|
Small island states swamped
By Thalif Deen
New York, New York, Apr. 16 (IPS) — The tiny Indian Ocean
island nation of Maldives, which depends primarily on fishing and tourism
for its economic survival, is threatened with extinction because of
a projected rise in sea level caused by global warming.
“My country is like a can of tuna fish,” says Maldivian Foreign
Minister Fathulla Jameel good-humoredly, “because it comes with
an expiry date.”
The United Nations says that climate change and the rising sea level
pose “a major threat to the very existence” of small island
developing states (SIDS) — specifically the Maldives, Tuvalu, and
many other tiny islands in the Pacific, which may vanish from the face
of the earth in the next 25 to 30 years.
“More immediately, global warming and climate change have brought
an increase in extreme weather events, coral bleaching, coastal erosion,
the disruption of agricultural activity, and vector-borne diseases and
reduced resilience of land and marine eco-systems,” warns UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in a 34-page report released this week.
A three-day meeting on SIDS, which concluded Apr. 16, highlighted the
inherent problems and vulnerabilities of small island states, including
natural disasters, fragile eco-systems, fluctuating tourism revenues,
dependency on a few primary commodities, and rising seas.
The meeting was also a preparatory forum for an upcoming UN conference
on SIDS, scheduled for Mauritius Aug. 30-Sept. 3.
The gathering will probe the “serious shortfalls” in the implementation
of the Barbados Program of Action (Bpoa) adopted at the 1994 Global
Conference for the Sustainable Development of SIDS.
Those shortfalls include a sharp decline in official development assistance
(ODA) to SIDS, UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul Karim Chowdhury told
IPS.
“The main questions before us today are: how can the international
meeting in Mauritius make a positive difference in promoting the welfare
and well-being of the women, men and children in the SIDS?” said
Chowdhury, who has been designated secretary-general of the Mauritius
event.
“How,” he asked, ”can the SIDS gain the support, genuine
commitment and political will of all partners to make substantive headway
in implementing the Bpoa?”
Chowdhury admits that one of the biggest problems facing many SIDS is
their small size and miniscule populations. “When we factor in
remoteness, the viability of many critical projects become questionable.
And this situation discourages external involvement and financing,”
he pointed out.
One way to address this handicap, he argued, would be to establish regional
programs with national components. Another strategy would be to ensure
that commitments made at the conference are honored.
“I am of the opinion that the Mauritius meeting should advocate
a more dynamic monitoring mechanism for the implementation of the meeting’s
outcome,” Chowdhury said.
“I believe that a pro-active — and exhortative — monitoring
system, especially at all levels, is a must if we want results,”
he added.
At a meeting in the Bahamas last January, the Alliance of Small Island
States (AOSIS) said their specific concerns have not yet been addressed
by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“We will be further marginalized unless specific provisions are
made for SIDS in the multilateral trading system,” AOSIS argued.
Trade liberalization, accompanied by erosion of trade preferences, is
having severe consequences on the already fragile economies and social
stability, health and education of SIDS, and will further deplete government
revenue, the group warned.
Preferential arrangements for commodities such as sugar, bananas, coffee
and coconut, have been dismantled under agreed rules of the WTO.
But some small island states depended heavily on the export of these
products for their national revenues. In the Caribbean state of St Lucia,
for example, export revenues from bananas declined from $46.5 million
in 1996 to $21.7 million in 2002 after preferences were dropped.
The AOSIS also said that developed countries must honor their commitments
to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) to ODA.
Currently ODA averages about $55 billion annually. But both the United
Nations and the World Bank have said that an additional $40 billion
to $60 billion are needed every year to meet the development goals of
all developing nations, including SIDS.
A “substantial increase in ODA and other resources” is required
for SIDS to achieve the internationally agreed development goals and
objectives, AOSIS said.
AOSIS Chairman Jagdish Koonjul of Mauritius told delegates that as the
struggle to implement the Bpoa continues, it is important to also recognize
changing external and internal circumstances.
These, including the HIV/AIDS pandemic and new security concerns, are
creating even greater challenges for SIDS, he added.
For instance, the Caribbean has been designated as second only to sub-Saharan
Africa among the regions hardest hit by HIV/AIDS, with a 2.3 percent
adult HIV prevalence rate.
In Haiti, a small island Caribbean nation, some 30,000 lives are lost
to AIDS every year, with 200,000 children orphaned to date as a result.
“The AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean has shifted to younger populations,
especially female,” Annan said recently. “Small island developing
states must address the issue of HIV/AIDS, which is increasingly prevalent
in many countries,” he warned.
The disease is also spreading in Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia,
Guam, New Caledonia, and Fiji.
GM soy ‘miracle’ turns sour
in Argentina
By Paul Brown
Apr. 16 — Seven years after GM soy was introduced to Argentina
as an economic miracle for poor farmers, researchers claim it is causing
an environmental crisis, damaging soil bacteria and allowing herbicide-resistant
weeds to grow out of control.
Soy has become the cash crop for half of Argentina’s arable land,
more than 11m hectares (27m acres), most situated on fragile pampas
lands on the vast plains. After Argentina’s economic collapse,
soy became a vital cash export providing cattle feed for Europe and
elsewhere.
Now researchers fear that the heavy reliance on one crop may bring economic
ruin.
The GM soy, grown and sold by Monsanto, is the company’s great
success story. Programmed to be resistant to Roundup, Monsanto’s
patented glyphosate herbicide, soy’s production increased by 75%
over five years to 2002 and yields increased by 173 percent, raising
more than $5 billion profits for farmers hard-hit financially.
However, a report in New Scientist magazine says that because of problems
with the crops, farmers are now using twice as much herbicide as in
conventional systems.
Soy is so successful it can be viewed as a weed itself: soy “volunteer”
plants, from seed split during harvesting, appear in the wrong place
and at the wrong time and need to be controlled with powerful herbicides
since they are already resistant to glyphosate.
The control of rogue soy has led to a number of disasters for neighboring
small farmers who have lost their own crops and livestock to the drift
of herbicide spray.
So keen have big farmers been to cash in on the soy bonanza that 150,000
small farmers have been driven off the land so that more soy can be
grown. Production of many staples such as milk, rice, maize, potatoes
and lentils has fallen.
Monsanto says the crop is the victim of its own success. Colin Merritt,
Monsanto’s biotechnology manager in Britain, said that any problems
with GM soy were to do with the crop as a monoculture, not because it
was GM. “If you grow any crop to the exclusion of any other you
are bound to get problems. What would be sensible would be to grow soy
in rotation with corn or some other crop so the ground and the environment
have time to recover,” he said.
One of the problems in Argentina is the rapid spread of weeds with natural
resistance to Roundup. Such weeds, say opponents of GM, could develop
into a generation of “superweeds” impossible to control. The
chief of these is equisetum, known as marestail or horsetail, a plant
which rapidly chokes fields of soy if not controlled.
But Merritt claimed horsetail could be a troublesome weed in any crop.
“I reject the notion that this is a superweed or that it will confer
genetic resistance on other weeds and make them superweeds. It always
has been a troublesome weed.”
The soy was originally welcomed in Argentina partly because it helped
to solve a problem of soil erosion on the pampas which had been caused
by ploughing. Soy is planted by direct drilling into the soil.
Adolfo Boy, a member of the Grupo de Reflexion Rural, a group opposed
to GM, said that the bacteria needed for breaking down vegetable matter
so that the soil was fertilized were being wiped out by excessive use
of Roundup. The soil was becoming inert, and so much so that dead weeds
did not rot, he told New Scientist.
Sue Mayer, of Genewatch in the UK, said: “These problems have been
becoming evident in Argentina for some time. It gives a lie to the claim
that GM is good for farmers in developing countries.
“It shows it’s an intensive form of agriculture that needs
to be tightly controlled to prevent very undesirable environmental effects.
It is not what small farmers in developing countries need.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
100 whales raise a $10 billion question
By Sanjay Suri
London, England, Apr. 17 (IPS) — A 20-foot mock-up of
a whale in London, a hundred grey whales off the Russian coast, and
$10 billion in the banks came together in a serious question raised
by environmental groups on Apr. 16.
Campaigners from Russia, Japan, and Europe carried the mock-up of
the grey whale down Bishopsgate to the office of the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to stage a mock whale funeral.
The EBRD is considering a $150 million loan for the Sakhalin II project
off the Russian coast. The project aims to lay four pipelines to transport
oil and natural gas extracted under the Sakhalin I project to mainland
Japan.
The $10 billion project has been proposed because of treacherous weather
and sea conditions that are making transportation of oil by tankers
difficult.
But environmental campaigners say the four proposed pipelines threaten
the last remaining 100 grey whales. Of these they say only about 20
are females that could reproduce. The project could mean extinction
of the grey whale, they say.
“Those pipelines would go directly through the crucial feeding
grounds for whales,” Greg Aitken from the CEE Bankwatch Network
told IPS. CEE Bankwatch Network is a leading non-governmental organization
engaged in environmental issues in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
“We have handed EBRD a strong letter of protest ahead of their
annual meeting during which the proposal would be discussed,”
Aitken said. The meeting takes place over Apr. 18-19.
The project is being led by the British company Shell, which has a
55 percent stake in it on the Russian island Sakhalin. The two Japanese
companies Mitsubishi and Mitsui also have an interest in the project.
The Sakhalin projects would be between them the biggest ever integrated
oil and gas projects, and would create the biggest liquid natural
gas processing plant.
“The Sakhalin Project poses a very real threat to the last remaining
Western Pacific Grey Whales,” Friends of the Earth Campaigner
Nick Rau said. “The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
funded from taxpayers’ money, should not be supporting such a
project, which not only threatens an endangered species, but also
poses a threat to the livelihoods of the fishing community on Sakhalin.”
Dmitry Lisitsyn, chairman of Sakhalin Environment Watch said in a
statement: “Shell promised that it would improve our local economy
and minimize damage to the environment by operating to the highest
standards. But we can already see that these promises have been broken.”
The project is damaging the environment, and “our wild salmon
spawning rivers are under extreme threat,” he said. “People
on the island have already made their objections clear, but the company
is pushing ahead. The bank must not provide funding until environmental
protection has been guaranteed.”
The EBRD has not taken any decision yet “and we will not take
any decision unless we have all the necessary information whether
the project complies with our environmental policy,” Richard
Wallis from the EBRD told IPS.
“We share many of the concerns of these protesters,” Wallis
said. “We are taking a lot of action to consult international
whale experts so that we can form our own opinions on measures to
mitigate potential impact.” The EBRD has clearly not ruled out
financing for the project either.
The tiny salmon could turn out to be the bigger problem for people
on the island. About one-third of Sakhalin’s population comprising
half a million live off the salmon as food and commercially.
A spokesman for Shell said there had been “no discernible change
of behavior in or impact from our operations on the grey whale”
since operations began in the area in 1999. But local environmentalists
say there are fewer grey whales around, and the ones surviving are
skinnier.
Given the relatively small commitment from the EBRD, the bank is unlikely
to be able to stop the project even if it were to refuse a loan.
|
