Global News Journal

Hope and Fear at the World Bank

It was early March and Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner of International Cooperation Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, was traveling in Asia. Her plan was to attend a 7.5 magnitude earthquake simulation that would hit Indonesia and generate a tsunami. A few things, however, changed in her itinerary: The destination turned out to be Japan, the earthquake was 9.0 and it not only generated a huge tsunami, but also a nuclear catastrophe. Plus, it was real.

“Usually our fears are bigger than reality. In this case our reality was worse than our fears,” Georgieva said recently at a World Bank panel on the climate, food and financial crises the world is facing today and the way they all intertwine. Georgieva’s strong Slavic optimism brightened the gloomy panel, but the data she threw in didn’t back up her positive view:

Hold on for a second. How can these disasters have such a devastating impact on us when cutting-edge technology, extensive knowledge and interconnectedness are here to help us mitigate them?

This question left the representatives of Uganda – who followed the event via webcast — puzzled. So they raised the simplest but toughest question for the panel:

“We seem to know the problem and we also seem to know the answer. The question is then: Why are we not responding?”

No one on the panel disagreed with World Bank’s managing director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iewala, who wasn’t shy to name those she blamed and to evoke “the fear of God” in them:

from Environment Forum:

Polar bears, sure. But grolar bears?

Most people have seen a polar bear, usually at the local zoo. And most zoo-goers know that wildlife advocates worry about the big white bears' future as their icy Arctic habitat literally melts away as a result of global climate change. But apparently more than the climate is changing above the Arctic Circle.

The new mammal around the North Pole is the grolar bear, a hybrid created when a polar bear and a grizzly bear mate. Then there's the narluga, a hybrid of the narwhal and beluga whale. The presence of these two new creatures and others produced by cross-breeding may be caused when melting sea ice allows them to mingle in ways they couldn't before, according to a comment in the journal Nature.

These hybrids could push some Arctic species to extinction, the three American authors said in their Nature piece. They identified 22 marine mammals at risk of hybridization, including 14 listed or candidates for listing as endangered, threatened or of special concern by one or more nations.

"Some people may say these are just a few freaks. Others will say the sky is falling," lead author Brendan Kelly, of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, told the Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth website.

"What we’re saying is that these are a few of the many examples of hybridization happening among marine mammals in the Arctic right now. It fits with what we would expect as a result of the rapid change in Arctic habitat. This sort of hybridization may be happening with more frequency, and we should pay attention."

What does a grolar bear look like? Basically a smudged polar bear. Only DNA tests showed that a grolar encountered this year was the offspring of a hybrid mother and a grizzly bear father. In 2006, Arctic hunters shot a white bear with brown patches which was dubbed a "pizzly."

There is hope for the polar bear, according to another study in Nature, as reported by my colleague Yereth Rosen from Anchorage. Significant curbs on climate-warming carbon emissions could save the big white bears' habitat, researchers said. But will these curbs come to pass? After two weeks of international climate talks in Cancun, the outlook is still unsettled.

from Environment Forum:

10,000 walruses, ready for their close-up

Zoom! Pan! Swish!  Take a look at a new movie of walruses crowding an Alaska beach -- as you've never seen them before! Shot from 4,000 feet up in the air, the vast herd of walruses looks like a pile of brown gravel from a distance. (A far different view than the extreme close-up in the still photo at left, which was taken at a zoo in Belarus.)

As the camera in Alaska zooms in, you can see there are thousands of walruses scrambling ashore as the ice floes they normally use as hunting platforms melt away. The video was shot this month at Point Lay, Alaska, and distributed this week by the U.S. Geological Survey. It's impossible to say how many are on this beach in this movie, but an Arctic scientist at World Wildlife Fund estimates between 10,000 and 20,000 of the tusked marine mammals have hauled themselves onto land in Alaska this year as summer Arctic sea ice shrank to its third-smallest recorded size.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Stringer Vladimir Nikolsky (Zoo employee plays with a walrus during celebrations marking the zoo's 23th birthday in Minsk, Belarus, August 11, 2007)

Video credit: U.S. Geological Survey

from Environment Forum:

The World Bank’s $6 billion man on climate change

As the special envoy on climate change for the World Bank, Andrew Steer might be thought of as the $6 billion man of environmental finance. He oversees more than that amount for projects to fight the effects of global warming.

"More funds flow through us to help adaptation and mitigation than anyone else," Steer said in a conversation at the bank's Washington headquarters. Named to the newly created position in June, Steer said one of his priorities is to marshall more than $6 billion in the organization's Climate Investment Funds to move from smaller pilot projects to large-scale efforts.

While the World Bank is not a party to global climate talks set for Cancun, Mexico, later this year, it is deeply engaged in this issue, Steer said. Acknowledging that an international agreement on climate change is a long shot this year, he said there are still opportunities to make changes to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur climate change.

"We do see there are opportunities," Steer said. "The mistake would be if it's sort of all or nothing." The bank is strongly supporting action to limit deforestation, offer quick financing to start climate projects and reform carbon markets to extend them to countries that have been left out so far.

Even though the World Bank won't be at the negotiating table in Cancun, its members will be there, and 80 percent of them want the bank to focus on climate change, Steer said. It's all part of a what he sees as a fundamental shift in the international attitude toward dealing with this problem.

"There is a new revolution that's going on now," he said . "It's not only driven by personal commitment, like it would have been 15 years ago ... Now it's driven by just the sheer logic ... If you care about long-term poverty reduction, you simply cannot avoid this issue."

Photo credits: REUTERS/Supri Supri (Andrew Steer (right) then the World Bank's Indonesia country director, with World Health Organization's Georg Peterson at a news conference in Jakarta, August 24, 2006)

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Helping Pakistan; not if, but how

Outside President Asif Ali Zardari's political rally in Birmingham last weekend, I chatted to a middle-aged woman passing by about the floods in Pakistan. "I have every sympathy for Pakistan and the Pakistanis, but he is not helping them much, is he?" she said. Another woman asked me to explain why it was that the  protesters were not focused on the floods but demonstrating "about all sorts".  Inside the rally, a young British Pakistani who had recently returned from a visit to his family home in Kashmir complained about negative stereotyping in the media of Pakistan that had reduced a country of some 170 million people to "a terrorist threat".

If there is a common thread to the relatively slow western response to one of the worst catastrophes in Pakistan's history, it is a sense of confusion, not about whether to help, but how to help. That, and the dehumanising impact of stereotypes - corrupt politicians, angry bearded protesters, suicide bombers to name but a few -- that obscure the impact of the floods on the very real people - 14 million of them - affected by the disaster.

In the short term, the weak civilian government has been slammed for failing to come up with a clear plan to address the immediate needs of those hit by the floods. Nor has it provided the leadership that might rally all institutions and people behind it. The result has been that the Pakistan Army, long the country's most efficient and effective national institution, has stepped in to fill the void, leading efforts to rescue flood victims.  Meanwhile, as Pakistani politicians squabbled amongst themselves and flew into disaster-hit areas with an eye for photo-ops, and as Zardari travelled abroad to France and Britain, the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa - the humanitarian wing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group - quietly moved in to help, as it did in the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. 

The United States, along with other countries, has been ratcheting up its aid efforts, offering financial assistance totallling $76 million and sending military helicopters for relief and rescue operations. However, I can't help but feel a bit uneasy when this is presented in terms of vying for influence with Islamist charities like the Jamaat ud-Dawa. This may be partially true, but it is also part of the same dehumanising process, as though the flood victims are no more than "hearts and minds" to be won over, rather than people facing death from hunger and disease.  International and Pakistani NGOs are doing what they can - although for those who want to help, it can be hard for outsiders to work out which charity best deserves donations (inside Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation is widely respected.)

But if understanding how to alleviate the short-term crisis is hard enough, the question of how to help Pakistan in the long term is even more perplexing.  The damage to its fragile economy is likely to be felt not just this year - the World Bank says $1 billion in crops have been lost - but in grain sowings for food supplies in the future.  The impact on society in a country already struggling to find its feet in a battle against Islamist militancy is yet to be fully understood, although popular anger against the government over its response to the floods does not bode well. Add to that  the disorientating impact of climate change -- and scientists are still arguing about how much the floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia are due to global warming -- and the need to bolster Pakistan's defences in the future against water crises (both shortage and excess) and you have a reconstruction challenge which would defy even the strongest of governments.

At a crude level, Pakistan needs better water management, better irrigation and a reversal of the deforestation which has been widely blamed for exacerbating the flooding.  Deforestation has a double impact. Firstly there is nothing to slow flood waters and mudslides. Secondly,  it contributes to soil erosion, silting up river waters so that dams and levees downstream are even less able to contain the impact of unusually heavy monsoon rains. Pakistan's forests have been ravaged by an illegal timber mafia, often working in league with corrupt local politicians. Reversing that process is both an obvious need and - as with so many obvious needs in Pakistan - a political nightmare.

The economy itself might actually tick up slightly. Natural disasters are often followed by a reconstruction boom. But reconstruction which does not take account of the need for sustainable development would leave Pakistan exposed to more natural disasters in the future, particularly if uneven monsoons combine with faster melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed its rivers. Reconstruction which exacerbates income disparities and feeds corruption will tug even harder at the country's fragile social fabric.

from Environment Forum:

So long, sardines? Lake Tanganyika hasn’t been this warm in 1,500 years

East Africa's Lake Tanganyika might be getting too hot for sardines.

The little fish have been an economic and nutritional mainstay for some 10 million people in neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- four of the poorest countries on Earth. They also depend on Lake Tanganyika for drinking water.

But that could change, according to research published in the online version of the journal Nature Geoscience. Using samples of the lakebed that chart a 1,500-year history of the lake's surface water temperature, the scientists found the current temperature -- 78.8 degrees F (26 degrees C) -- is the warmest it's been in a millennium and a half. And that could play havoc with sardines and other fish the local people depend on.

The scientists also found that the lake saw its biggest warm-up in the 20th century.

This unprecedented warm water could interfere with the lake's unique ecosystem, which relies on nutrients churned up from the bottom of the lake to feed the algae that form the base of the lake's food web. As Lake Tanganyika heats up, the mixing of waters is lessened and fewer nutrients get to the top level where algae and fish feed. More warming at the surface magnifies the difference between the two lake levels and even more wind is needed to churn the waters enough to get nutrients to the upper layer.

“Earth to Ban Ki-moon” or how a deal was sealed in Copenhagen

Sweden complained that the recent Copenhagen climate change summit was a “disaster.” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described it as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic.” Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, dubbed the outcome confirmation of a “climate apartheid.” For South Africa it was simply “not acceptable.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who for over a year had been urging the 192 members of the United Nations to “seal the deal” in Copenhagen, saw things differently. In a statement issued by his press office, Ban said the two-week meeting had a “successful conclusion with substantive outcomes.” Speaking to reporters, the secretary-general expanded on that: “Finally we sealed the deal. And it is a real deal. Bringing world leaders to the table paid off.” However, he tempered his praise for the participating delegations by noting that the outcome “may not be everything that everyone hoped for.”

In fact, the outcome fell far short of what Ban had been calling for over the last year. He had originally hoped the meeting would produce a legally binding agreement with ambitious targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and funding to help developing nations cope with global warming. Instead it “noted” an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that was widely criticized as unambitious and unspecific.

That accord set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times — seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts and rising seas. But it did not say how this would be achieved. It also held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations, but did not say where the money would come from. Decisions on fundamental issues such as emissions cuts were pushed into the future.

The South Korean U.N. chief was not the only person to praise the summit. U.S. President Barack Obama said the outcome was an “important breakthrough”, but noted that it was only one step on the road towards the emissions cuts needed. The head of China’s delegation, Xie Zhenhua, said the meeting “had a positive result, everyone should be happy.” (Gordon Brown was clearly placing the blame for the underwhelming outcome in Copenhagen on China and a few other states when he said: “Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries.”)

Back in New York, some delegations were shaking their heads over Ban’s bullish remarks about Copenhagen. “He is talking from Mars,” said the Sudanese envoy, who currently chairs the Group of 77 club of developing nations at the U.N. But Ban is not in outer space, several U.N. officials insisted on condition of anonymity. Ban did not see the summit as a failure, but he, too, felt disappointed and would keep on working to “seal the deal” in 2010.

In fact, the U.N. officials said, Ban’s personal intervention had helped prevent the summit from falling apart. “He’s acutely aware of how much worse it could have been,” one official said. He was making phone calls, organizing bilateral meetings and persuading reluctant delegates to join the consensus. “His final intervention at the 11th hour” helped secure that consensus, the official said.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Comparing Pakistan’s Islamists to India’s Maoists

One of the more controversial arguments doing the rounds is the question of whether you can compare Pakistan's Islamist militants to Maoist insurgents in India. Both claim to champion the cause of social justice and have been able to exploit local grievances against poor governance to win support, and both use violence against the state to try to achieve their aims.

The differences are obvious:  the Islamist militants come from the religious right; the Maoists from the far-left. In Pakistan, the militants have become powerful enough to strike at the heart of the country's major cities. In India, the Maoists remain largely confined to the country's interiors, although their influence is spreading through large parts of its rural hinterland.

In Pakistan, the military initially nurtured Islamist militants to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan - with U.S. and Saudi support - and later to fight India in Kashmir. In India, the Maoist movement has grown organically from its origins as a local 1967 uprising by communists over a land dispute in the village of  Naxalbari in West Bengal, from where its followers derive their name as Naxalites.

In Pakistan, the question of whether support for Islamist militants is underpinned by local grievances over social injustice is highly contentious.  Many in Pakistan dismiss the Pakistani Taliban as right-wing ideologues, fired up by an alien religious philosophy imported from the Middle East by al Qaeda, and joined by a motley crew of criminals and thugs bent on the pursuit of pursuit of power and money.

In India, even those who oppose the Maoists' violent methods acknowledge that poverty and the alienation of its rural poor - especially among the indigenous tribal people - have contributed to their appeal.  (I have rarely been so powerfully struck by the desolation of hunger than on a trip some years ago to Chhattisgarh, the heartland of the Maoist revolt.  It is a state where deep in the forests you find children with the protruding bellies and vacant eyes of the seriously malnourished, whose fathers use bows-and-arrows to catch animals (see pix).  It also has vast mineral resources which villagers hope might one day make them rich, and which Maoists argue will be exploited by international mining companies.)

But granted the obvious differences, some of the similarities offer a perspective which at the very least allows room for discussion about the challenges faced by national governments in dealing with insurgencies, both from the Islamist right and the far left.

In Pakistan, the Islamist militants are recognised by many as an existential threat to the state. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as "perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces".

What to do while the world burns

This opinion piece by Mort Rosenblum originally appeared in GlobalPost. The views expressed are his own. For the full article, click here.

PARIS, France — Back when primal-scream therapy was the rage in California, a friend fell asleep in a tangle of limbs by a blazing hearth. At dawn, sparks ignited the shag rug.

Someone shrieked, “FIRREEE!” Others, stupefied from the previous day’s psycho-dramatics and smoke from other sources, sleepily mumbled stuff like, “Yeah, man, let it out.”

Copenhagen is now upon us, and I think about this scene. For 20 years, climate scientists have banged ever louder on alarms. Still, we open one eye and nod off again.

The truth, however inconvenient, is that we all face calamity beyond imagination. Rather than take comprehensive action, we find excuses to stall and quibble over details.

“We’re like people racing downhill in buses without brakes, arguing over what song to sing,” Arundhati Roy remarked not long ago in New Delhi.

I interviewed her for the “Out of Poverty” issue of Dispatches quarterly and kept the notes for the next, on climate collapse: “Endgame.” The subjects are the same.

For Rudd, now it’s personal

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may be a shoo-in to return to office late next year, but this week his reputation as a transformative leader will be on the line.

The Senate will vote whether Australia will cut its carbon output through an emissions trading system, or ETS. The debate is being closely watched overseas, particularly in the United States where lawmakers are debating their own proposals. The carbon trading scheme was a key promise of Rudd’s 2007 election campaign and he wants the ETS laws passed before December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen.

As political commentator Peter Hartcher says, defeat for Rudd would mean his claim to be a leader “for the future” would face a serious challenge. Rudd is an internationalist, and sets his standards beyond the domestic realm. The former diplomat who speaks Mandarin has laid out a plan to win Australia a temporary seat at the U.N. Security Council, has secured Australia a position as a lead negotiator for a new climate pact at Copenhagen next month, and has been actively pursuing a deeper Australian role in Asian diplomatic circles with his push for an Asia Pacific community.

For Rudd, this week’s vote on the ETS is more than just domestic politics, this is something with global ramifications. And for a man seeking to burnish his internationalist image, this makes it personal.