12 November 2015, The Conversation, The Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a grave threat to sustainable development. This month’s long-awaited release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)text was the result of years of negotiations on trade ties between nations around the Pacific Rim. Some six weeks earlier, another set of deliberations came to an end as the United Nations unveiled its 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), which aim to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality by addressing critical issues such as food security, health care, access to education, clean and affordable water, clean energy, and climate action. Unfortunately, the two documents are incompatible. Several chapters of the TPP impinge upon the SDGs, potentially undermining the UN’s efforts to promote sustainable development and equality throughout the Pacific region. Moreover, many developing countries, least-developed countries, and small island states in the Pacific region are excluded from the preferential trade deal. What does the TPP say on development? The US Trade Representative has boasted that the TPP’s chapter on development will be a boon for developing Pacific nations, and that it will “focus attention on major development goals including inclusion of women, micro-enterprise, poverty reduction, and education, science, and technology”. But while the chapter is laden with aspiration, it lacks firm commitments or hard obligations. Here’s how it opens: “The Parties affirm their commitment to promote and strengthen an open trade and investment environment that seeks to improve welfare, reduce poverty, raise living standards and create new employment opportunities in support of development.” Read More here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
11 November 2015, Other Words, Who Can Follow This Climate Leader? President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline while backing increased oil, gas, and coal production. Remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy hits a fork in the Yellow Brick Road? As she stands there stumped, a friendly character who will accompany her to the Emerald Palace pipes up. “Pardon me, that way is a very nice way,” the Scarecrow advises as he points in one direction. “It’s pleasant down that way too,” he adds, now pointing in the other. Then the Scarecrow crosses his straw-stuffed arms and unhelpfully declares, “Of course people do go both ways.” President Barack Obama’s climate leadership is as hard to follow as the Scarecrow’s directions. After seven years of waffling, Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, this conduit would have moved more than 800,000 barrels a day of filthy oil mined from the Canadian tar sands through Nebraska and five other states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Rejecting the $8 billion pipeline early in his first term would have been bold. But Obama dallied. He only stopped it once the thing made no financial sense because of low oil prices and similar infrastructure that rendered the project unnecessary. Making this move now, on the eve of global climate talks in Paris, was merely expedient. He made his choice sound like a bigger deal than it was anyway. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” he asserted. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” So, what’s the state of that leadership? On the one hand, the Obama administration has taken steps to reduce the nation’s reliance on oil, gas, and coal. Its Clean Power Plan will step up the ongoing retirement of coal-fired power plants as it cuts carbon pollution. The federal government is also phasing in higher fuel-efficiency standards while throwing some weight behind renewable-energy initiatives. All the while, this White House has also leased a growing amount of federal land to coal-mining companies and encouraged the nation’s spiking oil and natural gas production. Obama’s inherently contradictory “all-of-the-above” energy policy supports the dangerous practice of hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — that pumps vast amounts of toxic chemicals underground, imperiling drinking water. Read More here
9 November 2015, Christian Science Monitor, World Bank: Global warming will drive 100 million people into poverty. Without swift action, 100 million people could fall into poverty within 15 years because of global warming, a new World Bank report says. More than 100 million people could fall into extreme poverty due to global warming, according to a World Bank report released Sunday. The 227-page report called “Shock Waves: Managing the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty,” warns those numbers could be reached in less than 15 years.As most of the world prepares for a global warming summit in Paris later this month, the report indicates only a change in strategy will spare the world’s poorest nations from the increasingly devastating effects associated with the Earth’s rising temperatures. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions most susceptible to the effects of climate change. “Climate change hits the poorest the hardest, and our challenge now is to protect tens of millions of people from falling into extreme poverty because of a changing climate,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. The debate over the role of rich and poor nations has already begun. Last week, a high-ranking summit member representing 134 developing nations involved in climate change talks said that, without financial support, poorer countries would not be able to meet the mandates likely to be imposed at the summit. Read More here
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7 November 2015, The Guardian, Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change. Barack Obama ended seven years of high-wire political drama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, saying the decision reflected America’s determination to be a global leader in the fight against climate change. The move, less than four weeks before more than 190 countries gather in Paris to try to reach a global deal to reduce carbon pollution, reinforces Obama’s commitment to making climate change the domestic and international legacy of his second term in the White House – even in the face of Republican hostility. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action on climate change,” Obama said from the White House on Friday, flanked by both secretary of state John Kerry and vice-president Joe Biden. “Frankly, approving that project would have undercut that global leadership, and that is the biggest risk we face: not acting.” The president went on: “Today, the United States is leading on climate change.” Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL was the biggest victory in years for grassroots campaigners, who chained themselves to the gates of the White House and built unlikely alliances with landowners and ranchers in heartland states like Nebraska and Texas, to mobilise opposition to what had once been seen as a routine project. As secretary of state, “I feel like the boots have beaten the big oil suits for the first time in our country’s history,” said Jane Fleming Kleeb, leader of Bold Nebraska, which had fought the pipeline’s route across the state. TransCanada, the Canadian firm behind the pipeline, said it was disappointed with Obama’s decision. “Today, misplaced symbolism was chosen over merit and science – rhetoric won out over reason,” Russ Girling, the chief executive of TransCanada, said in a statement. Read More here