Finance Industry’s Climate Promises Leave Plenty of Room for Oil and Gas

Eric Roston, Bloomberg News

A pumpjack is silhouetted as it operates in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Sunday, March 18, 2018. Two years after descending into junk, Azerbaijan's shortest path to winning back its investment grade is by rebuilding the stash of petrodollars it raided during a recession and a banking meltdown, according to Fitch Ratings. Photograph: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Fewer than half of 150 major financial institutions have restricted their business with the oil-and-gas sector, even though many of them have made high-profile pledges to reduce their contribution to climate change, according to new research by the Paris-based nonprofit Reclaim Finance.

The analysis, called the Oil and Gas Policy Tracker, looked at governance policies at 60 banks, 60 investment institutions and 30 insurers. Of the whole group, 74 belong to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero(1), an initiative that requires members to end their contribution to global heating by mid-century. More than half of the companies—including 20 of the GFANZ members—have no policies governing their oil-and-gas business. 

Among the companies with policies in place, the most popular restrictions are bans on several kinds of unconventional oil. More than a third of the firms limit Arctic and oil-sands work, with fewer prohibitions on shale and ultra-deepwater oil. Many of these policies are weak or flawed, according to Reclaim Finance and more than 15 NGO partners in the analysis. Forty-six of 54 rules governing Arctic oil and gas, for example, fail to use the common guidelines developed by a unit of the Arctic Council, a group of countries and peoples with land in the far north.

Just five companies, all banks, have quit or limited financing oil and gas expansion, according to the research.

“We wanted to have a better understanding about how it is possible to have—on one side—financial institutions that are claiming to be willing to do what it takes to limit global warming to 1.5°C and adopting policies on the most polluting sectors, while at the same time it seems like it doesn’t change,” said Lucie Pinson, director of Reclaim Finance. 

The analysis publishes at a moment when the chasm is widening between economic business-as-usual and the health of the climate. The latest report from climate science’s most authoritative body concluded that without a comprehensive, all-inclusive and collaborative effort among governments, the private sector, civil society and beyond, humanity “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

(1) The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is co-chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, the owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Russia billionaire Dmitrievich Pumpyansky's superyacht detained after docking in Gibraltar

TV footage showed 'Axioma' moored at Gibraltar flying a Maltese flag

The Axioma superyacht, believed to be owned by oligarch

 Dmitrievich Pumpyansky, 

who is on the EU's list of sanctioned 

Russians, docked at a port in Gibraltar on March 21. Reuters

The National

Mar 21, 2022

Live updates: follow the latest news on Russia-Ukraine

A luxurious superyacht linked to a Russian billionaire was detained by authorities after docking in Gibraltar on Monday.

Western sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine have forced the relocation of many luxury yachts from Europe in recent weeks.

Several have headed to the Maldives, which has no extradition treaty with the US.

READ MORE

Roman Abramovich docks luxury superyacht in Turkey's Bodrum

Reuters TV footage showed the Axioma, believed to belong to Dmitrievich Pumpyansky, owner of Russia's largest steel pipe maker, moored at Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, flying a Maltese flag.

Mr Pumpyansky, who is currently under UK and EU sanctions, owns steel group TMK. The UK imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian citizens and entities last week, enabling authorities to freeze their assets.

Refinitiv data shows the 72-metre vessel is owned by a British Virgin Islands holding company called Pyrene investments, Reuters reported. An article published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as part of the Panama Papers leaks names Pumpyansky as a beneficiary of the holding.

Forbes and specialist publication Superyacht Fan also list him as the Axioma's owner.

Dmitrievich Pumpyansky owns steel group TMK. Reuters

The Gibraltar government confirmed that the Axioma had arrived in port after asking permission to enter and "was confirmed to be the subject of an arrest action by a leading international bank in the Supreme Court of Gibraltar".

"The vessel is now subject to arrest by the Admiralty Marshal until further order," it said, without specifying the legal claims from creditors against the vessel or the vessel's owner.

Refinitiv shipping data showed the Axioma left the Caribbean island of Antigua on February 27 and spent the past three weeks crossing the Atlantic before reaching Gibraltar.

Earlier on Monday, a vessel linked to Roman Abramovich, the sanctioned owner of Chelsea football club, docked in the seaside city of Bodrum in south-west Turkey.

Kazakhstan reveals amount of direct investments from US

Kazakhstan Materials 22 March 2022 


BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar. 22. The US is the second largest investor for Kazakhstan after the Netherlands, Trend reports via the Kazakh Invest national company.

Over the past 17 years, direct investment inflows in Kazakhstan from the US have exceeded $47.2 billion, making up nearly 13.5 percent of the total foreign direct investments.

Currently, 414 legal entities, branches and representative offices are operating in the country with the participation of the US companies. For nine months of 2021, the volume of the US investments amounted to $3.2 billion. Thus, the inflow of investments has doubled compared to the same period of 2020.

According to the company, four projects - in the oil and gas industry, agricultural machinery, real estate and renewable energy sources - with the participation of investors from the US are at the implementation stage.

One of them is a project on building a plant for the production of sprinklers with a total investment of $50 million, implemented by the US Valmont company.

Besides, the US Freedom Builders company is implementing a project on building a multifunctional retail and residential complex worth $57.6 million on the territory of the Khorgos International Center for Border Cooperation.

Another project - the construction of the first and second phases of a 48 MW wind farm worth $200 million - is being jointly implemented by the Italian ENI and the US General Electric companies, added Kazakh Invest.

Reducing plastic waste to get “clean and green” in Lao PDR

MAURICE ANDRES RAWLINS|

MARCH 22, 2022
THE WORLD BANK

Plastic trapped in an abandoned structure on the Mekong River, Laos.

 Photo: Xaisongkham Induangchanthy/World Bank

Over the past 20 years, Lao PDR has had one of the fastest growing economies in East Asia and the Pacific. Rapid economic growth has led to a huge increase in waste produced, but systems for dealing with this have not kept pace. Rapid urbanization and changing lifestyles have led to a doubling of waste over the past 20 years in some areas. This has short- and long-term health and economic implications.

What kind of waste is development bringing?

As much as 24% of the waste found in Lao cities is plastic. As our new video shows, plastic waste is now found everywhere in the environment, affecting fish catches, blocking drains, causing air pollution and health issues, and decreasing the value of tourism destinations. The increase in single-use plastics due to COVID-19, and the escalating plastic waste imports since 2018, are making the problem worse.

A 2020 World Bank study of six Lao cities found that 95% percent of plastic pollution is caused by only 10 items — all single-use plastics. Single-use food and drink packaging is the top plastic product category, accounting for nearly half of this pollution — the hospitality and tourism sectors have been identified as key contributors.
Location-specific details on survey findings can be found at https://bit.ly/3iokodu
Data source: World Bank. 2021. Supporting Lao PDR in Development of a Plastic Action Plan—Plastic Diagnostics)


As Laos does not yet have a specific regulatory framework on waste management, or clearly defined responsibilities, much of this rubbish is not disposed of properly. Waste management is largely limited to urban centers, and even there only 40-60% of waste is collected — and then taken to landfill sites that are mostly poorly managed. Uncollected waste is burned or openly dumped, often into waterways.

This pollution can have devastating effects. A World Bank study published in 2021 found that 10,000 deaths each year in Laos stem from environmental health factors, with almost half these deaths attributable to air pollution. Environmental risks also resulted in more than 100 million days of illness, costing the economy dearly.

What can Laos do?

The Lao government has expressed a commitment to addressing the solid waste and plastics challenge. Its vision for green economic growth, laid out in the National Green Growth Strategy 2030, is centered on reforms that aim to use natural capital sustainably while reducing environmental costs. Environmental degradation will otherwise make it difficult to achieve economic diversification and allow the Lao economy to become more competitive.

The government is developing a National Plastics Action Plan with support from the World Bank and the EU Switch Asia Facility. Laos has also signed the ASEAN Bangkok Declaration on Marine Plastics, and ratified the amended Basel Convention, which focuses on control of transboundary plastics. The policy framework taking shape will complement and help coordinate ongoing community-level efforts around the country to manage plastics.

A new World Bank report, Get CLEAN and GREEN—Solid Waste and Plastic Management in Lao PDR, supported by the Korean Green Growth Trust Fund and PROBLUE, offers recommendations on how to better control solid waste and plastic pollution and is being used by the government as a key input for the National Plastic Action Plan. The report summarizes the findings of plastic and solid waste studies in Laos and assesses different ways of combating plastic pollution. The report is designed as a tool for planning and decision-making to reduce plastic pollution and provides a basis for better solid waste management. Recommendations include:
• Adopt a mix of regulatory and economic instruments, voluntary agreements, and awareness-building activities for plastics management.
• Focus on the top 10 plastic product items, which represent 95% of plastic found in rivers.
• Introduce measures gradually, starting with simple, low-cost actions that have wide political and public support and can be readily monitored and enforced.
• Focus on the hospitality and tourism sectors, where many measures are immediately feasible and impact can be significant.
• Engage the private sector and retail businesses in plastic reduction, collection, and recycling.

To reduce plastic pollution, behavior change will be needed. Consumers and retailers can play key roles in preventing and managing of waste. Regulations can help people with the necessary changes by making it easier for them to identify, separate, reuse and, recycle waste. Retailers can provide environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic food packages, while consumers can bring reusable containers when shopping.

As the Lao economy develops and towns continue to grow, proactive steps are needed to prevent further plastic pollution and ensure sustainable economic development. The World Bank brings continued support to the government’s efforts to reduce plastic pollution and develop the country’s solid waste sector.


Author

Maurice Andres Rawlins
Senior Environmental Specialist
MORE BLOGS BY MAURICE

HAPPY NEW YEAR /NORWUZ

Iraqi Kurds mark Nowruz amid dire economic conditions

Dana Taib Menmy
IRAQI KURDISTAN
22 March, 2022

Iraqi Kurds celebrated the Nowruz feast amid growing frustrations with local authorities and dire economic conditions.

Thousands of men, women, youth and children wearing colorful traditional Kurdish clothes gathered at Salim Street, in Sulaimaniyah city to express their pleasure, p

hoto by Dana Taib Menmy for TNA, March 20, 2022.

Kurds across the Iraqi Kurdistan region celebrated Nowruz, but increasing concerns over the indifference by local authorities to tackle the dire economic conditions have put a damper on the festivities.

Kurds celebrate Nowruz between March 21-23, which marks the beginning of the Kurdish New Year. Nowruz, a Persian word meaning "a new day'', is celebrated by many countries across the Middle East, the Caucauses, Central Asia, and particularly by the Kurdish communities in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.

Celebrations include going out for picnicking and lighting bonfires with family and loved ones.

Kurdish youth joined hands to the traditional Kurdish dance and music in Sulaimaniyah city, as others were taking photos of them, 20 March 2022.

 [Dana Taib Menmy/TNA]

On Sunday afternoon, thousands of men, women, youth and children wearing colourful traditional Kurdish clothes gathered at Salim Street in Sulaimaniyah city. A number of young residents joined hands to the traditional Kurdish dance and music, while others eagerly took photos.

On Monday, thousands of families picnicked at the region’s beautiful resorts, and thousands of tourists from the other parts of Iraq flocked to the Kurdistan region to celebrate Nowruz.

"As a Kurdish youth, I congratulate all Kurds in the Iraqi Kurdistan region as well as in all the four parts of the greater Kurdistan on this Nowruz national feast. I am expressing my delight by wearing traditional Kurdish clothes, in order to resurrect our national culture and pass it on to the next generations," Bawan Rizgar, 30, from Sulaimaniyah told The New Arab.

"Unfortunately, I see a coldness in marking Nowruz by locals in the city this year because of the current dire economic and living conditions of the people of Kurdistan," Rizgar added.

Bawan Rizgar, 30, from Sulaimaniyah in traditional Kurdish garment, 20 March 2022. [Dana Taib Menmy/TNA]

Early on Sunday, Kurdish citizens in Iraq were angry over the news of two elderly retirees who had died while waiting to receive their delayed salaries. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which administers the region, previously promised to pay more than one million employees in the public payroll on time, but as of yet has not paid out the salaries for February.

Moreover, alarming hikes in the prices of foodstuff and fuel due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, coupled with rising unemployment rates in the private sector, have exacerbated the woes of the poorer and the middle classes.

Ahmed Mira, a Kurdish university lecturer, told The New Arab, "Indeed the Kurdish governance destroyed all the ceremonies as the principles of being a Kurd or the Kurdish nationality have been negatively affected as a result of the bad ruling of the Kurdish parties since the 1991 uprising."

"The passion for celebrating Nowruz is not as it was in the past," Mira added.

Ahmed Mira, a Kurdish university lecturer, 20 March 2022.
[Dana Taib Menmy/TNA]

The university lecturer also said, "Being happy in this country has become very unique because of the bad governance in the region. Poverty is a big misfortune that makes people feel unable to celebrate the feasts."

In 2020, a total lockdown was imposed by Kurdish authorities in Nowruz as the region was trying to restrict the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, on Wednesday, announced March 20-21, as an official holiday across the country in celebration of the Kurdish New Year. In two separate tweets in Kurdish and Arabic languages, he also congratulated all the Iraqi people, especially Kurds on Nowruz, emphasizing the need to reinforce Iraq's stability, security and integrity.

AIPAC defends list of far-right endorsements to members

ZIONIST ALLIES AGAINST BDS, FREE PALESTINE AND THE LEFT

In a long letter to its members, AIPAC has attempted to defend to its members its list of far-right candidates, doubling down on its identity as a single-issue organisation.

Brooke Anderson
Washington, D.C.
22 March, 2022

AIPAC has sent a letter to its members defending its recent choice of political endorsements. [Getty]

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has issued a letter to its members in an effort to defend its endorsements of far-right candidates, more than a quarter of whom deny the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"This is no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends," reads the letter, written by AIPAC President Betsy Berns Korn and CEO Howard Kohr, obtained by Jewish Insider and published last Friday morning.

"The one thing that guarantees Israel's ability to defend itself is the enduring support of the United States. When we launched our political action committee last year, we decided that we would base decisions about political contributions on only one thing: whether a political candidate supports the US-Israel relationship."

The endorsements earlier this month caused a stir, particularly in the Israeli and Jewish-American press, including from conservative-leaning voices, who believed AIPAC had gone too far in endorsing far-right candidates, some of whom have endorsed openly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views.

Most have pointed out that Jewish voters choose Democratic candidates by three to one. AIPAC, by far America's largest pro-Israel lobby group, however, appears to be cementing its role as a single-issue organisation.

"We can never let the things that divide Americans politically determine whether the United States will support Israel," the AIPAC leaders wrote in their letter. "We must be willing to stand with those who stand with Israel."

The letter concluded, "Israel can't afford to wait for such a moment of peril. Our job is to make America's friendship with Israel so robust, so certain, so broadly based, and so dependable that even the deep divisions of American politics never imperil that relationship and the ability of the Jewish state to defend itself."

A computer science technique could help gauge when the pandemic is ‘over’

Published: March 20, 2022 

The world wants the pandemic to end and life to return to normal. 

When will that happen?

 Marc Fernandes/NurPhoto via Getty Images


In early 2022, nearly two years after Covid was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, experts are mulling a big question: when is a pandemic “over”?

So, what’s the answer? What criteria should be used to determine the “end” of Covid’s pandemic phase? These are deceptively simple questions and there are no easy answers.

I am a computer scientist who investigates the development of ontologies. In computing, ontologies are a means to formally structure knowledge of a subject domain, with its entities, relations and constraints, so that a computer can process it in various applications and help humans to be more precise.

Ontologies can discover knowledge that’s been overlooked until now: in one instance, an ontology identified two additional functional domains in phosphatases (a group of enzymes) and a novel domain architecture of a part of the enzyme. Ontologies also underlie Google’s Knowledge Graph that’s behind those knowledge panels on the right-hand side of a search result.

Join thousands of Canadians who subscribe to free evidence-based news.Get newsletter

Applying ontologies to the questions I posed at the start is useful. This approach helps to clarify why it is difficult to specify a cut-off point at which a pandemic can be declared “over”. The process involves collecting definitions and characterisations from domain experts, like epidemiologists and infectious disease scientists, consulting relevant research and other ontologies and investigating the nature of what entity “X” is.

“X”, here, would be the pandemic itself – not a mere shorthand definition, but looking into the properties of that entity. Such a precise characterisation of the “X” will also reveal when an entity is “not an X”. For instance, if X = house, a property of houses is that they all must have a roof; if some object doesn’t have a roof, it definitely isn’t a house.

With those characteristics in hand, a precise, formal specification can be formulated, aided by additional methods and tools. From that, the what or when of “X” – the pandemic is over or it is not – would logically follow. If it doesn’t, at least it will be possible to explain why things are not that straightforward.

This sort of precision complements health experts’ efforts, helping humans to be more precise and communicate more precisely. It forces us to make implicit assumptions explicit and clarifies where disagreements may be.
Definitions and diagrams

I conducted an ontological analysis of “pandemic”. First, I needed to find definitions of a pandemic.

Informally, an epidemic is an occurrence during which there are multiple instances of an infectious disease in organisms, for a limited duration of time, that affects a community of said organisms living in some region. A pandemic, as a minimum, extends the region where the infections take place.

Read more: When will the COVID-19 pandemic end? 4 essential reads on past pandemics and what the future could bring

Next, I drew from an existing foundational ontologies. This contains generic categories like “object”, “process”, and “quality”. I also used domain ontologies, which contain entities specific to a subject domain, like infectious diseases. Among other resources, I consulted the Infectious Disease Ontology and the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering.

First, I aligned “pandemic” to a foundational ontology, using a decision diagram to simplify the process. This helped to work out what kind of thing and generic category “pandemic” is:

(1) Is [pandemic] something that is happening or occurring? Yes (perdurant, i.e., something that unfolds in time, rather than be wholly present).

(2) Are you able to be present or participate in [a pandemic]? Yes (event).

(3) Is [a pandemic] atomic, i.e., has no subdivisions and has a definite end point? No (accomplishment).

The word “accomplishment” may seem strange here. But, in this context, it makes clear that a pandemic is a temporal entity with a limited lifespan and will evolve – that is, cease to be a pandemic and evolve back to epidemic, as indicated in this diagram.

Maria Keet
Characteristics

Next, I examined a pandemic’s characteristics described in the literature. A comprehensive list is described in a paper by US infectious disease specialists published in 2009 during the global H1N1 influenza virus outbreak. They collated eight characteristics of a pandemic.

Read more: New COVID data: South Africa has arrived at the recovery stage of the pandemic

I listed them and assessed them from an ontological perspective:

Wide geographic extension. This is an imprecise feature – be it fuzzy in the mathematical sense or estimated by other means: there isn’t a crisp threshold when “wide” starts or ends.

Disease movement: there’s transmission from place to place and that can be traced. A yes/no characteristic, but it could be made categorical or with ranges of how slowly or fast it moves.

High attack rates and explosiveness, or: many people are affected in a short timespan. Many, short, fast – all indicate imprecision.

Minimal population immunity: immunity is relative. You have it to a degree to some or all of the variants of the infectious agent, and likewise for the population. This is an inherently fuzzy feature.

Novelty: A yes/no feature, but one could add “partial”.

Infectiousness: it must be infectious (excluding non-infectious things, like obesity), so a clear yes/no.

Contagiousness: this may be from person to person or through some other medium. This property includes human-to-human, human-animal intermediary (e.g., fleas, rats), and human-environment (notably: water, as with cholera), and their attendant aspects.

Severity: Historically, the term “pandemic” has been applied more often for severe diseases or those with high fatality rates (e.g., HIV/AIDS) than for milder ones. This has some subjectivity, and thus may be fuzzy.

Properties with imprecise boundaries annoy epidemiologists because they may lead to different outcomes of their prediction models. But from my ontologist’s viewpoint, we’re getting somewhere with these properties. From the computational side, automated reasoning with fuzzy features is possible.

COVID, at least early in 2020, easily ticked all eight boxes. A suitably automated reasoner would have classified that situation as a pandemic. But now, in early 2022? Severity (point 8) has largely decreased and immunity (point 4) has risen. Point 5 – are there worse variants of concern to come – is the million-dollar question. More ontological analysis is needed.
Highlighting the difficulties

Ontologically speaking, then, a pandemic is an event (“accomplishment”) that unfolds in time. To be classified as a pandemic, there are a number of features that aren’t all crisp and for which the imprecise boundaries haven’t all been set. Conversely, it implies that classifying the event as “not a pandemic” is just as imprecise.

This isn’t a full answer as to what a pandemic is ontologically, but it does shed light on the difficulties of calling it “over” – and illustrates well that there will be disagreement about it.

Author

Maria Keet
Associate professor in Computer Science, University of Cape Town

Well-managed knowledge is a boon for pandemic control

MARTIN LUTALO
RIALDA KOVACEVIC
FENG ZHAO

|MARCH 21, 2022
THE WORLD BANK

Effective knowledge-sharing during pandemic needs to be just in time and demand-driven. 

One valuable resource of a country or organization is its knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated both the importance of timely knowledge and the need to manage it well. As the world faces the effects of the Omicron variant and the World Health Organization’s global pulse survey warns that essential health services continue to face disruptions across all major health areas in over 90 percent of countries with little to no improvement since early 2021, the less than optimal use of knowledge is not an option.

Decision makers across the globe have relied on timely knowledge to inform strategic decisions to mitigate the health and socioeconomic effects of the pandemic. In a fast-moving environment where information needs are constantly evolving and basic facts are sometimes in dispute, effectively managing knowledge can be a challenge.

We highlight three key lessons we have learned about managing knowledge more effectively during a public health crisis.

Effective knowledge-sharing needs to be just in time and demand-driven

A crisis warrants demand-driven knowledge that is just in time rather than just in case. To make this happen, it is essential to create regular learning platforms for stakeholders to share experiences and lessons learned, with a feedback loop to identify and fill remaining knowledge gaps, while ensuring consistency of messaging. It is far better to overshare knowledge than to risk under sharing it.

To promote an open exchange of ideas and fill knowledge gaps, our teams have organized virtual briefings providing the latest and most reliable knowledge and know-how to guide decision making combined with just-in-time webinars on topics addressing specific aspects of countries’ COVID-19 prevention and containment efforts. In the first 12 to 18 months of the pandemic, over 100 webinars were held, reaching more than 10,000 participants across the globe.

The choice of webinar topics has been demand-driven, the fruit of consultations with a host of internal and external sources, including colleagues from external partner organizations.

A forum for country knowledge-sharing and learning can generate a snowball effect

Creating a forum for policymakers and country practitioners to share their respective experiences, lessons learned, and best practices through regular webinars is important in helping countries during a crisis and can spur further learning and the exchange of ideas. Countries need to understand what others are doing as that is far faster and far less costly in times when learning and practicing are simultaneous.

Our experience has shown that not only are the Bank’s clients and external partners enriched by the knowledge shared, but they are also inspired. For example, following a webinar in mid-2020 entitled “Dealing with Concurring Epidemics in the Time of COVID-19: Experiences in Latin America,” the country speakers from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru went on to create a Latin American framework and started sharing their experiences in managing the pandemic.

In the same vein, staff across the Bank’s regions have shared materials including briefs, presentations, webinar recordings, and summaries of the learning events with policymakers in the countries where they work. Such examples include knowledge briefs that are meant to respond to the immediate and longer-term learning in areas such as the private sector, or supply chain, to name a few, as we help countries strengthen their health systems.

Partnerships boost knowledge acquisition and sharing and can help reach diverse audiences

Partnerships are especially important when dealing with a pandemic where countries and development agencies are eager to acquire and share knowledge at speed. By creating joint learning platforms, partner agencies can share critical knowledge with bigger audiences far quicker while providing consistent messaging. To this end, the Bank has tapped into its convening power to promote learning and sharing of knowledge.

Leveraging its membership of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), a global collaboration of governments, scientists, businesses, civil society, philanthropists, and global health organizations (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CEPI, FIND, Gavi, the Global Fund, Unitaid, Wellcome, UNICEF, and the WHO), we have been able to use its macro-stage and contribute to learning at large scale.

As co-lead of ACT-A’s Health Systems Response Connector (HSRC), the Bank hosted a learning and knowledge-sharing platform, enabling countries to present country-level know-how of health systems strengthening as they respond to COVID-19. The platform attracted participants across multiple agencies and countries across the globe. Topics for knowledge-sharing events ranged from challenges and solutions to protecting the health workforce, addressing supply chain bottlenecks, health financing and budgetary dialogues, frontline services assessments, and the value of community engagement in the pandemic, to the role of the private sector in COVID-19 vaccination.

Countries have shared how urgency yields ingenuity. For instance, Ghana’s mPharma health care technology company facilitated addressing testing capacity constraints faced by the public sector. Tunisia shared its experience of conducting research in a pandemic, as it addressed testing of COVID-19. Kenya’s facility assessment on the provision of services and availability of various commodities allowed it to prioritize areas in need of more investment and financing.

The Bank, in collaboration with WHO, and other ACT-A partners has created a Knowledge Bank depository to host various tools, guidance notes, technical briefs, and case studies produced by all ACT-A partner agencies. The goal is simple: make the latest COVID-19 health systems–related knowledge accessible in one place for ease of utilization by countries. Moving forward, this platform is meant to harness cross-country learning, increase country engagement, and update best practices as we learn them.

As countries work to turn the corner in their COVID-19 responses, the optimal use of knowledge will be critical. Countries will need to effectively manage knowledge assets to inform strategic decisions to both mitigate the health and socioeconomic effects of the pandemic and strengthen preparedness for future emergencies.

Authors

Martin Lutalo
Senior Knowledge Management Specialist
MORE BLOGS BY MARTIN

Rialda Kovacevic
Health Specialist
MORE BLOGS BY RIALDA


Feng Zhao
Practice Manager
MORE BLOGS BY FENG

 

We Are In The First Open Source Intelligence War

13Mar2022  Bob Gourley

A thesis I cannot prove but I believe: We are witnessing the world’s first war where open source intelligence is providing more actionable insights than classified sources.

In this war:

• Tiktok provided direct evidence of the nature of troop and equipment movements.
• Commercial imagery showed field deployment locations, field hospitals, then proof of movement to invade.
• Dating apps provided indications of which military units are being deployed.
• Twitter gave a platform for highly skilled deeply experienced open source analysts to provide insights.
• Cloud connected smartphones with a wide range of capabilities throughout Ukraine gave direct tactical insights into how the war was and is being prosecuted.
• Open source analysts are listening into and translating military communications.
• Cybersecurity analysts and cyber threat intelligence companies are sharing indicators of incidents faster than ever and before any tipping and queuing by government sources.
• Historians with great context on culture and history are more rapidly collaborating and sharing relevant insights.

Much of the above is supported by new tools and applications and collaborative environments for individuals and non government groups.

All of this means, I believe, that this is the world’s first war where open source intelligence is the dominate source.

Background:

Open Source Intelligence is a phrase I’ve known since I began a career in the intelligence community in 1982. By that time the intelligence community had already spent decades developing processes to leverage information produced by adversaries (even though what they say would have a propaganda slant it provided useful insights). For example, one of the most widely known feeds of open source intelligence at the time was the reporting of FBIS, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which monitored and translated Soviet media sources. Other open source intelligence also included great work by researchers and academics who studied everything they could on adversaries. An outstanding example from the Cold War was the body of knowledge produced by Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, who were able to provide extensive insights into the internal power structure and military capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union, all from reading open source intelligence.

Since then the world has changed dramatically. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union crumbled, and a technological revolution swept over the globe. Old media companies lost their monopoly on delivery of information.  Individuals are now empowered by incredible compute power fed by an incredible array of sensors.

Who Uses Open Source Intelligence:

Nations build intelligence capabilities to steal enemy secrets and provide context that can help prepare for uncertainty in order to serve government decision-makers first, and provide some open insights to citizens secondarily.

Open Source Intelligence as a concept and profession came out of the intelligence community and in that context was always thought of as a way to inform the work of the intelligence community. Meaning from a government standpoint the concept is usually referring to information brought into classified assessments. This is still a very valid use case.

But open source intelligence also has non government consumers, including businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals. And by size this is a much bigger segment of users. The use of open source intelligence by this large segment allows for optimal decisions, better informed strategies, reduced risk, and enables citizens to make more informed decisions when it comes to telling governments what they expect from them.

What Does This Mean For Governments?

Governments should evaluate their focus and spend on intelligence. The rise of open sources of information and analysis means the government should be able to focus more on the much harder problems of penetrating adversaries to steal their deepest secrets. Doing this needs smarter ways of leveraging open source intelligence than are currently in place.

What Does This Mean for Businesses? 

Businesses should consider, continuously, how to improve their ability to fuel decisions with open source intelligence, including processes to acquire, assess and correlate intelligence as well as the technology to support decision making (for tips on doing this see Decision Intelligence). Businesses who provide intelligence as a service should also take note of this huge shift and double efforts to continue to improve offerings. The innovation in this space will absolutely heat up.

What Does This Mean for Citizens?

As individuals we should all seek to continually develop our own ability to leverage the powerful sources of information at our disposal. This includes understanding what those sources are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to spot misinformation and disinformation. We should all work to mitigate cognitive bias errors.

What Should You Do Next? 

We recommend all treat the use of open source intelligence with great respect. Be sure to hone your own skills at analysis and also manage your information diet. Be sure to add the OODA Daily Pulse product to your daily read, this is like getting the open source intelligence version of the President’s Daily Brief delivered each morning.

We also recommend networking with others to share your own best practices and lessons learned in the use of open source intelligence. Improve your direct networking with other professionals by visiting the OODA Forum. 

Buy an air fryer, Indonesia’s utility firm PLN tells customers amid cooking oil crisis

PLN’s deleted tweet calling on customers to buy an air fryer amid a cooking oil shortage.

By Coconuts Jakarta

Mar 22, 2022 | 

Indonesia’s state-owned electricity company PLN has attracted a great deal of negative buzz over its failure to read the room amid a cooking oil shortage in the country.

On Monday, PLN posted a tweet calling on its customers to move on from cooking oil and implied that we should all be capable of going bougie and buying an air fryer.

“ELECTRIZENS, IS LOOKING FOR COOKING OIL GIVING YOU A HEADACHE? Relax, because now there’s a solution. Yep! An air fryer does not require cooking oil, so Electrizens can live healthy and save money as well. Air fryers can also cook crunchy and low-fat food, too!” the tweet reads, addressing readers using a god awful portmanteau of the words electricity and netizen.

The tweet attracted quite the public outrage, with “electrizens” accusing PLN of being tone deaf, especially as air fryers are simply out of reach for low-income Indonesians. Some also pointed out that those most affected by the cooking oil shortage likely live in houses that are unable to provide power to the energy-hungry appliance.

PLN has deleted the tweet. As of this article’s publication, the firm has not issued a public statement addressing the controversy.

PLN isn’t the only one who has been accused of being tone deaf amid the cooking oil crisis.

Last week, PDI-P chairwoman and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri went full Marie Antoinette and said, “The problem is not about cooking oil being expensive. I’ve stopped to think, do ladies just fry their food everyday? To the point that they’re fighting [over cooking oil]?” She then added, “Is there no way to boil or steam or make rujak (sweet/spicy fruit salad)? Those are Indonesian dishes. Why are people complicating this?”

Megawati has been widely panned over her statement, which many say are both sexist and tone deaf. She has not issued a public apology, and her PDI-P party has defended her and suggested that it is the public that has to think the way she does and unlearn habits formed over generations.

Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, is ironically in the midst of a cooking oil shortage. Despite a government-imposed price cap, retail prices for the product have nearly doubled in recent weeks. It has come to a point where Indonesians are reportedly rushing to get their hands on government-subsidized cooking oil as they disappear from traditional markets and supermarkets.

Rising domestic consumption and skyrocketing palm oil prices are likely the main causes of the crisis, but Indonesian police are also cracking down on alleged hoarders of cooking oil who aim to manipulate the market and sell the product later at a higher cost.

Philippine presidential election: Duterte’s party backs Ferdinand Marcos Jnr for top job

The PDP-Laban party has endorsed the candidacy of Marcos Jnr, who is leading election surveys by a wide margin

However, it remained unclear which candidate President Duterte would personally throw his support behind

22 Mar, 2022

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Photo: AP

The presidential bid of Philippine election front runner Ferdinand Marcos Jnr received a boost on Tuesday after incumbent leader Rodrigo Duterte’s political party endorsed his candidacy for the May 9 vote.

The PDP-Laban party, which has not fielded a presidential candidate, announced it will back Marcos Jnr, the son and namesake of the country’s late dictator, who is running alongside Duterte’s daughter, Davao city mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio.

Still, it remained unclear which candidate the popular Duterte would personally throw his support behind.

Marcos Jnr, commonly known as “Bongbong”, was the candidate “whose platform is most aligned with the development programme” of Duterte, read the resolution signed by members of the party belonging to a faction supported by the Philippine leader.

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Cracks have appeared within the ruling party since last year as supporters of Duterte and another presidential candidate, Manny Pacquiao, have sought to wrest control.

Asked whether the party’s choice had Duterte’s blessing, party president Alfonso Cusi referred reporters to the leader’s office.

Presidential spokesman Martin Andanar told a media briefing it was “not clear if this is also the preference of … Duterte.”

Philippine presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. Photo: EPA-EFE

Political analyst Temario Rivera said Duterte’s endorsement was an important factor.

“Forget about parties in our system. It is powerful families and influential politicians that count,” Rivera said, adding that PDP-Laban remained “very divided.”

Governor Ben Evardone, a close ally of Duterte and his party’s vice-president, announced he would back one of Marcos Jnr’s rivals, Vice-President Leni Robredo. He did not sign the party resolution.

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6 Mar 2022


PDP-Laban was created to oppose the Marcos dictatorship, Senator Aquilino Pimentel, leader of a faction in the party supporting retired boxing star Pacquiao, said in a statement.

Marcos Jnr enjoys a strong lead in the presidential election race, according to opinion polls, which also showed Duterte-Carpio as the top choice for vice-president.

A spokesperson for Marcos Jnr did not immediately respond to a request for comment.