A nod in the direction of Michael Tobis, who alerted me to the fact that James “Jems” Delingpole has been attempting to think his way out of the development box again :-

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/09/demographic-transition-cause-and-effect.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100052106/and-your-solution-to-the-us-problem-would-be-what-exactly-boris/

James Delingpole recognises that Boris Johnson has decided to latch onto an easy picking :-

“…Lots of nice, sensible people will have agreed with him, I’m sure. It’s an easy political point to make: like being against chewing gum stuck on pavements or uncleaned up dog poo or boisterous, drunken youths in town centres or battery chickens or bear baiting. Of course we’d all like the world to be less populous…”

After all, those in the world who are busy reproducing are the poor, and it’s easy to promote the idea that they should show more responsibility in fecundity. Because they are over there, and we are over here. And telling other people what to do is always easier than changing ourselves.

Some people even go so far as to base their “overpopulation in developing countries” argument on the notion that all the poor people with their multitudes of poor children are deforesting the tropics for fuel wood – how terrible !

But really, the populous poor have a much smaller impact on the environment than the minority rich. And I’m talking general environmental terms, not just Climate Change.

But if you want to talk Global Warming, it’s the non-multiplying rich people who are causing the significant problem with their unrelenting Greenhouse Gas emissions. For example, the United States with only 400 million people, produces over 25% of global Greenhouse Gas emissions.

Rather than raising the incomes of the poor, having the rich people get a bit poorer would do a great deal more of good in environmental protection terms as they would emit less :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/07/22/the-population-question/

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/07/23/the-population-question-2/

James Delingpole struggles to find more than one dimension in his rebuttal of Boris Johnson, however :-

“…Perhaps you believe in Eugenics, as was popular in the run up to (and during) the War. Or in sterilisation campaigns. Or contraceptive drives. Perhaps you believe in extremely repressive campaigns to keep Africans out of the bush. I don’t. I believe the human species is a blessing, not a curse. I believe we should stop patronising people in the third world and trying to decide how many babies they have. I believe that as GDP per capita increases, so people decide to have fewer children and that therefore the solution to Africa’s problems is for everyone to be made richer, faster through the institution of property rights, free trade and incentives for local people to benefit from the safari industry and keep those reserves in the pristine state Boris desires.”

The trouble with the idea of increased incomes is that there is much more than cash in the development equation – although most economists like to boil it down to the “earning X dollars a day” formula.

1. Money can’t buy you infrastructure public goods.

Even if you were to inflate the money supply for higher incomes in countries in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, people would still not be able to have a better quality of life if there were not also investments in public roadways, public transportation, health facilities, production facilities, energy plant and grids, basic sanitation and water supplies, good housing and good schools.

2. Money can’t buy you debt relief.

It’s more than time to cancel odious international debt – with no strings.

3. Money can’t buy you fair trade rules for basic commodities.

The classic example is coffee – bought on the stock exchanges around the world as the lowest price imaginable – and the producers have no say in the prices.

4. Money can’t buy you market access for your goods.

The United States of America and Europe still support over-production in their agriculture by the use of farming subsidies – products that end up flooding the developing world markets, undercutting local production, and also in the aid and emergency feeding programmes.

5. Money can’t buy you an end to corruption.

Look who installed that dictator !

6. Money can’t buy you an end to arms dealing.

Look who installed that dictator !

7. Money can’t buy you a cure for changes in the growing season, rainfall, excessive drought and flooding being brought about by the impacts of Global Warming.

8. Money can’t buy you protection from increased disease brought about by rising global temperatures.

9. Money can’t buy you employment opportunities.

James, do you honestly think that tourism is a valid export ? Will it give everyone a better standard of living in the “safari destination” countries ?

More to the point, James, do you think that tourism is a sustainable enterprise, given that Climate Change could seriously harm landscapes and wild animal populations ?

It’s true that, generally speaking, as the world educates, feeds and medically treats its populations, that people decide to have less children – partly because women become empowered through education to have more control over their own lives.

But Africa is a continent that has been grossly exploited by the minority rich for hundreds of years – and undoing that kind of impoverishment is not going to be a matter of raising local peoples’ incomes

Video Credit : Journeyman Pictures

Big green energy news of the month : President Barack Obama of the United States of America has announced direct investment into solar :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/04/obama-solar-pv-csp/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/04/obama-hands-solar-firms-2bn

Let there be light in the soul, and solar energy in the land.

This looks like a tipping point. Let’s flip some more trip switches in our personal networks and get the oil-producing bloc in the Middle East to see the value of going wind and solar (instead of expensive, risky Nuclear) :-

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/591358-qatar-awaits-new-solar-wind-tech-before-investment

http://www.uaeinteract.com

http://www.gizmag.com/shams-1-concentrated-solar-power-plant/15389/picture/116110/

“The largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in the Middle East is to be built in Madinat Zayed, approximately 120 km (75 miles) southwest of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). When it becomes operational in 2012, the plant, dubbed Shams 1, will feature some 6,300,000 square-feet of solar parabolic collectors, cover 741 acres of desert and will produce enough electricity to power 62,000 households.”

What ? That soon ?

Video Credit : Lighting Africa

Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

PART 4

CONTINUED FROM PART 1, PART 2 AND PART 3

Linking Climate Change to Poverty

There will be no global treaty on Climate Change without a solution for the poor.

The poor in every country are generally low emitters, and models of Low Carbon lives; yet because they are poor, it’s easy for their economic concerns to be swept aside in the global efforts to revive the big Energy systems.

One thing is clear, imposing a “dollar economy”, and thrusting international markets traded in American Dollars on the world’s poor is not the same as creating an environment for true social and sustainable development.

As John Gowdy makes clear in Section 5.4 of his article published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization “Behavioral economics and climate change policy”, the poor don’t need high consumption lifestyles :-

http://www.sciencedirect.com

“Policy Sub-Clue 1b: development in poorer countries need not focus exclusively on increasing per capita consumption : “Development” in the third world need not follow the path of the industrialized nations during the twentieth century. Sen (1999) has called for an approach to development emphasizing the ability to live an informed and full life rather than concentrating solely on income creation. Nussbaum (2000, chapter 4 and website of Human Development and Capabilities Association) has gone further in calling for “distributive justice”, that is, creating the conditions for the realization of a set of central human capabilities. Such policies would not only be more effective than simple income growth in making lives better for the world’s poorest, but they would also help to alleviate the pressure on the environment from more economic production. With a focus on individual happiness and self actualization, the developing world could improve its position relative to the North without emulating the consumption frenzy that drove past economic growth.”

The Kyoto Protocol’s “flexible mechanism” known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is not working to provide adaptation funds to Africa :-

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0413e/a0413E05.htm

“The Kyoto Protocol and the CDM in Africa: a good idea but …”

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/content/does-geography-matter-clean-development-mechanism-tyndall-working-paper-131

“Does Geography Matter for the Clean Development Mechanism?”

The poor don’t need to be dragged into a Carbon Trading market, even if their governments are.

What the poor need is access to land, water and energy.

Around the world there are millions of people being made landless to satisfy the demands of large mining and agricultural interests. This is a retrograde trend, which certainly needs to be reversed.

In Latin America, the landless movements are making some headway, but consider the irony – Brazil prides itself on having cheap, clean BioEthanol for transportation, yet the sugarcane for this enterprise is harvested under appalling conditions by impoverished landless peasants :-

http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=about
http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=kenfieldonethanolquestion2007

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-13-raising-cane-the-trouble-with-brazils-much-celebrated-ethanol-mi/

http://english.unica.com.br/opiniao/show.asp?msgCode={CB4605EE-B672-4D2C-9480-6A6EC339AFD2}

So keeping people landless works in favour of BioEnergy companies, so there is going to be an uphill struggle to make sure poor people have access to land.

Access to water caused a flashpoint in Colombia, when a program of “liberalisation” led to increased prices of privatised sources :-

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/1786-colombia-fighting-development-banks-for-the-human-right-to-water

But poor people need to be granted water, to grow the crops they need to survive, on the land they need to own.

I think it is fair to say that one of the biggest scourges of the poorest is night time. People need access to energy for light, at the very least. And it’s “small beer”, small change, to give people light, just as it is cheap to give poor people what they need to adapt their agriculture to Climate Change.

The International Energy Agency says that it would take $35 billion extra investment in energy annually until 2030 to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world that still don’t have it :-

http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/feature/1596241/the-shining-example-solar-etfs

“… International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighted in a recent report (November 2009)…It also noted 1.3 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030, compared with 1.5 billion today, adding that universal electricity access could be achieved with additional power-sector investment of $35bn annually until then – the assumption being a modest increase in overall primary energy demand and related CO2 emissions.”

That should be compared to the $26 trillion the world needs to spend on new energy investment by 2030 :-

http://www.iea.org/speech/2009/Tanaka/lisbon.pdf

In a policy for the poor of the world, the aim should be to enable energy access, without making the mistakes of the industrialised countries and getting locked into massive Fossil Fuel consumption.

By leapfrogging the Age of Burning Oil, Coal and Natural Gas for power, green energy will give a boost to, and enable, truly sustainable development for the poor.

What would be more costly would be to have to find the money to pay for all the Climate Change disasters, migration and serious adaptation that will be needed if Global Warming is made worse by trying to provide Fossil Fuel Energy to developing countries.

Today’s news is that the pastoral life in Africa is sustainable, even with a certain amount of Climate Change :-

http://www.iied.org/climate-change/key-issues/drylands/african-livestock-can-triumph-face-climate-change

“African livestock can triumph in the face of climate change : Africa’s livestock producers are bucking a trend, by proving resilient to climate change and generating huge economic benefits for their nations and regions, say researchers in a book published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and SOS Sahel. It shows how pastoralism is a major economic player and contributor to many African economies and one whose importance is only set to grow as climate change takes hold. “Pastoralists manage complex webs of profitable cross-border trade and draw huge economic benefits from rangelands ill-suited to other land use systems,” says Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, writing in the book’s preface. “Their livestock feed our families and grow our economies. And mobility is what allows them to do this.” The book, Modern and Mobile, shows how livestock play a key role in the economic prosperity in African’s drylands by supporting hundreds of millions of people, and a massive meat and leather industry. “What is remarkable is that these benefits all arise from animals fed solely on natural pasture,” says Ced Hesse, a researcher at IIED and one of the book’s authors. “The financial inputs are minimal but the benefits rapidly extend beyond the herders and their communities to enrich the lives of millions of people involved in the livestock supply chain including consumers in far off cities,” he adds. “This shows how crucial it is to support Africa’s pastoralists for their contribution to wider economic development.” The book shows that contrary to popular belief pastoralists actually profit from climatic variability…”

Free download :-

http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=12565IIED

I think after the amazing drought and its awful consequences in Kenya in 2009, I’m not entirely convinced by this argument. However, it’s worth thinking about : local practices are usually the most successful in coping with environmental change.

Plus, African pastoralism doesn’t depend on Fossil Fuel imports or any kind of novel infrastructure. It also doesn’t depend on “trade” with the rest of the World, who use that word to denote their usual plundering activities.

However, what I am convinced about is that other regions, and their corporations, and state apparatus, should leave Africa alone. Africa doesn’t need “investment” for the sole purpose of growing green beans for Western supermarkets :-

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/06/02/africa.beans/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6383687.stm

Africa doesn’t need to be the bread basket for China :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7086777.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/03/africa-land-grab

And Africa doesn’t need Genetically Modified crops : it needs rainwater management and indigenous wisdom :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/19/gm-crops-aid-uk-funding

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Endowment_opportunities_from_rainwater_in_Africa

http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=4723&lang=1

Download the UNCTAD Report :-

http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditcted200715_en.pdf

No, Africa did not walk out on the Barcelona Climate talks. Africa needs a global Climate deal. They are insisting that the rich/developed nations make firm commitments on Greenhouse Gas Emissions reductions, is all.

Great Britain has since managed to bailout the Banks, once more. Some of these Banks are financing Carbon-intensive projects, so you could say that the UK is investing in Climate megadeath in Africa. The Africa Group is entitled to strong feelings of injustice. Listen and watch at Climate Radio for a strong analysis :-

http://climateradio.org/41-africa-makes-a-stand/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/05/2734658.htm

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-43655220091103

“Africa ends boycott at U.N. climate talks : Wed Nov 4, 2009 : By Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn : BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – African nations called off a day-long boycott at U.N. climate talks on Tuesday after winning promises that rich nations would make more efforts to deepen 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. But the group threatened to repeat the boycott if there was no progress in discussions on Wednesday. “We were able to arrive at a solution,” John Ashe, an official of Antigua and Barbuda who chairs negotiations among parties to the U.N.’s existing Kyoto Protocol, told delegates at the 175-nation meeting in Barcelona. “Failure … in tomorrow’s discussions will give us no option but a suspension,” of the talks again, said Pa Ousman Jarju from the delegation of Gambia, one of leading countries which organised the Africa boycott…”

Offers of Mitigation and Adaptation to Africa are welcome, and nececssary, but they do not answer Africa’s main call for pledges of binding commitments on emissions reductions from the main developed countries :-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/africa-recieves-billions_n_346832.html

http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/11/03/why-african-countries-are-boycotting-climate-change-talks/

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL3301041

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol23no3/233-climate.html

What Africa wants is Contraction and Convergence : the contraction of the industrialised economy emissions, and a convergence to equal rights to emit for everyone.

Not such a large thing to ask for : equality and survival :-

http://www.climatejustice.org.uk/about/contractionandconvergence/

“Catastrophic droughts in Africa are the norm, claim scientists : Catastrophic droughts in Africa such as the those which devastated the Continent in the late 20th century are the norm and not due to human activity, claim scientists. By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent : Last Updated: 6:14PM BST 16 Apr 2009 : Dry land in Ethiopia: Researchers believe the drought that struck parts of Northern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions more, may have been the result of a natural climate cycle. In the past, many scientists thought the drought in the Sahel zone – a band that runs just below the Sahara – was caused by humans overusing natural resources in the region. But a new study in the journal Science shows that they are a natural part of weather pattern of the area for the last 3,000 years. If anything the droughts were less severe than those seen historically, with previous periods without rain lasting more than a century…”

http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKN16255903._CH_.2420

“Climate change could worsen African ‘megadroughts’ : Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:48pm BST : By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent : WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) – The recent decades-long drought that killed 100,000 people in Africa’s Sahel may be a small foretaste of monstrous “megadroughts” that could grip the region as global climate change worsens, scientists reported on Thursday. Droughts, some lasting for centuries, are part of the normal pattern in sub-Saharan Africa. But the added stress of a warming world will make these dry periods more severe and more difficult for the people who live there, the scientists said. “Clearly, much of West Africa is already on the edge of sustainability, and the situation could become much more dire in the future with increased global warming,” said University of Arizona climatologist Jonathan Overpeck, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science. The Sahel is an area between the Sahara desert and the wetter parts of equatorial Africa that stretches across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east…”

Just a reminder of why popstars are important :-

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/1984_-_1985_famine_in_Ethiopia_-_Response_to_the_famine/id/603001

“Close to 8 million people became famine victims during the drought of 1984, and over 1 million died. In the same year, a CBC news crew was the first to document the famine. The report shocked Canada, motivating its citizens to bring world attention to the crisis in Ethiopia. Live Aid, a 1985 fund-raising effort headed by Bob Geldof, induced millions of people in the West to donate money and to urge their governments to participate in the relief effort…”