All hail Jeff Bezos the philanthropist! The rest of us will just keep paying our taxes


The Amazon founder says giving money away ‘is really hard’. Luckily, poor people do far more of it than he does

Jeff Bezos at the National Press Club in Washington, 2019. 

Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP

Marina Hyde

Tue 15 Nov 2022 

How bracing to wake up yesterday and read that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had donated $100m to Dolly Parton’s charitable endeavours, at his own “Courage and Civility” event. (Sarcastic airquotes: my own.) The many, many news reports about this act suggested it was a truly incredible sum from the second richest man in the world, who – according to recent estimates – gets richer by about $205m a day.

Anyway, once I’d peeled myself off the ceiling, I got busy on the government’s tax calculator. If you’re on the median average UK salary – and you pay your taxes – your take-home pay is £72 a day. Looked at one way, then, Jeff’s benevolence would be the equivalent of donating £34.56 to charity. Have YOU ever donated thirty-four quid to charity? Do you pay your taxes? If so, you’re actually being more generous than Jeff Bezos, who, famously, avoids almost all of his. And yet, where’s YOUR splashy news write-up in all the fine news outlets of the world? Where’s YOUR fawning TV interview? Why does no one refer to YOU as a “philanthropist”?


We’ll come to the obvious answers to those questions shortly, but for now, let’s look at the stage-managed hoopla around these so-called Courage and Civility awards. And yes, that title does make it sound like Jeff just demanded a warehouse operative bring him two inoffensive abstract nouns that were out of copyright. In fact, Bezos announced the initiative last year, shortly after disembarking his little space rocket, possibly sensing a planetary disdain being levelled at the kind of guy who could put himself in zero gravity for four minutes but couldn’t figure out how to treat his workers properly.

Anyway, the Courage and Civility awards are now an actual thing. And alongside Sunday’s self-effacing ceremony and his attempt to piggyback on the lifelong altruism and extraordinary charitable service of HRH Dolly Parton, Bezos granted an exclusive sit-down with CNN. First impressions? Jeff interviews like a chat tool, and resembles your local area’s most uncompromising and least booked 58-year-old Vin Diesel lookalike. Having long refused to sign the Giving Pledge – a promise by many of the world’s richest individuals to donate most of their wealth to charitable causes – Bezos announced that he intends giving “the majority” of his money away in his lifetime, according to CNN. And yet, does he intend to do this? His answer – “Yeah, I do” – feels somewhat vague and short on specifics.

Dolly Parton at the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles, November 2022. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Variety/Getty Images

But taking Jeff at his word, I mean it from the bottom of the heart when I say: BIG FRICKING DEAL. Most people give a significant amount of their money away during their lifetime, via a little something we call the taxation system. I know! Where’s our red-carpet gala? I tell you what, next time our paychecks arrive, why don’t we all get our hair done and put on black tie or a big old dress and graciously twat our way down a red carpet going “You’re MOST welcome!” for the cameras.

According to what Bezos told CNN, philanthropy “is really hard”. It certainly seems to be for him. Do recall he was only dragged kicking and screaming to the giving-a-shit game, having spent years accruing billions before it was finally pointed out to him that not having some kind of philanthropic arm looked fairly abysmal. In 2017 Bezos asked Twitter users for ideas on how to help the world “in the here and now”, before embarking on a truly committed programme of ignoring every single one of them who suggested paying his workers properly and contributing fair tax.

A year later, he actually uttered the words: “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel.” That was the same year Amazon helped kill a Seattle tax on big firms to alleviate the homelessness crisis, by threatening to pull a huge building project. The business and tech commentator Scott Galloway calls Bezos “the mother of all welfare queens” for the vast benefits he’s drawn from public money and the tax breaks he remorselessly chases and demands.

But of course, Jeff is the kind of widely acclaimed visionary who simply lacks the vision to realise that the first way to help is by paying people a fair wage and forking out your taxes like an ordinary person – and not by turning up to dole out “charity” after the event like some bastard god of the purse strings. Unfortunately, he’s part of that specific billionaire class that believes they should be allowed to hypothecate almost 100% of their own vast riches in whichever direction they wish, because the exchequers of the world are just junior personnel, and they know better than all of them how to spend it.

So yes, for Bezos philanthropy “is really hard”. What he does – fauxlanthropy – is much, much easier. Moving billions to non-profits you control, effectively awarding yourself tax breaks, buying media fawning with one of the lamest possible sleights-of-hand: these things, self-evidently, are a whole lot easier. What’s hard to understand is why on earth we’re still buying into this obvious bullshit from some of the most selfish people in the world. The poor give a far greater proportion of their money to charity than the rich. I don’t mean to be uncivil, but what is courageous about letting Jeff Bezos pretend otherwise?

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

My suffragette grandmothers are now seen as heroes. Today’s climate protesters will be too

Whether or not you agree with their tactics, activists blocking roads and stopping traffic are on the right side of history

‘I worry about the danger of alienating the public, but I understand the sense of frustration.’ 

Just Stop Oil protest on the M25, 10 November 2022. 

Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Helen Pankhurst
Tue 15 Nov 2022 

“When the anti-suffrage members of the government criticise militancy in women, it is very like beasts of prey reproaching the gentler animals who turn in desperate resistance at the point of death.” These words were spoken by Emmeline Pankhurst some 110 years ago. As the great-granddaughter of Emmeline, and the granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, I’m often asked to make comparisons between the suffragette movement and the environmental movements of today. People regularly ask me whether I endorse the tactics of climate activists such as Just Stop Oil.

The climate activists who recently threw tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting might easily be regarded as gentle beasts turning to desperate resistance. The climate crisis is already deadly for many around the world: in east Africa, one person dies of climate-induced hunger every 36 seconds. My great-grandmother advised suffragettes to go to the House of Commons and refuse to leave; to break windows; to “attack the secret idol of property”. The point she was making was that within every cause there is room for people to find their own versions of activism and militancy. The choice of tactics must not divide the movement.

Of course, then, as now, there were red lines: damage to property, not people. The suffragette foot soldiers had already ramped up their militancy. Individual women had smashed windows and gone on hunger strikes, massively raising the visibility of their cause. The Women’s Social and Political Union, the militant wing of the suffrage movement, approved and took responsibility for these acts. But the schisms were there. Sylvia, Emmeline’s middle daughter, felt the focus should be on movement building and disapproved of militant actions such as the damage to Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus when it was slashed with a meat cleaver by the suffragette Mary Richardson.

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested outside Buckingham Palace, London, 21 May 1914. 

Photograph: Jimmy Sime/Getty Images

Many other suffrage campaigners were conflicted. Some tried to use non-militant but media-grabbing stunts, including attempting to drop leaflets from a hot air balloon over parliament. The question of which tactics are appropriate is a collective dilemma in the modern environmental movement.
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On one hand, environmental activists are shocked by the lack of urgency given to the matter. They feel that “constitutional” methods aren’t working, that the media are not giving their cause enough attention and that more people need to act. On the other hand, many worry that activists are going too far and alienating those who they need on their side.

Meanwhile, in the face of dissent, authorities are increasingly using heavy handed tactics of their own. The government’s Police and Crime Act curtails the right to protest peacefully. It increases the cost and reduces the space for citizens to share their views and to make their discontent heard. Activists may therefore adopt more disruptive actions.

To those who sneer at activists blocking roads: what are you doing to save the planet?

Polly Toynbee

As a feminist and environmentalist, I support climate activists. The climate crisis is a feminist issue. It is disproportionately taking the lives and futures of women and girls. Research by Care international found that 150 million more women than men experienced climate-induced hunger in 2021, while 900,000 children, most of them girls, are at risk of dropping out of school in Somalia alone due to drought. Yet so few women are at the decision-making tables (just seven out of the 110 world leaders at Cop27). Women are not responsible for this manmade climate mess, but they must be at the centre of finding solutions.

At the same time, I am uncomfortable with some of the more disruptive tactics used by environmental protesters. I worry about the danger of alienating the general public. Nevertheless, I understand the sense of urgency and frustration with the untenable status quo. It is not just their own deaths that climate activists are worried about, but people living in the harshest conditions around the world.

Those with political and economic power are the “beasts of prey” that should be made accountable for the pledges not delivered, for greenwashing, for the continued destruction of our planet. They have it in their power to limit global heating to that critical cap of 1.5C, and to invest in the women and girls who are so disproportionately affected by this crisis.

Environmentalists of all forms have the moral high ground. I have absolutely no doubt that in 100 years’ time they will be seen as the real heroes. Those who ignored the warning bells will be – nay, already are – on the wrong side of history.

Helen Pankhurst is a senior adviser on gender equality for Care International UK and a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University

It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate

It’s time to ditch the generations-long argument between those who blame overpopulation and those who worry about consumption

Nobel prizewinner Malala Yousafzai ‘summed it up: ‘If every girl was able to exercise her sexual and reproductive rights … it could reduce total emissions.’’ 

Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

John Vidal is a former Guardian environment editor
Tue 15 Nov 2022 

By a remarkable coincidence, just as governments, campaigners and business owners are meeting in Egypt to address climate breakdown today, the world is officially crashing past the symbolic 8 billion population milestone . This means global population is on its way to 10 billion or more by the turn of the century.

But there will be no attempt by countries at Cop27 to connect the inexorable growth of human numbers with the seemingly unstoppable rise in temperatures. Despite the fact that the several billion more people expected to be alive in 70 years’ time will put more pressure on resources and will produce far more emissions, the population explosion is yet again being ignored, sidestepped or denied by world leaders.


Part of this is down to sensitivity about talking about human numbers. History is littered with violent governments trying to force sterilisation on vulnerable people. Suggestions, too, that human numbers be cut have often been peddled by authoritarian regimes and far-right extremists, and genuine concern today in rich countries is often met with accusations of racism or eco-fascism.

Yet as the scientist James Lovelock was fond of saying, anyone who failed to see the connection between climate and population was “either ignorant or hiding from the truth”, adding: “These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.”

Until now, the orthodox western intellectual argument has been that the number of people does not matter as much as how people use resources. Consumption and inequality are the problem, not population size. True, the wealthiest 10% consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom 10%. So of course the rich must change their behaviour. But making climate breakdown all about consumption has become an excuse for countries to do nowhere near enough to reduce their populations.

The hard fact is that in an age of climate breakdown, human numbers matter. And the ecological impact of another 2-3 billion humans will be immense.

This is also about women’s rights too. By ignoring population, the needs of women and girls are being sidelined by governments that are too obsessed with consumption to notice how vital education and family planning are in tackling the climate emergency.

The Nobel peace prizewinner Malala Yousafzai summed it up best last year. “When girls are educated and when they stay in schools they get married later in their lives, then they have less children and that helps us to reduce the impacts of climate change that the population increase brings,” she said. “If every girl was able to exercise her sexual and reproductive health and rights through quality education and had access to modern contraception, it could reduce total emissions.”

According to the UN population fund (UNFPA), 257 million women have an unmet need for proper contraception, half of all global pregnancies are unplanned, and nearly a quarter of all women do not have enough agency to refuse sex.

Yet the world’s richest countries together contribute just a few hundred million dollars annually to the UN’s population agency, with some now pushing “pro-natalist” policies to grow their numbers. In 2017, Donald Trump cut US funding to the UNFPA, and last year the UK followed, by cutting its contribution to the agency by 85%, from an expected $200m to a paltry $32m. US funding has since been partly restored but the British money alone, it has been estimated, would have helped to prevent the deaths of about 250,000 mothers and children, 14.6 million unintended pregnancies and 4.3 million unsafe abortions.

The generations-long argument between those who uniquely blame overpopulation and those who maintain that consumption is the biggest contribution to the climate emergency must be ditched.

Finally, and barely noticed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s consensus of climate scientists, identified global population growth as one of the two biggest drivers of growing CO2 emissions, saying earlier this year that “globally, GDP per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade”. It also warned that if population continues to grow, “it will be much harder to limit warming to 1.5C”.

This should be proof enough for everyone that population growth and its future environmental impact are now twin global crises – and UN agencies and civil society groups meeting in Egypt must urgently recognise that both are driving planetary destruction, and poverty.

John Vidal was the Guardian’s environment editor. He is the author of McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial

This World Cup is about much more than football. I’ve seen the coffins

Migrant workers have endured exploitative, even deadly, conditions as Qatar prepared for the World Cup. The ‘beautiful game’ has blood on its hands

Construction workers at Lusail Stadium during a media tour in Doha, 

Qatar, 20 December 2019. Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

Pete Pattisson

Guardian 

Tue 15 Nov 2022 

On a corner of my desk stands a giant stack of external hard drives. They hold the story, gigabyte after gigabyte, of almost a decade of reporting on the lives of Nepal’s migrant workers in the World Cup host nation, Qatar.

On one, I recently found a photo from July 2013 of Tilak Bishwakarma holding a picture of his son Ganesh. When he left his home for Qatar, Ganesh was a teenager hoping to earn some money to support his impoverished family. Two months later his body was brought home in a coffin.

I opened another photo, showing a tattered piece of paper, listing the names of 22 other Nepali workers who died in Qatar that July. Beside each name is written the cause of death: electrocution, falls, road traffic accident. On 17 July came Ganesh’s name. Cause of death: cardiac arrest.

Ganesh’s short life formed part of a major investigation into the treatment of Qatar’s vast low-wage migrant workforce (almost 90% of the country’s population comprises migrant workers). It revealed an appalling catalogue of abuses – overcrowded, filthy accommodation, passport confiscation and non-payment of wages – which in some cases may have amounted to forced labour, a modern form of slavery.

When the Guardian published its exclusive story in September 2013 after I saw the coffins of Nepali workers returning home from the Gulf, it made headlines around the world. Football was literally coming down to a matter of life and death. There was something deeply offensive about the exploitation of some of the world’s poorest people in the name of a festival of sport.

Fifa immediately said it was “very concerned”, though clearly not concerned enough to have done its own due diligence. The next day Qatar’s World Cup organisers sent a letter to the game’s governing body assuring it that they viewed the Guardian’s findings with the “utmost seriousness”. Attached to the letter was a one-page “Workers’ Charter” setting out, in skeletal form, their commitment to workers’ rights.

A demonstrator holds a placard critical of Qatar’s policies regarding the working conditions of migrant workers before a friendly between Scotland and Qatar in Edinburgh. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images

For the next nine years, that commitment would be relentlessly tested and challenged by the Guardian’s reporting. (If you value our dogged pursuit of justice, safety and fairness, please consider supporting our journalism today.)

We exposed how workers from North Korea were building a tower block – now a luxury hotel booked up by football fans – under conditions likely to constitute slave labour.

We documented the poverty wages being paid to the men constructing the new stadiums. In 2014 one told us he was earning overtime pay the equivalent of 45 pence an hour. Four years later another said his basic wage worked out at 60 pence an hour – 10,000 times less than the reported earnings of Lionel Messi.

We revealed that thousands of south Asian workers had died in Qatar in the decade after it won the right to host the World Cup, many from sudden and unexplained causes. The Qatari authorities have done little to investigate these deaths and countless families of the deceased have not received compensation from their employers.

Construction workers on Doha’s Khalifa International Stadium in 2015.

 Photograph: Warren Little/Getty Images

Last year we found workers employed at opulent Fifa-endorsed hotels trapped by recruitment debts and rogue employers, earning less in a month than the cost of a standard room for a night.
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And in September we revealed that some labourers at World Cup stadiums were living in squalid, windowless cabins on the edge of the desert.

Low-wage migrant workers face a cruel choice: stay at home and suffer, or take the risk and go abroad. For some the gamble pays off – money is sent home, houses are rebuilt and children sent to school – but for too many it’s a bet they lose.

Reporting from Qatar is not easy, but the only way to really tell this story is to be on the ground, feel the searing heat, see the overcrowded labour camps and listen. And that’s the hardest part. People are afraid to speak, because however tough their circumstances are, they need the work, so why put that at risk to talk to a journalist?

Before each trip I agree protocols with my editor in the event that I’m detained (as a number of journalists have been). Once in Qatar, I am constantly looking over my shoulder, metaphorically and literally. Interviews take place at night, or parked up on a quiet street or in the back of a nondescript restaurant. But by working independently and undercover we have been able to expose what they hoped to keep hidden.

A room at the camp which houses workers employed at a number 

of World Cup stadiums in Qatar. 

Photograph: Pete Pattisson/The Guardian

So as the World Cup kicks off, if you value reading about the action in the stadiums, but also about the people who built them, please consider supporting a news organisation determined to expose the truth behind the slick PR of Big Football and the Gulf petrocrats. You can fund our work today, from just £1. If you can, please consider giving a little more each month or year.

It makes a difference. The cumulative pressure of our reporting, alongside the work of human rights groups and trade unions, forced the Qatari authorities to belatedly introduce a number of new laws that have the potential to create real change for low-wage workers.

The abusive kafala system, under which workers cannot change jobs without their employer’s permission, has – on paper – been abolished and a minimum wage has been introduced.

The reforms have neither gone far enough nor been implemented rigorously. But that’s why this work matters. When the Qatari authorities and Fifa make overblown claims about what they have achieved, we will challenge them.

Our reporters know that it’s about so much more than what happens on the pitch.

Support vital, investigative Guardian journalism today.

Lula faces backlash after flying to Cop27 on millionaire’s private jet

Brazil president-elect’s decision to fly on a jet owned by a health industry mogul criticised by both opponents and supporters

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasília, Brazil, last week. 

Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters


Andrew Downie in São PauloTue 15 Nov 2022 15.32 GMT


Brazil’s president-elect has faced a backlash at home after flying to the Cop27 environmental summit on a private jet owned by a millionaire businessman.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected on 30 October and has vowed to undo much of the environmental damage wrought by the outgoing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Under Bolsonaro, Amazonian deforestation hit a 15-year high after he gutted protection agencies and encouraged loggers, prospectors and ranchers into the rainforest to take advantage of its abundant natural resources.

But Lula’s decision to fly to Egypt on a Gulfstream G600 owned by a health industry mogul was criticised by both opponents and supporters.

“If he is really travelling on [a] private jet it’s a careless mistake he should have avoided,” one former minister said. “There are things you can’t do as a president, even before being sworn in.”

Lula’s spokesman said he would not comment on the issue but his vice-president-elect said the plane’s owner, José Seripieri Junior, was accompanying Lula to Egypt rather than loaning him the aircraft.

Lula’s transition coordinator argued he had committed no crime.

“Lula is not yet president of the republic, he doesn’t have the use of government aircraft,” Wellington Dias said on the Roda Viva interview show. “So there’s no rule that stops him from getting a lift.”

Dias pointed out that Lula cannot travel on commercial airlines due to the significant chance of him being harassed or attacked by far-right radicals, some of whom have openly expressed a wish to see him dead.

But the controversy, coming just two weeks after Lula beat Bolsonaro in the tightest runoff election since Brazil’s military dictators gave up power in 1985, was evidence he will enjoy little or no honeymoon period.

Lula does not take power until 1 January but last week the Brazilian real lost value against the dollar and the stock market had its biggest one-day fall in almost a year after he gave a speech saying he would govern for the poor, not the financial markets.
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Both recouped much of the value the next day but it was a stark warning that the leftist leader will have little room for manoeuvre, especially with Bolsonaro forces strong in Congress and hardcore supporters still on the streets denying the election result.

Lula served as president between 2003 and 2011 before giving way to Workers’ party colleague Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff was impeached and a corruption scandal engulfed the party, leading to Lula’s imprisonment in 2018.

He was released almost two years later and the charges were annulled on a technicality but many voters have never forgiven him.

The furore over his trip to Egypt added to the sense of foreboding after the private jet’s owner was named as Seripieri Junior, founder of Qualicorp, one of Brazil’s best-known private health plans.

Seripiero founded Qualicorp in 1997 but left the company in 2019 and now runs another health plan called Qsaúde. He was briefly arrested in 2020 as part of an investigation into illegal campaign funding.

He was also an early backer of Lula’s presidential bid, hosting dinners with other business leaders who had shown reluctance to meet with the leftist challenger.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah has ended hunger strike, sister says

British-Egyptian political prisoner had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories or less a day for six months

Abd el-Fattah had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories a day since April. According to his family, his health has deteriorated markedly. 

Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton/Reuters

Ruth MichaelsonTue 15 Nov 2022 13.03 GMT

Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian democracy activist jailed in Egypt, has told his family in a letter that he has ended his six-month-long hunger strike, which he began in protest against his detention conditions.

“I’ve broken my strike. I’ll explain everything on Thursday,” he told them, in reference to his monthly family prison visits to the Wadi el-Natrun desert prison where he is being held. The democracy activist was sentenced to a further five years in prison last year for sharing a social media post about torture, shortly after gaining British citizenship through his mother.




Abd el-Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 revolution who has spent most of the past decade behind bars, began a partial hunger strike in April in protest at his detention conditions, spending more than six months consuming only 100 calories a day. According to his family, his health has deteriorated markedly.

He escalated to a full hunger strike the week before Cop7, and then ceased drinking water on the day the conference began in Sharm el-Sheikh. He told his family repeatedly beforehand that he expected to die in prison.

The news that Abd el-Fattah had broken his strike came after Egyptian public prosecutors said the activist had received a “medical intervention” last week, without specifying further.

In a letter to his family written last Saturday, Abd el-Fattah provided the first proof of life his family had received in two weeks, telling them that he had resumed drinking water.

“From today I’m drinking water again so you can stop worrying until you see me yourself. Vital signs today are OK. I’m measuring regularly and receiving medical attention,” he told them.

Abd el-Fattah is due to mark his 41st birthday on Friday. “The important thing is I want to celebrate my birthday with you on Thursday, I haven’t celebrated for a long time, and want to celebrate with my cellmates so bring a cake, normal provisions,” he told his family in his latest letter. His communications are heavily monitored by prison authorities.

Prisoners in Egypt’s sprawling detention system, which houses at least 65,000 political prisoners, normally require their families to provide food and other basic items to sustain them.

“I feel cautiously relieved now knowing that at least he’s not on hunger strike but my heart won’t really be settled until Thursday, when my mother and sister see him with their own eyes,” said Mona Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister.

His lawyer, Khaled Ali, has made three unsuccessful attempts to visit his client at the prison, despite having gained permission to do so from Egypt’s public prosecutor. Ali’s visit was intended to provide updates about Abd el-Fattah’s wellbeing and status, including what motivated him to begin drinking water and to begin eating, and whether he had been subjected to treatments without his consent.

“At this point the family have no further information about what has happened inside prison or what is informing Alaa’s decision,” Abd el-Fattah’s family said in a statement.

Another sister, Sanaa Seif, who attended Cop27 to campaign for her brother’s freedom and demand freedom for other political prisoners, is due to visit Wadi el-Natrun on Thursday.

“We’re counting down the days until Thursday now to find out what’s been going on inside prison with Alaa,” she said.

Fear of backsliding on Glasgow pledges dominates Cop27

Tentative drafts are emerging but some countries appear to be seeking to water down commitments agreed last year

• Cop27 live – latest news updates

Climate protesters in Egypt remind delegates of the 1.5C target but China and India want to emphasise the Paris agreement that had an upper limit of a 2C rise. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

Fiona Harvey and Nina Lakhani in Sharm El-Sheikh and Damian Carrington in London

Tue 15 Nov 2022 

Fear of countries backsliding on their commitments to tackle the climate crisis dominated the Cop27 UN climate talks in Egypt on Tuesday, as the first tentative drafts started to emerge of key potential decisions.

Governments are supposed to be building on pledges made last year at Cop26 in Glasgow. These include limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, doubling the amount of financial assistance for poor countries to adapt to the impacts of extreme weather, and addressing the issue of loss and damage, which means financial assistance for countries stricken by climate disaster.

However, documents and proposals seen by the Guardian on Tuesday, and accounts from negotiating teams, showed some countries attempting to unpick agreements and water down commitments.

Negotiators cautioned that the situation was still highly fluid, and threats by some to renege on previous promises may be merely a gambit, at this early stage. Many countries may be setting out extreme negotiating positions on some issues in order to win concessions on others.

“There really is nothing definite you can say yet at this stage about where these issues will go,” one delegate said. “It’s all still up for grabs.”

Draft texts go through many iterations before they are finally accepted by the Conference of the Parties, and key proposals can be dropped, reinstated or modified many times. Some countries also leak drafts in order to push others into changing position.

The central promise to limit global heating to 1.5C has been targeted by China and India, who want instead to emphasise the Paris agreement goal of an upper limit of 2C. The UK, which hosted Cop26, has pushed back strongly. Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, told the conference: “At Cop26 we did resolve collectively to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C. I have always said what we agreed in Glasgow and Paris has to be the baseline of our ambition. We’ve got to stick to that commitment. We cannot allow any backsliding.”

He warned: “We’ll either leave Egypt having kept 1.5C alive or this will be the Cop where we lose 1.5C.”

On finance, one potential draft shows a proposal to water down a commitment made in Glasgow to double finance for adaptation, from about $20bn a year to $40bn, by 2025. One version of the new text would relegate this to “considering” to double finance.

On loss and damage, Sweden’s climate minister, Romina Pourmokhtari, queried the need for a new fund to direct money from rich to poor countries afflicted by climate disaster. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish youth activist, tweeted: “Sweden opposes the creation of a fund for climate damages and thus complicates the negotiations on Cop27. This fund would provide crucial support for those most affected – it is a matter of life and death for countless people.”

Romina Pourmokhtari, Sweden’s climate minister, questioned the need for a new fund to address loss and damage. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, insisted that the EU was still supportive of providing finance for loss and damage, but that there was not broad agreement among developed and developing countries on what form any new finance mechanism should take.

“I don’t see today agreement emerging on a new facility, but the EU is building bridges [with other countries],” he said.

The question of whether there should be a whole new fund for loss and damage, and how any such fund should be administered, is a bone of contention at the talks. The Guardian has seen a proposal from the G77 and China – one of the developing world negotiating blocs at the talks – that insists a new fund is necessary.

However, other developing countries believe there can be a “mosaic” approach, which would combine funding from various sources, including the World Bank, an insurance programme created by Germany and the G7 called the Global Shield, and existing climate finance bodies such as the Global Environment Facility.

The G77 proposal says a new fund is needed “to assist developing countries in meeting their costs of addressing non-economic and economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events”.

It would create a 35-member transitional committee – with representatives from 20 developing and 15 developed countries – which would begin work in early 2023 to establish the “objectives, principles and operational modalities” of the new fund over the next year or two.

Loss and damage is for many climate-vulnerable countries the most important and contested aspect of the finance negotiations. The G77 chief negotiator, Nabeel Munir, told the Guardian that the bloc was united. “There is 100% unity on this. We want a loss and damage facility established this year. We are pushing for this and not talking about compromises … Loss and damage is the main banner headline for this Cop, we are not giving up. The rest of climate finance [adaptation and mitigation] is also slow moving but is in process.”

The leaked copy of the “Draft Cop decision on long-term climate finance” seen by the Guardian shows a potential watering down of the Glasgow pact, which contained the provision: “Urges developed country parties to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country parties from 2019 levels by 2025”

But the draft text for Cop27 currently says: “Urges developed country parties to continue improving and scaling up adaptation finance, including by, as appropriate, considering doubling adaptation finance”. The draft also suggests that the goal discussed at Glasgow of delivering $100bn (£84bn) a year in climate finance from 2023 could also be weakened, as the 2023 date does not appear in the text the Guardian has seen.

These attempts at watering down were “extremely worrying and unacceptable”, said Friederike Roder at Global Citizen. “The $100bn promise is left unmet for the second year in a row, but instead of pledging new money, the reference to striving to finally hit the target in 2023 is now completely gone,” said Roder.

She said: “While it’s early days … the first signs are far from promising. While efforts [described in the text] to increase transparency, to improve reporting and to agree on a common definition [of climate finance] are welcome, these cannot replace actual commitments. None of this excuses inaction – when will countries actually take responsibility?”

Native American kids are at the center of a high-stakes SCOTUS case

Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
Mon, November 14, 2022 
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.





What’s happening

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case challenging laws surrounding the care of Native American children that, depending on the ruling, could fundamentally alter the foundations of tribal sovereignty that have been in place for more than two centuries.

The case, Brackeen v. Haaland, centers around the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a law passed in 1978 in response to the alarming rate at which Native children were being taken from their homes, often to be placed in non-Native families. Under the ICWA, state authorities handling child custody cases involving Native children are required to place them in another Native American home whenever possible, preferably with members of their family or within their own tribe.

Three white families, with the backing of a handful of conservative states, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the ICWA puts the interests of tribes ahead of those of children and violates constitutional protections against race-based discrimination. Hundreds of Native American tribes from across the country have asked the court to reject the challenge, arguing that the word Indian in the law refers to the unique political status of tribe members — not their race.

For more than 200 years, U.S. law has considered Indigenous tribes to be distinct governments with the power to make and enforce their own laws. Because of this distinction, the 574 federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States have the right to run their own health services and criminal justice systems, set gaming laws, determine land rights practices and carry out a long list of other functions independent of the state and federal governments.
Why there’s debate

Plaintiffs challenging the ICWA say that tribes’ distinct status, though appropriate in many circumstances, goes too far when it’s applied to child custody cases. In their view, prioritizing Native families for adoption means children end up being taken away from the foster parents who have cared for them for years — often to be placed in homes that are less able to protect their welfare. Others argue that tribal identity should be just one factor that’s considered when the authorities are weighing the best interest of a child, not one that supersedes all others.

Opponents of this view say the ICWA is a critical means of protecting tribes from efforts to erode their sovereignty and culture. They point to a long history of campaigns designed to dilute, or even eliminate, Indigenous peoples — often by removing children from tribal communities. Some experts say the ICWA should be considered the “gold standard” of child welfare policies and make the case that custody decisions involving all children should also weigh familial and cultural considerations.

The most fervent opposition, though, comes from tribes and legal experts who see the case as a means of eroding tribal sovereignty more generally. They argue that if the court rules that Indian is a racial designation, every single law built on the principle that it's actually a political status would be under threat. That could mean tribes could lose their ability to govern themselves on a whole range of issues or, in the most extreme scenario, lose their right to self-governance altogether.
What’s next

Legal experts say disagreement among the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices make it difficult to predict how much, if at all, the court might roll back the ICWA. A final ruling is expected sometime next summer.

A total of 10 states have passed their own versions of the ICWA, and more could follow suit if the federal statute is knocked down.
Perspectives

Native tribes have every right to protect their cultures

“Too many children have been taken from the beautiful living cultures that are indigenous to this land. We thrive on seeing our heritage, seeing ourselves reflected in genetic mirrors, and so we have to ask: Whose interest is served by cutting a child off from their roots?” — Michele Kriegman, Slate

The law puts the interests of tribes over the interests of children

“The ICWA has insinuated into law a ‘separate but equal’ test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes ‘the best interests of the child’ from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important. The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.” — George Will, Washington Post

The ICWA protects Native children from the harms that previous generations endured

“The United States has used generations of Native children as the tip of the spear in attacking tribal sovereignty. For the failed policies of their country, those children suffered unspeakable harm. Will the Supreme Court show that our country can learn from our past? Or, while we are still recovering the bodies of previous generations of Native children, will we betray the next?” — Rebecca Nagle, Atlantic

Many supporters of the lawsuit care more about chipping away at Native rights than the welfare of children

“Just as they did throughout the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, conservative groups and Christian organizations are funneling huge sums of money to dismantle ICWA in the 21st century, striking at the very heart of tribal sovereignty: the right to raise and educate each nation’s children and determine futures without colonial interference on the lands to which they belong and control.” — Nathan Tanner, Indian Country Today

The ICWA’s outdated restrictions causes harm to Native children and the families that want to adopt them

“This does have to do with some kind of horrible history with regards to how Native children were handled in the past. But now in our kind of more modern times, this situation has become one in which there really are a lot of decisions that are being made solely on the basis of race in ways that are excluding some Americans from their ability to adopt.” — Kim Strassel, Wall Street Journal

All child welfare laws should follow the model set up by the ICWA

“ICWA has long been considered the gold standard for child welfare, with good reason. It aligns with what is increasingly recognized as best practice in all situations: Whenever possible, keep children with family members if they cannot stay with their parents. The law has rightly been hailed by national child welfare experts as a high-water mark of sensible governance.” — Donna Butts, The Hill

A slimmed-down version of the law could reach the appropriate balance between tribal rights and child welfare

“A more narrowly tailored law, focusing on protecting Indian parents who affirm their Indian identity from having their child's fate determined by non-Indian courts to the detriment of their Indian heritage, might well be constitutional. This law is not.” — David Bernstein, Reason

Every single law regarding the government’s relationship with tribes could be under threat

“It would put at risk every treaty, every property and political right and every power that Indian nations possess today. All of a sudden, lands would be owned by ‘a race of Indian people,’ not a tribal government. Your borders, your police laws, everything on the reservation would be in question. I’m not being hyperbolic. I am afraid of this case.” — Robert Miller, Indian law expert, to New York Times

More than anything, the case represents a challenge to Native tribes’ basic right to exist

“At its heart … the ultimate questions it raises for the justices are fairly straightforward. Do Native tribes have the sovereign right to exist and to keep existing? Can Congress pass laws to help ensure that they do? If the answers seem easy, then so will the result.” — Matt Ford, New Republic

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Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo