GLOBALIZATION IS OUTSOURCING


Bangladesh draws smartphone assembly as brands eye growing market

Nokia, Samsung and Chinese makers including Vivo enticed by government incentives

Dhaka shops selling smartphones from Oppo and Vivo, two Chinese companies that are among the global manufacturers producing the devices in Bangladesh. (Photo by Syful Islam)

SYFUL ISLAM, 

Contributing writer

NIKKEI ASIA

June 30, 2021 


DHAKA -- International mobile phone brands Nokia, Samsung, Vivo and others are increasingly choosing to set up manufacturing ventures in Bangladesh to avoid the South Asian country's high import tariffs and get direct access to its large and growing population.

Bangladesh, once a perennial bottom-dweller in global league tables, has drawn increasing attention in recent years as its economy racks up high growth rates and consumer spending power in the country of 163 million people expands.

It has also taken steps to attract foreign investment and increase local production and consumption through its "Made in Bangladesh" program, nudging phone brands to enter the country by raising tariffs on imported handsets, collecting lower duties on component imports and exempting consumer purchases from the country's value-added tax.

Finland's Nokia is just the latest manufacturer to make the move, following on the heels of South Korea's Samsung as well as China's Oppo, Vivo, Transsion and Realme to adopt a strategy previously reserved for bigger markets like India and Brazil. Bangladeshi officials say other Chinese brands are expected to follow suit.

Thanks to an effective price gap of 15-26% between imported and locally assembled smartphones, domestic production has climbed, now accounting for nearly 80% of sales.

Noting the new predominance of local phones, Finance Minister A.H.M. Mustafa Kamal this month proposed extending the VAT exemption another two years. Another measure, set to come into effect on July 1, will block buyers of smuggled phones from registering their devices on local networks.

"That will shut [down the] illegal import of handsets into Bangladesh, and local manufactures will get encouraged, as their market shares will go up," Shahidul Alam, director general of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, told Nikkei Asia.

Bangladesh's economy has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years. © AP

Local manufacturing of phones only began in October 2017 when local electronics maker Walton started production under its own brand in a Dhaka suburb. It has since made 1.7 million smartphones and 4.3 million older-style feature phones.

A number of other companies now making smartphones in Bangladesh are local ventures, often arms of large conglomerates. But Vivo and Realme, both under the umbrella of China's BBK Electronics, and compatriot Transsion have set up their own factories in the country.

Tanzib Ahamed, brand manager at Vivo Bangladesh, said it had won "sizable" market share since launching its local plant in 2019 by making "global technology much more affordable for local consumers."

Citing data from research company Canalys, a local spokesman for Realme said his company is now one of Bangladesh's top three smartphone brands, with a 14% share.

"It is now possible to offer our products at a much more competitive price to the smartphone users," he said, adding that the company's factory in the city of Gazipur now has 600 employees. "We are registering phenomenal growth in Bangladesh."

Rezwanul Hoque, chief executive of Transsion's local unit, said he expects to be able to price phones even lower in the future as local factories start production of motherboards, batteries, chargers and other components.

Consumers welcome the trend.

"We are now using 'Made in Bangladesh' handsets. We are proud of it," said Atiqur Rahman, a private banker, who added that smartphone prices should go down further so that those with lower incomes also can buy high quality handsets.

The rush to produce phones in Bangladesh comes as its economy has been growing steadily. Before the pandemic, gross domestic product grew by over 7% annually for several years, and in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020, GDP expanded 5.2%, according to the finance minister. Though lower than before, it was the strongest in Asia, he said.

Bangladeshis seen outside the Bashundhara City Shopping Complex in Dhaka on Oct. 2, 2020. Producing smartphones in the country makes them more affordable to consumers. © EPA/Jiji

The country has $45 billion in foreign exchange reserves, enough to cover six months of imports, and last fiscal year received over $21 billion in remittances from citizens working abroad, a figure the finance minister expects to reach $25 billion by the end of June. The country has also racked up merchandise exports of nearly $40 billion a year.

Bangladesh's 175.27 million active mobile phone accounts at the end of May -- well within the top 10 in Asia in size -- means the country is a key attraction for brands, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

Union Group, the local conglomerate that will make Nokia phones under contract with Espoo, Finland-based brand owner HMD Global, aims to soon start producing 500,000 handsets a month, according to Mohammed Asif Alamgir, business controller of the group's mobile division.

"Nokia is a very old and trusted brand compared to Chinese makers," he said. "None will be able to match ... Nokia's brand acceptance."

Takayuki Omino, spokesman for HMD Global, said, "Consumers will be able to buy their [be]loved brand Nokia handsets at an affordable price."

An official at the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology said Xiaomi and Motorola, which is now part of China's Lenovo, are also working on plans for local production. However, Lenovo spokeswoman Genevieve Hilton denied that, while Xiaomi did not respond to queries.

Beyond the domestic market, the country's phone makers are starting to consider exporting. Walton has begun assembling phones for a foreign brand for export, with the first shipment dispatched to the U.S. in March, according to Uday Hakim, executive director at Walton Hi-Tech Industries. Walton also exported handsets under its own brand to Nepal, he said, though shipments are now suspended due to the pandemic.

Fair Group, the local conglomerate that assembles Samsung phones, also has its eye on foreign markets.

"We are expecting to start handset exports from Bangladesh by 2023 or 2024," said Chief Marketing Officer Mohammed Mesbah Uddin.

"Almost all the global brands either have received permission or [are] under process to set up factories here," he said, estimating that once that happens, 95% of smartphones for the domestic market will be produced locally.

Edison Group, another local conglomerate, makes phones under its own Symphony brand.

"We aim to turn Bangladesh into a regional hub for mobile handset production," Managing Director Jakaria Shahid told Nikkei, forecasting that exports by the industry will start to take off next year.

Bangladesh draws smartphone assembly as brands eye growing market - Nikkei Asia

Japan faces heat over Bangladesh’s coal power

Funding commitment for Matarbari scheme sits awkwardly with carbon pledges

Some 4,000km from Japan, on a verdant, mangrove-lined island in south-eastern Bangladesh, sits one of the biggest and most controversial tests of Tokyo’s commitment to help phase out fossil fuels.

Thanks to low-interest loans from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Bangladesh is currently building the Matarbari coal plant: a power complex set to be completed by 2024. And JICA, a government body, has been considering funding an expansion to the 10-year-old project, known as Matarbari Phase 2 — despite, earlier this year, saying it would work with Bangladesh “to promote a low- or zero-carbon transformation” of its energy economy.

This debate around the Matarbari plant embodies the tensions in Japan’s fossil-fuel policies. Its financing of coal power in developing countries risks falling out of step with moves to promote renewable energy at home and abroad.

In Bangladesh — a low-lying country highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and erratic rainfall — the government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina has been backing coal to meet energy needs.

However, official enthusiasm for mega-projects such as Matarbari is waning as renewable alternatives become cheaper. Hasina’s government last month scrapped 10 of the coal-power plants it had planned. While the mooted Matarbari Phase 2 project was not officially among them, analysts say it is looking less and less viable.

One activist says Japan is ‘making money transferring pollution to other countries’

“Now, [Bangladesh’s] focus is more pro-renewables, and [it] seems to be turning away from coal,” says Simon Nicholas, an analyst with US think-tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). “That’s more economics than anything else.” Bangladesh says it wants to generate 40 per cent of its power from renewable energy within 20 years.

Yesterday’s policy

Japan has long invested in Bangladeshi infrastructure, a partnership that stems back nearly as far as the South Asian nation’s independence 50 years ago. But JICA’s support for the Matarbari units has faced severe censure.

“Japan has no right to invest in coal in other countries — they have a responsibility to ensure zero emissions,” argues Hasan Mehedi, an activist with the Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt, which opposes the project. Japan is “making money . . . transferring pollution to other countries so that they can phase themselves clean,” Mehedi says.

Within Japan, too, there is belated recognition that its support for overseas coal plants has become anachronistic.

Until recently, its suppliers of coal-fired boilers and turbines were regarded as the kind of strategic national industry the country had a duty to support. Now, it has realised that there is little future in coal. That prompted a big shift in policy last year, when Japan adopted a presumption against new coal projects overseas. Banks began to question whether coal financing was worth the international opprobrium. 

“There are very few possibilities for Japanese industry to export coal power plants,” says University of Tokyo professor Yukari Takamura, who was part of a government expert panel on the topic. She adds that “almost all Japanese banks have now said they will not finance new coal plants overseas.”

While there is some ambiguity about official Japanese policy — there is still no clear ban on coal projects overseas — the government made its strongest commitment yet at last month’s G7 summit in the UK: agreeing to halt all new direct government support for unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021 (that is, plants that do not capture the carbon dioxide they produce).

That has left a few pipeline projects, including Matarbari Phase 2, in a no man’s land. They now run against official policy, but commitments were made. JICA says that preparatory surveys are continuing.

Who benefits?

Local attitudes towards the Matarbari project, about 40 miles from Bangladesh’s second-largest city Chattogram, are polarised.

Supporters have touted its job-creating potential, but critics accuse it of displacing residents and polluting the adjacent Kohelia river. Sharif Jamil, of environmental group Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon, says locals complain that construction contractors are bringing in workers from outside areas. They had hoped “the area will be developed like Singapore,” he says. “But now the myth has gone.”

IEEFA’s Nicholas argues that such projects will exacerbate Bangladesh’s power overcapacity, with utilisation of the power system currently around 40 per cent. He thinks the country should instead upgrad

e its grid to make better use of its existing electricity supply and to meet its renewable energy targets.

“Until recently, Bangladesh was expected to be one of the key growth markets for seaborne thermal coal,” he says. “The potential growth markets around Asia — that were supposed to replace Japan, South Korea and China as they shift away from thermal coal imports — increasingly look like they will disappoint the coal industry.”

Additional reporting by Robin Harding

https://www.ft.com/content/0428b4b5-b3c9-4ce9-a207-c88445216a19

Bangladesh's 'banker to the poor' Yunus awarded prestigious Olympic Laurel

Xinhua/Tokyo
Filed on July 23, 2021

(Twitter)
The 81-year-old Nobel laureate accepts award via video link from his home in Dhaka.

Bangladeshi 'banker to the poor' Muhammad Yunus has written the name of his country into Olympic history, as he was awarded the Olympic Laurel at the opening ceremony of Tokyo Olympics on Friday night.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Yunus will become the second recipient of the laurel, which was introduced in 2016 to honor people who have "made significant achievements in education, culture, development and peace through sport."

A banker by trade, Yunus, has dedicated his life to fighting poverty around the world through establishing the Grameen Bank - a community development bank that makes small loans to impoverished people without requiring collateral. His work has therefore earned him the nickname of the "world's banker to the poor."

He was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

The 81-year-old man accepted the award by video link from his home in Dhaka and said it represented a significant moment for Bangladesh's Olympic history.

In addition to his work with the impoverished, Yunus has also collaborated with the IOC on a Young Leaders Programme for athletes.

IOC President Thomas Bach spoke highly of Yunus for his "extensive work" helping athletes "become socially responsible entrepreneurs" and for his work building a new sustainable Olympic model.

Born in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh in 1940, Yunus was educated at the Chittagong College and the Department of Economics at Dhaka University.

After spending 13 years lecturing at various institutions and working on his PhD in economics, Yunus in 1974 became involved in reducing poverty, championing microcredit small loans with small interest rates for poor people.

In 1983 his pilot microfinance program had 28,000 members and became the Grameen - or village - Bank.

By 2007 the bank had issued loans worth 6.38 billion US dollars to 7.4 million borrowers.

IT NEVER LEFT

The Biden Era Is Witnessing a Return of the Military-Industrial Complex

One of the top national security think tanks backing the Biden administration, the Center for a New American Security, has been taking money from every major defense contractor while pumping out a steady stream of research supporting those companies’ interests. It’s yet another sign that Biden’s promised “return to normal” has, unfortunately, arrived.  

Troops gather as the US Capitol in January before Joe Biden's presidential inauguration. (Rod Lamkey / Getty Images)


BY BRANKO MARCETIC
02.12.2021
JACOBIN

The promise of a “return to normal” under Joe Biden always meant two possibilities. It could mean a hard break from the obscene, in-your-face corruption and self-dealing that defined Donald Trump’s presidency. Or it could mean going back to the kind of run-of-the-mill, revolving-door Washington corruption that Trump had pledged to clean up, but ended up wallowing in.

According to a new report by the Revolving Door Project, titled “The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex: Conflict of Interest at the Center for a New American Security,” it looks to be the latter option that is so far prevailing in the Biden years. Released yesterday, the report charges top Democratic foreign policy think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) of “at best, a serious deficiency of accountability,” and at worst, “a systematically corrupt arrangement” that sees it promote its corporate sponsors’ interests while passing it off as a public good.

The report recounts several examples of this arrangement. In 2009, for instance, CNAS published a report maintaining that the controversial use of private military contractors was essential and “here to stay” in wars like Afghanistan, all while taking money from several different firms providing those very services. One of these firms, DynCorp, was on the receiving end of $2.8 billion of the state department’s Afghanistan operations funding from 2002 to 2013, or 69 percent of the total sum.

In another case, a 2018 CNAS report charged that the Air Force’s plans to buy a hundred B-21 bombers did “not go far enough,” pushing the military to add fifty to seventy-five more jets at an extra cost of $32.8-49.2 billion. Those profits would have gone to the bomber’s maker, Northrop Grumman, an arms manufacturer that also happened to direct more than half of its total think tank donations during the 2014–19 period to CNAS.

A year before that, CNAS had charged the UAE embassy in the United States $250,000 for a report advocating looser rules for exporting US drones (“I think it will help push the debate in the right direction,” the ambassador wrote in a thank you e-mail), before publishing a separate paper calling on Trump to loosen those restrictions. The UAE ended up signing a nearly $200 million deal for the drones with General Atomics, whose billionaire chairman and CEO, Neal Blue, is both a generous donor to CNAS and sits on its board of advisors.

In these and other examples, the report states, the center failed to disclose the conflicts of interest in their reports, despite noting the existence of a policy on such conflicts in their tax filings. It also repeatedly violated the “very clear line” CNAS cofounder Kurt Campbell — then about to serve in Barack Obama’s state department, and now serving on Biden’s national security council — testified about in his 2009 confirmation hearing: that the CNAS doesn’t write about specific products its donors make, but rather stays limited to big picture foreign policy ideas.

The center’s reliance on the corporate sector, particularly military contractors, is extensive, having taken donations from all “big five” such firms in the last decade, along with twenty-four others. According to a Center for International Policy report released last year, CNAS got more defense contractor money than any of the top fifty US think tanks it analyzed. That’s in addition to contributions from NATO, the governments of the United States and eleven other allied countries, and corporate titans spanning fossil fuel, financial, tech, and other sectors, all of whom have given generously to CNAS over the years.

As the report points out, CNAS’s own cofounder — Michèle Flournoy, tipped to be Biden’s defense secretary before her own extensive conflicts of interest derailed her — pointed out the issues with a corporate funding model in a 2014 speech.

“Every funder has intent. They’re giving you money for a reason,” she said. “There are some organizations that call themselves ‘think tanks’ that actually accept money from corporations to do very specific work that tends to advocate the programs those companies produce, and I think that sort of … makes the waters more murky.”

“The scale and scope of conflicts of interest that appear in CNAS’s work and the influence that its donors may be exerting on policy further highlights serious concerns about political corruption,” wrote Brett Heinz, coauthor of the report.

Of course, CNAS is far from unique. A whole host of think tanks, including those in the foreign policy sphere like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council, regularly overlap their advocacy work with the interests of their well-heeled benefactors. But few have as much influence on the workings of the US government, with at least thirteen of the center’s alumni ending up in the Biden administration to date. As the foreign policy equivalent of the Center for American Progress, this is, after all, why CNAS exists: to serve as the future Democratic administration’s foreign policy team in waiting.

Washington, it seems, is finally back in the guiding hands of the experts who were always meant to be running the show. This also means that, true to Biden’s promise, the city has reverted back to the same, unremarkably money-driven state that Trump first used to take power four years ago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Marvel's Newest Sponsor

Update: Marvel says that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership.

By Jordan Pearson

By Matthew Gault
6.10.17

Update: Marvel announced that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership" with Northrop Grumman. It also sent us the following statement:

"The activation with Northrop Grumman at New York Comic Con was meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way. However, as the spirit of that intent has not come across, we will not be proceeding with this partnership including this weekend's event programming. Marvel and Northrop Grumman continue to be committed to elevating, and introducing, STEM to a broad audience."

The original story follows below:

Up until now, Marvel Comics only had one arms manufacturer in its roster of superheroes: Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Now, it has two.

On Friday, Marvel announced that the company is "joining forces" with Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the Global Hawk surveillance drone and the fifth-largest arms manufacturer in the world.

The company has already released a comic book starring a new team of heroes who work for Northrop Grumman, called Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus, or N.G.E.N. You know, like "engine," as in the engine of the B-2 Spirit, a stealth bomber that Northrop manufactured for the US government and dropped bombs over Kosovo and the Middle East.

The comic is titled "Start Your N.G.E.N.S! Part 1," which means that there's at least one more part coming in this series, god help us, if not more. The first instalment sees Northrop Grumman operatives teaming up with the cast of the Avengers, one of Marvel's hottest properties at the moment.

The comic is also marked "all ages," which means that children can and probably will read this. In short, it's a marketing tool aimed at kids to get them to think favorably of the military-industrial complex. Nice.

Neither Northrop Grumman nor Marvel Comics immediately responded to Motherboard's request for comment.

In case this wasn't already all painfully on the nose, the comic also features a backpage ad that places photos of the fictional Stark Industries and the very real Northrop Grumman next to each other with the text, "Dream vs. Reality." The implication being that Stark Industries is the Marvel version of Northrop Grumman, which already has a Marvel version of itself? Ugh, my head hurts.

Fans and commentators have already taken to Twitter to voice their disgust regarding the partnership, an early indication that this will continue to not go well for Marvel. Still, at the very least, they probably made a lot of money.

Philosophical Soup: The glorification of the U.S. military-industrial complex in film

April 14, 2021  by Max Ferrandino


The following article contains spoilers for “Outside the Wire.”

Action movies are undeniably entertaining and captivating, and the genre is typically defined by big, strong military heroes. Take “Outside the Wire,” all of the “Captain America” movies or basically any Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film for example.

In reality, however, superheroes such as Captain America and Captain Marvel are just figures who are glorifying the United States’ military-industrial complex. And Marvel movies aren’t the only films that do this.

In the recent Netflix movie “Outside the Wire,” Anthony Mackie plays a U.S. robot soldier fighting against Russia in a civil war in Ukraine. Captain Leo, Mackie’s character, is the latest in the line of supersoldiers in films. At the end of the movie, he goes rogue and tries to prevent future wars and the super-soldier program by launching nuclear missiles against the United States.

Ultimately, Thomas Harp, the hero of the movie, stops Leo from launching the missile. Framing Leo as the well-meaning villain only serves to glorify the United States’ endless wars. Netflix tries to make a complex point, yet it falls short once again by letting the U.S. hero win.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is another example. While the action sequences in this film are excellent, it, too, glorifies the military-industrial complex.

“Avengers: Endgame,” another action movie, was the second highest-grossing film ever, raking in only around $46 million less than “Avatar.”

It raises the question: What does the United States love so much about action movies that are steeped in military themes?

I watch action movies simply because I enjoy watching them, not out of any sense of patriotism. However, I think this may be too simple of an explanation. If you think about it more, action movies — perhaps similar to all forms of media — help us escape the mundane nature of our lives.

I do not seek to take my mundane life for granted. I am incredibly lucky to be able to go to college and have a set routine. Places that are currently being destroyed by the U.S. military are not so lucky.

Just last week for my Introduction to International Relations class, I watched a video in which a Syrian mother described how a berry tree was able to protect her and her children from the shrapnel of a Russian bomb that dropped on their village.

The United States, and other countries, has been pulled into a humanitarian crisis in Syria. The lives of those who live in Syria have been affected by near-constant war for the last 10 years. This in turn has become a sort of proxy war between the United States and other countries.

I know the damage our military-industrial complex causes, yet I still unintentionally support it through watching action movies. Can I reconcile my enjoyment for movies such as “Lady Bird” with my enjoyment of “Captain America” and the violence it helps to normalize?

The depiction of U.S. exceptionalism in films have influenced cultural perceptions of enemies in these movies and real-life U.S. adversaries. In most films, these enemies are the Russians or Soviet Union — a remnant of the Cold War — North Koreans or Islamic extremists.

The United States has fought so many different countries around the globe that there is no shortage of enemies for action filmmakers to use. By using a biased narrative and blurring the line between real and fictional wars, the United States gains control of who is perceived as the enemy of the people. This can be dangerous if used to misguide or miseducate the public to garner support for wars.

To sum up, our perception of the United States cannot be separated from how action movies depict the country. One feeds the other.

The military thrives upon the media industry portraying the institution in a positive light. To understand the United States, all you need to do is watch an action movie to get a sense of what the country thinks of itself as: the shining beacon of light in a sea of chaos.

Yet the United States image as a world power has been tainted, which is why it is so necessary for action movies to show a U.S. perception of reality and why it is doubly more crucial for us to recognize and be aware of this propaganda the next time we indulge in the MCU and other films.

Fed up, Argentina’s domestic workers demand a better deal

Argentina’s domestic workers, badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are forming and joining unions to demand better pay and conditions.

Domestic worker Angelica Lopez at a labour protest in Buenos Aires, standing in front of a banner bearing the name of the union she co-leads [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

By Natalie Alcoba
24 Jun 2021

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work.
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She could take two buses, but her left knee hurts. It has hurt for a long while and she doesn’t have paid sick leave to rely on while she has an operation.

“Whenever I walk, it makes this sound. Tok tok tok.” She grins through the pain, as she approaches the household cleaning job that will keep her on her feet all day.

Lopez counts herself among those to still have work in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has been merciless, especially for women in her position.

Her commute tells you a lot about the world in which she lives. It starts down a laneway around the corner from a tyre shop in Bajo Flores, one of the poorest enclaves of the capital city. She lives on the top floor of a two-story building, in a single room with her grown son who is studying. They share a bathroom and kitchen with the other residents.

The mother of four, and grandmother of seven, takes the same route every day out of her neighbourhood, past the police post and the officer in army fatigues. She skirts a park and murals exalting Jesus, and a grocery store selling ribs at 750 pesos a kilogramme ($7.85), until the stop for the 34 bus. It will take her on a ride, literally and figuratively, past the changing face of Buenos Aires and the chasm that traps its subjects.

The commute ends at the white gates of an exclusive high-rise in the city’s trendy Las Canitas neighbourhood, where Angelica will work for six hours, two days a week. That earns her 10,000 pesos a month, or the equivalent of $105. Her rent costs double that.

“Basically, we’re surviving on luck,” said Lopez, 52, originally from Peru. “Even now, we’re still living in poverty. It’s just not enough.”

That “not enough” has become a galvanising force for a wide and often invisible sector of Argentina’s workforce.

Household workers do a variety of jobs – mostly cleaning tasks, but also caring for children or the elderly. Before the pandemic, the government estimated some 1.4 million women worked in what is known as the domestic sector. The pandemic has almost surely diminished their ranks, and most definitely worsened their working conditions.

A long and strict lockdown prohibited most of them from going out to work. Many lost income, even though they should have received it. Others endured a higher risk of COVID-19 exposure after their employers misclassified them as essential workers in order to dodge shutdown orders.

As COVID-19 restrictions stacked the deck even further against them, these women met each other on the streets of Buenos Aires, fearful of the risks they were taking, but determined to have their voices heard.

Since October, there have been at least seven marches by household workers in Buenos Aires to put pressure on the government to do more to help them.

Household worker Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

Collective action

While unions for household workers predated COVID-19, few labourers actually signed up – until now.

“The changes during the pandemic were brutal. Economically, psychologically, morally,” said Lopez, who turned to soup kitchens to survive. “The workers – all of us – lost work. Many of us worked in an informal way, and, to be honest, many of us ended up on the streets, we were evicted… we need a union that is formed by workers, that represents us.”

Household workers represent 8 percent of Argentina’s total workforce and just over 17 percent of all working women. Almost half of these women are the breadwinners in their homes.

Legislation passed in 2013 mandated that all household workers be registered, so their employers would have to pay social insurance, make pension contributions, and give workers paid maternity, sick and bereavement leave. But the vast majority — 77 percent, according to a 2018 study — remain unregistered.

“If you don’t protest, if you don’t make noise, they won’t listen to you. You can’t achieve much by staying silent,” said Estela Avila, 59, who has worked for 40 years cleaning houses and is now the president of a new union called Asociación de Trabajadoras del Hogar y Afines (Association of Household and Related Workers).

It’s not enough, say activists, to scrape by on a meagre salary, which the government sets at 25,000 pesos a month or $262 – less than half of what a family in Argentina needs to survive on without falling below the nation’s official poverty line.

There have been some small victories. This month, a union representing workers and groups representing employers negotiated a 42 percent wage increase over the next year. But the pay bump is not expected to keep up with inflation in the financially volatile country.

But more unions are forming, spearheaded by the women themselves, including one co-led by Lopez under the Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party) of Argentina.

Lopez, who spends a lot of time these days on Zoom and WhatsApp strategising with her fellow union members, has become comfortable standing behind a megaphone at demonstrations.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of AMUMRA, an organisation that helps and supports immigrant women in Argentina [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

The most vulnerable

About 9 percent of the household workforce in Argentina are migrants from other countries, a 2018 government study found.

The undocumented are perhaps the most vulnerable workers in the domestic sector. Many, for example, couldn’t access pandemic aid offered by the government. But many see the renewed emphasis on collective action spawned by the pandemic as an opportunity to bring these workers out from the shadows.

“The crisis caused by the pandemic is also an opportunity to make visible the precarious conditions that this labour force lives through,” said Macarena Romero, a political scientist who researches issues related to migration, gender and care work.

“The empowerment that is taking place is not just about a political position. It’s about unmasking the discriminatory, stigmatising and racist xenophobia of many societies, in this case Argentina, that creates the conditions that put these women in vulnerable positions to begin with,” she told Al Jazeera.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of United Migrant and Refugee Women in Argentina – AMUMRA, an organisation dedicated to promoting the rights of migrant women. Originally from Peru, she worked as a cleaning lady in Buenos Aires until the day her employer told her she wasn’t entitled to take a holiday off.

“I removed my uniform that day and put it in the garbage,” she told Al Jazeera.

Obeso helped draft recommendations that shaped the 2013 law. While that represented an important advance for household workers, she says the government has fallen down on enforcement – something she’s working to change.

A major obstacle to holding employers accountable, she says, is that household workers, especially migrants, often lack proof of employment. They may not know their employers’ full names, or even the exact address where they are working.

“So we give them tools – we tell them to take a photo in the bathroom while they’re at work, in the living room, in the bedroom, so that when they stop working, they can show that they were there,” she said.

“We’ve had situations where the superintendent of the building, who is friendly and supports them while they are working, suddenly no longer recognises them once they are fired,” Obeso said. “The things household workers live through is very painful.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

The Oil and Gas Industry Produces Radioactive Waste. Lots of It

A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council confirms Rolling Stone‘s bombshell investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s waste problem

In this May 27, 2016, file photo, a pump jack works near Firestone, CO.
David Zalubowski/AP

By JUSTIN NOBEL

ROLLING STONE

21 July, 2021

Massive amounts of radioactive waste brought to the surface by oil and gas wells have overwhelmed the industry and the state and federal agencies that regulate it, according to a report released today by the prominent environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. The waste poses “significant health threats,” including the increased risk of cancer to oil and gas workers and their families and also nearby communities.

“We know that the waste has radioactive elements, we know that it can have very high and dangerous levels, we know that some of the waste gets into the environment, and we know that people who live or work near various oil and gas sites are exposed to the waste. What we don’t know are the full extent of the health impacts,” says Amy Mall, an analyst with NRDC who has been researching oilfield waste for 15 years and is a co-author on the report.

The report conveys that radioactive oilfield waste is piling up at landfills across America — and in at least some documented cases leaching radioactivity through treatment plants and into waterways. It is also being spread on farm fields in states like Oklahoma and Texas and on roads across the Midwest and Northeast under the belief that it melts ice and suppresses dust.


Many of the issues mentioned in the NRDC report were reported by Rolling Stone in a 20-month investigation published in January 2020 that found a sweeping arc of contamination. “There is little public awareness of this enormous waste stream, the disposal of which could present dangers at every step,” the story stated, “from being transported along America’s highways in unmarked trucks; handled by workers who are often misinformed and under-protected; leaked into waterways; and stored in dumps that are not equipped to contain the toxicity. Brine has even been used in commercial products sold at hardwares stores and is spread on local roads as a de-icer.”

“Radioactive elements are naturally present in many soil and rock formations, as well as the water that flows through them,” the NRDC report explains. Oil and gas production brings those elements to the surface. Wells generate a highly salty toxic liquid called brine at the rate of about a trillion gallons a year in the U.S. It contains heavy metals and can contain significant amounts of the carcinogenic radioactive element radium. The U.S. EPA’s webpage on oilfield waste indicates that radium and lead-210, a radioactive isotope of lead, can also accumulate and concentrate in a sludge at the bottom of storage containers and in the hardened mineral deposits that form on the inside of oilfield piping. Crushed dirt and rock called drilled cuttings, which are produced through fracking, can contain elevated levels of uranium and thorium.

“My first major concern is that workers don’t know they are working with radioactive materials, and there is no protection to ensure that they don’t face dangerous exposures to radiation,” says Bemnet Alemayehu, the report’s other co-author and an NRDC staff scientist with a Ph.D. in radiation health physics. “Those are alpha emitters, and from an internal dose perspective [inhalation or ingestion], this is one area where I am very concerned,” he continued. “If workers’ clothes or skin get dusted or splashed in waste, they may take contamination home to their families.”

The NRDC report, entitled “A Hot Fracking Mess: How Weak Regulation of Oil and Gas Production Leads to Radioactive Waste in Our Water, Air, and Communities,” shows that despite the industry and regulators knowing about the radioactivity issue, the risks have been patently ignored. A 1982 American Petroleum Institute paper obtained by Rolling Stone laid out hazards but warned the industry that regulation “could impose a severe burden.” A 1987 EPA report to Congress detailed numerous harms, but according to one EPA employee cited in the NRDC report, was ignored for “solely political reasons.” To this day there remains no single federal rule governing the radioactivity brought to the surface in oil and gas development, says the NRDC, and state regulators have failed to pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps.

“Our bedrock federal environmental, health, and safety laws have gaping loopholes and exemptions that allow radioactive oil and gas materials to go virtually unregulated,” the NRDC report states. While some states have established rules to address gaps in federal regulations, “no state has adequately protected health and the environment from this dangerous material.”

The report details regulatory gaps in transportation and trucking, worker safety, and in some of the nation’s benchmark environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. One of the most notorious exemptions involves oilfield radioactivity not being covered by the Atomic Energy Act, which was passed in 1946 and is the nation’s chief law for regulating radioactive materials. The mother of all exemptions is the 1980 Bentsen and Bevill Amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which labels oilfield waste as non-hazardous, despite the EPA having found that the wastes contain multiple hazards, including uranium at “levels that exceed 100 times EPA’s health-based standards.”

While some states, like North Dakota or Pennsylvania, have instituted some regulatory measures, it is typically after something particularly egregious occurs, says Mall. For example, the report documents how in North Dakota in the mid-2010s, radioactive oilfield waste was dumped in trash bags at an abandoned gas station. In the early days of Pennsylvania’s fracking boom, shale waste was being disposed of at waste treatment plants that leaked radioactivity into rivers that could be sources of drinking water or used for recreation. But even then, Mall says, the rules are so narrow as to be ineffective. North Dakota mandated new rules for certain waste streams, but waste continues to be illegally dumped, the report found — the problem was just exported to other states. Between 2016 and 2019, some 2 million pounds of radioactive fracking waste from North Dakota ended up at a landfill in Oregon near the Columbia River.

“With both the federal government and state governments declining to adequately regulate the radioactive material in oil and gas waste,” states the NRDC report, “industry is often free to release this waste into surrounding communities, endangering human health and the environment with impunity.”

“I would add that all these gaps and loopholes in the law that allow the industry to operate in a way that is unsafe to workers and communities are basically subsidies or gifts to the industry that allow oil and gas production to appear cheaper than it actually is, so they skew the economics,” says Mall. “There is human harm from these exemptions and there is an economic effect as well.”

The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s main oil and gas lobby, when notified by Rolling Stone about the NRDC report, and reminded that their own documents express concern about radioactive contamination to workers and the public, conveyed that they believe the issue is under control.

“Health and safety is our industry’s top priority, and we take stringent and significant measures to protect our workers, the environment and the communities where we live and operate,” says spokesperson Jess Szymanski. “Natural gas and oil companies meet or exceed strict federal and state regulations, as well as undergo routine inspections to ensure that all materials are managed, stored, transported, and disposed of safely and responsibly.”

But there is ample evidence this is not the case. The Rolling Stone story published in 2020, which relied on historical industry and government documents, dozens of academic, industry and government experts, and industry workers, found many examples of the waste being stored or transported in ways that put people at risk of exposure. “If we caught some ISIS terrorist cells dumping this into our waterways, they’d be tried for terrorism and the use of a WMD on U.S. citizens,” said Silverio Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist in Ohio. “However the frac industry is given a pass on all this.” One Ohio truck driver who learned the waste he was hauling was radioactive was unable to get help or clarification from his employer or the government, so he started collecting samples on his own. Through a grassroots network of Ohio activists, he was able to get them tested in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh. The radioactive element radium measured at levels thousands of times above EPA safe drinking water limits and hundreds of times above limits imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Though it is still grossly under-studied, in the past few years there has been an increase in academic research focused on the radioactivity issue. The NRDC cites a study published last year by Harvard researchers that analyzed air samples downwind from more than 150,000 unconventional oil and gas wells across the country and found elevated levels of airborne radioactive particles. “As a side effect of the shale boom, academic experts started paying a lot more attention to this issue,” says Mall.

Physicians for Social Responsibility, which together with Concerned Health Professionals of NY publishes a regular compendium that documents all of the scientific and medical research demonstrating risks and harms of fracking, paid special attention to radioactivity in their latest edition, published last December.

Civic engagement has also been increasing around the issue. Medina County, Ohio resident Kathie Jones had long been worried about the radioactive oilfield brine being spread on roads in her community and within the last year was able to get her City Council to halt the practice. “If nothing else, people should think of their children, grandchildren and the harm they are permitting these companies, and the government, to do if they do not speak up and fight back,” Jones tells Rolling Stone. Radium-226, which has been shown by Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources to be present in the brine being spread on roads at levels well above Nuclear Regulatory Commission discharge limits, has a half-life of 1,600 years.

Yet Ohio as a whole is still pushing to expand the practice. Ohio House Bill 282, presently in committee, would classify “treated” brine with radium levels up to 4,000 times EPA’s safe drinking water limits as a commodity so it could be sold legally for de-icing purposes.

In New York, however, environmental groups and concerned residents won a major victory last summer when the state legislature passed a bill to close the loophole that exempts oil and gas waste from hazardous-waste regulations. On August 3rd, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law. Still, “strong action is needed at the federal level to deal with this threat in an appropriately comprehensive way,” Mitch Jones, policy director with Food & Water Watch, one of the main groups that promoted the bill, tells Rolling Stone. “After all, toxic air and water pollution doesn’t recognize state lines.”

And perhaps no state legislator has been following the oilfield radioactivity issue more closely than state Rep. Sara Innamorato in Pennsylvania, who has introduced a pair of bills to close the oil and gas industry’s hazardous waste loophole in her state. “We are actually meeting with a number of organizations from across Pennsylvania as I type this,” Innamorato says. “Since Pennsylvania is the second largest extractor of shale gas in America, we produce an enormous amount of waste. These bills are common sense and place the onus on fracking companies to prove that their waste is not harmful to human health and the environment and be subjected to the same regulations as other industries that handle hazardous waste, instead of using Pennsylvania’s families who live near these municipal waste sites and other disposal wells as experimental test subjects.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Congressman from California Ro Khanna, chairman of the House’s Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on the Environment, held a hearing on Earth Day this past April that took aim at various oil and gas industry loopholes and discussed how fossil fuel subsidies are preventing action on the climate crisis. It featured comments from Ohio resident Jill Antares Hunkler, who was forced to flee a house she built by hand to escape toxic emissions from adjacent fracked gas wells and compressor stations. She calls herself a “fracking refugee.”

“Under the current regulatory framework, there is very limited accountability for the oil and gas companies who engage in fracking,” Khanna tells Rolling Stone. “There is also little ability for the federal government to effectively protect workers and major supplies of drinking water.”

The NRDC report recommends that Congress close the loopholes that put the industry’s workers and the public at risk from radioactive oilfield waste, and that states should institute “state-of-the-art, protective regulations” for the radioactive material generated by the oil and gas industry, as well as a much more robust set of standards to protect industry workers, including training, proper PPE, and monitoring of emissions and levels.

Rolling Stone asked the EPA whether they believed oilfield waste is putting oil and gas industry workers and the public at risk, why the agency had not done more to collect data on the topic, and if the agency believes the oil and gas industry enjoys an inappropriate exemption with the Bentsen and Bevill Amendments. “EPA takes its mission to protect public health and the environment seriously, and is committed to holding violators accountable for pollution in American communities, especially in overburdened communities,” replied Tim Carroll, deputy press secretary. “EPA looks forward to reviewing the NRDC report and will respond accordingly.”

“The challenge here is that the lack of regulation means that we don’t have all the data that we should, and then the lack of data is used as an excuse for why we don’t have regulations,” says Mall. “Without the information the public doesn’t know how best to protect themselves.”

She adds, “I think it would be wonderful for EPA to do a study, but we have enough information now to know that we need stronger rules. We don’t need to wait for more studies to strengthen the rules.”

Tar sands companies aim for ‘net zero’ by 2050 – with no plan to extract less oil

The alliance of Canadian oil producers makes no mention of winding down oil production, which modelling shows is necessary to achieve global climate goals

Syncrude Oil Operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada (Photo: Jiri Rezac/Greenpeace)

By Chloé Farand
CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS

Published on 10/06/2021

Canadian tar sands producers have committed to achieve net zero emissions in their operations by 2050 to “help Canada meet its climate goal” while continuing to extract and produce oil for the next 30 years.

Five major oil companies, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, which extract some of the world’s most carbon-intensive oil, announced they had formed the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero alliance on Wednesday.

The companies, which together operate about 90% of Canada’s tar sands, said they will work with the Canadian government and the provincial government of Alberta to roll out technologies that will enable them to cut emissions from their extraction and production process.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2018, the oil and gas sector was the largest source of Canada’s emissions, accounting for 26% of its total, according to government data.

Tar sands companies said the alliance aims to “develop an actionable approach” to cut emissions while “preserving the more than $3 trillion in oil sands contribution” to Canada’s economy to 2050.

But they made no mention of phasing out production. The “net zero” strategy does not extend to emissions from consumers burning the oil, which are many times larger than those from the extraction process.

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In fact, planned oil production in Canada would lead to a 17% expansion between 2019 and 2030, according to recent analysis by Stockholm Environment Institute.

This goes against modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which found that new investments in expanding oil and gas production must stop by the end of the year for the sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

“This kind of greenwash is worse than meaningless – it’s dangerous,” Alex Doukas, senior consultant at the Denmark-based KR Foundation, said of the alliance. “It fails to cover emissions associated with the tar sands products themselves. Nobody should cheer this nonsense.”

Laurie van der Burg, campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home News: “These plans lack the one and only action that is most vital to cutting emissions: cutting dirty oil and gas production.

“If the Canadian tar sands net-zero alliance cared about climate action it would have committed to cut production by 2030.”

Van der Burg added that tar sands producers risked facing litigation over the plans, citing a court ruling against oil giant Shell, which established that real emissions reductions were necessary for oil and gas companies to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN Environment Programme, global oil production must fall by 4% every year between now and 2030 to maintain a chance of staying below 1.5C of warming.

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Because it is thick and viscous, oil from tar sands takes a lot of energy to extract and refine, making its production three to four times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional crude oil.

To meet the goal, the alliance plans to create a corridor to link oil sands facilities from Fort McMurray to the Cold Lake regions and channel CO2 to a carbon sequestration hub.

Energy efficiency measures, electrification of operations, producing hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technology would be deployed requiring “significant investment” from both the industry and government, the companies said.

The alliance said “internationally recognised forecasts” indicate fossil fuel will continue to be part of the energy mix to 2050 to justify the initiative – contrary to the latest IEA net zero report.

“Every credible energy forecast indicates that oil will be a major contributor to the energy mix in the decades ahead and even beyond 2050,” said Sonya Savage, Alberta’s minister of energy, claiming this would lead to the production of “net zero barrels of oil”.


Under the IEA’s first comprehensive 1.5C scenario, the agency projects a drop in oil demand of 75% between 2020 and 2050, with fossil fuels supplying slightly over one-fifth of total energy by 2050.

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, described the alliance as “absurd”. In a tweet, she said measures to reduce emission intensity and develop carbon capture and storage were “clearly not enough” to help the world meet its climate goal.

One of the main checks on tar sands producers’ bullishness is organised opposition to infrastructure projects to connect Alberta to key export markets.

On Wednesday, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries along the US’ Gulf Coast. The decision comes after Joe Biden revoked permits for the pipeline expansion in January.

It was hailed a victory by climate campaigners and indigenous communities who fought the project for a decade.

“Keystone XL is now the most famous fossil fuel project killed by the climate movement, but it won’t be the last,” said Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. “Now it’s time to go a step further and say no to all new fossil fuel projects everywhere.”

On Thursday, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative published research warning that ending the expansion of the fossil fuel sector was not enough to keep the 1.5C within reach, and an exit strategy from existing production is required.

The study, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, found that carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects would lead to 66% more emissions in 2030 than is compatible with a 1.5C trajectory.

Professor Sven Teske, who led the research, said: “National governments must establish binding limits for the extraction volumes for coal, oil and gas,” adding that new investments risked becoming stranded because of the falling prices of renewable energy.

Ocean fire raises questions about US support for Mexico’s oil and gas industry

US export credit agency Exim bank has provided $16.14 billion in loans and guarantees to Pemex since 1998, with recent funds going to the site of the fire


A Pemex petrol station in Mexico (Photo: Flickr/Wonderlane)

By Isabelle Gerretsen

CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS
Published on 14/07/2021

Campaigners have called on the US to review its longstanding support for Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas company after a gas leak from one of its pipelines set the ocean on fire in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pemex made headlines earlier this month after the leak triggered a huge blaze near one of its platforms, as the world watched aghast.

For 76 years, the company has received billions of dollars in support from the US’ export credit agency, the Export–Import Bank (Exim), despite warnings of safety and environmental concerns.

Since 1998, Exim has propped up the fossil fuel company with $16.14 billion in loans and guarantees, according to analysis by the Friends of the Earth of the bank’s annual reports, seen by Climate Home News.

Most recently, in September 2020, Exim approved $400 million worth of support to the company.

The funding would “facilitate the purchase of US oil and gas equipment and services provided to approximately 21 oil and gas field projects,” the Exim press release reads.

According to documents submitted by Pemex to Exim, one of the projects was Ku Maloob Zaap, the oil field located 90km off the coast of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the site of the gas fire.


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Campaigners are demanding an investigation into the environmental and climate damage caused by the fire.

But with little faith in the Mexican authorities, analysts told Climate Home they were looking to regional allies such as the US to exert pressure to hold Pemex accountable.

Following last week’s incident, campaigners are escalating calls on Exim to end its support to Pemex.

“I don’t understand how they would be willing to lend any money to Pemex. The hypocrisy of US administrations, who make all these statements about climate, and then allow this company to be its biggest borrower. It’s outrageous,” Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, told Climate Home News.

The company was Exim’s biggest client until at least 2017, when the bank stopped disclosing its top borrowers in its annual reports.

Between 1998 and 2015, Pemex received Exim money annually, with loans and guarantees averaging $850 million every year, according to the analysis. From 2003 to 2016, the bank had more loans outstanding to Pemex than to any other client, it shows.

In September 2020, after Exim authorised the latest loan to Pemex, Friends of the Earth wrote a letter to the bank’s chairman Kimberly Reed , criticising the decision.

The campaign group opposed the loan “due to the hundreds of worker deaths at Pemex facilities from accidents and Covid-19, the harmful environmental impacts of Pemex projects, allegations of corruption against Pemex leadership, and the failure to provide a meaningful assessment of the environmental and social impacts of the Pemex projects”.

At that time, Pemex had recorded more Covid-19 deaths than any other company in the world, according to analysis by Bloomberg.

More than 190 workers and contractors died and over 570 were injured in fires, explosions and offshore rig collapses at Pemex sites between 2009 and 2016.

The gas fire last week was not an anomaly, Kate DeAngelis, international finance manager at Friends of the Earth, told Climate Home.

“Pemex has a long history of environmental destruction and poor safety record as evidenced by the hundreds of workers who have been killed from explosions, fires and other accidents at Pemex sites,” she said.

Much of Pemex’s production is heavy sour crude oil, which is particularly polluting, according to DeAngelis. “Pemex has no plans to reduce its harmful environmental impacts,” she added.

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A 2020 report by the Mercatus Center, a US-based think-tank, outlines significant environmental, safety and corruption concerns surrounding Pemex and questions Exim’s continued support for the heavily indebted fossil fuel company.

“Working with Pemex has posed a reputational risk to the Exim Bank for decades,” the report reads. “The Exim Bank’s willingness to continue lending to Pemex may come down to Pemex being too big to fail.”

At the end of 2020, Pemex said its financial debt stood at $113.2 billion, despite several capital injections from the government. In April, the company said it expected to maintain debt of $105 billion between 2021 and 2025.

Considering its long-standing relationship with Pemex, “Exim could have used that leverage to require strong environmental and worker safeguards, but it appears that Exim has never even attempted to do that,” said DeAngelis.

Exim did not respond to Climate Home News’ request for comment.