UN maritime force takes part in rescue after ship sinks off Lebanese coast

The United Nations maritime task force serving off the Lebanese coast is taking part in a search-and-rescue operation today to try to save the lives of the crew of a cargo ship that sank last night in rough seas.

UN chief relieved at activist’s return to Western Sahara

UN chief relieved at activist’s return to Western SaharaSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon today expressed his great relief that an independence activist from Western Sahara has returned home, ending an impasse that led to her hunger strike lasting more than one month.

SACP Red Alert: Take the Offensive to the Financial Bourgeoisie & Moreon the Nationalisation Debate in South Africa

Usembenzi Online
Volume 8, No. 22, 3 December 2009

In this Issue:

Take the offensive to the financial bourgeoisie: Mobilise to make banks serve the people!

The nationalisation debate…more and more curious

Red Alert

Take the offensive to the financial bourgeoisie: Mobilise to make banks serve the people!

By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

Our Central Committee (CC) meeting held over the last weekend expressed itself comprehensively on the offensive statement by the Banking Council of South Africa (BASA) to try and concoct an elitist escape to some of its commitments to the Financial Sector Charter Council. The Banking Association of South Africa announced last week that it would longer engage with the Community and Labour members of the Financial Sector Charter Council. Instead it opportunistically and foolishly stated that it would now only engage with government, and working together with the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (Absip) as the only true representatives of what it refers to as ‘black interests’.

Basa Managing Director Cas Coovadia held a media conference to say the banks would in future not engage with organised Labour and Community groups in relation to the Charter dispute over black ownership of financial institutions, but would engage only with Government and the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (Absip) “because this body is among the organisations which have black interests”. What a cheek!

Who are the banks trying to convince by claiming Absip represents “black interests” but organised Labour and Community groups do not? As has become increasingly clear during the financial sector campaign over the years, the banks are not willing partners in transformation, they are obstacles to it. In fact, banks are tyring to use their powerful position in capitalist South Africa to further entrench their powerful positions at the direct expense of the workers and the poor of our country. Last week’s BASA statement is an expression of the most arrogant, if not outrageous, of attitudes towards the overwhelming majority of the people of this country.

In a joint statement issued by Cosatu and the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition (FSCC) (representing a total of about 50 community and related organisations) we called on both Government and Absip to publicly dissociate themselves from these attempts by Basa to undermine the Financial Sector Charter and, instead, urged them to resist attempts by the banks to subvert government and black professionals to their elitist cause.

Background

The background to the latest move by Basa is the Charter dispute, which has been going on for the past 20 months, over alignment with the BEE Codes of Good Practice. In 2008, Charter participants deadlocked over the refusal by the banks to align with the generic Codes as the basic minimum universal standards for transformation across all sectors of the economy. Media attention has focussed only on non-alignment with the direct (narrow) black ownership of financial institutions, which the Charter pegs at 10% and the Codes put at 15%, but there are several other areas in which the banks have not yet agreed to align. Negotiations were in limbo for much of this period as Charter participants waited for direction from government.

Following the election earlier this year, the new Ministers of Trade and Industry and of Finance convened a meeting of all Charter participants. Constituencies agreed to consider and quantify an equity equivalent to resolve the ownership dispute. Equity equivalent involves performance in other areas with an equal Rand value to non-performance in the area of equity ownership.

Charter parties agreed to report back to the ministers with proposals. Negotiations have taken far longer than anticipated, but have now resulted in a calculation of the 5% equity equivalent at R16,8 billion. Initially, agreement was reached on splitting this amount between financing for co-operatives, financial access by the workers and poor, financial assistance to resource-poor black farmers and low-income housing. However, banks subsequently tabled two “non-negotiable” demands:

–BEE Transaction Financing must be included in the equity equivalent split -by 2008 banks have already financed over R100bn in BEE deal financing, more than double the target, whilst refusing to finance low-cost housing and other related infrastructural programmes
–The Charter’s “once empowered, always empowered” clause must be retained
–The Charter Council must reach consensus on proposals to the Minister for deviations from the Codes. So far, the banks have been unable to come up with a convincing motivation for retaining “once empowered” that other Charter participants can support.

The “once empowered” provision enables banks to do only a single once-off BEE deal in order to score full black ownership Charter points in perpetuity. Even if black owners exit from a BEE deal and sell their shares back to whites or to the bank itself, the BEE score can remain the same, as if they still retained the same shares for black owners, subject to Charter Council approval. This would mean a 100% white-owned bank could claim forever to be black-owned. But banks refuse to give up “once empowered” for the Codes’ provision that black ownership points can be retained for a period, subject to certain conditions.

In the case of Standard Bank, it continues to claim 10% black ownership for its BEE deal with Saki Macozoma’s Safika and Cyril Ramaphosa’s Shanduka, even though this shareholding has reduced to less than 7%. Absa claims its full 10% black ownership score despite its BEE deal with Tokyo Sexwale’s Batho Bonke consortium, unwinding. Only 3 % of the Batho Bonke shareholding was unencumbered but Absa continues to claim 10% black ownership recognition.

Ironically, if banks pull out of the Charter, in future they will have to comply with the Codes, so they will forfeit “once empowered, always empowered” anyway. So what is really behind the banks refusal to engage with Community and Labour and, in effect, pulling out of the Charter?

Banks have made it clear throughout the life of the Charter that they do not want to be in any structure that they do not have exclusive control over so that they manage this for their own profit-maximising interests. Banks refuse to be held to account in any forum which can measure genuine transformation in an objective and independent manner. They have been unwilling partners in the Charter process. Their intransigence has ranged from refusing to finalise performance standards to refusing to align with the BBBEE Codes. Banks believed controlling the Charter would enable them to hold on to their wealth, and their economic and financial muscle would shield them from transformation.

The banks have indicated that they will pull out of the Charter if they do not get their way on their two non-negotiables. At the same time, they say if government instructed them to align, they would comply, because then they could explain to investors they had been forced to do so, and did not comply voluntarily.

Recently, the banks have also embarked on an extensive, self-regulated so-called transformation process parallel to the Charter, co-ordinated by the Banking Association. This process includes co-ordinating banks’ compliance with the Codes as well as overseeing sector-specific programmes such as consumer education and access.

Conclusion

Basa did not state this week that banks were withdrawing from the Charter Council, which is due to meet on 10 December 2009. Instead, Basa appears to be attempting to unilaterally restructure the Charter Council and to exclude Community and Labour. They have tried and failed to get government to restructure the Council by excluding Community and Labour.

The Charter Council constitution does not give Basa the authority to exclude any other Charter participant or member, although it does allow Basa to resign. In terms of Clause 20.2 of the Charter:

“A member may resign from the Charter Council at any time by delivering written notice to that effect to the Charter Council at its office, and that member shall thereupon cease to be a member of the Charter Council.”

Basa is a “member” of the Charter Council in terms of 3.1.2 of the Charter Council Constitution. If the banks do not want to be part of a collective, representative, multi-stakeholder transformation Charter Council, they should resign. Community and Labour should not walk away from the Charter in response to bad behaviour from the banks. If anyone pulls out, it should be the banks.

There are a number of choices in dealing with the Equity Equivalent proposal, including BEE transaction and financing.

As the workers and the poor of this country, represented by labour and the community organisations we can choose one of two choices:

–We could refuse the demands of the banks; or
–Agree to include it, provided that any BEE transactions meet genuinely broad-based criteria
–Banks should say whether they have been mandated and whether indeed they do support the Basa position.

It is clear to us, given what some of the CEOs of the banks have said, that BASA did not have the mandate to issue such a dismissive and reckless statement.

It is for all these reasons that the SACP, working together with the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, will resuscitate its mass campaign to make banks serve the people!

Asikhulume!

The nationalisation debate…more and more curious

By Jeremy Cronin

The present discussion on nationalising the mines runs the danger of becoming too narrowly focused. It’s a mistake to detach the question of the ownership of the mines from the overall strategic thrust of our economic policy programme.

This strategic programme has emerged with increasing clarity from recent SACP and COSATU congresses, and from the ANC’s December 2007 watershed 52nd national conference. Our shared strategic perspective has been further consolidated at our most recent mid-November Alliance Summit. If we are to make progress in the discussion around the mining sector, for instance, then we need to begin by identifying what we are saying is our key overall strategic economic priority. Last month’s Alliance Summit summarised it crisply as “transforming the structure of the economy and moving to a different growth path”.

So what is problematic about the structure of our economy? Why do we need to move to a different growth path? At the heart of our problems is that even when our economy has been growing, as it did in the recent past, this growth has tended to reproduce (and in some cases worsen) racialised inequality and under-development.

In 1994 unemployment was around 24%. Just before the global recession began to bite locally, in the latter half of 2008, after some fourteen years of “unprecedented” growth, we had barely managed to return the unemployment level back to the same crisis level of 24%. After 15 years of democracy, and notwithstanding many important efforts, we succeeded in going round in a circle! The rich got richer, but our country was not transformed. In the present recessionary conditions the unemployment levels are now rocketing up, with nearly 1 million jobs lost in this year alone.

Why is it, then, that even in the “good times”, our economy reproduces crises of inequality, poverty and general under-development?

The answer is that we are still locked into basically the same semi-colonial economic growth path that was first forged in the imperialist-dominated mining revolution in SA over one hundred years ago. Our economy remains excessively dependent on primary commodity exports. On the other hand, we are excessively dependent on imports of capital goods (machinery), technologies and luxury goods. Even relative to many developed capitalist economies, we have extremely high levels of corporate concentration (”monopoly capital”), especially in the minerals and energy complex, in finance, chemicals, and increasingly in agro-processing. These high levels of concentration continue to shape our economy in many problematic ways. Our economy tends to be capital not labour-intensive. It is extremely energy-intensive, and the infrastructure (transport logistics, ICT, water, energy) is all skewed towards the narrow interests of monopoly capital.

All of these features, along with collusive, monopoly pricing practices by the dominant monopoly capital sectors, serve to throttle any organic growth of more labour-intensive, medium and small-scale light manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors – not to mention cooperatives. High levels of unemployment and skewed infrastructural and spatial development narrow our national market, and further entrench our export-oriented dependency. Historically, big capital in SA has also acted aggressively as a sub-imperialist power, undermining a more balanced approach to regional development and production, further weakening our potential regional market.

This is why our recent Alliance Summit statement is absolutely correct to identify the transformation of the STRUCTURE of our economy as the key strategic task. In fact, this is now the key multi-class and, indeed, non-racial patriotic task of the national democratic revolution in the present conjuncture.

And this is why we need always to ensure that any economic discussion – whether it be about BEE, or infrastructure development, or nationalising the mines – always returns to this fundamental question: Will this or that specific economic policy proposal actively contribute to transforming the highly problematic STRUCTURE of our economy? Or will it, wittingly or unwittingly, simply help to REPRODUCE the same essential semi-colonial structural features?

The strange case of nationalising in order to privatise!

Sello Rasethaba, chairperson of the Lobbying Corporation of SA, has made an interesting contribution to the debate around nationalising the mines (”We should follow the Chinese route”, City Press Business, 29 November). Rasethaba positions himself as a protagonist of nationalising mines in SA. His article, however, confirms and compounds the concerns that many of us in the ANC-alliance have about the timing and motivation behind at least some of the recent calls for nationalisation.

Rasethaba mentions, in passing, the SACP’s recent interventions on this topic. He claims that “Jeremy Cronin” has said “many mines were now owned by struggling BEE groups, which meant that nationalisation would be little more than a bail-out at taxpayers’ expense. I do not know where he [that’s me] gets his evidence from, but he is wrong because the top 30 resources companies that control more than 90% of the sector are in white capital’s hands and are controlled by foreigners.”

There are two major confusions here. No-one has ever said that BEE groups are dominant in our mining sector. What has been said is that our mining sector in general has been hit by the global recession. BEE interests in mining tend to be particularly vulnerable precisely because many operate in marginal mines and because most of their share-holdings are highly geared. Moreover, some (not all) of our resource sectors are now in serious long-term decline. The obvious example is gold, where, despite the recent significant surge in the gold price, output has declined by 9%.

While, in principle, the SACP certainly supports the nationalisation of the commanding heights of our economy, any move to nationalise mines now needs to be closely scrutinised. Would nationalisation be the best allocation of billions of rands of public money in the current reality? Whose class interests would be served? Would we be baling out capital in general and not just BEE elements (although these latter might be particularly anxious to be bought out, given their high levels of indebtedness)? Would we be saddling the public sector (and therefore taxpayers) with the burden of managing down declining sectors, allowing those who have made trillions of rands of super-profits to walk away from responsibilities to workers, communities, and a ravaged environment plundered for over a century?

Then there is the other confusion embedded in what I have just quoted from Rasethaba: “the top 30 resources companies that control more than 90% of the sector are in white capital’s hands and are controlled by foreigners.” If these resources are controlled by “foreigners”, then are they really in “white capital’s hands”? Yes, I suppose, if you assume that “foreigners” are necessarily “white”. So who are these foreigners? Well, of course, foreign holdings in the SA resources sector are diverse, typically cosmopolitan investment funds and multi-national corporations. In the interesting example that Rasetheba cites, the ASA Metals joint venture, it is a Chinese state-owned corporation that has a 60% controlling interest, while 40% is currently held by a provincial publicly-owned entity, Limpopo Economic Development Corporation (LimDev).

All of this illustrates that it is far too simplistic to divide capital into “white” and “black”. (Is Chinese capital “yellow”, and if it is state-owned is it then “red”?) I am not for a moment denying that we are living still with the terrible reality of racialised inequality and exclusion impacting upon the black majority of South Africans. In the SACP we are not colour-blind liberals. Our national democratic struggle is all about the radical eradication of national oppression AND the structural realities that still keep reproducing it. We fully support broad-based black economic empowerment (after all, it was the Communist Party that first pioneered this call in SA in the late 1920s).

But to make sense of different sectors and strata of capital, we need to analyse them in terms of their dynamic and functional realities. Is it capital that is largely dependent for its reproduction on productive investment, or on speculation, or on rent-seeking as a comprador go-between? Is it bound to a national market, not so much by sentiment, but by its location within the accumulation process, or is it cosmopolitan? Is it structurally parasitic on the state? Is it locked in by its indebtedness to others? We also need to distinguish between the agents of capital accumulation (owners and managers), with their various subjective political, cultural and ideological inclinations, and the underlying laws of capital accumulation (which ARE colour-blind).

Above all, we always need to ask what leverage the working class and other popular forces, together with our democratic state, have over different sectors and strata of capital and its agents in order to discipline them, as much as possible, into the transformative agenda we have highlighted above.

Unfortunately, Rasethaba’s attempt to promote nationalisation asks none of these strategic questions. And he doesn’t ask these questions for a very simple reason - he has a very different agenda.

Beneath the surface of his argument a strange paradox is apparent. He is in favour of public ownership of mining interests…but essentially as a route to then privatising much of them on behalf of aspirant black capitalists! He commends Limpopo’s publicly-owned LimDev’s endeavours “to sell 30% of its [minority] stake in ASA Metals…”, and its “expression of interest for a BEE partner to buy 62,5% of its 40% stake” in the same company (I don’t quite understand the arithmetic here, but nevermind). But he doesn’t explain how any of this will contribute to job creation, or enhanced beneficiation.

He bewails the fact that the “state missed [an] opportunity to assist black mining entrepreneurs by not using the proceeds from the royalties legislation to fund new entrants”. Again, he doesn’t tell us how using public proceeds in this way would advance the transformation of our skewed, semi-colonial growth path. I am not saying that it wouldn’t – but I am saying that we need to know how it would.

He calls on SA to “nationalise companies in strategic sectors” using the balance sheets of the state-owned African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation, the IDC, PetroSA, the PIC, Eskom and Transnet. But to what end? He tells us that “these entities must expand into the African continent and eventually go global…” Again, he simply replicates the sub-imperial ambitions of Cecil Rhodes and all of his successors. Again he simply calls for the intensification of the same flawed growth path.

It is true that he qualifies himself by saying we must expand beyond our borders “while heeding the national interest and security of the republic and the welfare of South Africans”. But what about our neighbours? What about Zambians or Mozambicans or Angolans? What about an entirely different kind of relationship of developmental solidarity between SA and its region?

The ironies of Rasethaba’s intervention, where nationalisation is espoused to advance privatisation, are best explained by understanding that he consistently conflates South Africa’s national interests with the sectoral interests of aspirant black capitalists. Emerging black capitalists may well be able to contribute to a multi-class national struggle to transform our society. But this will not happen spontaneously. They will need to be marshalled within the discipline of a common strategic objective of transforming the STRUCTURE of our economic growth path. And that is quite a different matter from simply changing the supposed “colour” of capital.

France Moves Summit to Exclude Sudan Leader

Summit moved to keep Bashir away

A France-Africa summit due to be held in Egypt has been cancelled over French concerns at the invitation of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The announcement came after Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt met in Paris.

The event, due in February, will now be held in France in May, diplomats said.

The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Mr Bashir’s arrest in March over atrocities in Darfur. He denies the accusations.

The venue was reportedly moved to prevent the Sudanese leader from attending: France has said it would carry out the ICC warrant for his arrest, whereas several African nations, including Egypt, have said they would not.

Mr Bashir has visited several African countries since the warrant was issued.

It accuses him of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a “slow death” and of forcing two-and-a-half million to flee their homes in Darfur.

Earlier this month, Mr Bashir pulled out of an Islamic summit in Istanbul after Turkey, which is seeking EU membership, reportedly came under pressure from Brussels to drop him from the guest list.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8414480.stm
Published: 2009/12/15 15:29:14 GMT

China turns down Clinton’s ultimatum – but hope remains

China says it will not incorporate its emissions pledge into a Copenhagen agreement, laying a diplomatic minefield, says Fred Pearce

The EU in 2010

As 2009 draws to a close, Open Europe today looks ahead to 2010 and what the EU has in store.

From 1 January 2010, Spain takes over the six-month rotating ‘presidency’, currently held by Sweden.

The new Lisbon Treaty rules mean that the country holding the Presidency is stripped of its power to ‘represent’ the EU because of the appointment of a permanent EU President and Foreign Minister. However, Spanish ministers will chair most meetings of the Council of Ministers, and as the first in the next ‘trio’ of presidencies, Spain gets to lay out an agenda for the EU for the first six months of the year.

In a new briefing note, Open Europe outlines the main priorities for the Spanish EU Presidency, and takes a look ahead to key events and developments in the EU in 2010.

Key things in the pipeline:

- New social legislation to bolster ‘European citizenship’, including turning the EU into a “factory of rights”Yikes!
- “Common economic governance”, including the creation of controversial new EU financial supervisory authorities and new rules for managers of alternative investment funds
- Speedy establishment of the new EU Foreign Service - hoped to become “the biggest diplomatic service in the world”
- Efforts to turn the controversial ‘Stockholm Programme’ into concrete justice and home affairs legislation

What’s clear is that the Spanish government wants to use its Presidency to achieve greater political, social and economic integration in Europe - to work for a more ‘unified’ EU. This is fundamentally at odds with British priorities for the EU in 2010. Reformist governments must resist moves towards ‘building Europe’ for the sake of it, and instead concentrate on promoting economic reform.

In particular, the Spanish government’s determination to push for new EU social legislation over the next six months and beyond should ring alarm bells at Westminster. The UK Conservatives have said that if they win next year’s election, they will fight for control over social and employment policy to be returned to the UK where it can be properly controlled closer the people it affects. This kind of legislation already represents a huge regulatory burden in the UK, and the Spanish government’s talk of turning the EU into a ‘factory of rights’ tells us fundamental reform is more urgent than ever.

Please click here to read the briefing: The EU in 2010 - what to expect from the Spanish Presidency:

http://action.openeurope.org.uk/page/m/4b660976/1ba9f669/85d4f97/7c5561ff/2392946743/VEsH/

Obama’s arrival expected to inject fresh momentum into Copenhagen talks

US president said to be preparing ‘knock out punch’ after Hillary Clinton’s gamechanging promise to back $100bn climate aid

Suzanne Goldenberg in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 19.38 GMT
Barack Obama is poised to arrive in Copenhagen tomorrow with additional pledges of cash for poor countries which will suffer the most from global warming, a day after America’s promise to support a $100bn a year climate fund.
Obama’s arrival has been the most anticipated event of the 10-day summit, which has lurched between optimism and rank despair. He will seek to make a decisive impact, building on the announcement today by Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, who said for the first time that America would support a $100bn global climate change fund from 2020. But she will be a tough act to follow, as the statement was seen by delegates as a gamechanger.
Obama is expected to add an extra boost of momentum by beefing up America’s share in a $10bn a year fast-track aid package. That aims to cushion poor countries from the impact of climate change and promote rainforest preservation starting next year. He is also expected to outline little-known provisions in the climate bill passed by the House of Representatives that would direct some $4bn a year from the auction of emission allowances to a fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change and deploy clean technology.
He is also expected to call more forcefully on the Senate to pass climate change law, critical to the eventual success of Copenhagen. “I’ve got a sense that she set the table, and he is going to deliver the knock-out punch,” said Earl Blumenauer, part of the delegation of Democratic congressmen to the talks.
Clinton gave no specifics on how America would raise its share of the $100bn fund, and she made her offer contingent on overcoming an atmosphere of mistrust to reach a deal at Copenhagen. “It is no secret that we have lost precious time in these past days,” she said. “In the time we have left here, it can no longer be about us versus them — this group of nations pitted against that group. We all face the same challenge together.”
She also said the deal must include an international regime to monitor and verify pledges by developing countries to curb their emissions. Clinton said there could be no deal without such checks in place. “If there is not even a commitment to pursue transparency, that’s kind of a dealbreaker for us,” she said.
Clinton’s appearance here — only hours after the summit’s Danish hosts had given up hopes of reaching a deal — was widely credited with pulling the negotiations back from the brink.
Environmental organisations said America still needed to provide details about the sources of funding, and how it would be distributed. Clinton would only say there would be public and private investment, and that America was exploring several different potential soures of funding.
But British officials said last night that the US move puts the onus on the European Union to decide whether to make good on its promise to raise its emissions reductions target to 30% in the event of strong action at the summit. EU officials were meeting to discuss the next move tonight . .
Alden Meyer, director of strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said America’s support for the $100bn climate fund gave China the cover it needed to back down gracefully from the showdown over accountability. “Now China can be magnanimous and say it is acting in solidarity with its brothers and sisters in Africa [who will benefit from the money], and that it is not going to stand in the way of a deal,” he said.
Although industrialised countries had cobbled together a package of short-term aid for African countries and low-lying islands that will suffer the worst ravages of global warming, there had been little movement on mobilising the billions that will be required over the long haul.
Clinton’s intervention helps supply that crucial missing link. The $100bn figure was formally put on the table at the conference by the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who is head of the African group of nations. It is much lower than many developing nations say is necessary to help them adapt to climate change and develop green technologies, with esitmates ranging up to $600bn a year.
The American offer to puts its share into the $100bn climate fund is unlikely to win over all objections to the deal from African countries and small island states. “If nobody is going to be alive to get a dime of it, how far does this take us?” asked Hama Arba Diallo, a member of parliament from Burkina Faso.
Amisa Elamia, the prime minister of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said he would be unable to sign on to an agreement unless it sought more stringent emissions cuts that would limit global warming to 1.5C. Negotiators are currently discussing limiting warming to 2C.
“Over the last few days we have faced considerable pressure to accept a deal based around 2C. We have not yielded to this pressure because our future is not negotiatiable,” he said. “I will not sign anything that is not 1.5C.”

It is not China’s style to let the green inspectors rummage around

Leo Lewis

For nations of a nervous disposition, there is an ocean of difference between “transparency” and “scrutiny”: a commitment to the first is a sop, a commitment to the second is a surrender.
The climate change debate has blazingly illuminated China’s stance on the issue.
There are many reasons why emotions in Beijing run high over allowing outsiders to verify China’s adherence to its emissions promises.
The first is universal — no nation is fundamentally happy about the idea of having its domestic activities judged by interlopers. In China the unease is especially acute.

The country is run on the principle that the Communist Party is almighty: the minutest detail of Chinese policy-making has this as its starting point.
The severe external shock created by the financial crisis has dramatically increased Beijing’s domestic need to appear in control, so this was never a moment where any smidgin of jurisdiction was likely to be ceded.
Included in that logic may well be concerns over domestic anger on environmental issues.
The Government already faces a persistent barrage of protest over a grim variety of air, soil and water pollution. It does not want the reports of foreign inspectors adding fuel to those fires.
The second reason — about which China is open — is the related matter of priorities.
China, for all its astronomical growth and increasing diplomatic heft, is a developing country and is hell-bent on completing that process.
The masterplan involves lifting tens of millions of people from poverty, and increasing the living standards of more than a billion.
That ambition will consistently trump all others (including climate change reduction) however genuinely China believes them to be valid.
The third factor may be Beijing’s private calculations over the prospects of a “green economy”.
Numerous governments have talked about the jobs, skills and profits that will be created through fighting climate change with technology.
China has pushed ahead impressively with hydroelectric, wind- and solar-energy projects, but a harsh truth may now be dawning: none of these is going to create anything like the jobs that dirty energy and dirty industry do.
More than 70 per cent of China’s power is still produced from burning coal, and new plants are still being constructed. Heavy industry accounted for 71 per cent of industrial output in 2008.
But beneath it all, a more basic issue may be at stake. By shunning scrutiny and claiming transparency, Beijing will in effect shove climate change numbers into the giant black box that is official Chinese statistics.
These figures — everything from GDP growth to fertility rates — are the “transparency” by which China is understood both domestically and by the outside world.
If China ever allowed scrutiny of how well it had adhered to its carbon emission promises, it would be opening the door to something far more subversive: the idea that the “official” numbers are anything but cast-iron fact.

English winegrowers set to prosper from warmer climate

As world leaders gather in Copenhagen to debate the catastrophic effects of climate change there are some places in the world, such as the English vineyards, which stand to benefit from warmer temperatures.

Over the years, some winemakers say, a rise in temperature has redrawn the international wine map.

The warmer climate has aided English winegrowers as they experiment with planting grape varieties found in some of France’s best wine regions.

And many have met with some success. Chris White, general manager at Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey told CNN: “Twenty years ago with what we were growing here — pinot noir — people were a little bit sniffy, thinking that we wont be able to grow a full bodied red. We are now and we are producing sparkling wines which are competing and beating in any blind competitions.”

White’s 265-acre wine estate in Surrey in the southeast of England has been producing both white and red wines for moe than 20 years, and he says that the quality keeps getting better and better with the warmer temperatures.

“Because of the improving weather conditions we are getting better consistency in terms of quality and yield, year on year,” White said.

White also says that producing full-bodied reds are easier now whereas previously it had been a bit of a struggle.

Climate plays a crucial role in balancing the sugar and acidity levels found in grapes necessary for the distinctive flavors of all wines.

Whatever the color of wine produced, wine drinkers and growers have every reason to say “cheers.”

A record 3 million bottles of wine was produced last year, and the English Wine Producers Association predicts that the number will nearly double by 2015.

But not all winemakers credit climate change with the quality improvements.

Owen Clive from the Chapel Down Winery in Kent told CNN: “Both culture and wine making technique have improved immensely in the last 10 to 15 years. And so now we are making much better wines from better grapes. But how much climate change has influenced that is difficult to say. It’s anecdotal really.”

Climate experts have said that global warming will shift growing patterns from crops. So who knows what’s ahead for England and other parts of the globe. But some see a fruity forecast for the English wine industry.

Richard Selley, author of “The Winelands of Britain” sees a sparkling future.

“For English winemakers the immediate future is very bright. It’s very good for the next 30 or 40 years,” Selley said.

Perhaps one day the finest wines may well be bottled in the south of England.

Source:
Cable News Network, “English winegrowers set to prosper from warmer climate“, accessed December 15, 2009

India Announces Incentives for Wind Power Generation

By SUNIL RAGHU
NEW DELHI — India’s ministry of new and renewable energy Thursday announced the implementation of incentives for grid-connected wind power projects providing cleaner power.
Wind electricity producers will now receive a generation-based incentive of 0.50 rupees ($0.01) per unit of electricity fed into the grid. The government will spend about 3.8 billion rupees on subsidies as of the new scheme.
“Providing 0.50 rupees per unit is huge if you compare it with existing wind power generation costs,” Debashish Majumdar, chairman and managing director, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event. “The average price of wind power in India is currently about 3 rupees per unit.”
Installed wind power in India stands at 10,500 megawatts, of the country’s total of 15.59 gigawatts.
India’s federal government is promoting the renewable sector through a mix of fiscal and financial incentives as it aims to exploit its renewable energy potential by attracting investments in the sector and reduce carbon emissions.
The latest tariff incentive comes three months after the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, which regulates power tariffs in the country, announced tariff norms for companies investing in renewable energy projects, stating they will get a 19% pretax return on investments for the first 10 years of generation and 23% thereafter.
The tariff on power produced by wind energy will vary between 3.76 rupees and 5.64 rupees per kilowatt hour, depending on the wind velocity at the site, CERC had said.
India’s new scheme would be implemented parallel to other existing incentive scheme for wind power in the country that allow producers to seek accelerated depreciation on their investments.
“The new scheme cuts down the uncertainty as it is linked directly to generation. The more you generate the more you get,” Mr. Majumdar said.
Write to Sunil Raghu at Sunil.Raghu@dowjones.com