Growing climate anxiety poses significant threat to individuals and society

by British Medical Journal

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Levels of eco-anxiety—the chronic fear of environmental doom—are growing, particularly among children and young people, and are likely to be significant and potentially damaging to individuals and society, warn experts in The BMJ today.

Mala Rao and Richard A Powell say neglecting the effects of increasing eco-anxiety "risks exacerbating health and social inequalities between those more or less vulnerable to these psychological impacts," while the socioeconomic effects—as yet hidden and unquantified—"will add considerably to the national costs of addressing the climate crisis."

And they call on leaders to "recognize the challenges ahead, the need to act now, and the commitment necessary to create a path to a happier and healthier future, leaving no one behind."

They point to a 2020 survey of child psychiatrists in England showing that more than half (57%) are seeing children and young people distressed about the climate crisis and the state of the environment.

And a recent international survey of climate anxiety in young people aged 16 to 25 showed that the psychological (emotional, cognitive, social, and functional) burdens of climate change are "profoundly affecting huge numbers of these young people around the world."

These findings also offer insights into how young people's emotions are linked with their feelings of betrayal and abandonment by governments and adults, they write. Governments are seen as failing to respond adequately, leaving young people with "no future" and "humanity doomed."

So what is to be done to alleviate the rising levels of climate anxiety, they ask?

"The best chance of increasing optimism and hope in the eco-anxious young and old is to ensure they have access to the best and most reliable information on climate mitigation and adaptation," they explain.

"Especially important is information on how they could connect more strongly with nature, contribute to greener choices at an individual level, and join forces with like-minded communities and groups."

They conclude: "The climate crisis is an existential threat, and fearfulness about the future cannot be fully tackled until a common united global strategy is put in place to address the root cause, global warming, and to give everyone—especially the young and the most vulnerable communities—the hope of a better future."Government inaction on climate change linked to psychological distress in young people

More information: The BMJ, blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/10/06/t … -rise-of-eco-anxiety

Provided by British Medical Journal 

‘Eco-anxiety’: fear of environmental doom weighs on young people

Although not a diagnosable condition, experts says climate anxiety is on the rise worldwide

In September children and young people around the world, including Glasgow, took part in protests against the climate crisis. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Andrew Gregory Health editor
Wed 6 Oct 2021 23.30 BST

The climate crisis is taking a growing toll on the mental health of children and young people, experts have warned.

Increasing levels of “eco-anxiety” – the chronic fear of environmental doom – were likely to be underestimated and damaging to many in the long term, public health experts said.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Mala Rao and Richard Powell, of Imperial College London’s Department of Primary Care and Public Health, said eco-anxiety “risks exacerbating health and social inequalities between those more or less vulnerable to these psychological impacts”.

Although not yet considered a diagnosable condition, recognition of eco-anxiety and its complex psychological effects was increasing, they said, as was its “disproportionate” impact on children and young people.

In their article, they pointed to a 2020 survey of child psychiatrists in England showing that more than half (57%) are seeing children and young people distressed about the climate crisis and the state of the environment.


Children set for more climate disasters than their grandparents, research shows

A recent international survey of climate anxiety in young people aged 16 to 25 showed that the psychological burdens of climate crisis were “profoundly affecting huge numbers of these young people around the world”, they added.

Rao and Powell called on global leaders to “recognise the challenges ahead, the need to act now, and the commitment necessary to create a path to a happier and healthier future, leaving no one behind”.

Research offered insights into how young people’s emotions were linked with their feelings of betrayal and abandonment by governments and adults, they said. Governments were seen as failing to respond adequately, leaving young people with “no future” and “humanity doomed”.

Their warning comes a week after Greta Thunberg excoriated global leaders, dismissing their promises to address the climate emergency as “blah, blah, blah”.

In April, she quoted Boris Johnson, who derisively used the phrase “bunny hugging” to describe climate activism. Thunberg said: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”.

By 2030 carbon emissions are expected to rise by 16%, according to the UN, rather than fall by half, which is the cut needed to keep global heating under the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C

Protest in a pandemic: voices of young climate activists – video

Rao and Powell said it was important to consider what could be done to alleviate the rising levels of climate anxiety.


“The best chance of increasing optimism and hope in the eco-anxious young and old is to ensure they have access to the best and most reliable information on climate mitigation and adaptation,” they said. “Especially important is information on how they could connect more strongly with nature, contribute to greener choices at an individual level, and join forces with like-minded communities and groups.”

Separately, new research also published in the BMJ suggests changing unhealthy behaviour could be key to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Theresa Marteau, of the University of Cambridge, said technological innovation alone would be insufficient.

Adopting a largely plant-based diet and taking most journeys using a combination of walking, cycling and public transport would substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve health, she said.

FIRST READING: Alberta really, really doesn't like Jason Kenney anymore

The federal Liberal government goes to bat for a pipeline (seriously)

Author of the article:

Tristin Hopper

Publishing date:

Oct 06, 2021  •  +NATONAL POST

Jason Kenney actually looked relatively confident at this Tuesday press conference, but we                                   grabbed this photo of him looking defeated to match the headline. PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA

Premier Jason Kenney has become one of the most hated leaders in modern Alberta history, according to a new poll by ThinkHQ. More than 77 per cent of Albertans gave the thumbs-down to his leadership, putting him in roughly the same territory as Alison Redford just prior to her 2014 resignation. With COVID-19 hospitalizations now reaching an all-time high in Alberta, Kenney is currently getting hate from the right for inaugurating a system of vaccine passports, and from the left for pursuing a months-long strategy of strenuously avoiding even moderate measures for contract tracing and monitoring.

That’s right; COVID-19 has made Albertans pine for Rachel Notley to return. PHOTO BY THINKHQ

The Canadian Energy Centre is the fancy name for Kenney’s government-funded “energy war room.” The centre just released a report tracking the quantities of foreign oil that Canada has imported since the 1980s, with the implication being that Canada should buy more of its own supply rather than __. They found that Quebec is the largest single buyer of foreign oil in Canada, with the average Quebec household consuming roughly $1,576 of imported petroleum per year.

FIRST READING: Alberta really, really doesn't like Jason Kenney anymore | National Post

Canadian oil exports to U.S. jump with expanded Line 3 pipeline

Sheela Tobben, Bloomberg News

Canadian oil shipments to the U.S. jumped to the highest volume since the start of the year thanks in part to the startup of a long-delayed Canadian pipeline.

Weekly oil deliveries from America’s northern neighbor reached 4.04 million barrels day, the most since January, according to the Energy Information Administration. It’s only the third time the U.S. has imported more than 4 million barrels a day of Canadian crude since the agency began compiling weekly data in 2010.

It’s likely these increased flows will be the new norm mainly because of the expanded Line 3, said Elisabeth Murphy, ESAI Energy LLC upstream analyst for North America. In fact, weekly volumes should start to average closer to 3.7-3.8 million barrels a day from here, from current levels of around 3.5 million, she added.



The additional barrels from Canada come as a relief to U.S. refiners struggling with less supply from OPEC+, shrinking imports from Latin America, and more recently, the loss of about 30 million barrels of Gulf of Mexico production after Hurricane Ida.

Gulf Coast refineries have increasingly been pulling from Canada to offset the crude production in the Gulf of Mexico thats remains shut since Hurricane Ida swept through over a month ago, said Shirin Lakhani, director of global oil service at Rapidan Energy Group.

Last week, Enbridge Inc. started its new Line 3 crude pipeline after years of delays. It can transport 760,000 barrels a day of heavy and light oil, nearly double the size of the old line it replaced.

Canada set to fall short on targets for carbon emissions, report finds

Oct 6, 2021

Canada is forecast to fall short of its 2030 target to cut emissions by 40 per cent, according to a new report by Trottier Energy Institute.  

#GlobalNews

 New Brunswick

All CUPE locals in wage talks with province vote overwhelmingly to strike

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At least one local has already started job

action

Mia Urquhart · CBC News · Posted: Oct 06, 2021 2

Support for strike action ranged from 83 to 98 per cent across the 10 locals negotiating with the province. (Hadeel Ibrahim/CBC)

All 10 CUPE locals who were in wage talks with the province have voted in favour of a strike.

Results for the final two votes were announced by CUPE officials in a news briefing on Wednesday morning. 

Local 5026, which represents francophone community college workers, and Local 1190, general labour and trades, both voted 96 per cent in favour of strike action. 

The ten locals represent approximately 22,000 workers around the province. 

Nearly every one of the locals voted overwhelmingly for a strike. Percentages ranged from 83 to 98 across the 10 groups. 

Steve Drost, the president of CUPE New Brunswick, said the average was 94 per cent. He said the results send a clear message to government and Premier Blaine Higgs. 

CUPE New Brunswick president Steve Drost said 94 per cent of 22,000 workers from 10 locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees have voted in favour of a strike. (Jacques Poitras/CBC News)

"So, Mr. Higgs, you've got 10 locals that have taken very, very strong strike mandates. Let's not go down that road. Don't force us down that road, but our members have given us a very, very clear, strong message."

Talks between the province and CUPE members broke down on Sept. 3 when an agreement over wages couldn't be reached and the province stopped negotiating.

Drost said the union wrote to the premier last Friday, asking the province to come back to the bargaining table. So far, he said, they haven't received a response. 

The union is asking for annual wage increases of five per cent over the next four years. 

Last December, Higgs asked public-sector unions to agree to four-year contracts with no wage increase in the first year and increases of one per cent in each of the three remaining years.

Higgs said wage restraint was necessary because COVID-19 had pushed the province into a precarious financial position.

The province's most recent offer was for annual increases of 1.25 per cent over four years, then two per cent in the fifth and sixth years.

But the government wanted CUPE to agree to concessions, including converting members' pensions to the shared-risk model used elsewhere in the civil service and transferring about 100 union members to management positions.

Court stenographers counting votes in Moncton last month. 96 per cent of the local voted in favour of a strike. (CUPE NB )

There have also been complaints of bad faith bargaining filed by both sides with the province's labour board.

"Let's get back to the bargaining table and let's settle this and bring some labour peace to this province," said Drost. 

Here's a breakdown for each local that voted in favour of strike action: 

• Local 1418 – Rehabilitation, therapy and RCPO - 92 per cent
• Local 1251 – Institutional services and care -  98 per cent
• Local 1253 – School district unions -  97 per cent
• Local 2745 – Educational support staff -  91 per cent
• Local 1840 - Court stenographers - 96 per cent
• Local 1866 - WorkSafe NB - 83 per cent
• Local 5017 - Community colleges - 93 per cent
• Local 1252 - Hospital workers - 94 per cent
• Local 5026 - Collèges communautaires du NB - 96 per cent
• Local 1190  - General Labour and Trades  96 per cent

Eight of those 10 locals are in a strike position right now and by next Tuesday, all 10 "will be in a  legal position to take job action," said Drost.  

One local started last week and another is planning to start. But Drost declined to give any details about what that means or how it might impact the public. 

He said union members "will be doing exactly what is required in the collective agreements," but said members are committed to being "socially responsible" and will not do anything to endanger the public. 

"Again, we're reviewing this extremely closely. We don't want to put our members at risk, we certainly don't want to put the public at risk, and we are looking at everyone's safety and well-being."

Some deemed essential

Each local has a number of "essential" positions that cannot walk off the job. The numbers vary depending on the classification within the local. 

In the case of hospital workers, for example, there are more than 140 classifications in Local 1252, explained CUPE spokesperson Simon Ouellette. 

He said at least 50 per cent of the positions are deemed essential, but the percentages vary depending on worker classifications. Ouellette said it's about 75 per cent for those directly involved in patient care and significantly lower in others, like administrative/clerical positions.

The president of Local 1252, the New Brunswick Council of Hospital Unions, said the numbers are adequate to ensure public safety. 

Norma Robinson, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1215, said the number of hospital workers designated "essential" during strike action is adequate to ensure public safety. (CBC)

"The one thing that we really view when we do essential service designations is public safety," said Norma Robinson. 

"So yes, we feel that they are more than adequate and they were agreed to by the union and the employer, so both parties agree they're adequate."

The question, Robinson said, is how service will be impacted in six weeks when the government is set to suspend without pay all workers who are not fully vaccinated. 

Drost said workers would prefer to get back to the bargaining table instead of taking job action. He said some employees have been without a contract for five years. 

He also said CUPE expects a level playing field when talks resume. He said the government was offering concessions to other groups that were not being offered to his members. 

"How can you bargain with a bunch of other unions in this province and offer them one thing, but come to the table and offer our group something else?" asked Drost. 

But he declined to give specifics about what concessions he was talking about and to whom they were offered. 

Higgs said he was aware of the results of the CUPE votes. 

"It is unfortunate they feel they must go on strike, but we remain confident that a deal can be achieved at the bargaining table. We are willing to return to the table as soon as CUPE is prepared to come forward with revised wage proposals," Higgs said in an emailed statement.

"With respect to working to rule, it is very unfortunate that CUPE is sanctioning this action while the province is immersed in the fourth wave of the COVID pandemic."

Germany puts 100-year-old on trial for Nazi crimes

Issued on: 07/10/2021 - 

Josef Schuetz, stands accused of "knowingly and willingly" assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945 

Tobias Schwarz AFP/File


Brandenburg an der Havel (Germany) (AFP)

A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard became the oldest person yet to be tried for Nazi-era crimes in Germany as he went before the court on Thursday charged with complicity in mass murder.

The suspect, Josef Schuetz, stands accused of "knowingly and willingly" assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

Allegations against him include aiding and abetting the "execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942" and the murder of prisoners "using the poisonous gas Zyklon B".

More than seven decades after World War II, German prosecutors are racing to bring the last surviving Nazi perpetrators to justice, and have in recent years increasingly focused attention on lower-ranking Nazi staff.

The case comes a week after a 96-year-old German woman, who was a secretary in a Nazi death camp, dramatically fled before the start of her trial, but was caught several hours later.

She, too, has been charged with complicity in murder. Her trial resumes on October 19.

Despite his advanced age, a medical assessment in August found that Schuetz was fit to stand trial, although the Neuruppin court will limit his hearings to a couple of hours a day.

Schuetz arrived with a walking aid for the proceedings, held in a sports hall given the huge interest in the case. The trial is scheduled to last until early January.

"He is not accused of having shot anyone in particular, but of having contributed to these acts through his work as a guard and of having been aware such killings were happening at the camp," a court spokeswoman said.

Holocaust survivor Leon Schwarzbaum attended the trial of Josef Schuetz 

Tobias Schwarz AFP

Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing several camp survivors and victims' relatives in the case, said that even 76 years on from the war, such trials were necessary.

"There's no expiry date on justice," he told AFP.

One of his clients is Antoine Grumbach, 79, who hopes Schuetz will shed light on the methods used to kill people in the camp, but also that the accused "will say 'I was wrong, I am ashamed'".

- 'Symbolic' -

The Nazi SS guard worked at the Sachsenhausen camp which detained more than 200,000 people between 1936 and 1945, including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people.

Tens of thousands of inmates died from forced labour, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, according to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.

Little is known about the accused, beyond the fact that he was released from captivity as a prisoner of war in 1947 and went to work as a locksmith in the Brandenburg region of what was then Communist East Germany, the Bild newspaper reported.

The file against him was transferred by the central unit investigating Nazi crimes to the state of Brandenburg, where he lives, in April 2019, and charges were eventually filed on January 26 this year.

Co-plaintiff Christoffel Heijer, 84, told AFP his father was shot dead in the camp in May 1942.

"My mother received a letter from him on May 3, 1942, before he was shot. When she learnt a few days later that he had died, she cried a lot and went grey almost at once," he said.

The Nazi SS guard worked at the Sachsenhausen camp which detained more than 200,000 people between 1936 and 1945, including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people JOHANNES EISELE AFP/File

The accused's lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, said his client "has stayed silent" so far on the charges against him.

Schuetz remains free during the trial. Even if convicted, he is highly unlikely to be put behind bars given his advanced age.

- Race against time -

Germany has been hunting down former Nazi staff since the 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk, on the basis that he served as part of Hitler's killing machine, set a legal precedent.

Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

Among those brought to late justice were Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at Auschwitz.

Both were convicted at the age of 94 of complicity in mass murder, but died before they could be imprisoned.

Most recently, former SS guard Bruno Dey was found guilty at the age of 93 last year and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Prosecutors are investigating eight other cases, according to the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.

© 2021 AFP

French police cause misery for migrants in Calais: HRW

Issued on: 07/10/2021 -

French police evacuating hundreds of migrants last week after dismantling their camp near a hospital in Calais

 Bernard BARRON AFP

Paris (AFP)

French police are inflicting misery on migrants in the northern port of Calais, routinely tearing down their tents and forcing them to wander the streets as part of a deterrence policy, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Thursday.

The 75-page report documents methods used by authorities to prevent the emergence of another major migrant settlement in Calais, five years after the demolition of the sprawling "Jungle" camp which housed up to 10,000 people at its peak.

Calais has for years been a rallying point for migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa trying to sneak across the English Channel to Britain.

Faced with growing public anti-migrant sentiment, President Emmanuel Macron's government has waged a campaign to prevent new camps emerging.

Police tactics include systematically tearing down migrants' tents in the woods, on wasteland or under bridges, regularly confiscating their belongings and harassing NGOs trying to provide them with aid, according to New York-based HRW.

"The authorities carry out these abusive practices with the primary purposes of forcing people to move elsewhere, without resolving their migration status or lack of housing, or of deterring new arrivals," it said in the report entitled "Enforced Misery: The Degrading Treatment of Migrant Children and Adults in Northern France".

- 'Harass and abuse' -

NGOs estimate the number of migrants currently living around Calais at between 1,500 and 2,000, including numerous families. Local authorities estimate that only 500 remain in the area.

Last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin ordered the eviction of a camp housing 400 migrants near a hospital in Calais, which was presented as a danger to the hospital's patients and staff.

On that occasion the migrants were taken to temporary shelters but often they are left to wander the streets.

“When the police arrive, we have five minutes to get out of the tent before they destroy everything," a Kurdish woman from Iraq told HRW.

The interior ministry did not respond to AFP's request for comment on the report.

The government argues that the camps are havens for people smugglers, who command extortionate fees to help migrants cross to Britain, either in a small boat crossing the Channel in the dead of night or stowed away on a truck crossing by ferry or through the Channel Tunnel.

Migrants attempt to board a truck bound for Britain 

DENIS CHARLET AFP

NGOs argue that the tactics do nothing more than make migrants already difficult lives even more miserable.

The report quoted the Calais-based Human Rights Observers group as saying that in some cases cleaning crews cut migrants' tents while people are still inside, in order to force them out.

15,400 people attempted to cross the Channel in the first eight months of this year, a increase of 50 percent over the figure for the whole of 2020 

HO Prefecture maritime de la Manche/AFP

"If the aim is to discourage migrants from gathering in northern France, these policies are a manifest failure and result in serious harm," Benedicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch, said.

French authorities "need a new approach to help people, not repeatedly harass and abuse them," she added.

A total of 15,400 people attempted to cross the Channel in the first eight months of this year, a increase of 50 percent over the figure for the whole of 2020, according to French coast guard statistics.

"Exiles aren’t travelling to northern France because they’ve heard they can camp in the woods or stay under a bridge...They come because that's where the border is," Charlotte Kwantes, national coordinator of the Utopia 56 charity was quoted in the report as saying.

© 2021 AFP

Saudi takeover of Newcastle set to go ahead despite rights concerns

Issued on: 07/10/2021

A Saudi-backed takeover could make Newcastle a Premier League

 force to contend with

 Lindsey PARNABY AFP


London (AFP)

A Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle is set to get the green light from the Premier League despite warnings from Amnesty International on Thursday that the deal represents "sportswashing" of the Gulf kingdom's human rights record.

A consortium featuring Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), PCP Capital Partners and billionaire brothers David and Simon Reuben struck a deal worth a reported £300 million ($408 million) to buy the club from unpopular owner Mike Ashley in April 2020.

However, the controversial takeover bid hit the rocks last year after an outcry from Qatar-based beIN Sports, a major television rights holder of the Premier League.

The broadcaster, which extended its rights to the English top-flight for the Middle East and North African region earlier this year until 2025 at a cost of $500 million, was banned by Saudi Arabia in 2017 at the start of a diplomatic and transport blockade of Qatar, which ended in January.

Tensions between the states have eased significantly this year and Saudi's ban on beIN is set to be lifted, with Riyadh also seeking to settle Qatar's $1 billion arbitration claim over pirate broadcasts to Saudi audiences by the BeoutQ network.

The PIF, chaired by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS, is reportedly set to take an 80 percent stake under the proposed deal.

The takeover could transform the Magpies' fortunes -- despite regular attendances of 50,000 at St. James' Park, Newcastle have not won a major trophy since 1969.

Current owner Mike Ashley has been deeply unpopular in his 13 years in charge, during which time the club have twice been relegated from the Premier League before bouncing back into English football's lucrative top flight.

- Rights record -

But Amnesty has urged the Premier League to consider Saudi Arabia's human rights record.

"Ever since this deal was first talked about we said it represented a clear attempt by the Saudi authorities to sportswash their appalling human rights record with the glamour of top-flight football," Amnesty International's UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh said in a statement.

Newcastle have not won a major trophy since 1969

 Lindsey PARNABY AFP/File

Saudi Arabia faced international condemnation following the brutal murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate three years ago.

In February, US intelligence released a report that accused MBS of approving the murder, an assessment strongly rejected by the Saudis.

Newcastle, currently managed by former Manchester United defender Steve Bruce, are without a win in their opening seven games of the Premier League season and sit second-bottom of the table.

"Under this ownership there has been no ambition, effectively no investment and no hope for a sporting entity that hasn't been a sporting entity. It's been there to survive and nothing more," a spokesman for the Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) told AFP.

A recent poll by the NUST found 93.8 percent of fans were in favour of the takeover.

The transformation of Manchester City since a 2008 takeover from Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, is the template for Newcastle to follow.

Prior to Abu Dhabi's investment, City had not won a major trophy since 1976 but the English champions have now won five of the past 10 Premier League titles.

Huge investment into Newcastle would only intensify the battle at the top end of the Premier League for the title and lucrative Champions League places.

A competition tribunal case brought by Ashley ruled last month that the Premier League had been "improperly influenced" by other clubs when rejecting the takeover last year.

© 2021 AFP

PROMOTED CONTE

China kicks off UN biodiversity summit, virtually

Issued on: 07/10/2021 

Destruction of ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest in Brazil also threatens human lives and health 

MAURO PIMENTEL AFP/File


Paris (AFP)

China will on Monday launch a crucial biodiversity summit to build political momentum to halt and even reverse the destruction of nature by man.

As the human population climbs toward nine billion by mid-century, animals are being crowded, eaten, snared, poisoned, poached, hawked and hunted out of existence.

Forests have been burned to the ground to grow commercial crops, and ecosystems that sustain life on the planet ravaged.

The virtual opening of the COP15 summit will transfer leadership from Egypt, which presided over the last gathering in 2018, to China.

During the talks, Beijing will orchestrate high-level online meetings with ministers from scores of countries in a drive to build political momentum.

China -- by far the world's biggest emitter of carbon pollution that drives global warming and harms the environment -- will also issue a "Kunming Declaration" that will set the tone for its leadership, observers say.

"This declaration, we hope, will further underline and recognise the importance of biodiversity for human health," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a treaty ratified by 195 countries and the European Union.

"It will also recognise the importance of mainstreaming biodiversity in decision-making and will serve also as a tool to create the political momentum," she told AFP.

Since gathering in person in Rome last year, delegates have negotiated across cyberspace.

- Urgent targets -

Next week's online meet will be followed by in-person talks in Kunming from April 25 to May 8, with an intermediate session, also face-to-face, in Geneva in January.

The November COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, meanwhile, will seek to tame the increasingly devastating effects of global warming.

Discussions will focus on a negotiated draft text called the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Published in July, its stated goal is "living in harmony with nature" by 2050.

That "harmony" will be defined by mid-century goals with 2030 reality checks in the form of 21 "targets for urgent action" over the next decade.

Targets include declaring 30 percent of land and sea as protected areas, the end of plastic waste in the oceans, and sustainable management of agriculture, aquaculture and forestry.

Financial targets include boosting investment in biodiversity protection to $200 billion per year within a decade 

SAEED KHAN AFP/File

Financial targets include boosting investment in biodiversity protection to $200 billion per year within a decade, while reducing subsidies for environmentally harmful industries by "at least US $500 billion per year".

It asks that individual governments implement strategies and devise reporting methods to make it easier to measure progress.

The document insists that follow-up is crucial to ensure targets do not remain a list of empty promises.

- 'Sad truth' -

Sharp divisions remain.

France and Costa Rica are among a coalition of support for the initiative to declare 30 percent of oceans and lands protected areas before 2030.

But when scientists called for more ambitious protection of half of Earth's biodiversity, Brazil and South Africa strongly opposed.

Other sources of tension surround financing, with developing nations asking rich countries to foot the bill for their ecological transitions.

France and Costa Rica are among a coalition of support for the initiative to declare 30 percent of oceans and lands protected areas before 2030

 Ezequiel BECERRA AFP/File

These issues will be at the heart of negotiation sessions set to take place in Geneva in January 2022.

"It is concerning that these issues have not been dealt with sufficiently," said Li Shuo, global policy advisor for Greenpeace China.

"The sad truth is countries simply don't care about biodiversity in other countries as much as they do for emissions others pump into the air," he told AFP, referring to the carbon pollution that drives global warming.

But while the protection of nature isn't getting the kind of buzz the climate has been able to generate, biodiversity has gotten more visibility than it used to.

At the end of September Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg joined other philanthropists in pledging $5 billion by 2030 for biodiversity restoration and conservation.

© 2021 AFP

UN summit to tackle 'unprecedented' biodiversity threats

Issued on: 07/10/2021 -

The UN's COP15 summit beginning next week aims to tackle the fight against pollution, protecting ecosystems and preventing mass extinction 

Pablo PORCIUNCULA BRUNE AFP/File


Paris (AFP)

Just weeks before the crucial COP26 climate conference, another global UN summit -- this one tasked with reversing the destruction of nature -- officially kicks off next week in Kunming, China.

Focusing on biodiversity, COP15 is less well known than its sister climate summit but deals with issues that are no less vital to the health of the planet, such as fighting pollution, protecting ecosystems and preventing mass extinction.

The online session beginning on Monday will be followed by a face-to-face gathering in late April, where a final pact for nature will be hammered out.


- Who is involved? -

Discussions at the COP15 are grounded in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a treaty ratified by 195 countries and the European Union -- but not the United States, the world's biggest historical polluter. Parties meet every two years.

The CBD was drafted in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio. Its stated goals are to preserve the diversity of species on Earth and set guidelines on how to exploit natural resources sustainably and justly.

This year's gathering, originally set for 2020, was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

- Why does nature need protection? -

Plants and animals are disappearing at an accelerating rate due to human activity -- habitat encroachment, over-exploitation, pollution, the spread of invasive species and, more recently, climate change.

"Biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates," CBD executive secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told AFP in an interview.

"About one million animal and plant species out of 8.1 million are threatened with extinction -- more than ever before in human history."

Humanity's expanding footprint is also undermining the ecosystems that produce the clean air, drinkable water, food, medicine and raw materials we need to survive.

"Our relationship with nature must change," said Maruma Mrema.

The Covid-19 pandemic, thought to have originated from a virus in wild animals, is a "brutal reminder" of the price we can pay for neglecting or abusing nature, she said.

- What has the CBD achieved? -

At the 2010 biodiversity summit in Aichi, Japan, CBD member states laid out 20 goals to preserve biological diversity and reduce human pressures on the environment, setting a 2020 deadline for achieving them.

None of the objectives was fulfilled by that deadline, and -- with a few exceptions -- conditions are generally worse today than when the goals were first set.

This year's negotiations will likely see a new set of targets designed to allow our species to "live in harmony with nature", with a 2050 deadline and 2030 checkpoints.

- What are this year's goals? -

The draft text under negotiation, the Framework Biodiversity Convention, provisionally sets 21 "targets" for 2030.

These include according protected status to 30 percent of lands and oceans, a measure supported by a broad coalition of nations, including France and Costa Rica.

Another goal is to halve the use of fertilisers so that less of the nitrogen-rich substance leaches into fresh and ocean waters.

The draft pact also calls for reducing pesticide use by at least two thirds, and for halting the discharge of plastic waste entirely.

Another measure would see subsidies for environmentally harmful industries reduced by "at least $500 billion per year".

Without money and enforcement, however, these measures risk becoming empty promises, experts warn.

- Are COP15 and COP26 linked? -

Yes and no. Negotiations under the two conventions unfold on separate tracks and do not intersect. But parties to both treaties are increasingly looking for overlapping solutions.

"We cannot solve climate change without biodiversity and we cannot solve biodiversity loss without climate change," Maruma Mrema said.

"They are two intertwined crises and they need to be addressed together."

Healthy ecosystems -- especially forest and oceans -- make better carbon sinks to absorb CO2 pollution.

These in turn are vital to keep global warming down to levels that are survivable for humanity and other species.

- What is China's role? -

Maruma Mrema says that China's status as host for the negotiations means the world's top carbon polluter and most populous nation will be "taking global leadership on the biodiversity agenda".

A statement known as the Kunming Declaration to be unveiled at the opening next week will set the tone for China's leadership, said Li Shuo, global policy advisor for Greenpeace China.

"Beijing has the task of rescuing a weak environmental convention from the verge of a reputational collapse," he said.

"It carries the mission to boost biodiversity protection to the same rank as climate change, a task that has proven beyond its reach so far."

© 2021 AFP

Behind a ‘green façade’, Modi expands coal mining on India's tribal lands

Issued on: 07/10/2021 -

File photo taken in April 2018 of Indian coal loaders at a mine in

 Dhanbad, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. © AFP

Text by :Leela JACINTO


The Indian government’s push to increase coal production to 1 billion tonnes in response to energy shortages has sparked a protest march by tribal villagers from forested areas up for coal mining. But their voices are being drowned out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s green messaging, which obscures India’s dark addiction to coal.

Hundreds of tribal villagers began a long protest march against government plans for a major coal mining expansion on their lands on October 2, an important holiday in India marking the birth of Mahatma Gandhi.

“This land is our land! This land is our land!” chanted the men and women in Hindi as they navigated forest tracts, village paths, and state and national highways on a 300-kilometre (186-mile) trek to make their voices heard.

The villagers – from India’s indigenous, or Adivasi, communities – hail from the Hasdeo area in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, one of the largest contiguous stretches of dense forest on the subcontinent, which is rich in biodiversity and wildlife, including elephant corridors that are critical for forestation.

But the Hasdeo Arand forest is also rich in coal – and it’s a resource India can’t seem get enough of these days.

Earlier this week, India’s energy and power minister sounded the alarm when he warned of acute coal stock shortages. Monsoon flooding of domestic coalmines, coupled with a global energy crisis that sent coal prices spiking due to increased demand from China, had seen a reduction in Indian coal imports. Power outages were in store, warned Minister R.K. Singh.

“It's going to be touch and go," he said.

The crisis comes as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies emerges from the pandemic with soaring energy demands.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made self-reliance a central plank of his pandemic recovery plan. In a televised speech last year, Modi pledged to oversee an economic “quantum jump” so that “India can be self-sufficient”.

But critics warn this leap is being made on the backs of India’s most marginalised groups at enormous environmental cost and with little in the way of social safeguards.

Boosting coal production to 1 billion tonnes

Coal still accounts for nearly 70 percent of India's electricity generation. While the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter is committed to transitioning to renewable energy, India’s quantum, self-reliant growth will be largely powered by the “dirtiest fossil fuel”.

On the international stage, Modi touts Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of a “trusteeship of the planet with a duty of caring for it”. But even as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleads for an end to the “deadly addiction to coal”, the Modi administration is committed to an aggressive expansion of coal production to 1 billion tonnes by 2024.

And while Modi’s green commitments and speeches make headlines, the ramping-up of coal production in rural areas is overlooked by a national media under pressure to “toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line”, according to Reporters Without Borders, with expressions of dissent treated as “anti-national”.

Much of India’s increased coal production will come from the “coal-belt” central and eastern states of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, where Adivasi communities live in areas rich in biodiversity and wildlife.

“Nationally, there are 55 new coal mines planned and there are expansion plans for 193 existing mines. Eighty percent of the new expansion is on Adivasi land and they are going to bear the brunt of it,” said Jo Woodman, senior researcher at Survival International, a UK-based tribal rights group.

Mining companies enter a once-protected zone

The Adivasi communities of the Hasdeo Arand forest have been waging a decades-long struggle to protect their ancestral homelands and their way of life, which is guided by indigenous belief systems that attach spiritual value to every feature of the forests – from fruits and flowers to the grains and seeds that sustain their livelihoods.

Once designated a “no-go area” that was off-limits to mining, the Hasdeo Arand forest’s status has been steadily undermined by complex legal and administrative manoeuvers by successive governments and state bodies handing out major contracts.

In the absence of foreign takers for contracts in a shrinking sector plagued with regulations on environmental clearance and land ownership issues, the coal block bids have been scooped up by Indian private corporations.

In 2011, India’s then environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, cleared three coal blocks in the no-go zone for mining. They were “clearly on the fringe” of the Hasdeo Arand forest, Ramesh told reporters. “But they are the first and the last” to be opened for mining, he vowed.

Those were infamous last words, according to Woodman. “There has since been a weakening and auctioning, and there’s more mining to come due to the lack of policy to protect such areas and the pressure from mining companies,” she noted.

Corporations get contracts, Adivasis bear the costs

By 2013, the Adani Group, one of India’s largest and richest companies, had begun coal production in the Parsa East-Kente Basan (PEKB) mine in Hasdeo. The Modi government has since approved more mines, putting forests and villagers at risk, according to activists.

In a statement released at the start of the latest 300-kilometre march to the Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur, Hasdeo protest leaders claimed the Modi government "has illegally allotted seven coal mines in our region to state government companies. The state governments have, in turn, appointed Adani to develop and mine these blocks”.

The Adani Group – run by the country’s second-richest man, Gautam Adani – has come under international media scrutiny since environmentalists and indigenous rights activists in Australia started a campaign against the group’s Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.

Noting the close links between Adani and Modi, the Financial Times last year reported that, “Since Mr Modi came into office, Mr Adani’s net worth has increased by about 230 per cent to more than $26bn as he won government tenders and built infrastructure projects across the country.”

As the government attempts to accelerate growth by increasing resource extraction, critics note that the concentration of capital in a few favoured hands comes at the expense of minority rights and national well-being.

“The Adivasis are viewed as superstitious, primitive, backward, their connection to the land is belittled, and their lives and lands are treated as disposable. They are expected to bear the costs in this massive ramp-up of coal mining in the so-called national interest, which is seen as making it as lucrative as possible for Indian private companies,” said Woodman.

Over the past few decades, the climate change crisis has upended the modernisation model of heavy industrialisation and resource extraction powered by cheap fossil fuels such as coal. But for countries such as India, China and Brazil that are attempting to get millions of their citizens out of poverty, an environmentally sustainable alternative to growth remains prohibitively expensive.

As the international community prepares for next month’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, environmentalists believe the focus should be on helping developing countries shift to a greener model of modernisation.

“Rich countries have to step up and help India wean itself from coal and get on the path to a true green transition,” said Woodman. “What’s worrying is that Modi seems to be hiding behind this green façade and promoting himself as a green leader as we run up to the COP26 discussions. But at the same time, he’s having this massive push for coal – and that’s simply not viable in the world we live in today.”

Marx vs. the Machine

Kate Milberry

I'm going talk more about Marxs contribution to the study of technology, as well as his ideas on the relationship b/w sociological and economic analyses of technology. But I'm going to do this with the help of Donald MacKenzie. Just so  you know.

MacKenzie, in chapter 2 of his book Knowing Machines, details Marxs account of the way the machine was made stable, highlighting how social relationships (within which production occurs) impact production technology  indeed are a major factor in the shaping and success or failure of technical systems. This jives with Marxs insistence that, when analyzing markets, one must remember capital is not a thing, but a social relation b/w persons which is mediated thru things.”

One of Marxs big ideas is this: with the advent of large-scale mechanized production, social relations molded technology, not vice versa. The determinist reading of Marx views the forces of production as technology itself. But the forces of production also include labour power, people, skills, knowledge. Indeed, Marx always afforded agency to workers, stressing that what was specific to human work was that it was conscious: people as much as machines make human history.

Marx defines the machine as a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs w/its tools the same operations as the worker formerly did w/similar tools.” With the machine began the Industrial Revolution: it undermined the basis on which manufacturing workers had resisted emergent capitalism. Whereas in manufacture, the organization of the social labour process was purely subjective (a combination of specialized workers), the machine system of large-scale industry was a totally objective organization of production, which appears to the worker as a pre-given material condition of production.

The machine contributes to valorization via correlative surplus value the reduction in labour time required to produce the equivalent of the workers wage generates an increase in surplus value accruing to capitalist. Thus the machine liberates capital to accrue absolute surplus value; by undermining skilled workers, by drawing new sectors into the labour market, by threatening/generating unemployment, the machine “is able to break all resistance to lengthening the working day. Alienation of the collective and intellectual aspects of work achieves its technical embodiment in the machine. Further, the machine embodies the power of the capitalist: science + natural forces + mass of social labour converge in the system of machinery, which represents the power of the master. Thus, capitalist social relations achieve technical embodiment in labour process

For Marx, the conditions of work represent the means of production in their social form as capital; the means of production therefore employ the worker instead of the worker employing the means of production. This was the goal under manufacture and handicraft labour BUT its only w/machinery that this inversion acquires technical reality. Not surprisingly, then, the worker regards the machine is a direct threat; it is capitals material form. Indeed, the connection b/w class struggle and technical innovation was part and parcel of the Industrial Revolution in 19th c. Britain. Skilled labour, especially, stubbornly resisted the discipline of factory work. Marx links worker recalcitrance directly to technical innovation, which was a response to and a weapon against working-class revolt. New machinery did not always increase efficiency or profit but DID reduce the capitalists dependence on highly skilled and paid labourers with minds of their own. Marx thus concludes that Luddism was, in fact, a working class critique of machinery.

Marxs account of the machine is an attempt to theorize the social causes of organizational and technical changes in labour process (how perfect for a “social shaper” like MacKenzie!). For example, technical changes in the steam engine resulted from shifting relations b/w capital and labour as a result of new labour legislation that shortened the working day. While machines were more efficient than human muscle power, there was still the need to squeeze more from the worker during the shortened period

Again, Marx stresses that capital is not a thing (e.g. not a sum of money or commodities) but comprises social relations b/w persons mediated through things. Thus the relation b/w capitalist and worker consists of wages, hours of work; the law and the state; supervision discipline, culture, collective organization, power, conflict and so on. Here MacKenzie points out a weakness in Marxs understanding of this: the social relations of production (w/in which technology develops) are not just b/w worker and capitalist but also worker and worker. That is, relations b/w men and women workers, older and younger, workers, and likely immigrant and native workers must be accounted for.

He lists three ways the split b/w male and female workers influences technological production: 1. New machinery caters to highly unskilled and low-paid worker, always women (and children), who initially displace the highly skilled male workers (left over from days of manufacture). 2. Some skills, like sewing, were considered womens work, and learned at home. There was no need, therefore, to automate this process. Such work was entirely unregulated and devastatingly underpaid and because in the home, isolated, with little to no chance for workers to organize. 3. Skilled, all-male unions marshaled their power to keep at least some control over the new technology and defensively keep women out of their organizations.

At this point, MacKenzie asks a Feenbergian question: Does the design of machinery reflect the social relations w/in which it develops? Marx equivocates on this, he says, sometimes treating machines as victims of capital and not in their design inherently capitalist. Nonetheless, a specifically capitalist form of production emerges, including at the technological level. This is a rather orthodox interpretation, then, one that accepts that social relations impact the pace of technical change (e.g. mechanization was spurred by valorization-imposed needs to displace skilled workers and their power to resist) BUT denies that those relations influenced the design of technical artifacts.

If technology is neutral, and the system of social organization corrupt, then progressive social change will occur simply by changing how society is organized. No need to worry about the technological infrastructure, which can, apparently, be coopted, adapted and reconstituted. Substitute a workers government for the capitalists government, add water and presto! A workers utopia.

MacKenzieâs social shaping self concludes by suggesting that understanding how social relations interact with technical design turns on the contingency of design, and the need to identify where and how things could have been different. This leaves only one (albeit burning) question: why one design was chosen over another. Indeed.

So… is this enough Marx for you?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Comps, Feminist critique, Marx. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.