Kerala Communists Serve the People, Look to Youth and Women

BY W. T. WHITNEY

 JANUARY 29, 2021
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Kerala, a state in India, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations … Kerala has a population as big as California’s and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth … Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development.

– Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author

At 21 years of age, Arya Rajendran is barely eligible to vote. Nevertheless, she is now the mayor of Kerala’s capital city Thiruvananthapuram, population 2,585,000. She is a second-year student at All Saints College. She concentrates in math.

Rajendran told a reporter that,

“From the time I remember my childhood, I was going to Balasangham. … I am now the State President for Balasingham. I am also the Students Federation of India state committee member. My parents are branch committee members of CPI(M). And we firmly believe in what the party stands for.” Balasingham is the youth organization of the Communist Party of India, Marxist – the CPI(M).

In early December, Arya Rajendran was the candidate of Left Democratic Front (LDF) as voting took place in Mudavanmughal ward for the city council. She won 2,872 votes, 549 more than the candidate for the United Democratic Front (UDF), a coalition led by India’s National Congress political party. The CPI(M) is by far the largest force in the LDF, which also includes the Communist Party of India (CPI) and smaller leftist parties.

In city-wide voting, LDF candidates won 51 of the city council’s 100 seats. The council chooses the city’s mayor, and the CPI (M) district committee named Arya Rajendran as the LDF candidate for that office. Gaining the votes of 54 councilpersons on December 28, Rajendra became India’s youngest mayor.

The LDF government in Kerala in 2009 determined that women shall make up at least 50% of elected officials at every level of government. The CPI(M) in Kerala recently took steps to encourage young people to run for political office. One women, 22 years old and a candidate in the in the local elections, stated that, “In Thiruvananthapuram, 66 per cent of CPI(M)’s candidates are women. Five of them are below 25 years of age. This is a party with a difference.”

The CPI(M) – led government in Kerala is riding on a wave of good will following success in organizing life-saving relief after massive floods in 2018 and dealing with outbreaks of the lethal Nipah virus in 2018 and 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic recently.

Communist – led governments have held power intermittently in Kerala since 1957. That year the CPI gained political control through electoral victory – one of the world’s first socialist political parties to do so – and was immediately removed by India’s central government because of turbulence associated with land reform efforts.

Even so, the CPI retained a strong presence in Kerala during the 1960s. From then on, however, the new CPI(M) has regularly won state elections as the dominant partner in the LDF coalition. Leadership of the state has alternated between the CPI(M) and India’s National Congress Party, leader of the UDF coalition. The current LDF government, in office since 2016, will gain a new term if the LDF is victorious in state-assembly elections set for May, 2021.

CPI dissidents formed the CPI(M) in 1964. They were protesting both CPI collaboration with the Congress Party, viewed as serving business interests, and CPI affinity with the Soviet Union. In concert with Chinese Communists, the CPI(M) objected to the Soviet Union’s turn to “peaceful coexistence” with capitalist powers.

The CPI(M) held power in West Bengal state from 1977 until 2011 and in the small state of Tripura intermittently from 1978 until 2018. The Party claimed a national membership of 10,000,520 in 2018.

Kerala governments headed by the CPI(M) instituted social and economic reforms starting with equitable use of land and continuing with improved access to healthcare and education and programs of social rescue. Reforms introduced by LDF governments stayed mostly intact during periods of the opposition coalition being in power

Communist reformers in Kerala had the advantage of rudimentary social reforms already in place prior to national independence in 1947. The principalities of Travancore and Cochin, converted into Kerala state in 1956, had avoided some of the depredations of British colonialism, and officials there had collaborated with missionaries and eventually with international aid agencies.

The new Kerala government quickly integrated illness and preventative care into a single health services agency. It prioritized planning capabilities, attended to urgent healthcare needs in rural areas, and gradually built a system of primary health care that’s been crucial to Kerala’s healthcare achievements.

Kerala’s Centre for Development Studies, established in 1970 and assisted by the United Nations, has guided efforts of government planners, politicians, healthcare providers, and educators. Teachers and researchers there did much to shape what’s known as the “Kerala model” of development, which implies: high “material quality of life” despite low per-capita income, “wealth and redistribution programs,” and “High levels of political participation and activism among ordinary people.”

Kerala’s government in the mid-1990s decentralized planning and policy-making for healthcare and education; many responsibilities were transferred to local political authorities. According to a report released in 2014, “In 2011, Kerala attained the highest Human Development Index of all Indian states.” Markers included:

+ Infant mortality rate of 12 per 1,000 live births in Kerala vs. 40 per 1,000 live births in India

+ Maternal mortality ratio of 66 per 100,000 live births in Kerala vs. 178 per 100,000 live births in India

+ Male literacy – 96% in Kerala vs. 82% in India; female literacy – 92% in Kerala vs. 65% in India

U.S. Communist, author, and veteran trade unionist Beatrice Lumpkin, was a math teacher. She recently extolled the performance of K. K. Shailaja, Kerala’s Minister of Health and Social Welfare, as she took on the Covid-19 Pandemic. The minister is a member of the Central Committee of the CPI(M) and formerly a physics teacher.

Ms. Lumpkin recalls that she “was invited to attend the conference of mathematics teachers in Kerala,” adding that, “To reach Kerala, I overnighted in Mumbai to change planes. In Mumbai, I saw many families living on the sidewalk, with at most a lean-to over their heads. It was a school day, but school-age children were on the sidewalk, with their families … In my two weeks in Kerala, I walked and rode all around the streets of the Kerala capital city of Thiruvananthapuram and never saw anyone living on the streets. In answer to my question my hosts said, ‘You don’t see any homeless because we had a land reform in Kerala. Everybody owns a piece of land, no matter how small.’”

This article first appeared on MR Online.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

Essential Workers Take the Risk, CEO’s Reap the Rewards

BY SAM PIZZIGATI

 JANUARY 29, 2021

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Every week, millions of us walk into a Walgreens drugstore without giving it a second thought.

Maybe we should. Walgreens perfectly encapsulates the long-term economic trends of the Trump years: top corporate executives pocketing immense paychecks at the expense of their workers.

At Walgreens, workers start at just $10 an hour. No chain store empire employing essential workers pays less.

And no retail giant in the United States has given its workers less of a pandemic hazard pay bump — just 18 cents an hour, according to Brookings analysts Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler.

These paltry numbers look even worse when we turn our attention to the power suits who run Walgreens, who face no pandemic hazard. Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina took home $17 million last year. Altogether, the five top Walgreens execs averaged $11 million for the year, a 9 percent hike over the previous year’s annual average.

Meanwhile, the typical Walgreens employee pulled down a mere $33,396. Pessina’s take-home outpaced that meager reward by 524 times. In effect, Pessina made more in a single weekday morning than his company’s typical worker made for an entire year.

Kinder and Stateler found similar levels of greed at other U.S. retail giants, especially Amazon and Walmart. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the heirs to the Walmart fortune, they note, “have grown $116 billion richer during the pandemic — 35 times the total hazard pay given to more than 2.5 million Amazon and Walmart workers.”

Amazon and Walmart, they add, “could have quadrupled the extra COVID-19 compensation they gave to their workers” and still earned more profit than the previous year.

Not every major corporate player has treated the pandemic as just another easy greed-grab. Workers at Costco — who start at $15 an hour, $5 an hour more than workers at Walgreens — got an extra $2 an hour in hazard pay.

Costco’s top executive team, interestingly, last year collected less than half the pay that went to their counterparts at Walgreens. Costco’s most typical workers took home $47,312 for the year. At 169 to one, that’s less than one-third the pay gap between Walgreen’s chief exec and his company’s most typical workers.

As a society, which corporations should we be rewarding — those whose executives enrich themselves at worker expense, or those that value the contributions all their employees are making?

In moments of past national crises, like World War II, lawmakers took action to prevent corporate profiteering. They put in place stiff excess profits taxes. We could act in that same spirit today. We could, for instance, raise the tax rate on companies that pay their top execs unconscionably more than their workers.

We could also start linking government contracts to corporate pay scales: no tax dollars to any corporations that pay their CEOs over a certain multiple of what their workers take home.

Efforts to link taxes and contracts to corporate pay ratios have already begun.

Voters in San Francisco this past November opted to levy a tax penalty on corporations with top executives making over 100 times typical San Francisco worker pay. Portland, Oregon took a similar step in 2018. At the national level, progressive lawmakers have introduced comparable legislation.

Donald Trump may be gone, but the executives who did so well throughout his tenure remain in place. We need to change the rules that flatter their fortunes.

Sam Pizzigati writes on inequality for the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest book: The Case for a Maximum Wage (Polity). Among his other books on maldistributed income and wealth: The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970  (Seven Stories Press). 

The U.S. Economy Excels at One Thing: 

Producing Massive Inequality

BY RICHARD D. WOLFF

JANUARY 29, 2021

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

To grasp the sheer magnitude of U.S. economic inequality in recent years, consider its two major stock market indices: the Standard and Poor (S&P) 500 and Nasdaq. Over the last 10 years, the values of shares listed on them grew spectacularly. The S&P 500 went from roughly 1,300 points to over 3,800 points, almost tripling. The Nasdaq index over the same period went from 2,800 points to 13,000 points, more than quadrupling. Times were good for the 10 percent of Americans who own 80 percent of stocks and bonds. In contrast, the real median weekly wage rose barely over 10 percent across the same 10-year period. The real federal minimum wage fell as inflation diminished its nominal $7.25 per hour, officially fixed and kept at that rate since 2009.

All the other relevant metrics likewise show that economic inequality in the United States kept worsening across the last half-century. This happened despite “concerns” about inequality expressed publicly across the years by many establishment politicians (including some in the new Biden administration), journalists, and academics. Inequality worsened through the capitalist downturns after 1970 and likewise through the three capitalist crashes of this century (2000, 2008, and 2020). Nor did the deadly pandemic provoke soul-searching or policies adequate to stop, let alone reverse, the ongoing redistribution of income and wealth upward.

No advanced economics is required to grasp that divisions, bitterness, resentment, and anger flow from such a persistently widening gap between haves and have-nots. Among millions who search for explanations, many become prey for those mobilizing against scapegoats. White supremacists blame Black and Brown people. Nativists (calling themselves “patriots” or “nationalists”) point to immigrants and foreign trade partners. Fundamentalists blame those less zealous and especially the non-religious. Fascists try to combine those movements with economically threatened small-business owners, jobless workers, and alienated social outcasts to form a powerful political coalition. The fascists made good use of Trump to assist their efforts.

U.S. history adds a special sharpness to the search for explanations. The dominant argument for capitalism in the 20th century after the 1930s Great Depression was that it “produced a great middle class.” Real U.S. wages had risen even during the Depression. They were generally higher than elsewhere across the globe, and especially in comparison with those in the USSR. High wages showed the superiority of U.S. capitalism according to the system’s apologists in politics, journalism, and academia. Demolition of that middle class at the end of the 20th and into the new century pained especially those who had bought the apologies.

And indeed, the Great Depression and its aftermath had lessened inequality significantly, enabling such a defense of capitalism to have some semblance of validity. However, for that defense to be persuasive required two key facts to be forgotten or hidden. The first is that the U.S. working class fought harder for major economic gains in the 1930s than at any other time in U.S. history. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) then organized millions into labor unions utilizing militants from two socialist parties and a communist party. Those parties were then achieving their largest-ever numerical strengths and social influences. That is how and why together the unions and the parties won the establishment of Social Security, federal unemployment compensation, a minimum wage, and a huge federal jobs program: all firsts in U.S. history. The second fact is that capitalists in the 1930s and afterward fought harder than ever against each and every working-class advance. The “middle-class” status achieved by a large portion of the working class (by no means all and especially not minorities) happened despite not because of capitalism and capitalists. But it was certainly clever propaganda for capitalism to claim credit for working-class gains that capitalists tried but failed to block.

The reduction of U.S. economic inequality accomplished then proved temporary. It was undone after 1945. Particularly after 1970, capitalism’s normal trajectory of deepening economic inequality resumed through to the present moment. Simply put, capitalism’s basic structure of production—how it organizes its enterprises—positioned capitalists to reverse the New Deal’s reduction of economic inequality. Much of the temporary U.S. middle class is now gone; the rest is fading fast. Over the last half-century, U.S. capitalism brought inequality to the extremes surrounding us now. No wonder a population once persuaded to support capitalism because it fostered a middle class now finds reasons to question it.

In capitalist enterprises, tiny minorities of the persons involved occupy positions of leadership, command, and control. The owner, the owner’s family, the board of directors, or the major shareholders comprise such minorities: the class of employers. Opposite them are the vast majorities: the class of employees. The employer class determines, exclusively, what the enterprise produces, what technology it uses, where production occurs, and what is done with its net revenue. The employee class must live with the consequences of employers’ decisions from which it is excluded. The employer class uses its position atop the enterprise to distribute its profits partly to enrich itself (via dividends and top executive pay packages). It uses some of its profits to buy and control politics. The goal there is to prevent universal suffrage from moving the economic system beyond capitalism and the economic inequality it reproduces.

Deepening U.S. inequality flows directly from this capitalist organization of production—its class system. Occasionally, under exceptional circumstances, rebellious social movements win reversals of that inequality. However, if such movements do not change the capitalist organization of production, capitalists will render such reversals temporary. To solve the extreme inequality of U.S. capitalism requires systemic change, an end to capitalism’s specific class structure pitting employers against employees. If production were organized instead in enterprises (factories, offices, stores) that were democratized—one worker, one vote—as worker cooperatives, economic inequality could and would be drastically reduced. Democratic decisions over the distribution of individual incomes across all the participants in an enterprise would far less likely give a small minority vast wealth at the expense of the vast majority. The same logic that dispensed with kings in politics applies to employers in capitalism’s enterprises.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work.

How international media covered Delhi’s farmers protest violence

While one protestor was killed during the violence, as many as 80 Delhi police personnel were injured during the clashes between police and protesting farmers.

By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Updated: January 26, 2021 

Protestors clash with police personnel at ITO, New Delhi. 

(Express photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

Chaotic scenes unfolded in the national capital on Republic Day after protesting farmers clashed with the police, broke barricades and stormed the Red Fort. After violence erupted in several areas of New Delhi, hundreds of protesters were seen chasing police personnel with sticks and ramming their tractors into the buses parked by police.

After deviating from the pre-decided route for a tractor rally, a group of protesting farmers breached barricades and entered the Red Fort. In unprecedented scenes, protesters entered the complex of the Mughal-era monument and attempted to climb the domes and the ramparts, some clambering up the flagpole to hoist a flag from the same place the prime minister unfurls the tricolour from on Independence Day. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha has dissociated itself from ‘the violent elements’.

While one protestor was killed during the violence, as many as 80 Delhi police personnel were injured. Internet was also shut down in parts of Delhi and neighbouring areas.

Here is how the international media covered the farmers’ protest
The New York Times

The New York Times said that the events in New Delhi “prompted the police to fire tear gas” and threw into chaos an event that posed “a direct challenge” to the central government.



“It was unclear whether the security forces, or the farm leaders who appeared to have lost control, could push the protesters out of the city and back to the campsites they have occupied for the past two months at the capital’s borders,” an article said.
PHOTOS |Chaos, clashes at farmers’ protest: 16 photos that capture what happened

It also spoke about the Republic Day parade, which was held just hours before violence broke out saying, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi oversaw a lavish military parade, and news channels showed surreal scenes of Mr. Modi saluting officers as chaos broke out in several parts of the city just a few miles away.”

Further talking about the events that unfolded in the capital, the article said: “The demonstration, after the central government failed in its frantic efforts to prevent the tractor march, illustrated how deeply the deadlock with the farmers has embarrassed Mr. Modi. Although he has emerged as India’s most dominant figure after crushing his political opposition, the farmers have been persistent.”
BBC

In a news report, the BBC reported the incident saying that farmers at several entry points appeared to have followed the agreed routes, however, a section of protesters broke through police barricades and entered the capital.



“Images from the ITO metro station junction – which is on the route to central Delhi – showed police clashing with protesting farmers and using tear gas and batons against them. Protesters driving tractors appeared to be deliberately trying to run over police personnel. Local media reported injuries on both sides,” the report read.

Citing its India correspondents, the BBC said protesters outnumbered the police at the ITO junction, leaving them struggling to control the crowd.
Read |What it looked like at Delhi’s Red Fort today

“Mr Modi and cabinet ministers watched the official parade on Tuesday morning, but did not encounter any protesters. They were driven back to their residences before the farmers reached central Delhi,” it said.
The Guardian

The Guardian, too, said that Tuesday’s “chaotic and violent” scenes overshadowed the country’s Republic Day celebrations.



“Some protesters reached a junction about two miles from where the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and other government leaders watched tanks and troops parade past and fighter jets fly overhead,” it said in a report.

Further remarking over the farmers’ protest in the national capital, The Guardian wrote: “For more than two months, tens of thousands of farmers have been stationed in a huge protest camp around the peripheries of Delhi to demonstrate their fierce opposition to a series of new farm laws, which they say will destroy their livelihoods, offer no protection for crop prices and leave them at greater risk of losing their land.”

“Agriculture employs more than 40% of India’s population but it is a sector plagued by poverty and inefficiency, with farmers often selling their crops for one rupee,” it added.

Leeds scientists have found that 28 trillion tonnes of ice were lost between 1994 and 2017 - the equivalent to a sheet of ice 100 metres thick covering the UK.

By Rebecca Marano
Tuesday, 26th January 2021

The terrifying findings show that the rate in which ice is disappearing has increased massively in the past three decades.

In the 1990s, ice melted at a rate of 0.8 trillion tonnes a year, while it is now 1.3 trillion tonnes per year, and things are getting worse.

Ice melt across the globe raises sea levels, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities, and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which wildlife depend on.


Despite storing only one per cent of the Earth's total ice volume, glaciers have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period, with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.

The team led by researchers at the University of Leeds were the first team to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

There has been a 65 per cent increase in the rate of ice loss over the 23-year survey. This has been mainly driven by steep rises in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Dr Thomas Slater, a Research Fellow at Leeds' Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling , said: "Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.

"The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The team led by researchers at the University of Leeds were the first team to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

"Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century."

Dr Slater said the study was the first of its kind to examine all the ice that is disappearing on Earth, using satellite observations .

He added: "Over the past three decades there's been a huge international effort to understand what's happening to individual components in Earth's ice system, revolutionised by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found.

"Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet."

The increase in ice loss has been triggered by warming of the atmosphere and oceans, which have warmed by 0.26°C and 0.12°C per decade since the 1980, respectively.

The majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting (68 %), with the remaining losses (32%) being driven by oceanic melting.

The survey covers 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.

Dr Isobel Lawrence, a Research Fellow at Leeds' Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: "Sea ice loss doesn't contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence.

"One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool.

"As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.

"Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it's also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise."

It is estimated that for every centimetre of sea level rise, approximately a million people are in danger of being displaced from low-lying homelands.

Despite storing only one per cent of the Earth's total ice volume, glaciers have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period, with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.

PhD researcher Inès Otosaka, also from Leeds' Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: "As well as contributing to global mean sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as a freshwater resource for local communities.

"The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of crucial importance at both local and global scales."

The study was published in European Geosciences Union's journal The Cryosphere.

 

New solar power global opportunity for the UK

Charlie McCarthy27 January 2021

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsp

Researchers at Oxford University department of physics have developed a new world-beating solar panel using the semiconductor perovskite. Perovskite is a semiconductor that can transport electric charge when light strikes the material. Oxford PV, an Oxford University spin-off, has spent more than a decade working on improving the efficiency of solar technology.

Currently solar cells convert 15–20 percent of incoming solar energy to electricity. Oxford PV’s perovskite solar cell is described as being “20 percent more efficient than standard solar cells”. This improvement could transform solar power, reducing the payback time, and make solar energy more attractive as an essential part of the UK’s energy mix.

Renewable energy generates electricity without harmful waste gases that cause global heating, which makes it hugely important as we seek to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports there has been a 7.4 percent growth in renewable energy capacity in 2019, to 2,537 GW of electricity generated. Some 54 percent of the new renewable capacity was installed in Asia in 2019. However, since fossil fuels still provide over 80 percent of world energy, anything that can be done to boost further growth in renewables is obviously to be welcomed.

Perovskite solar technology is a new research field, which has only emerged in the last decade. Claims for the panels due on the market in late 2021, are extremely encouraging. These include a 20 percent improved efficiency rate over conventional solar panels, utilisation of the blue as well as the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum, bringing a double whammy of advantages in the form of cheaper electricity bills and a reduction in their carbon footprints. The electromagnetic spectrum is the term used by scientists to describe the entire range of light that exists. From radio waves to gamma rays, most of the light in the universe is, in fact, invisible to us.

Solar energy is a renewable energy source: there are no waste products, and it does not contribute to climate change. Oxford PV’s ultra-efficient perovskite will be incorporated into solar panels for installation on residential roofs. These new panels will be available for installation from 2022 in the UK and Europe.

Oxford PV’s chief executive, Frank Averdung, describes the breakthrough as:

“Achieving another world record is a fantastic milestone for our perovskite based solar cell, as it demonstrates that we are one step closer to the provision of highly powerful and lower cost solar energy.”

Averdung believes that perovskite technology will enable solar power to dominate the solar generated electricity market:

“Conventional silicon cells have reached their practical limit. The combination of a silicon cell and perovskite is the only way to drive fast adoption of solar PV in the world.”

Making solar energy more efficient will have a dramatic impact on the amount of renewable energy generated in the UK. Currently, solar power contributes just 0.6 percent of the UK’s electricity consumption over the period 2000–2019 according to government figures. A 1 percent efficiency improvement in the current installed UK base of solar power could provide the electricity needs of 150,000 homes.

Innovations such as this show how, globally, UK science punches above its weight. Our national record is good. In a wide-ranging article which examined our scientific research-to-innovation performance in detail, David Gann and Nick Jennings of the Guardian found that:

“In fact, if we adjust for the size of our economies, the UK now exceeds the United States in numbers of spinouts formed, disclosures of discoveries, patents and licences. In emerging fields such as low-carbon, the UK is forming twice as many spinouts per trillion dollars of GDP as the US. Employment growth by digital technology companies in the UK is five times faster than for the rest of the economy.”

They go on in their article to point out that in terms of invention, disclosures per £100m the UK (74) outperforms the US (58). Some 98 Britons are now on the list of Nobel Prize winners, a tally second only to the (much larger) USA; so it appears that in terms of scientific ideas, we are at the forefront. However, when it comes to what we do with them, that is where, traditionally, we have not been as successful as we might have been.

British universities are very aware of this poor record and many now have enterprise companies closely linked to their research interests, with senior staff bridging the gap with roles in both camps. This is a step forward and major commercial success is anticipated to follow on the back of this approach. What we now need is a pool of commercial leaders who have experience in leading the commercial scaling up of new science start-ups to enable them to achieve their potential under, hopefully, British ownership.

Deepmind is a good example of a successful AI company that was founded in London by a group of classmates and who are now world leaders in the field of AI innovation, and part of the Google group since 2014.  

The perovskite solar cell development gives us an ideal opportunity to show a watching world that we can take good science, understand implicitly how it has the potential to change the world for the better, scale it up to a world leading manufacturing business and still keep it under British control. Such an outcome would mark progress in our attempt to marry our science and industry sectors to create a billion-pound industry on the back of British science. It would herald a new age of what Prime Minister Johnson hopes will be ‘Global Britain.’  

The international market (China, India, USA, Africa, Europe) is potentially huge. Domestically, Oxford PV has provided a research idea that can help the government to hit its low carbon, sustainability target, which, as stated by Boris Johnson in anticipation of the Cop26 climate change summit in November is “to cut emissions (of greenhouse gases) by at least 68 percent by 2030 and to end the support for the fossil fuel sector overseas as soon as possible”.

Oxford PV have, to use cricketing terms, hit the ball up in the air. It should be an easy catch for a cricket-loving PM.

Let’s hope he doesn’t fluff it.

UN Forest Project ‘Does More Harm Than Good’

A UN forest project is fuelling conflict over land, threatening local people and failing to slow deforestation, researchers say.

January 27, 2021 by Climate News Network


By Alex Kirby

The harm a UN forest project in Africa is doing to local people is greater than the good it is managing to achieve for them, researchers say.

They say they have found significant flaws in conservation projects in a densely-forested region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a decision on future investment by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) is imminent.

The DRC province of Mai-Ndombe, with an estimated 73,000 indigenous people, has 10 million hectares of forest and the world’s largest wetland of international importance. It is a testing ground for international climate schemes designed to halt forest destruction, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reward indigenous and other local people who care for the forests.

But a study by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), which works to support community land rights, says the UN’s global forest conservation scheme, REDD+, risks harming its intended beneficiaries in Mai-Ndombe, while failing to stop deforestation.

‘Terrible precedent’

“Our findings show that the DRC is not yet ready for REDD+ investment”, said Andy White, RRI’s coordinator. “The evidence from other countries shows that REDD+ and similar payment schemes will work only if governments recognise and support community land rights.”

The study’s authors say there is weak recognition of community land rights in the province, as well as corruption and poor governance, and that channelling more investment into the area for REDD+ programmes would only worsen conflict while failing to protect the forests.

The countries funding the FCPF are due to decide within the next year on an agreement that would add millions of dollars to REDD+ programmes in the DRC, which contains the larger part of the world’s second biggest tropical rainforest.

“If the programme in Mai-Ndombe is approved without ensuring that local peoples’ rights are respected, it would set a terrible precedent for REDD+ and make a bad situation worse”, said Alain Frechette, researcher and director of strategic analysis at RRI.

Wrong recipients

“Strong indigenous and community land rights and a clear understanding of who owns forest carbon are vital prerequisites for climate finance to succeed.”

The report says some projects already under way have not adequately included communities in their governance or made plans to benefit forest peoples.

Instead, it says, the lack of legal safeguards and accountability in the current system could channel benefits from REDD+ to the private sector and to others with little incentive to champion forests or local peoples.

A second paper by RRI analyses the legal systems of 24 of the 50 developing countries preparing to participate in the global carbon market, and says only five have established national legal frameworks to regulate their trade in carbon.

“To succeed, the projects must include the communities that have managed these forests for generations”

So far, none of the 24 has set up a system for sharing the benefits earned on the carbon market with local forest communities, despite evidence that they are the forests’ best guardians

Alain Frechette said it was crucial to protect and enforce forest peoples’ rights, to avoid the risk of displacing thousands of people and fuelling the violence and deforestation usually associated with the expansion of agro-industry and mining.

The Mai-Ndombe study is the first to analyse the 20 climate finance projects planned or under way in the province. Chouchouna Losale, of the Coalition of Women for the Environment and Sustainable Development in DRC, said: “These projects were developed in Kinshasa before being shared with communities. To succeed, the projects must include the communities that have managed these forests for generations.”

No meeting

Despite plans that include transforming former logging zones into conservation areas and paying local people to plant acacia trees on degraded savannah, the DRC projects currently under way suffer from conflict and mismanagement, the report says, blaming weak public governance and inadequate adherence to international standards. The national REDD+ steering committee has not met since it was formed in 2012.

“The people of Mai-Ndombe – whose median income is only US$0.24 per day [for each member of an average-sized family of five] – are largely to thank for keeping the world’s second largest tropical forest intact. But their success has made the province a magnet for carbon profiteers as well as timber and oil companies”, said Solange Bandiaky-Badji of RRI.

Mai-Ndombe, in the west of the DRC, became a province in 2015, a year after the implementation of the country’s Forest Code. The Code recognises the legal right of indigenous peoples and local communities to ownership of forest areas of up to 50,000 hectares. In Mai-Ndombe the Mushie and Bolobo communities have asked for formal title to 65,308 hectares of land, but only 3,900 hectares have been legally recognised.

Massive contribution

Scientists estimate that, globally, forests and other “natural climate solutions” could by 2030 contribute about one third of what is needed to keep the global temperature increase below 2°C – the more modest of the two targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Increasingly, forests and the people who live in them are being recognised as vital to addressing climate change, as scientists continue to report a dearth of affordable carbon capture technologies that can safely be scaled up.

“In the DRC and worldwide, conflicts over agriculture, logging, livestock, mining and conservation are mounting”, says RRI’s Andy White. “Instead of empowering indigenous peoples, communities, and women in the forest communities, the REDD+ programmes in Mai-Ndombe are not adequately respecting the rights of local peoples and are failing to protect forests.”

“But all is not lost. It is not too late. Recognising community land rights and engaging local communities would ensure that this grand experiment under way in the world’s remote rainforests can succeed, unlocking all of the benefits that come with strong forests and forest protectors.” – Climate News Network

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This post was previously published on Climatenewsnetwork.net with Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Why Are Farmers Protesting in India?

Thousands of protesters, many driving tractors, took to the streets of New Delhi on Tuesday. Who are they, and what do they want?


Indian farmers taking part in a tractor rally in New Delhi on Tuesday against the central government’s new agricultural laws.

Credit...Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images



By Mujib Mashal, Emily Schmall and Russell Goldman
Jan. 27, 2021 NEW YORK TIMES


At least one protester was killed and 300 police officers were injured after tens of thousands of farmers, many driving tractors, took to the streets of New Delhi on Tuesday to call for the repeal of contentious new agriculture laws.

After months of sustained but peaceful demonstrations on the city’s outskirts, the farmers upstaged the city’s national Republic Day holiday, clashing with the police, destroying barricades and storming the Red Fort, a 400-year-old landmark. In addition to the police officers, many protesters were injured as well.

On Wednesday, the day after the chaos, the farmers returned to their camps on the city’s edge, pledging to continue their movement but canceling plans for a march on foot to India’s Parliament that had been set for Monday.


Protesting farmers have camped outside New Delhi since November.

Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Who are the protesters?

Many of the protesting farmers are members of the Sikh religious minority and come from the states of Punjab and Haryana. Farmers in other parts of the country have held rallies in solidarity.

Since November, thousands of farmers have encamped outside New Delhi, the capital, keeping vigil in sprawling tent cities and threatening to enter if the farm laws were not repealed.

The protest has laid bare the dire reality of inequality across much of the country.

More than 60 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, though the sector accounts for only about 15 percent of the country’s economic output. Their reliance has only increased after the coronavirus pandemic badly struck the urban economy and sent millions of laborers back to their villages. For years, debts and bankruptcies have been driving farmers to high rates of suicide.



The grain market in the Indian city of Khanna, the largest in Asia, last year.

Credit...Karan Deep Singh/The New York Times

What do they want?

The protesters are challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his efforts to reshape farming in India.

The demonstrators are demanding that Mr. Modi repeal recent farming laws that would minimize the government’s role in agriculture and open more space for private investors. The government says the new laws would unshackle farmers and private investment, bringing growth. But farmers are skeptical, fearing that the removal of state protections that they already consider insufficient would leave them at the mercy of greedy corporations.

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Government support for farmers, which included guaranteed minimum prices for certain essential crops, helped India move past the hunger crisis of the 1960s. But with India liberalizing its economy in recent decades, Mr. Modi — who wants the country’s economy to nearly double by 2024 — sees such a large role for the government as no longer sustainable.

Farmers, however, contend that they are struggling even with the existing protections. They say that market-friendly laws will eventually eliminate regulatory support and leave them bereft, with the weakened economy offering little chance of a different livelihood.

Farmers trying to dismantle barricades during the Republic Day protest on Tuesday

.Credit...Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

How did the violence erupt?

Thousands of protesting farmers poured into New Delhi on Tuesday in what had been expected to be a peaceful protest during holiday celebrations and a military parade overseen by the prime minister.

Some farmers broke with the main march and used tractors to dismantle police barricades. Many farmers carried long swords, tridents, sharp daggers and battle axes — functional if largely ceremonial weapons. Most protesters did not seem to be wearing masks despite the Covid-19 outbreak in India.

Police commanders deployed officers carrying assault rifles. They stood in the middle of main roads, tear gas swirling around them with their rifles aimed at the crowds. In some areas, video footage showed, the police beat protesters with their batons to push them back.


The farmers claim the violence was stoked by the government and outside elements in an effort to derail their months of peaceful protest.

The farmers waved flags and taunted officers. They also breached the Red Fort, the iconic palace that once served as the residence of the Mughal rulers of India, and hoisted atop the ramparts a flag that is often flown on Sikh temples.

Local television channels showed farmers placing the body of a protester in the middle of a road. They claimed the man had been shot, but the police said he had died when his tractor overturned.

The Indian government temporarily suspended internet services across the areas that have been hubs of protest for months, an official at the Home Affairs Ministry confirmed.



A farmer inside a tractor trolley amid the march into the capital on Tuesday.

Credit...Altaf Qadri/Associated Press

BEHIND PAYWALL
Indian Farmers’ Protest

As Angry Farmers Take to New Delhi’s Streets, Protests Turn Violent
Jan. 25, 2021

In the Cold and Rain, India’s Farmers Press Their Stand Against Modi
Jan. 9, 2021

Indian Farmers’ Protests Spread, in Challenge to Modi
Dec. 4, 2020

Angry Farmers Choke India’s Capital in Giant Demonstrations
Nov. 30, 2020

Mujib Mashal is The New York Times correspondent for South Asia. Born in Kabul, he wrote for magazines such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time and others before joining The Times. @MujMash

Emily Schmall is a South Asia correspondent based in New Delhi. @emilyschmall

Russell Goldman is a senior editor on the International Desk of The New York Times, focusing on digital storytelling and breaking news and based in Hong Kong. He is a winner of the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Excellence. @goldmanrussell

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 28, 2021, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Laying Bare The History Of Inequality Across India.