Civil Liberties, Rjasthan - India
Prashant Bhushan, Campaign for Judicial Accountability - India
Praveer Peter, Gender, Livelihoods and ResourcesForum - India
Anil Sadgopal - India
Prakash Louis, Bihar Social Institute - India
Ranjan Soloman, ALTERNATIVES/BADAYL - India
Sauquat Hussain - India
Smitu Kothari, Intercultural Resource - India
Arun Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University - India
Mukta Srivastava, National Alliance of People Movements – India
Vincent,National Centre for Dalit Human Rights - India
Syed Saiful Haque - Bangladesh
*********************************************
THE PERILS OF A DOHA DEAL ON SERVICES
By Walden Bello*
Desperate to clinch a new global trade deal, World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy is planning to convene a “mini-ministerial” meeting in the third week of July. The aim of the meeting is to come up with agreements on trade in agriculture, industry, and services which have been the focus of the so-called Doha Round of WTO negotiations that have dragged on since 2001.
Developing country governments have been rightly concerned about agreeing to texts which promise illusory reductions in agricultural subsidies in the European Union and United States and require them to cut their industrial tariffs proportionally more than the developed countries. They should also not allow themselves to be snookered into a bad agreement on services.
While global attention has focused on the talks on agricultural subsidies and industrial tariffs, the US and EU have made it clear that they will not settle for a trade package that does not include services. As US Trade Representative Susan Schwab bluntly stated in a recent opinion piece, Washington “will not support a Doha package unless it includes an ambitious outcome on services that delivers commercially meaningful results.” While Schwab portrays the services talks as the poor cousin of the agriculture and industry negotiations, an equally possible outcome is a services agreement unaccompanied by deals in industrial tariffs and agriculture. With the North-South polarization in agriculture and industry, salvaging Doha with a deal in services, which are said to account for 50-60 per cent of economic activity in most developing countries, might become an increasingly attractive option to the EU and US.
Much media coverage of developing country concerns in services has centered on the so-called Mode 4 of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which addresses the movement of “natural persons.” Much resentment has been expressed with a multilateral system that facilitates the movement of capital and goods into developing country markets but severely limits the entry into developed country markets of labor from the developed countries. But an equal, if not greater, concern of the developing countries is their current lack of capacity to regulate transnational service providers. Their fears have been fanned by the current troubles of the global financial system, which are traceable to the virtual absence of global regulation of developed country financial operators. While financial services are just one of many services covered by GATS, the US and EU have made a liberalized financial sector their main demand on developing countries. It has been revealed, for instance, that the EU has demanded that some developing countries eliminate regulations that cover the activities of hedge funds. The EU has also demanded that Mexico open up its market to trade in derivatives, the slippery financial instruments that have played such as key role in the current financial chaos.
Most developing countries welcome foreign capital, but they have learned the hard way that a strong foreign financial presence demands a strong regulatory regime tailored to a particular country’s needs and capacities. It was the indiscriminate elimination of capital controls across the region at the behest of the International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury Department that brought on the devastating Asian financial crisis. With practically all capital controls lifted and investment rules liberalized, some $100 billion flowed into the key Asian economies between 1993 and 1997, with the money gravitating toward areas of high and quick return, like the stock market and real estate.
With few controls on where the funds went, overinvestment soon swamped the the stock and housing markets, causing prices to collapse and triggering follow-on dislocations in the exchange rate, the balance of payments, and the balance of trade. Gripped by panic, speculators scampered toward the exit. With both entry and exit rules liberalized, there was no way for governments -- except for Malaysia, which defied the IMF and imposed capital controls -- to stop the stampede, and the $100 billion that fled the region in a few short weeks in the summer of 1997 brought economic growth to a screeching halt from Korea all the way down to Indonesia.
Capital account and financial liberalization was also a key demand pushed on Argentina in the 1990’s by developed country authorities. Buenos Aires complied, prompting Larry Summers, then US Secretary of the Treasury, to claim that the end result of foreign interests controlling 50 per cent of the banking sector and 70 percent of private banks was a “deeper, more efficient market and external investors with a greater stake in staying put.” Summers was dead wrong. Foreign control aggravated the financial crisis into which Argentina was plunged in 2002, with the foreign-controlled banks ceasing to lend to local governments and businesses and sending capital out of the country instead. With no credit, small and medium enterprises, and not a few big ones, closed down, throwing thousands out of work as the country spiraled into depression.
After the Asian financial crisis, the Argentine financial collapse, and the dot.com crash of 2000-2002, which was also caused by a speculative bubble promoted by lack of financial regulation, one would have thought that developed country authorities would put the emphasis on seriously regulating the activities of global financial actors.
Global finance, however, resisted any move toward effective regulation.. While there were calls for controls on proliferating financial instruments such as derivatives, these got nowhere. Assessment and regulation of derivatives were to be left to market players who had access to sophisticated quantitative “risk assessment” models that were being developed.
Moreover, despite the fact that it was developed country-based financial institutions like hedge funds that triggered the Asian crisis, the so-called Basel II process focused not on disciplining these actors but on standardizing developing country financial institutions and processes along the weakly regulated “Anglo-American” financial model that had already been implicated in scores of crises since the 1980's. Having been burned by the consequences of financial deregulation, many developing country governments were not surprised when “self regulation” led to the massive housing bubble whose bursting has brought the global financial system to the edge of collapse.
One of the stock scenarios of the old western movies was that of a train picking up speed towards a collision with another train as the lifeless hand of the engineer, already shot dead by outlaws, remained pressed on the accelerator. Current developments in global finance are reminiscent of this scene. A global consensus is forming around strongly reregulating the financial sector. But in disregard of this emerging consensus and the financial chaos around them, developed country negotiators at the WTO, much like the dead hand of the engineer, continue to press developing countries for a services agreement that would drastically liberalize their financial sectors!
The developing country governments should steer clear of the train wreck that will certainly ensue from the US and EU's determination to pursue global financial liberalization at any cost. They must not agree to a services deal that would compromise their ability to effectively regulate financial and other services. Just as they must say no to agricultural and industrial tariff agreements loaded down with inequitable conditions, they must also not be party to a services agreement that would have no other effect but to continually drag them into the terrifying maelstroms of unregulated global finance.
* Walden Bello is professor of sociology a the University of the Philippines, and senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a research institute at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Focus on Trade is a regular electronic bulletin providing updates and analysis of trends in regional and world trade and finance, the political economy of globalisation and peoples resistance, and alternatives to global capitalism. Nicola Bullard edits Focus on Trade. Your contributions and comments are welcome. Write to
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Focus on the Global South is an autonomous programme of policy research and action of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute (CUSRI) based in Bangkok.
Water justice, like water, travels in networks: notes on reclaiming public water
An
international seminar of the Reclaiming Public Water Network brought
together participants from more than 30 countries, who shared knowledge
and experiences about how to improve water provision through the
democratization of water management.
The initiative People’s Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms, involves regional alliances such as Hemispheric Social Alliance (Latin America), Southern African People’s Solidarity Network- SAPSN (Southern Africa), Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy – SAPA (South East Asia), People’s SAARC (South Asia) as well as organisations and networks in Europe, including Transnational Institute (TNI), that struggle for “Another Europe”. These networks and the organisations part of them, share a strong commitment on the need to RECLAIM the regions, RECREATE the processes of regional integration and ADVANCE people-centered regional alternatives.
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