Colombia: UN expert voices outrage after mass killing of indigenous people

A United Nations human rights expert today condemned the massacre of 12 indigenous people, including seven children, in southern Colombia and voiced concern about an apparent wave of deadly attacks this year against indigenous peoples in that region of the South American country.

Germany assumes control of UN coastal fleet in Lebanon

Germany took the helm of United Nations peacekeeping’s first-ever maritime task force (MTF), which was deployed off the coast of Lebanon in 2006 to curtail arms smuggling following that year’s war Israel-Hizbollah war.

Brazilian beach volleyball star named UNESCO Champion of Sport

The Olympic gold medallist and Brazilian beach volleyball star, Jacqueline Silva, will partner the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in its efforts to promote education for all, including the disadvantaged and vulnerable.

UNICEF chief meets with children terrorized by Ugandan rebels

The people of the far northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo live in constant fear of attacks from a notorious rebel group from neighbouring Uganda, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said today after visiting the region.

UN urges action against forced indigenous labour in Bolivia, Paraguay

The indigenous peoples of the Chaco region of neighbouring Bolivia and Paraguay are often trapped into forced labour practices and face discrimination, severe poverty and in some cases systematic violence, the United Nations reported today, calling on the two countries to take urgent action to protect those groups’ human rights.

Ban emphasizes key role of UN in tackling today’s challenges

The United Nations plays a critical role in addressing the current food, climate and other crises, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today in Oslo, as he stressed that Norway is one of the Organization’s strongest partners in tackling global challenges.

UN urges action against forced labour of indigenous peoples in Bolivia, Paraguay

The indigenous peoples of the Chaco region of neighbouring Bolivia and Paraguay are often trapped into forced labour practices and face discrimination, severe poverty and in some cases systematic violence, the United Nations reported today, calling on the two countries to take urgent action to protect those groups’ human rights.

UN expert urges Zambia to ‘move from rhetoric to action’ in fighting extreme poverty

An independent United Nations human rights expert has called on the Zambian Government to make good on its promises to reduce the deep poverty in the Southern African nation.

How green socialism can save the UK

Britain is ideally placed to lead the world on renewable energy. But a free market lacks the nerve to avert climate change crisis

Neal Lawson
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 August 2009 09.00 BST

It may be a crisis that is too good to waste but we have to move fast to define and win support for a progressive response to the failures of the market. But a new socialism can only be built on the politics of sustainability.
We must remember that it is not just banks that have failed. Two years into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, with more than 2.4 million already without work, the official closure earlier this month of Britain’s only wind turbine blade manufacturing plant, Vestas, is a sharp reminder of the failure of blind reliance on free markets to solve the economic and climate change crises. The plant’s closure, with the loss of 400 jobs, was blamed on the slow pace of growth in the UK’s wind turbine market and the drawn out local planning process to agree projects.
It has brought home the reality that the changes needed to protect us from catastrophic climate change are exactly the opportunities that can catalyse an upturn in our economy. Clean, fuel-free renewable energy is a huge international growth sector – allowing countries to achieve energy security, protect themselves against volatile fossil fuel prices and stimulate economic development without the consequence of dangerous carbon emissions that are the primary cause of climate change.
Worldwide in 2008, at $155bn (£95bn), more was invested in sustainable than conventional energy production. It is no coincidence that it is the world’s most economically dynamic countries – such as Germany and China – that are shaping markets and driving investment to benefit from an almost exponential growth in renewable technologies.
Britain almost couldn’t be better placed to profit from this emergent sector. We are one of the windiest countries anywhere in the world. We already have engineering expertise for offshore windfarms from exploiting our dwindling gas and oil reserves. The skill sets of our ailing car manufacturing industry, together with our aerospace industry, are easily transferable to wind turbine manufacturing. Research from the business advisory group the Carbon Trust shows that by 2020, the UK could capture 45% of the global offshore wind energy market, and that by 2050 our wind energy industry alone could be worth £65bn to the UK economy. Our badly hit construction sector is well placed to lead the energy efficiency revolution needed for our aged housing and public building stock. The UK wave and tidal power research and development industry is already a world leader.
We have a serious road map to deliver some of these economic and climate solutions set out by the energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, in July’s Low Carbon Transition Plan and Renewable Energy Strategy. The plan, which rhetorically at least has cross-party support, could create up to half a million more jobs in the UK. But, as a legacy of the free-market fundamentalist, non-strategic approach of previous energy ministers, the UK still languishes near the bottom of Europe’s renewable energy league table. The sector in the UK has been hit hard by the slump in investment, including problems accessing finance.
What we need now is support for the scale of investment needed to jump start the industry, and confidence that the bumper crop of neo-Thatcherite Tory MPs heading for parliament next spring will let more than a tiny handful of wind turbines through the planning process. Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show Conservative-run councils have been blocking three times as many windfarms as they approve. Unless David Cameron publicly commits to meeting the government’s target to generate 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 – and sets out a convincing strategy for how this will be achieved – his blue-green agenda will look to the public and investors like nasty party brand decontamination rather than long-term commitment.
Bold Keynesian bailouts by Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson of other parts of the economy, notably the finance sector and car industries, have saved them from catastrophe. Along with other major bailouts internationally, they have also ended the disastrous era where state intervention was taboo. But, only £405m was allocated in the budget for developing green industries – just £108m of which is for direct funding of renewable energy development. Even the failed RBS bankers reportedly won £775m for bonuses from the chancellor. This is still nowhere near the scale of support needed capitalise on the competitive advantage we could have in clean energy.
The passion of the protesting workers and the obvious synergy of economic and environmental interests has helped to make the campaign against the Vestas plant closure a cause celebre for both the trade union and environmental movements this summer. In other parts of Europe and the US the benefits to ordinary working people are already manifest – new skilled jobs, training, more comfortable insulated homes, measures to alleviate fuel poverty and protection from spikes in fossil fuel bills. These are the kind of benefits that can be achieved here too, but only with the kind of ambition and sustained, political commitment that will attract rapid investment and overcome a knee-jerk rejection of windfarm developments.
The stakes are too high to left to anonymous free market forces driven by fossil fuel and nuclear interests. The economic cost of inaction – laid out in the authoritative Stern Review report – is bleak. Stern estimated the cost to the world economy of unabated climate change would be around 5% to 20% of gross domestic product per year – a figure that would dwarf the cost of the banking crisis. An alliance of red and green politics would transform the landscape of Britain. The moment to do it is now.

Water crisis threatens Yemen’s swelling population

Gentle showers temporarily damp the dust and cool the August heat of Sanaa, but cannot remedy a grim water outlook for the Yemeni capital’s 2 million people.

Some residents receive piped city water only once every nine days and others get none at all. The sinking water table means the municipality can now operate only 80 of its 180 wells, said Naji Abu Hatim, a Yemeni expert at the World Bank.

“People don’t believe the magnitude of the problem. They see a little cloud and say, ‘oh, God is still there, he can give us water’,” he added. “But water is Yemen’s number one problem.”

That might seem a startling claim given that the country is also grappling with a tribal revolt in the north, violent unrest in the south, al Qaeda militancy and widespread poverty.

But water shortages in the southern city of Aden are already fuelling violence. One person was shot dead and three were wounded, two of them police, during water protests on August 24.

And fast-depleting aquifers make Yemen’s plight the starkest in a desperately water-scarce region. Local disputes over water rights may turn violent, especially in tribal areas. Competition for supplies between cities and the countryside may sharpen.

“Yemen’s water share per capita is under 100 cubic meters a year, compared to the water poverty line of 1,000 cubic meters,” said Hosny Khordagui, Cairo-based head of the U.N. Development Program’s water governance program in Arab countries.

Arab states, except Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon, all fall short of the water poverty line and the regional trend, blamed on climate change, is toward consistently lower rainfall.

Unlike wealthy Gulf oil states, Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, is ill-placed to fill the gap between supply and demand with desalination. “They are thinking of it, but economically I very much doubt they can do it,” Khordagui said.

UNATTRACTIVE OPTIONS

Desalinating seawater and pumping it 2,000 meters uphill to the inland capital would be hugely expensive. Water could be transferred to Sanaa from another basin, but this might spark conflict with nearby provinces that are also parched.

“One idea, which is politically unacceptable, is to move the capital elsewhere. I don’t see it happening,” Khordagui said.

Sanaa, 50 years ago a sleepy, walled town of perhaps 50,000, is among the world’s fastest-growing cities, with a population exploding at an estimated 8 percent a year, according to the World Bank, of which 5 percent is due to rural migration.

Water scarcity is forcing many poorer villagers to sell up and move to Yemen’s cities, where few have the skills to thrive, even though they are expected to send money home to relatives.

From the 1970s, Yemenis turned swiftly from rain-fed farming to irrigation using water pumped from new tube wells, encouraged by the government and foreign donors keen to expand production.

“Finally they found irrigated agriculture was unsustainable because of the depletion of groundwater,” Abu Hatim said.

Agriculture sucks up more than 90 percent of water used and a third of that goes to irrigate fields of qat, a mild narcotic intrinsic to the daily social life of most Yemenis.

Mismanagement of water resources is one reason why Yemen’s plight is worse than that of neighbors such as Oman, argues Jac van der Gun, director of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Center in The Netherlands.

Both countries have dwindling oil resources, but Oman’s oil wealth is shared among only three million, compared to Yemen’s population of 23 million, which is set to double in 20 years.

“Oman is a positive example of stability and charismatic leadership, so it is much easier for them to control their water problems. Yemen is not anarchic, but it comes close,” he said.

Van der Gun cited the troubled northern province of Saada, the bastion of Shi’ite tribesmen whose intermittent rebellion against the government flared into fierce battles this month.

“Saada has a huge water problem, but they can’t think about the future because they are thinking about today,” he added.

Despite the afternoon downpours in Sanaa, Yemen’s northern highlands have been suffering a two-year drought.

“The rains this year have been poor and late,” said Ramon Scoble, a water expert for the German development agency GTZ who works in Amran province, just north of the capital.

“Rural sectors of north Yemen may face famine,” he said, echoing a warning sounded in June by Abdul-Karim al-Iryani, senior political adviser to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“They won’t be producing their own foodstuffs for another year and they won’t have harvested enough seed to be able to grow again next year,” Scoble said.

The government, backed by foreign donors, began applying a comprehensive strategy for water resources, irrigation, water supply, the environment and capacity building in 2005.

But experts describe implementation as patchy. The World Bank’s Abu Hatim said the program was a palliative measure.

“It will not solve the problems, only alleviate them to buy time. The catastrophe is coming, but we don’t know when.”

Source:
Reuters, “Water crisis threatens Yemen’s swelling population“, accessed August 30, 2009