IT'S 2023, TOOK LONG ENOUGH

UN members agree to protect marine life in high seas for first time: ‘The ocean is not a limitless resource’

BYCHRISTINA LARSON, PATRICK WHITTLE 

AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 5, 2023 

Sandbar sharks swim next to a person snorkeling in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Hadera, Israel, Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty on Saturday, March 4, 2023, to protect biodiversity in the high seas—nearly half the planet’s surface.

AP PHOTO/ODED BALILTY, FILE

For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas – representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York.

An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty, which applies to nearly half the planet’s surface, was reached late Saturday.

“We only really have two major global commons — the atmosphere and the oceans,” said Georgetown marine biologist Rebecca Helm. While the oceans may draw less attention, “protecting this half of earth’s surface is absolutely critical to the health of our planet.”

Nichola Clark, an oceans expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts who observed the talks in New York, called the long-awaited treaty text “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect the oceans — a major win for biodiversity.”

The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. And Clark said that’s critical to achieve the U.N. Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s waters, as well as its land, for conservation.

Treaty negotiations initially were anticipated to conclude Friday, but stretched through the night and deep into Saturday. The crafting of the treaty, which at times looked in jeopardy, represents “a historic and overwhelming success for international marine protection,” said Steffi Lemke, Germany’s environment minister.

“For the first time, we are getting a binding agreement for the high seas, which until now have hardly been protected,” Lemke said. “Comprehensive protection of endangered species and habitats is now finally possible on more than 40% of the Earth’s surface.”

The treaty also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.

“It means all activities planned for the high seas need to be looked at, though not all will go through a full assessment,” said Jessica Battle, an oceans governance expert at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Several marine species — including dolphins, whales, sea turtles and many fish — make long annual migrations, crossing national borders and the high seas. Efforts to protect them, along with human communities that rely on fishing or tourism related to marine life, have long proven difficult for international governing bodies.

“This treaty will help to knit together the different regional treaties to be able to address threats and concerns across species’ ranges,” Battle said.

That protection also helps coastal biodiversity and economies, said Gladys Martínez de Lemos, executive director of the nonprofit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense focusing on environmental issues across Latin America.

“Governments have taken an important step that strengthens the legal protection of two-thirds of the ocean and with it marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of coastal communities,” she said.

The question now is how well the ambitious treaty will be implemented.

Formal adoption also remains outstanding, with numerous conservationists and environmental groups vowing to watch closely.

The high seas have long suffered exploitation due to commercial fishing and mining, as well as pollution from chemicals and plastics. The new agreement is about “acknowledging that the ocean is not a limitless resource, and it requires global cooperation to use the ocean sustainably,” Rutgers University biologist Malin Pinsky said.

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Berlin

'The Biggest Conservation Victory Ever!' Global Treaty to Protect Oceans Reached


"This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics," said Greenpeace in response to an agreement to protect world's marine biodiversity.


Hawksbill turtle swimming over coral reef.
(Photo by Georgette Douwma / iStock via Gettty Images)

JON QUEALLY
Mar 05, 2023

Ocean conservationists expressed elation late Saturday after it was announced—following nearly two decades of consideration and effort—that delegates from around the world had agreed to language for a far-reaching global treaty aimed at protecting the biodiversity on the high seas and in the deep oceans of the world.

"This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics," declared Dr. Laura Meller, the oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic.

"We praise countries for seeking compromises, putting aside differences, and delivering a Treaty that will let us protect the oceans, build our resilience to climate change and safeguard the lives and livelihoods of billions of people," Meller added.

The final text of the Global Ocean Treaty, formally referred to as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty (BBNJ), was reached after a two-week round of talks that concluded with a 48-hour marathon push between delegations at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

"The High Seas Treaty opens the path for humankind to finally provide protection to marine life across our one ocean."

"This is huge," said Greenpeace in a social media post, calling the agreement "the biggest conservation victory ever!"

Rena Lee of Singapore, the U.N Ambassador for Oceans and president of the conference hosting the talks, received a standing ovation after announcing a final deal had been reached. "The shipped has reached the shore," Lee told the conference.

"Following a two-week-long rollercoaster ride of negotiations and super-hero efforts in the last 48 hours, governments reached agreement on key issues that will advance protection and better management of marine biodiversity in the High Seas," said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of over 40 ocean-focused NGOs that also includes the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Minna Epps, director of the Global Marine and Polar Programme at the IUCN, said the agreement represents a new opportunity.

"The High Seas Treaty opens the path for humankind to finally provide protection to marine life across our one ocean," Epps said in a statement. "Its adoption closes essential gaps in international law and offers a framework for governments to work together to protect global ocean health, climate resilience, and the socioeconomic wellbeing and food security of billions of people."

Protecting the world's high seas, which refers to areas of the oceans outside the jurisdiction of any country, is part of the larger push to protect planetary biodiversity and seen as key if nations want to keep their commitment to the UN-brokered Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—also known as the known as the 30x30 pledge—that aims protect 30 percent of the world's natural habitat by 2030.

"With currently just over 1% of the High Seas protected," said the High Seas Alliance in a statement, "the new Treaty will provide a pathway to establish marine protected areas in these waters." The group said the treaty will make acheiving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal agreement possible, but that "time is of the essence" for the world's biodiversity.

"The new Treaty will bring ocean governance into the 21st century," said the group, "including establishing modern requirements to assess and manage planned human activities that would affect marine life in the High Seas as well as ensuring greater transparency. This will greatly strengthen the effective area-based management of fishing, shipping, and other activities that have contributed to the overall decline in ocean health."

According to Greenpeace's assessment of the talks:

The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the EU, US and UK, and China were key players in brokering the deal. Both showed willingness to compromise in the final days of talks, and built coalitions instead of sowing division. Small Island States have shown leadership throughout the process, and the G77 group led the way in ensuring the Treaty can be put into practice in a fair and equitable way.

The fair sharing of monetary benefits from Marine Genetic Resources was a key sticking point. This was only resolved on the final day of talks. The section of the Treaty on Marine Protected Areas does away with broken consensus-based decision making which has failed to protect the oceans through existing regional bodies like the Antarctic Ocean Commission. While there are still major issues in the text, it is a workable Treaty that is a starting point for protecting 30% of the world’s oceans.

The group said it is now urgent for governments around the world to take the final step of ratifying the treaty.

"We can now finally move from talk to real change at sea. Countries must formally adopt the Treaty and ratify it as quickly as possible to bring it into force, and then deliver the fully protected ocean sanctuaries our planet needs," Meller said. "The clock is still ticking to deliver 30×30. We have half a decade left, and we can't be complacent."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


JON QUEALLYis managing editor of Common Dreams.

250,000 Israelis Rally against Netanyahu, Warn of Dictatorship and ‘No Liberty in an Occupation State’

By Juan Cole

March 5, 2023

Source: Informed Comment


Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – WAFA reports that on Saturday evening some 250,000 Israelis are estimated to have come out in numerous cities to protest plans of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to gut the judiciary. It is the ninth week in a row that rallies have been held, and they appear to be growing ever larger.

An estimated 160,000 people came out for the central demonstration on Kaplan street in Tel Aviv. The issue of neutering the Supreme Court dominated this and previous rallies, according to Al Jazeera.

WAFA says, however, that the current government’s complicity in pogroms against Palestinians finally began making an appearance as an issue for some protesters. They raised placards that said things like, “Where were the police when Huwwara was being burned?” They were referring to the rampage of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank in the small town of Huwwara near Nablus last Sunday, in which they set fire to houses, cars and trees and some shot up the place, killing one Palestinian aid worker, Sameh Aqtar, who had just come back from helping victims of the Turkish earthquake, and who was shot in the belly. Over 100 Palestinian residents were wounded, some badly.

Other posters depicted two fascist ministers in the government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security, and Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance, with Huwwara burning behind them. One said, “Yesterday in Huwwara, tomorrow in Israel,” a warning that the extremists would happily happily set fire to Israel itself to achieve their extremist goals. The Israeli Right has referred to the protesters as “terrorists.”

The demonstrations grew in the port city of Haifa in comparison with past weeks, with 35,000 attending the rally there. They demanded Netanyahu’s resignation. Some raised placards saying in Hebrew, English and Arabic “Palestinian Lives Matter,” “A people that occupies another people cannot be free,” “The time has come to pull down the dictatorship,” “A Government of Shame,” and “Apartheid does not stop at the Green Line.”

The green line is the border between Israel proper in its 1949 borders and the Palestinian West Bank, which Israel seized in 1967 and which major human rights organizations have said is being ruled under Apartheid laws and procedures.

In Netanya north of Tel Aviv about 20,000 protesters came out, about 10% of the resort city’s population.

In upscale Herzliya, 12,000 rallied, which is more than 10% of the city. 6,000 came out in Be’er-Sheva in the Negev. Thousands protested in other, smaller towns and cities all around the country.

For the first time this Saturday, demonstrations were held in Bat Yam south of Tel Aviv, which is known as the stronghold of the far right-wing Likud Party that Netanyahu leads.

A thousand police were assigned to try to control the Tel Aviv crowds. At Ben-Gvir’s urging, police had used military-grade tear gas and stun grenades against Tel Aviv crowds on Wednesdays “March of Disruption,” which saw many strikes and work stoppages. On Saturday, the protest in Tel Aviv was largely peaceful, but toward the end demonstrators blocked a main artery and clashed with police.

In his 1748 work Spirit of the Laws, eighteenth-century French thinker Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, d. 1755) wrote,


“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.”

Montesquieu’s division of powers was one basis for the U.S. constitution and this key concept has been central to democratic thinking.

By involving the ruling party more in the selection of supreme court justices and in allowing the legislature to overrule the supreme court with a simple majority, Netanyahu plans to subordinate the judiciary to himself and his parliamentary coalition. The Israeli public understands that if Netanyahu succeeds “there can be no liberty.”

Remarkably, since the Palestinian issue is a third rail in Israeli politics and many Israelis initially thought it would be a distraction to bring it up, some protesters at least have become more vocal on the extremist Religious Zionism and Jewish Power parties’ plans for deepening Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank.

And some at least of these Israelis have clearly gotten the message that if the extremists succeed in crushing the Palestinians, they will next proceed to crush the centrist and leftist Israelis, as well.

Michael Bloomberg warns Israel ‘courting disaster’ with judicial overhaul

Billionaire former New York mayor urges Netanyahu to ‘slow

down’ controversial legislation, says he understands those

pulling funds from country

By TOI STAFF5 March 2023,

Former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg (L), seen with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 

Former New York City mayor and longtime Israel supporter Michael Bloomberg published a New York Times op-ed Sunday warning against the Israeli government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary and sympathizing with those who are already pulling their funds out of the country for fear of the fallout.

It was the latest in a series of alarms raised by prominent figures abroad against the planned legislation.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is courting disaster” by trying to claim powers that are above review and is “imperiling Israel’s alliances around the world, its security in the region, its economy at home, and the very democracy upon which the country was built,” Bloomberg warned.

The billionaire spoke of his “fervent hope” that Netanyahu would heed President Isaac Herzog and “pull back and slow down” his coalition’s legislative plans.

The coalition is pushing a dramatic judicial restructuring that would increase government control over the judiciary. Critics say that along with other planned legislation, the sweeping reforms will impact Israel’s democratic character by upsetting its system of checks and balances, granting almost all power to the executive branch and leaving individual rights unprotected and minorities undefended.

Bloomberg assessed that the economic damage from the proposed changes is already being felt and noted that last month the shekel fell to a three-year record low against the dollar and euro. He noted that “a broad swath of business leaders and investors” have spoken out against the proposals “and, in a disturbing sign,” some have already begun pulling money out of the country while “re-evaluating their plans for future growth there.”

“As the owner of a global company, I don’t blame them,” he wrote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) chairs the weekly cabinet meeting, flanked by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on March 5, 2023. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / POOL / AFP)

Bloomberg said that companies and investors “place enormous value on strong and independent judicial systems because courts help protect them — not only against crime and corruption but also government overreach.”

“The extraordinary rise in Israel’s economic standing over the last generation may be Mr. Netanyahu’s greatest achievement,” he continued. “Yet unless he changes course, Mr. Netanyahu risks throwing all that progress — and his own hard-earned legacy — away.”

Aside from the economic impact, Bloomberg wrote, there is Israel’s security, which greatly relies on the relationship with the United States, is “built on shared values — freedom, equality, democracy,” and can only be maintained “by a commitment to the rule of law, including an independent judiciary capable of upholding it.”

If Israel moved to a form of governance “that mirrors those of authoritarian countries,” it risks upsetting its ties to the US and other free nations, resulting in a “devastating loss” for Israel’s security, damage to the prospects of peace with the Palestinians, he warned, adding that such a prospect “could even imperil the future of the Jewish homeland.”

Israel, he noted, is in “one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods” and faces existential threats. “The more divided it is at home, the weaker it appears to its enemies,” Bloomberg said.

The overhaul, he warned, would also undermine the “deep attachment millions of people around the world feel toward the country,” forged not just from its Jewish character, but its commitment to freedom.

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, speaks at the opening of the US Pavilion at the COP27 UN Climate Summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 8, 2022. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)

“I have never gotten involved in its domestic politics or criticized its government initiatives,” Bloomberg wrote. “But my love for Israel, my respect for its people, and my concern about its future are now leading me to speak out against the current government’s attempt to effectively abolish the nation’s independent judiciary.”

Bloomberg served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013 and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for US president in 2020.

His remarks joined those of a growing chorus from abroad against the overhaul.

Among those who have spoken up were a group of more than 70 prominent law professors at American universities who, in January, signed onto a statement urging the Israeli government to rethink its plan.

The 78 signatories included former deans at the Harvard and Yale law schools, Martha Minow and Robert Post, along with Alan Dershowitz — a staunch Israel supporter who had already spoken out against the government’s legal proposals. Dershowitz has since repeated his insistence that the judiciary remain non-partisan.

In addition, a group of 310 economists, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Eric Maskin of the United States and Israel Prize recipient Menahem Yaari, signed a letter against the proposed overhaul, warning that it could “lead investors to flee and bring a brain drain.”

Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against plans by the government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 4, 2023. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Last week, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Europe was increasingly concerned over the plans and a group of foreign ambassadors reportedly grilled Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana with questions about the proposals.

The judicial overhaul plan has also drawn intense criticism and warnings from leading financial and legal experts in Israel, as well as weekly mass protests and public petitions by various officials, professionals, and private companies.

President Herzog first issued a plea to pause the legislative blitz last month to enable dialogue between coalition and opposition on constructive judicial reform, warning that the rifts over the issue were becoming dangerous.

While Netanyahu has said he is open to dialogue, he has insisted that he will not slow efforts to advance the judicial overhaul.

In Bulldozing Israeli Democracy, Benjamin Netanyahu Could Become the BDS Movement’s Greatest Ally

Capital is beginning to flee Israel in the wake of the prime minister’s judicial overhaul.

By Daniel Boguslaw

March 5, 2023

Source: The Intercept


In recent years, the Israeli government has identified boycott, divestment, and sanctions of the Jewish state over its treatment of Palestinians as a top threat to the country. Today, right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be the BDS movement’s greatest ally.

In his bid to evade prosecution for influence peddling and bribery, Netanyahu has forged a political alliance with Israel’s extremist religious parties, allied himself with the remnants of the anti-Arab terror organization Kach, and now charged forward with plans to gut the Israeli Supreme Court. Ahead of Israel’s 2022 election — the fifth in four years — Netanyahu put forward a proposal to effectively strip the judiciary of its moderating influence on Israeli society while transferring power to the executive branch and what is now an extremist-controlled Parliament.

Already, the effects of an unmoored and emboldened Israeli far right have emerged, with a full-on pogrom — endorsed by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — taking place late last month in the occupied West Bank town of Hawara.

The Israeli government’s far-right turn has spurred tens of thousands of Israelis from across the political spectrum to take to the streets in protest — and BDS members are watching closely as its goal of making Israel an economic and cultural pariah is finally materializing on the horizon.

“The BDS movement has tracked the most recent divestments and threats of divestment from Israel, concluding that the self-identified ‘Start-up Nation’ is increasingly and gradually looking like a Shut Down Nation,” Omar Barghouti, one of the co-founders of the BDS movement, told The Intercept.

Leading figures at Israel’s major universities have warned that the efforts to force judicial reform through Israel’s Parliament could lead to widespread brain drain and have a devastating effect on Israel’s education system, scholars, and cultural institutions writ large.

Investment firms, long the target of BDS pressure, are signaling that keeping their money in Israel might end up being bad for their clients’ bottom lines. The firms are warning that the erosion of democracy in Israel could be followed by capital flight and decreased investment as seen in Poland and Hungary in the wake of similar anti-democratic reforms — a de facto divestment owing to market pressures themselves.

In the past, sanctions against Israel have largely failed to materialize, lacking a critical mass of Western countries that have long treated Israel as a geopolitical ally. But as signs of growing unease mount, Irish parliamentarians renewed calls for increased sanctions, and infighting in the European Union over security cooperation and unchecked support is starting to spill into view.

“These economic-financial woes will only strengthen BDS campaigning worldwide to pressure companies and investment funds to dump apartheid Israel, as many of them eventually dumped apartheid South Africa,” Barghouti said.

In the early 2000s, activists opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine created a plan to achieve a global realignment toward Israel. Building on the anti-globalization efforts of the 1990s and effective boycotts against South African apartheid, activists sought to create a multipronged campaign focused on mobilizing economic and cultural pressures to force changes in Israeli society. Boycotting Israeli products and cultural institutions, divesting from Israeli companies, and imposing sanctions for the violation of international law formed the three pillars of the BDS movement.

In recent years, American politicians and pro-Israel advocacy groups have worked at the state and national levels to criminalize BDS protests under the banner of antisemitism. Anti-BDS laws have proliferated in over 30 states, and found widespread buy-in from sitting U.S. senators. Ironically, this full-throated support of Israel may catalyze many of the outcomes they hoped to criminalize.

“Anti-BDS laws are a direct effort by the government of Israel to penalize Americans for criticizing how Palestinians are treated. It is more objectionable now than it was at any time this idea that we will listen to the prime minister of Israel on this issue,” Gadeir Abbas, an attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Intercept. CAIR has worked to oppose bills seeking to criminalize the BDS movement in the United States. “For Palestinians, Israel has always been anti-democratic, and now that anti-democratic energy is enveloping all of Israel. I don’t think it’s clear to anybody what will happen next.”

In early February, just days after claiming that Wall Street firms were sticking firmly to Israel in the face of the protests roiling the county, Netanyahu was forced to confront an internal report from JPMorgan warning that the “idiosyncratic risk” posed by judicial reform could destabilize Israel’s credit rating. Netanyahu attempted to prevent JPMorgan from releasing negative analysis, according to the Israeli press, and met with major investors in France to calm fears about economic turmoil in Israel.

Already some $4 billion has flowed out of Israeli banks in the wake of the proposed judicial reforms, with European bank HSBC joining JPMorgan to suggest political turmoil could significantly damage Israel’s economy. The changes pose such a grave economic threat, a member of Israel’s monetary committee — the Israeli equivalent of the American Federal Reserve Board of Governors — resigned in protest. Even former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who attended MIT in the 1970s alongside Netanyahu, told Bloomberg that Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, which raise “serious and profound questions about the rule of law,” “could have quite serious adverse effects on the Israeli economy.”

The HR firm Papaya Global, which has invested tens of billions in Israel, announced at the end of January that it would pull funds out of Israel alongside other smaller tech firms, signaling that the tech sector, which accounts for 10 percent of Israeli employment, could also see significant damage in the coming months.

Israeli universities are also sounding the alarm that judicial reform could devastate international collaboration and research funding, isolating them from the rest of the world.

“This is liable to manifest itself as a brain drain,” leading Israeli academics wrote in an open letter, “and in the fact that faculty members will hesitate to join our ranks; that students, research students, post-doctoral students, and international colleagues will not come to Israel; that our access to international research funds will be limited; that foreign industries will withdraw themselves from cooperating with Israeli academia; and we will be excluded from the international research and educational community.”

While Israel has faced almost no sanctions for its repeated violations of international law, cracks have started to show. In 2021, Norway committed to withdrawing its sovereign wealth fund investments in Israeli companies tied to West Bank settlement expansion. In coming months, Norway may announce a decision to further withdraw hundreds of millions from Israeli banks.

Ireland has repeatedly advanced bills to ban the import of Israeli products, nearing success on multiple occasions only to have the U.S. State Department quash the country’s efforts. Irish parliamentarians who have long called for sanctioning Israel may find new support in light of the recent political upheaval. In January, the Irish foreign minister called on Israel to pay compensation for the destruction of EU-funded buildings in occupied Palestine.

In a letter to Netanyahu, Ada Colau wrote, “As mayor of Barcelona, a Mediterranean city and defender of human rights, I cannot be indifferent to the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population,” thereby ending the city’s ties to Israel and its “twinning” arrangement with Tel Aviv.

The EU also quietly backed off security cooperation with Israel last year and could find full-throated support for Netanyahu less and less tenable in the face of over 90 countries — including Germany and France — decrying Israel’s increasingly hostile attacks against Palestine at the U.N.

In February, the European Union was also forced to issue a statement heading off alarm that the international body would intervene in the fight over judicial reforms. “Israel is a democratic country with functioning democratic institutions and it is not for us to comment on ongoing domestic discussions,” it said. While Israel is not an EU member state, the European body has repeatedly decried the consolidation of power by authoritarian leaders in Hungary and Poland, going beyond statements to cut billions of dollars in funding to the two European nations.

“This far-right government with its strong fascist tendencies, promises to once and for all destroy apartheid Israel’s ludicrous, deeply racist claim of being a ‘democracy,’” Barghouti, the BDS movement co-founder, said. “This assertion, seared into the consciousness of tens of millions of Americans over decades of sophisticated propaganda campaigns, has essentially flourished by erasing the Palestinian people subjected to Israel’s system of colonial oppression.”

Dads Get Paid More When They Have Kids — As Moms Earn Less

Stereotypes around parenthood are having a lasting effect on the gender pay gap, which has not budged in 20 years, according to a new study by Pew.

By Chabeli CarrazanaMarch 5, 2023Z ArticleNo Comments8 Mins Read
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Source: 19th


While having children often leads to less pay for mothers, fatherhood leads to an increase: Men with children typically earn more than both women — with or without kids — and men without children. This parenthood paradox, at least in part, may be responsible for maintaining the gender pay gap, which has been consistent for 20 years.

Gender stereotypes around parents are so deeply embedded into American work culture that they have had a significant impact in not just how mothers are treated in the workplace, but in how employers compensate fathers, according to a new study of census data by the Pew Research Center, released Wednesday. Data was not collected on nonbinary people, so they were not part of the analysis.

Men tend to increase their work hours and receive a bonus when they have children, a phenomenon known as the “fatherhood wage premium.” Women, meanwhile, experience the “motherhood penalty,” which studies have found is closely tied to conscious or subconscious bias against mothers, who may be viewed by employers as less competent or committed to the job.

Pew found that the fatherhood premium has a larger effect in widening the pay gap during parenthood than the dip mothers experience in their pay. The fatherhood premium is so ingrained that dads ages 25 to 54 out earn women and men — regardless of parenthood status.

It’s the economic manifestation of the capitalist idea that fathers are breadwinners and need higher pay.

“Employers recognize family needs and they compensate for it through one channel and not the other,” said Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher at Pew and the author of the study.

The difference between the average pay for men and women across all industries and jobs makes up the gender pay gap. (Data on nonbinary Americans is typically not collected across job sectors, making it difficult to capture the full pay gap.) In 2022, women earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men on average when comparing median hourly earnings for full- and part-time workers. In 2002, the figure was 80 cents.

Black women and Latinas have seen the least progress toward closing the wage gap overall. The gap narrowed more quickly for White women between 1982 and 2022, Pew found, than for women of color.

In 2022, Black women earned 70 cents for every $1 earned by White men, and for Hispanic women it was 65 cents. White women earned 83 cents and Asian women earned 93 cents as compared to White men, but that figure obscures significant disparities for specific ethnic groups. Pew did not include data on Native American women, but in 2021, the pay gap for Native women was 51 cents on the White man’s $1, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

The gap has narrowed for some: Pew’s research found that among young women workers ages 25 to 34, the gender pay gap has actually shrunk over time, bringing them near parity with men of the same age.

The inflection point seems to be in large part when workers have children. The more likely a woman is to have a child under 18 at home, the wider the pay gap becomes.

Women who were 25 to 34 in 2010 were earning 92 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to Pew’s analysis. By 2022, those women were 37 to 46 — the age group most likely to have kids under 18 at home — and their pay gap was wider, earning 84 cents on the man’s dollar.

The gap widens even more for women of color when they become mothers. The National Women’s Law Center found that in 2020, Latina moms earned 47 cents, Native American moms earned 49 cents and Black moms earned 52 cents compared to White dads.

A significant amount of women leave the workforce, whether through choice or necessity, due to the weight of caregiving responsibilities that disproportionately continue to fall on women. The United States remains the only developed country in the world without paid parental leave, and the child care system is a market failure: It’s so expensive it costs as much as an additional mortgage every month, but daycare centers often can’t pay workers much more than minimum wage, and therefore many struggle to attract employees. That cycle leaves more than 3.4 million children unable to access a child care slot at all, according to an analysis of 35 states including Washington, D.C.

On top of that, about a quarter of private sector and state and local government workers do not have access to the paid sick leave that would allow them to weather breakdowns in care. Because of some of these barriers, 1.4 million younger mothers left the workforce in 2022, Pew found.

“Taking care of a kid is a lot of work. It has a big burden and your work doesn’t accommodate it — not fully, not enough,” said Kathryn Anne Edwards, an economic policy consultant with a focus on inequality. “What do families do? They have to be strategic … One of them is going to lean into the job and the other one is going to lean into care. It’s not about gender roles necessarily, it’s about squaring the circle of having a kid and having a job.”

What ends up happening is a labor force participation gap between mothers and fathers. For parents ages 35 to 44, 94 percent of fathers were active in the workforce in 2022, compared with 75 percent of mothers, a gap of 19 percentage points. For men and women without children in the same age group, the gap is 6 percentage points.

“We know that motherhood changes the relationship that a woman could have with work — it would make sense that fatherhood does the same thing,” Edwards said. But the manifestation is different, she added. A study of layoffs during the pandemic found that fathers were least likely to get laid off compared to mothers and non-parents, in part because of notions of dads as breadwinners.

What’s important to remember, Edwards said, is that people tend to put the onus on women and how they choose to interact with work, rather than on the labor market and how it’s punishing mothers but rewarding fathers.

“I find that the conversation related to [the gender pay gap] tends to be really focused on women’s choices and personalities. ‘Did you ask for that raise? What job did you take? Are you working full time?’” Edwards said. “If you consider it a performance metric of the labor market, and not a reflection of women’s status in society, you can see where the labor market is failing — it’s failing mothers.”

And that’s despite the fact that women have continued to make significant gains in other areas, including college education. By 2022, women had surpassed men in earning bachelor’s degrees. About 48 percent of employed women had at least a bachelor’s in 2022, compared with 41 percent of men. But about 20 years ago, the boost in earnings that workers enjoyed from having an advanced degree began to become less significant in closing the gap, Kochhar said.

Progress toward pay equity brought on by women’s growing involvement in fields dominated by men was also limited. In managerial jobs, for instance, women went from accounting for 26 percent of employment in 1982 to 40 percent in 2022, Pew found. The share of women in lower-paying jobs, including food service and administrative support, also fell in that same time period, but not enough to make up the difference.

Because the wage gap is calculated by taking into account earnings by all women and men, the overrepresentation of women in lower-paying positions has continued for decades to create a pay gap.

And then there is persisting discrimination. Pew conducted a survey of adults in October 2022 and found that half said a major reason for the pay gap is that employers treat women differently. Women were more likely than men to say they are treated differently, 61 percent compared to 37 percent.

“You’re bumping up against the ceiling of parenthood, of discrimination, of gender stereotypes and social norms. And so despite gains in education, you’re unable to push past that ceiling,” Kochhar said.

Changing ideas about gender stereotypes and discrimination are considered “last-mile” hurdles that need to be overcome for true progress. And then some solutions can be policy-driven: A national policy that makes child care more accessible and destigmatizes caregiving — both paid and unpaid — is considered the central piece needed to push the United States past the current stalemate, as well as a national paid leave policy. It’s been 30 years since the nation passed the Family and Medical Leave Act mandating unpaid leave, viewed then as a stepping stone to passing paid leave — which still hasn’t happened.

“The U.S. has done so little that there’s just room to grow,” Edwards said.

Oil CEOs Should Be Barred From Global Climate Summits, Not Running Them

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has completely co-opted climate policy from the inside out. It is time for this to end.

By Pablo Fajardo Medoza

March 5, 2023
Source: Common Dreams

Sultan Al Jaber of Abu Dhabi

The Chief Executive of the twelfth largest oil producer – Sultan Al Jaber of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) – has been appointed as president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) COP28, the biggest climate change conference that will take place in November, 2023 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In brief, the leadership of a Climate Conference that should deliver on ways to create a fossil-free future is in the hands of the representative of one of the top 15 corporations most responsible for carbon emissions globally. Like any other oil company, ADNOC’s very reason for existence is to profit off of the very product that has sent global greenhouse gas emissions soaring and spurred a global climate emergency.

In fact, ADNOC Drilling under ADNOC Groups reported a rise of 33 percent in 2022 net profit with a projection of record net profit in 2023 fueled by further oil and gas expansion plans. And now at least 12 employees of ADNOC have been given organizing roles for COP28. That means this year the global climate negotiations will literally be run by the fossil fuel industry.

Fierce criticism has arisen from all over the world and in particular from climate activists that have been long fighting for a fossil fuel free climate COP. In reaction to this appointment, more than 450 climate and human rights organizations wrote a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres and Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC condemning the appointment of Al Jaber as COP28 President.

The thin argument presented for the appointment of Al Jaber is his involvement in renewables as chairman of Masdar, a “clean-energy innovator” investing in renewables. But that alone does not compare to the evidence on the negative role and powerful influence of the fossil fuel industry in the climate talks.

The fossil fuel industry has completely co-opted climate policy from the inside out. The most offensive illustration of this co-option and corporate capture of climate talks is the current reality that someone like Al Jaber will preside over a crucial session of climate negotiations at such a time when complete and equitable phase out of fossil fuels is a critical and immediate action needed to protect the planet.

And this is not happening for the first time!

More than 630 fossil fuel industry lobbyists participated in COP27 last year at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt and 18 out of 20 COP27 sponsors were either directly partnered with or are linked to the fossil fuel industry.

This ongoing 30-year experiment of allowing the largest polluters, their financiers, and polluter governments to undermine a meaningful global response to climate change has delivered predictably poor and unacceptable results.

Several reports last year including this report by the UN Environmental Programme showed that the world will miss the target set in the Paris Agreement by world leaders to limit global warming below 1.5℃.

So, what’s the solution?

It’s time for international climate policy to finally be protected from polluting interests, and this is the reason many are proposing a concrete drawing from other UN precedents to systematically weed out this undue interference.

The UN Secretary General has recently equated the fossil fuel industry’s modus operandi as “inconsistent with human survival,” also agreeing that “those responsible [for climate deceit] must be held to account.’

A concrete Accountability Framework should be implemented by the UNFCCC drawing from other UN precedents to systematically weed out this undue interference.

Parties to the UNFCCC have to change the course of how climate talks are moving and provide immediate and clear signs of deep structural changes that can lead to just transition. Governments across the world should be actively protecting climate action from being written, bankrolled, and weakened by polluting interests.

Rather, it’s (past) time to implement real, proven, and people-centered solutions and hold polluting corporations liable for their decades-long deception and deceit. These are not new ideas. These are not even radical ideas. They are necessary ones.

The indigenous peoples, peasants, women and frontline communities who face and suffer the serious consequences of the impacts of climate change, together with the social groups of the world that have a real interest in curbing the emissions of greenhouse gasses, demand that the decision makers implement the necessary changes in order to ensure that appropriate measures are adopted by the world and governments at COP28 to prevent the collapse of the planet.

If these necessary measures are not rectified and implemented immediately, it is world leaders and the decision makers who would be mainly responsible for the collapse of our planet. For us it is clear, Sultan Al Jaber does not have the moral or ethical rectitude to lead and deliver on a COP28 that is for the peoples.

What If the World Cannot Save the World?
The crisis of international governance on a planet rife with emergencies.

By John Feffer

March 5, 2023
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus


The United Nations has convened 27 conferences on climate change. For nearly three decades, the international community has come together at a different location every year to pool its collective wisdom, resources, and resolve to address this global threat. These Conferences of Parties (COPs) have produced important agreements, such as the Paris Accords of 2015 on the reduction of carbon emissions and most recently at Sharm el-Sheikh a Loss & Damage Fund to help countries currently experiencing the most impact from climate change.

And yet the threat of climate change has only grown larger. In 2022, carbon emissions grew by nearly 2 percent.

This failure is not for want of institutions. There’s the UN Environment Program (UNEP), which oversees the complex of international treaties and protocols, helps implement climate financing, and coordinates with other agencies to meet sustainable development goals (SDGs). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has marshaled all the relevant scientific data and recommendations. The Green Climate Fund is attempting to funnel resources to developing countries to advance their energy transitions. The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, begun in 2020 at the instigation of the Biden administration, has been focusing on reducing methane. International financial institutions like the World Bank have their own staff devoted to global energy transition efforts.

Still, with the notable exception of the global effort to repair the ozone layer, more institutions have not translated into better results.

On climate change, notes Miriam Lang. a professor of environmental and sustainability studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Ecuador and a member of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South, “it seems that the more we know, the less we are able to take effective action. The same can be said about the accelerated loss of biodiversity. We live in an era of mass extinctions, and there’s been little progress at the governance level despite many good intentions.”

One major reason for the failure of collective action is the persistent refusal to think beyond the nation-state. “It’s weird that nationalism has become so dominant when the challenges that we face are global,” observes Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We know that these problems can’t be regulated within national borders. Yet governments and people within countries persist in treating these crises as ways in which one nation can benefit at the expense of another.”

Can existing institutions be transformed to more adequately address the global problems of climate change and economic development? Or do we need different institutions altogether?

Another challenge is financial. “Adequate funding at all levels is a fundamental prerequisite to improving climate governance and the implementation of sustainable development goals,” argues Jens Martens, executive director of the Global Policy Forum Europe. “At a global level, this requires predictable and reliable funding for the UN system. The total assessed contributions to the UN regular budget in 2022 were just about $3 billion. In comparison, the New York City budget alone is over $100 billion.”

In part because of these budgetary shortfalls, international institutions have increasingly relied on what they call “multistakeholderism.” On the face of it, the effort to bring other voices into policymaking at the international level—the various “stakeholders”—sounds eminently democratic. The inclusion of civil society and popular movements is certainly a step in the right direction, as is the incorporation of the perspectives of academics.

But multistakeholderism has also meant bringing business on board, and corporations have the money not only to underwrite global meetings but to determine the outcomes.

“I was at Sharm el-Sheikh in November,” recalls Madhuresh Kumar, an Indian activist-researcher currently based in Paris as a Senior Fellow at Atlantic Institute. “We were welcomed at the airport by a banner that read ‘Welcome to Cop 27.’ And it listed the main partners: Vodaphone, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, IBM, Cisco, Coca Cola and so on. Most UN institutions face a growing monetary problem. But this monetary problem is not actually at the crux of the issue. It is astonishing how through multistakeholderism, which has evolved over the last four decades, corporations have captured multilateral institutions, the global governance space, and even the big International NGOs.” He adds that 630 energy lobbyists were registered at COP 27, a 25 percent increase from the previous year’s meeting.

The challenges facing global governance are well known, whether it’s nationalism, funding, or corporate capture. Less clear is how to overcome these challenges. Can existing institutions be transformed to more adequately address the global problems of climate change and economic development? Or do we need different institutions altogether? These were the questions addressed at a recent webinar on global governance sponsored by Global Just Transition.
Global Shortcomings

Transforming the current system of global governance around climate, energy, and economic development is like trying to repairing an ocean liner that has sprung multiple leaks in the middle of its voyage with no land in sight. But there’s an additional twist: all the crew members have to agree on the proposed fixes.

Jayati Ghosh is a member of the new UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. “The challenge is in its very title,” Ghosh explains. “Multilateralism itself is under threat in part because it hasn’t been effective. But also the imbalances that are rendering it ineffective are not likely to go away any time soon. We’re all aware of this on the board. But without much broader political will, there’s a limit to any given individual or group proposals.”

In addition to nationalism, she believes that four other broad “isms” have prevented a cooperative response to the global problems facing the planet. Take imperialism, for instance, which Ghosh prefers to define “as the struggle of large capital over economic territories when supported by nation-states. We see evidence of that in continuous subsidies of fossil fuels or the greenwashing of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments. The ability of large capital to sway international policies and national politics in its own interests persists unabated. That’s a major constraint to doing anything serious about climate change.”

Short-termism is another such constraint. In the wake of the Ukraine war, food and fuel corporations sought to profit in the short term by manufacturing a sense of scarcity. The rise in fuel and food prices, Ghosh notes, were created not so much by constraints on supply, but from market imperfections and control over markets by large corporations. That short-term profiteering in turn led to equally short-sighted decisions by the most powerful countries to reverse their previous climate commitments and make fewer such commitments at the last COP in Egypt. Politicians “reversed those commitments because they have midterm elections coming up,” she points out. “They’re worried that voters will support the far right, so they argue that they have to do whatever it takes to increase fuel supplies.”

Classism, in various forms of inequality, has also prevented effective action. “Globally, the top 10 percent, the rich, are responsible for one third to more than one half of all carbon emissions,” Ghosh notes. “Even within countries that is the case. The rich have the power to influence national government policies to ensure that they continue to take the bulk of the carbon budget of the world.”

Finally, she points to “status-quo-ism,” by which she means the tyranny of the international economic architecture, not only the legal and regulatory framework but also the associated global agreements and institutions. “We really have to reconsider the role played by international financial institutions, by the World Trade Organization, the multilateral development banks, and legal frameworks like economic partnership agreements and bilateral investment treaties that actually prevent governments from doing something about climate change,” she argues.

One way of addressing especially these last four obstacles is to reverse privatization. “The privatizations of the last three decades have been absolutely critical in generating both inequality and more aggressive carbon emissions globally,” Ghosh concludes. She urges the return of utilities, cyberspace, even land to the public sphere.
Revisiting Sustainable Development

In 2015, the UN endorsed 17 sustainable development goals. These SDGs include pledges to end poverty and hunger, combat inequalities within and among countries, protect human rights and promote gender equality, and protect the planet and its natural resources. But climate change, COVID, and conflicts like the war in Ukraine have all pushed the SDG targets further from reach—and made them considerably more expensive to achieve.

“The implementation of the 2030 agenda is not just a matter of better policies,” observes Jens Martens. “The current problems of growing inequality and unsustainable models of consumption and production are deeply connected with powerful hierarchies and institutions. Policy reform is necessary, but it is not sufficient. It will require more sweeping shifts in how and where power is vested. A simple software update is not enough. We have to revisit and reshape the hardware of sustainable development.”

In terms of governance, this means strengthening bottom-up approaches. “The major challenge for more effective global governance is a lack of coherence at the national level,” Martens continues. “Any attempt to create more effective global institutions will not work if it’s not reflected in effective national counterparts. For instance, as long as environmental ministries are weak at the national level we cannot expect UNEP to be strong at the global level.”

Stronger local and national institutions, however, operate within what Martens calls a “disabling environment” where, for instance, “the IMF’s neoliberal approach has proven incompatible with the achievement of the SDGs as well as the climate goals in many countries. IMF recommendations and loan conditionalities have led to a deepening of social and economic inequalities.” Also disabling is the disproportionate power wielded by international financial institutions. “One striking example is the Investor-State Dispute settlement system, which awards investors the right to sue governments, for instance, for environmental policies that reduce profits,” he notes. “This system undermines the ability of governments to implement stronger domestic regulations of fossil fuel industries or to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.”

Enhancing coherence also means strengthening UN bodies such as the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which is responsible for reviewing and following up on the SDGs. “Compared to the Security Council or the Human Rights Council, the HLPF remains extremely weak,” he points out. “It meets only eight days per year. It has a small budget and no decision-making power.”

Some additional institutions are needed to fill global governance gaps, such as an Intergovernmental Tax Body under the auspices of the United Nations, that would ensure that all UN member states, and not only the rich, participate equally in the reform of global tax Rules. Another oft-cited recommendation would be an institution within the UN system independent of both creditors and debtors to facilitate debt restructuring.

All of this requires sufficient funding. Around $40 billion goes toward the development activities of UN agencies, Martens notes, “but far more than half of these funds are project-tied non-core resources mainly earmarked to favor individual donor priorities. That means mainly the priorities of rich donors.” UNEP, meanwhile, gets a mere $25 million from the regular UN budget, which is about $3 billion and doesn’t include separate assessments for activities like peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.

More democratic funding would have the side benefit of shrinking reliance on foundations and corporate contributions, which “reduce the flexibility and autonomy of all UN organizations,” he concludes.
Addressing Multistakeholderism

One path that global institutions have taken to address the funding shortfall is “multistakeholderism.” As with corporations pushing for privatization at a national level with arguments about the inefficiencies of state enterprises or the bureaucratic state, the advocates of multistakeholder initiatives (MSI) point to the failures of global public institutions to tackle common problems as a reason for greater corporate involvement. In effect, this boils down to large corporations buying more seats at the table for themselves.

Madhuresh Kumar has produced a recent book with Mary Ann Manahan that looks at how multistakeholderism has evolved in five key sectors: education, health, environment, agriculture, and communications. In the forestry sector, for instance, they looked at initiatives like the Tropical Forest Alliance, the Global Commons Alliance, and the Forest for Life Partnership. “We found that in their first decade, the initiatives primarily established the problem by arguing that the multilateral institutions are failing and that’s why we need solutions,” he reports. With the rise in global demand for raw materials, particularly in the context of a “green economy,” there was also greater demand to regulate the industries. The corporate sector responded with initiatives that emphasized “responsible” mining, forestry, and the like.

These “responsible” corporate initiatives revolved around “nature-based” solutions that rely on markets to “get the price right.” Kumar notes that “at the heart of these false, ‘nature-based’ solutions promoted by MSI is the notion that if nature does not have a price, human beings are not incentivized to take care of it, that we have to use nature and also replace it. Carbon offsets, for instance, come out of the principle that you can continue to produce as much carbon as you want as long as you also plant some trees somewhere else.”

According to this logic, nature can be priced according to various “ecosystem services.” He continues: “Seventeen ecosystem services have been identified along with 16 biomes. Together they have an estimated value of $16-54 trillion. If they can be unlocked, the idea is that this money can be put toward solving the climate crisis. But we won’t see that money. Ultimately, what rolls out on the ground won’t help our communities.”

Not only nature is commodified but knowledge itself, for instance through intellectual property rights. “Increasingly, we have a reinforcement of very rigid rules and very rigid systems that lead to the concentration of knowledge and to large corporations appropriating traditional knowledge,” notes Jayati Ghosh.

Another essential part of MSI is the focus on technical fixes, like carbon capture technology, geoengineering, and various forms of hydrogen energy. “These divert a lot of attention from climate justice,” Kumar notes. “It is also having an impact on indigenous communities. For instance, the One Trillion Trees Initiative that the UN backs is promoting a monoculture, the destruction of biodiversity, and the eviction of indigenous communities and many others.”

The disenfranchisement of indigenous communities is especially worrisome. “Indigenous peoples are responsible for preserving 80 percent of the biodiversity that still exists today, which is even confirmed by the World Bank,” Miriam Lang explains. “Nevertheless, we somehow do everything to disrespect, weaken, and threaten indigenous people’s modes of living. We still systematically treat indigenous people as poor and in need of development. We are reluctant to guarantee their land rights, their rights to clean water, their rights to the forest where they live. Instead, we propose to pay them money to compensate their losses, which is just another way of weakening their social organization and decision-making. It causes division and lures them into consumerism, individualism, and entrepreneurialism: precisely those aspects of capitalism that have brought about the current environmental breakdown.”

In addition to corporations, large NGOs like World Wildlife Fund, and major funders like Michael Bloomberg, Kumar notes that “the UN has been a willing participant in all of this. Sustainable Energy for All, which is another MSI, was started by former UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon in 2011 as a response to a statement made by a group of countries. But Sustainable Energy for All later acquired an independent status of its own over which the UN has no control. The UN General Assembly plays an important role in shaping the agenda and setting standards. But then these institutions, like the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership that was initially backed by UNIDO, later go out on their own, become unaccountable, and fall into the lap of corporations.”
Democratizing Governance

In 1974, the UN declared a New International Economic Order to free countries from economic colonialism and dependency on an inequitable global economy. The developing world was unusually unified in supporting the NIEO. Though some elements of the NIEO can be seen in the Agenda 2030, the effort did not translate into any substantial changes in the Bretton Woods institutions—IMF, World Bank—that form the international financial architecture.

“The reason we had demands for a NIEO is precisely because developing countries felt that the global economy was not just or equitable,” Jayati Ghosh observes. “Yes, it was a period of relatively more access to certain institutions. But some of the imbalances that we’re talking about in trade or finance or technology existed even then. Of course, it’s also absolutely true that neoliberal financial globalization has dramatically worsened conditions globally. But I would put it more in terms of the supremacy of large capital over everyone else.”

Also, the United States and European Union continue to wield disproportionate power: appointing the leaders of the World Bank and IMF and controlling the majority of votes in these institutions. “Middle- and low-income countries, which together constitute 85 percent of the world’s population, have only a minority share,” observes Miriam Lang. “There is also a clear racial imbalance at play with the votes of people of color worth only a fraction of their counterparts. If this were the case in any particular country, we would call it apartheid. Yet, as economic anthropologist Jason Hickel points out, a form of apartheid operates right at the heart of international economic governance today and has come to be accepted as normal.”

Developing countries have long demanded a reform of the governance of these IFIs. “The voting rights were originally allocated on the basis of a country’s share of the global economy and of global trade,” reports Jayati Ghosh. “But this was done based on the data of the 1940s, and the world has changed dramatically since then. Developing countries have significantly increased their share of both, and certain countries are much more significant while a number of European countries are much less significant.”

Despite a very minor change in this distribution of votes, the United States and European Union retain the majority of the votes and the lion’s share of the influence. “When you have a new issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)—which we just had in 2021 for $650 billion— this liquidity created by the IMF is distributed according to quota, which really means that the developing world doesn’t get very much. And 80 percent goes to countries that are never going to use them. So, it’s an inefficient way of increasing global liquidity.”

“Obviously the rich countries that control these institutions are not going to give up their power easily,” she continues. “They have blocked every attempt to change because they have the voting rights now. So, do you say, ‘Okay, let’s demolish the whole thing and start afresh’? But then, how do you create a new institution? How do you even create a minimally democratic way of functioning?”

If the rich countries won’t give up their power voluntarily, they’ll have to be pushed to do so. “I have to confess: I’m saddened by the lack of public outcry,” Ghosh adds. “Even in the very progressive state of Massachusetts, where I’m teaching, people couldn’t be bothered with this. Similarly, in Europe. People’s movements need to point out how this is against not just the interests of the developing world, it’s against the enlightened self-interest of people in the rich countries as well.”

A similar problem applies to the power of the rich within countries. “There’s a need for tax justice at the global level, and not only with the rich countries with all governments involved in setting the tax rules, especially from the global south,” Jens Martens says. “We have a tax system with the highest rates much below what we had in the 1970s or even the 1980s. The international community recently established a minimum tax of 15 percent for transnational corporations: this is a very minor first step at the global level.”

“We had suggested 25 percent,” Jayati Ghosh adds, “which is the median of corporate tax rates globally. But it isn’t just increased tax rates. It’s important to emphasize redistribution. Regulatory processes have dramatically increased the profit share of large companies. Before we get to taxation, we have to look at the reasons they’re able to have these very high profits. We allow them to profiteer during periods of scarcity or assumed scarcity. We allow them to repress workers’ wages. We allow them to grab rents in different ways. So, we need a combination of regulation and taxation to rein in large capital and to make sure that the benefits ultimately produced by workers come back to workers and society as a whole.”

“In the last decade of the twentieth century, we managed to make these corporations villains,” points out Madhuresh Kumar. “But today they are not seen as the villains. Governments in the global North and in the South have given them a platform. There is muted celebration if we are able to shift these corporations toward providing more renewable energy, which they have done by diversifying. But if we can’t shift the power imbalance, we won’t achieve any equality in global governance, in the financial architecture, or anywhere.”
Where Does Change Come From?

In March 2022, Jayati Ghosh was named to a new High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism created by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The dozen board members come from different countries and perspectives.

“We have to have a bit of a reality check on what commissions and advisory boards can achieve,” Ghosh points out. “We can advise. We can say this is what we think should happen, this is how we believe the international financial architecture must be changed. Everything else really depends on political will, which is not just governments suddenly seeing the light and becoming good. Political will is when governments are forced to respond to the people. Until that happens, we’re not going to get change no matter how many high-level boards and commissions come up with excellent recommendations that we can all agree with.”

After the 2008-9 global financial crisis, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz headed up a UN-created commission. “It came up with some really fine recommendations, which are still valid,” Ghosh recalls. “But they were not implemented. They were not even considered. I don’t know if anyone at the IFIs even bothered to read that whole report.”

Multistakeholderism has elevated the status of corporations in high-level climate negotiations. But this is precisely the wrong strategy. “When the World Health Organization negotiated the Tobacco Control Convention, they decided to exclude lobbyists from the tobacco companies from the negotiations,” Jens Martens points out. “In the end they agreed to a quite strong convention, which is now in place. Why can’t we convince our governments to exclude fossil fuel lobbyists from negotiations in the climate sphere because there’s a conflict of interest?”

In the end, Martens is not so pessimistic: “I see a lot of social movements occurring in the last couple years as a counter-reaction to nationalism and the inactivity of our governments: Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter. It’s very necessary to put pressure on our governments, because they only respond to pressure from below.”

Jayati Ghosh sees some positive momentum, particularly around the growing trend of acknowledging the rights of nature. “Ecuador and Bolivia included the rights of Mother Earth in their constitutions,” she reports. “But there’s also a movement of civil society groups fighting for the rights of nature in many countries including Germany. If nature is a subject by law, then we can have better instruments to protect nature. We also have discussions at the global level about alternatives to GDP that focus on well-being.”

“Can the world save the world?” she asks. “Yes, the world can save the world. Will the world save the world? No, not at the current rate. Not unless people actually rise up and make sure that their governments act.”