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Sunday, September 03, 2023

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Europe’s biggest oil company quietly shelves radical plan to shrink carbon footprint

Shell has ended the world’s biggest corporate plan to develop carbon offsets, designed to

UPDATED

LONDON - Six months after becoming the chief executive at Shell, Mr Wael Sawan quietly ended the world’s biggest corporate plan to develop carbon offsets, the environmental projects designed to counteract the warming effects of carbon dioxide missions.

In an all-day investor event in June, Mr Sawan laid out an updated strategy for the European oil major that included cutting costs and doubling down on profit drivers such as oil and gas.

As important was what he omitted: Any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to US$100 million (S$135 million) a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of a promise to zero out its emissions by 2050.

Those goals for the offsets programme have been retired, the company confirmed, along with the plan to harvest a whopping 120 million carbon credits annually by the end of the decade from projects that sequester carbon with trees, grasses or other natural resources, many of which Shell would develop itself.

That would have accounted for 10 per cent of the company’s emissions. It has not made public any new targets for developing offsets or specified how it now plans to deliver on its future climate commitments.

The pullback reflects both Mr Sawan’s renewed commitment to the oil and gas business that generates most of Shell’s profits, and an admission that the prior goals were simply unattainable.

Over the past two years, Shell barely made a dent.

It spent US$95 million, less than half of its initial budget, to build or invest in a portfolio of carbon projects from Western Africa to the Brazilian Amazon to Australian farmlands. They have generated few if any offsets, and Shell has struggled to find projects that meet its standards for quality.

It is a newly damning indictment of offsets, which have become an important if controversial “climate solution” for most big companies: Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates the voluntary carbon market, which totals around US$2 billion today, could grow as high as US$950 billion by 2037.

Ms Flora Ji, a 17-year Shell veteran, has run the company’s nature-based solutions operations since 2021. In an interview before Mr Sawan scrapped the official 120 million-offsets-per-year target, she said everyone knew it was a big number, a reach.

Meanwhile, the carbon market had not expanded rapidly enough to meet rising demand, she said. “It didn’t have that kind of huge, exponential growth we expected.”

Offsets, even of the highest quality, were never intended to be the only solution for Shell or anyone else. The Science Based Targets initiative, a UN-backed agency that evaluates companies’ net-zero goals, recommends offsetting no more than 10 per cent of emissions, and then only after making every other possible cut.

Ms Ji said that has been Shell’s long-term approach, first to avoid emissions, then to reduce and finally to offset.

“Shell’s sustainability and climate targets remain,” a company spokesman said.

Still, Mr Sawan has softened some of his predecessor’s environmental priorities.

Along with ending the carbon offsets target, he eliminated a goal to increase power sales and vowed to be more selective with investments in renewable power, the backbone of the transition away from oil and gas. Shell also silently ditched a target to reach 500,000 electric vehicle charge points by 2025 and to have at least 10 per cent share of global clean hydrogen sales.

“The company has flipped to the short-term focus, to profit maximisation,” said Mr Adam Matthews, chief responsible investment officer at the Church of England Pensions Board. “They are no longer aligned with trying to navigate the transition in the same way that we had previously perceived.”

In spite of what Mr Matthews and others see as a significant shift, Shell has yet to adjust its long-term climate target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

And Shell has not abandoned its offsets efforts, yet its backup plan is revealing. Ms Ji said the company can also use offsets it acquires on the market to bolster its supplies. And, of course, that exposes Shell to the lower quality credits it was trying to avoid in the first place.

BLOOMBERG

Naming suicide in obits was once taboo. Changing that can help loved ones grieve

Deborah Blum holds a photo of her teen, Esther Iris, at home in Los Angeles. Blum and her husband, Warren, lost Esther Iris to suicide in 2021. When it came time to write the death notice, Deborah Blum was open and specific about the mental health struggles that led to her child’s death.

(Lauren Justice for KFF Health News/TNS)

By TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
PUBLISHED: August 30, 2023
Debby Waldman | (TNS) KFF Health News

When Deborah and Warren Blum’s 16-year-old died by suicide in November 2021, they went into shock. For two days, the grief-stricken Los Angeles couple didn’t sleep.

But when it came time to write a death notice, Deborah Blum was clearheaded: In a heartfelt tribute to her smart, funny, popular child, who had recently come out as nonbinary, she was open and specific about the mental health struggles that led to Esther Iris’ death.

“Esther’s whole thing was that people should know and talk about mental health and it shouldn’t be a secret,” Deborah Blum told KFF Health News. “The least I could do was to be honest and tell people. I think being embarrassed just makes it worse.”

While it was once unheard-of to mention suicide as a cause of death in news obituaries and paid death notices, that has been changing, especially in the past 10 years, said Dan Reidenberg, a psychologist and managing director of The National Council for Suicide Prevention. High-profile suicides — such as those of comic actor Robin Williams in 2014, fashion designer Kate Spade in 2018, and dancer Stephen “tWitch” Boss in 2022 — have helped reduce the stigma surrounding suicide loss. So has advertising for depression and anxiety medications, which has helped normalize that mental illnesses are health conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic also drew attention to the prevalence of mental health challenges.

“The stigma is changing,” Reidenberg said. “There is still some, but it’s less than it used to be, and that’s increasing people’s willingness to include it in an obituary.”

While there’s no right or wrong way to write death announcements, mental health and grief experts said the reluctance to acknowledge suicide has implications beyond the confines of a public notice. The stigma attached to the word affects everything from how people grieve to how people help prevent others from ending their own lives.

Research shows that talking about suicide can help reduce suicidal thoughts, but studies have also found that spikes in suicide rates can follow news reports about someone dying that way — a phenomenon known as “suicide contagion.” The latter is an argument people make for not acknowledging suicide in obituaries and death notices.

However, Reidenberg said, the subject can be addressed responsibly. That includes telling a balanced story, similar to what Deborah Blum did, acknowledging Esther Iris’ accomplishments as well as their struggles. It means leaving out details about the method or location of the death, and not glorifying the deceased in a way that might encourage vulnerable readers to think dying by suicide is a good way to get attention.

“We don’t ever want to normalize suicide, but we don’t want to normalize that people can’t have a conversation about suicide,” Reidenberg said.

Having that conversation is an important part of the grieving process, said Holly Prigerson, a professor of sociology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and an expert on prolonged grief disorder.

“Part of adjusting to the loss of someone is coming up with a story of what happened and why,” she said. “To the extent that you can’t be honest and acknowledge what happened if it’s a death due to suicide, that will complicate, if not impede, your ability to fully and accurately process your loss.”

People close to the deceased often know when a death was by suicide, said Reidenberg, particularly in the case of young people. “Being honest can lead to information and awareness, whereas if we keep it shrouded in this big mystery it doesn’t help,” he added.

A study about caregiver depression that Prigerson recently conducted identified avoidance as an impediment to healing from grief. “Not acknowledging how someone died, denying the cause of death, avoiding the reality of what happened is a significant barrier to being able to adjust to what happened and to move forward,” she said.

Researchers are increasingly seeing bereavement as a social process, Prigerson said, and as social beings, people look to others for comfort and solace. That’s another reason the stigma attached to suicide is harmful: It keeps people from opening up.

“The stigma is based on the perception that others will judge you as being an inadequate parent, or not having done enough,” Prigerson said. “This whole thing with obituaries is all about others — it’s about how people are going to read what happened and think less of you.”

Stigma, shame, and embarrassment are among the reasons grieving family members have traditionally avoided acknowledging suicide in obituaries and death notices. It’s also why, if they do, they may be more likely to address it indirectly, either by describing the death as “sudden and unexpected” or by soliciting donations for mental health programs.

Economics can also factor in — sometimes people are secretive because of life insurance plans that exclude payouts for suicides. Sometimes they’re trying to protect reputations, theirs as well as those of the deceased, particularly in religious communities where suicide is considered a sin.

Sometimes they’re operating under what Adam Bernstein, the obituary editor at The Washington Post, sees as “a mistaken belief” that an obituary is a form of eulogy that should speak to the highest memories of a person, and suicide doesn’t fit that agenda. People don’t include the word in paid death notices for the same reason. Bernstein, who is also president of The Society of Professional Obituary Writers, said that at the Post, obituaries mention suicide when the reporter can confirm it as a cause of death.

Avoiding the word suicide doesn’t necessarily mean someone is in denial. In the days after a loss, which is when most obituaries and death announcements are written, it’s often profoundly difficult to face the truth, especially in the case of suicide, according to Doreen Marshall, a psychologist and former vice president at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Even when people can admit the truth to themselves, they might have trouble expressing it to others, said Joanne Harpel, a suicide bereavement expert in New York who works with mourners through her business, Coping After Suicide. In the support groups she runs, she said, people vary in how open they are willing to be. For example, in the group for mothers who have lost a child to suicide, everyone acknowledges that reality — after all, that’s why they’re there — but they don’t all do so the same way.

“Some of them will refer to ‘when this happened’ or ‘before all this,’” Harpel said, cautioning against holding all mourners to the same standard. “They’re not pretending it was something else, but using the word ‘suicide’ is so confronting and so painful that even in the safest context it’s very, very hard for them to say it out loud.”

——-

___

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Critical Minerals: Insights from a Recent Workshop

Resources - innovative ideas and engaging stories in environmental economics

BEIA SPILLER AND MICHAEL A. TOMAN

NAMLONG NGUYEN / SHUTTERSTOCK

Date
AUG. 30, 2023

Insights for how the United States can approach secure and affordable access to the critical minerals that are needed for electric vehicle production, from a recent workshop held at Resources for the Future.

As the move to electrify the vehicle fleet picks up steam, concern has been growing that critical minerals, the key inputs into electric vehicle (EV) batteries, will become a bottleneck. Copper, recently identified as a critical material, also will be needed for the charging infrastructure.

Several questions have moved to the forefront of discussion around vehicle electrification: Will critical mineral shortages restrict battery production? Will the costs of critical minerals rise so much that batteries, and thus EVs, become too expensive? How might environmental, social, and geopolitical concerns associated with these minerals be mitigated?

In July 2023, Resources for the Future held a closed-door workshop with over 20 stakeholders from government, nongovernmental organizations, academia, and the mineral and automotive industries to discuss many of these challenges, uncover areas of agreement and disagreement on these issues, and identify questions that need more research. The workshop covered topics such as supply chains, security, permitting, policies for promoting the supply of domestic critical minerals, and strategies for improving the flexibility of demand for critical minerals. In this blog post, we discuss some high-level takeaways from the meeting.

Data Availability

Data will be necessary for researchers to study these issues, yet data on critical minerals—particularly around their supply chains—are sparse. The US Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center (USGS NMIC) is the most comprehensive and reliable source of publicly available information on non-fuel minerals. For more than 80 different mineral commodities, NMIC publishes domestic and international information on a multitude of issues such as mineral reserves, processing, demand, prices, and ownership. Yet, more information is needed to adequately understand mineral markets and supply chains. To address these needs, past National Research Council committees have recommended that NMIC be organized in a similar way as the US Energy Information Agency, with comparable resources, authority, and autonomy.

Further, although the US government knows and reports the amounts of minerals that are extracted from state lands, an information gap exists for federal lands because royalties are collected from state lands but not federal lands. This knowledge gap limits an understanding of the potential future supply of critical minerals on federal lands—an important consideration for addressing permitting issues.

Ownership of mines and processing facilities worldwide also is important for evaluating the global market power of large suppliers that co-finance and co-own international and domestic sources of critical minerals. As mentioned above, USGS tries to track this information, but ownership changes rapidly, so the data are incomplete.

Sergii Chernov / Shutterstock

The pricing of critical minerals also is difficult to unravel. Although some spot transactions happen, China plays a large role in pricing, given that China is the origin of most of the global supply of processed minerals for EV batteries. Because pricing is not transparent, it is difficult to judge how competitive pricing might be and how changes in supply or demand would affect prices.

Finally, publicly available data on permitting are sparse, which makes it hard to construct and assess policies to improve the permitting process. Workshop participants agreed that long wait times are involved in fully permitting and setting up a mine in the United States, but what proportion of that time is due to the permitting process itself remains unclear. Several agencies at different levels of government are involved in permitting, and comprehensive data on permitting processes have not been compiled. Although anecdotes suggest that the United States takes longer to permit mines than other comparable countries, the data on wait times are too limited for us to draw any firm conclusions. Some participants thought that these permitting issues are not unique to the United States but also arise in other developed countries that enact significant protections for the environment and communities.

Accelerating Domestic Supplies of Critical Minerals

Workshop participants agreed that increasing the domestic capacity for extracting and processing critical minerals is an important goal. However, views differed on the extent to which that ramp-up could significantly increase the availability of cost-competitive supplies. Two key issues underlie the disagreements among participants.

First, the United States currently produces very small amounts of the critical minerals that are needed for EV batteries, and USGS statistics show only limited available quantities of critical mineral reserves. The small supply raises questions about US capability to significantly ramp up production in the near to medium term. Participants who disagreed with that perspective argued that US reserves could be much larger if mining exploration were less impeded by federal land use regulations, a perspective that was contested by other participants.

Second, even if more domestic resources were discovered, many participants thought that existing policies will have only a limited effect on increasing domestic extraction. For example, the EV tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act require the minerals in the batteries to come from domestic sources or from countries with which the United States has free trade agreements; however, several workshop participants thought that these credits were not a very powerful incentive for new critical mineral exploration and mining in the United States.

The workshop participants agreed that stakeholder opposition has been a major part of the delays in permitting and opening new mines in the United States. Recent research has demonstrated that the majority of domestic reserves are located within 35 miles of Native lands. This observation underscores that any successful ramp-up in critical minerals exploration and extraction will require early, consistent, credible, transparent, and equitable community and stakeholder engagement. Understanding the concerns of local communities and ensuring that community members are part of the planning process will be key to developing plans that reduce impacts and achieve equitable outcomes. Additional objective data on the mining sector’s uptake of best practices for community engagement in advance of new projects also would be useful.

Nontraditional opportunities to increase domestic supplies exist, such as increasing the recovery of critical minerals as byproducts of other mining activity, extracting from existing wastes, and expanding recycling. However, at present, these options are not cost-competitive. Moreover, the volumes of material currently available for recycling are too small relative to the large initial capital costs necessary for setting up recycling. Investments in research and development (R&D) that reduce the costs of accessing these sources would be valuable for increasing domestic capacity.

Insecurity of Critical Mineral Supplies

USGS data show that China currently has a significant market share in extracting and a dominant share in processing the critical minerals that are used in EV batteries. Workshop participants agreed that this market concentration poses risks to the ability of the United States to secure affordable and reliable critical mineral supplies for expanded battery production. For example, China recently withheld graphite exports to Sweden, and workshop participants suggested that this sanction was a geopolitical strategic response to Sweden’s decision to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Officials in China have threatened to withhold or ban exports of rare earth elements to the United States in retaliation against sanctions; China took a similar action in 2010 in response to a territorial dispute with Japan, which caused prices to increase steeply.

A mining facility in Australia. Alf Manciagli / Shutterstock

Workshop participants suggested policies to deal with such insecurity, though each potential solution has its own challenges. For example, the United States and other large importers could jointly limit dependence on imports from “countries of concern.” However, this approach would create a similar upward price pressure as export restrictions. The US government alternatively could subsidize domestic processing, to establish an alternative to Chinese processing of critical minerals. Subsidies likely would be needed to attain cost-competitiveness with China. However, the subsidies might need to continue for an extended period, which would be costly and could stifle technical innovation in the sector. Moreover, the United States faces workforce scarcities for these activities. As noted, nontraditional sources could be tapped for critical minerals, but those options likely will require significant R&D spending to make them cost-competitive.

Given the various obstacles to addressing critical mineral insecurity through supply-side measures, a crucial consideration will be to leverage technological innovation to diversify EV battery designs, especially designs that economize on critical minerals that are more scarce or less reliably supplied. A current example is the increased use of batteries without cobalt (though such batteries have lower range). Having more battery design options increases the flexibility of demand for critical minerals, thus reducing US vulnerability to shortages or high prices. In the short term, flexibility is limited, particularly given the need for vehicle manufacturers to make commitments on vehicle design to accommodate particular battery technologies. However, R&D funding could be used to diversify battery chemistries, thus providing EV and battery manufacturers with additional options for addressing possible disruptions in the supply of specific critical minerals. The cost of the necessary R&D needs to be weighed against the benefits of having a larger number of options available for battery chemistry that depend less, or not at all, on critical minerals that are scarcer or more unreliably supplied.

Implications

Ensuring a smooth transition to an electrified vehicle fleet will require a significant effort to overcome the potential bottlenecks created by critical minerals. As we learned in our recent workshop, these challenges are complex and will require coordinated attention from a variety of stakeholders, including federal and state policymakers, business leaders, academics, and nongovernmental organizations. New policies will need to be developed, and existing policies revisited, to diversify the supply of critical minerals, increase options for EV battery design, reduce risks, keep costs down, and spur innovation.

Another clear conclusion is that the United States can’t do this alone. Overcoming the challenges will require international cooperation. This cooperation can include coordination on R&D policies and on policies for promoting more competitive and transparent markets for critical minerals. In addition, by working to improve environmental and labor outcomes from critical mineral mining and processing in friendly nations (e.g., through the Minerals Security Partnership), and increasing the number of countries with which it has free trade agreements, the United States can promote lower-cost, more secure, and environmentally and socially friendly supply chains for the critical minerals that are used in EV batteries.

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Man charged with hate crime for destroying LGBTQ Pride flags at Stonewall National Monument

Claire Thornton
USA TODAY

A Colorado man has been arrested for allegedly removing and destroying LGBTQ Pride flags at New York City's Stonewall National Monument, which commemorates iconic uprisings in the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights.

Patrick Murphy, of Denver, was charged with a hate crime and "criminal mischief" after he allegedly removed and "broke" multiple transgender Pride flags that were displayed on the fence surrounding Christopher Park, New York Police Department Detective Ronald Montas told USA TODAY. Murphy, 25, was arrested Monday, Montas said.

The attack, one of several police are investigating, happened during LGBTQ Pride month, which occurs every year in June to commemorate the Stonewall Inn uprisings for LGBTQ rights, which began on June 28, 1969.

Murphy pleaded not guilty, according to court records.

"It is preposterous to conclude that Patrick was involved in any hate crime," Robert C. Gottlieb, Murphy's attorney, told USA TODAY. "The evidence will clearly show that whatever happened that night involving Patrick was not intended to attack gays or their symbol, the gay Pride flag."

Murphy's arrest comes after several other attacks on LGBTQ Pride flags this year in New York. In February, a woman was arrested and charged with multiple hate crimes after she allegedly torched an LGBTQ Pride flag hanging from a restaurant. In April, a man was caught defecating on a Pride flag in Manhattan.

This month in California, a woman was shot and killed by a 27-year-old man who ripped down a Pride flag hanging outside her clothing shop

What is the Stonewall National Monument?

The Stonewall National Monument encompasses Greenwich Village's historic Stonewall Inn gay bar, Christopher Park and the surrounding streets and sidewalks where the 1969 Stonewall uprisings against police occurred, according to the National Park Service.

The monument was designated by President Barack Obama in 2016.

The fence surrounding Christopher Park, a public city park, is adorned with different LGBTQ Pride flags, some of which are placed there by U.S. park rangers. The area also includes a photo exhibit showing images of police raids, which were common at bars where LGBTQ people were suspected of gathering. At Stonewall, patrons and LGBTQ advocates rioted against police for days, demanding they be given the same treatment under the law as non-LGBTQ New York residents.

The monument commemorates "a milestone in the quest for LGBTQ+ civil rights," the park service says on its website.

Attacks against LGBTQ Pride flags on the rise

Authorities across the country have been responding this summer to a growing number of attacks targeting LGBTQ flags.

Sarah Moore, an extremism analyst with the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, recently told USA TODAY she has tracked incidents across the country where people damage, burn or steal Pride flags hanging outside private residences, restaurants and other businesses. Earlier this year, there was an online hate campaign using a hashtag that advocated for a destroy-the-Pride-flag challenge, she said.

“There's definitely been an increase in attacks against Pride flags," Moore said.

Just in August, Moore has tracked attacks on Pride flags in Newtown, Connecticut; Capitola, California; Hamtramck, Michigan; Seattle and Houston.

"We need allies more than ever," Moore said.

“Rural” Decline?

Jacob Otis on August 30, 2023

Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson, Socius, Urbanization and the Paradox of Rural Population Decline: Racial and Regional Variation

Image: A rural landscape during late summer with blooming GoldenRod and tall, dry grass in the foreground, young Walnut trees in the midground, and a silo and barns in the background. Photo via author.

Rural America has been shrinking, right? Sociologists have been monitoring the alleged erosion of rural America and while many envision an exodus of millions of families packing their possessions and moving to the city, sociological research tells us a different story. The true story is that, without moving, many families once considered “rural” are now “urban” households. This urban-rural “line” has been simply moved.

Daniel Lichter and Kenneth Johnson analyzed county-level changes for urban-rural classifications in the 2020 census. Urban or rural classifications are technical: the United States government categorizes counties as either urban or rural based on their population size and density, the percent of the population that commutes, and their economic activity.

between the 1980 and 2020 censuses, there was a 64% increase in the technical number of urban counties

Comparing 1980 to 2020, Lichter and Johnson found that 464 counties that were previously considered rural have since been recategorized as urban. Although we might typically consider many of these shifting counties as “suburban,” the primary census categories are either urban (metro) or rural (nonmetro). As a result of these changing categorizations, between the 1980 and 2020 censuses, there was a 64% increase in the technical number of urban counties at the expense of historically rural counties.

The researchers also found that “rural” America is not only becoming smaller, it is also becoming less white. This is a result of both white, rural depopulation – with white people moving out of rural towns – and other racial groups’ internal population growth within rural counties. In terms of population, white-rural America has decreased by nearly 14 million [28% decrease] and minority-rural America has increased by over 3 million [40% increase].

In short, the commonly spun story of predominantly Black urban city dwellers and white rural farmers may be conceptually familiar, but it distorts today’s, real picture. Our popular understandings of the “city” or “country” and “urban” or “rural” are changing, and where and how we draw the line is important.

Image: From the Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson’ s publication [Figure 2] showing the designation of counties as consistent nonmetro in white, transitioning from nonmetro to metro in orange, or consistent metro in red.

Click here to visit an interactive map from the U.S. Census Bureau about rural America.

The Bongo Family’s 56-Year Rule Over Gabon

Elections in the country during the dynasty’s decades in power were followed by protests, then security force crackdowns and ultimately silence, writes Douglas Yates. Until Wednesday, when the Bongo regime was finally overthrown.

Sept. 18, 2022: Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba signs a book of condolence in London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

(Jonathan Hordle/PA Media Assignments, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

By Douglas Yates
American Graduate School in Paris (AGS)
August 30, 2023

A military intervention appears set to end the Bongo family’s 56 years hold to power in Gabon. A group of senior military officers announced on Wednesday that they had seized power shortly after President Ali Bongo Ondimba was declared winner of the country’s recently held presidential poll.

The coup leaders claimed the Aug. 26 general election was not credible. They announced a cancellation of the election result, closure of all borders and dissolution of all state institutions including the legislative arm of government.

[Related: Another Regime in ‘French West Africa’ Is Toppled]

Ali Bongo was said to have won 64.27 percent of votes cast in the election that the opposition described as a sham. According to the electoral umpire, Bongo’s main challenger, Albert Ondo Ossa, came second with 30.77 percent.

Ali Bongo, (son of former president Omar Bongo who ruled the country from 1967 to 2009) contested the election on the platform of the ruling Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG), founded by his father. The party has monopolised power in the oil-rich central African country for more than half a century.

The Bongo family held onto power for 56 years. It did so through single-party government, corruption in the mining and oil sectors, and political kinship. According to some estimates Ali Bongo personally controls $1 billion in assets, much of that secreted overseas, making him the richest man in Gabon.

In addition, the constitution has been changed several times in the past decades to ensure the Bongos’ continued rule.

First, term limits were removed from the constitution in 2003, ensuring that Bongo could serve as president for life.

Second, traditional two-round ballots were changed into single-round ballots, also in 2003. This was to ensure that Bongo’s opponents could not rally around a single challenger in a run-off.

Third, instead of requiring that the winner obtain a majority, all that is needed for Bongo to be re-elected is a plurality. This means a majority could be less than 50 percent, as long as the winner has the most votes. Had he been required to win a majority of votes, Ali Bongo, with 49.8 percent in the 2016 election, would not have won.

Mach 31, 2016: Ali Bongo chats with French President François Hollande at the Nuclear Security Summit dinner held at the White House in Washington, D.C.

(GPA Photo Archive, Public domain)

Fourth, in April, the presidential term was reduced from seven to five years, ensuring the presidential elections would occur at the same time as legislative and local elections.

In the past, after presidential elections, opposition parties would organise against Bongo’s ruling party to capture seats in the legislative and local elections. The change made it much more likely that all the institutions of government power would have been taken by Bongo and his party in one single election.

Bongo’s party increased its seats in the National Assembly, holding 63 out of 120 seats in 1990 and most recently 98 out of 143 in 2018. The ruling party has also increased its share of seats in the Senate from 52 out of 92 in 1997, to 46 out of 67 in 2021.

The continuous rule by the Bongos was not good for a country of just 2.3 million people. Gabon is a resource-rich country and was once heralded as the “Kuwait of Africa.” Because of its small population and large oil reserves, per capita income is at least $13,949.16. In neighbouring Cameroon, per capita income is only $3,733.

But Gabon’s “average” is belied by a population where a third of the citizens live below the poverty line and unemployment stands at about 37 percent among young people.

Dynastic Republic

Aug. 26, 1988: Omar Bongo thanks participants in Gabon Medflag 88, in which American military personnel provide medical assistance and training to citizens of his West African nation. (U.S. National Archives)

Gabon is not a monarchy but a “dynastic republic.”

In dynastic republics, presidents have concentrated power in their hands and established systems of personal rule. They transmit state power through nepotism to their family and kin. This includes sons and daughters, wives and ex-wives, brothers and sisters, half-siblings and step-siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, in-laws, illegitimate children and so on.

Under this system, the classical ideal of a legal-rational state — where position and rank are distributed based on merit in the name of the rational (efficient and effective) functioning of government — is corrupted.

Ali Bongo receiving Greek officials in January.

(Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

In all dynastic republics around the world — including Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Syria, Azerbaijan, North Korea, Turkmenistan and most recently Cambodia — an institutionalisation of traditional family power through the modern vehicle of a single ruling party has been critical.

In Gabon, this is the Parti Démocratique Gabonais. The party held the Presidential Palace and has a majority in the National Assembly (98/143 seats) and in the Senate (46/67 seats). It also controls the courts, and the regional and municipal governments.

It is critical to understand that no man rules alone. Only with a large party apparatus can a man and his family rule a republic with millions of people.

But why was the rule by one man and his family tolerated?

The answer is the political elite needed him to keep their own positions.

The economist Gordon Tullock hypothesised back in 1987 that dynastic succession appeals to non-familial elites who are wary of a leadership struggle. In 2007, professor of government Jason Brownlee tested this theory by looking at 258 non-monarchical autocrats. He found that

“in the absence of prior experience selecting a ruler through a party, regime elites accepted filial heirs apparent when the incumbent had arisen from a party and his successor predominantly emerged from that organisation.”

Political scientists Bruno Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith argue that

“essential supporters have a much greater chance of retaining their privileged position when power passes within a family from father to son, from king to prince, than when power passes to an outsider.”

Omar Bongo founded the PDG in 1967 as a de jure one-party system. After constitutional reforms in 1990, he permitted the existence of opposition parties. But because he never held free or fair elections, the democratic opposition has never managed to wrest power from either the Bongos or their ruling party.

In the past, elections in Gabon were followed by protests, which were followed by security force crackdowns and ultimately silence. But the 2023 election may turn out to be different as it appears to have been followed by a military coup.

This article was updated on Aug. 30 to reflect the coup in Gabon.

Douglas Yates is professor of political science at American Graduate School in Paris (AGS).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW

Q&A: Nick Turse on the coup in Niger and coverage of US intervention in the Sahel

AUGUST 30, 2023

By FEVEN MERID

CJR

Nigeriens participate in a march called by supporters of coup leader Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, pictured, in Niamey, Niger, Sunday, July 30, 2023.

(AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

In late July, Mohamed Bazoum, the president of Niger, was removed from power in a coup carried out by the commander of the presidential guard, General Abdourahmane Tchiani, and other senior military officials. The upheaval sent shockwaves through neighboring countries and international allies, including France and the United States, that had come to rely on Bazoum as their last reliable partner in the Sahel, the region in Africa that lies directly below the Sahara desert and has recently experienced multiple coups and been a prime breeding ground for Islamist extremist groups.

Bazoum’s diplomatic supporters imposed sanctions in the hope of bringing about his return to power. The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, entered into negotiations with the coup leaders, going so far as to threaten military intervention if the coup was not reversed. In response, the junta, known as the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, put the military on maximum alert, but no troops have yet been deployed. Efforts to find a broader diplomatic solution have ranged from the tense to the nonexistent; last week, the French ambassador was asked to leave the country. While Bazoum remains captive in his own home, support for the junta has grown, both from Nigeriens and the leaders of neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, who themselves came to power in coups. The US avoided using the word “coup,” presumably to safeguard its military operations in the country. Meanwhile, Russia has reportedly sought to exploit the chaos by using government-associated channels to push critiques and false information on social media.

Last week, I spoke with Nick Turse, a reporter who has long covered the Sahel and Niger through the lens of US diplomatic and military activity in the region, for outlets including The Intercept and The Guardian. We discussed how the events in Niger have been communicated in the media and what the coup says about the larger story of Western military partnerships in the Sahel. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

FM: It’s been a month since the coup took place. Where do things currently stand in Niger?

NT: The junta has been in charge for a month. The United States—which has been a major military influence in the country, providing security assistance—has over a thousand troops based in the country and has conducted unilateral combat missions there over the years. The US won’t outright call this a coup that’s taking place; they only call it an attempted coup and seem to be trying to walk a fine line, keeping alive what seems to be the fiction of a possible reversal.

It doesn’t look like the junta has any designs on giving up power, although they talked about a timetable for it—I think as a way to forestall any sort of intervention by ECOWAS, the economic bloc that has threatened military intervention to return President Bazoum to power. The junta seems to be consolidating. Five of its members are US-trained officers and they’ve now appointed governors around the country from their security forces, of which another five are US-trained officers. So they’re putting their own people in charge, and they seem to be strengthening their hold on the country despite what some of the region wants and what the US also seems to want.

How are the coup leaders approaching the media a month in?

They’ve rebuffed all my efforts to speak with them. I’ve tried several members, including a brigadier general, Moussa Barmou. I’ve made the case that, if they want continued Western influence, they should talk to Western outlets, but so far, they haven’t been interested in talking with me. I think they’ve been very selective about who they’ve talked to, and what they’ll say. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the country, contacts of mine. Very few of them are willing to speak on the record about what’s going on there because they fear an official backlash. I’ve talked to some reporters; they say it’s become an even more challenging environment to report. It’s never been an easy one for locals or foreign press. The government keeps a tight leash on the press, and people basically know what they can and can’t report, so there’s a lot of self-censorship already.

How are people getting their news and information?

The junta has taken to the airwaves quite a bit to make announcements on the national broadcaster. There’s been official media outreach by the generals who are in charge and there’s been plenty of reporting on what’s happened in the country, but I wouldn’t say it’s been especially critical. A lot of information spreads via WhatsApp. A lot of rumors have been flying about contending interventions from France or ECOWAS. In some groups that I’m part of, I’ve seen this come up a few times—unverified reports about impending military action, which hasn’t come to pass. There’s a lot of traffic in rumors out there.

Ali Lamine Zeine, the civilian leader who was appointed by the coup leaders as prime minister, is being featured in the media; he even gave an interview to the New York Times. What do you make of him giving interviews to Western outlets when other junta leaders aren’t doing so?

I don’t know a lot about him and I’ve never spoken with him, but he has a reputation as a technocrat and it looks to me like they want him to be the Western-media-facing voice. When the junta talks to the public, they’ve had a military spokesperson in military fatigues speak. I think they wanted a kinder, gentler spokesperson for a Western audience—someone who would be more palatable and give a civilian face to the government; someone who is seen as a stabilizing force, a steady hand.

In much of your reporting, you focus on the fact that many of the coups that have happened in the Sahel region, for example in Mali and Burkina Faso, have been carried out by military figures with US training.

I feel like this is something that the US government tries to sweep under the rug: they don’t want to talk about this penchant to overthrow the governments they’ve been training these people to bolster, prop up, protect all these years. Now, the US has a really robust training effort; they train a lot of people, so it’s not all that shocking. And in my reporting, I really don’t talk about it in terms of causation. It’s a correlation that I bring up. There’s conflicting evidence out there as to whether there’s any possible causation. I’ve seen some compelling evidence by people who looked at this very closely, researched it, and I’ve written a little bit about it. But I think this is something that more needs to be addressed as part of a broader look at US security assistance. The US has pumped billions of dollars into the Sahel as part of the War on Terror, and the results have been uniformly dismal from one country to the next. Coups by US-trained military officers are just a small part of it.

From 2000 to 2003, when the US assistance to Niger and its Sahelien neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso started, the State Department counted nine terrorist attacks in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, in just those three countries, there were close to two thousand eight hundred attacks, so about a 30,000 percent increase over that time. The attacks have gone up, fatalities of civilians have gone up, and the number of terrorist groups operating in the region has proliferated over that time. Again, this is something where correlation doesn’t equal causation, but the metrics have all gone in the wrong direction. It raises some real questions about the way that the United States uses its security assistance and a need to take a harder look at it. This is something that the State Department doesn’t seem very interested in. But it’s something that I think they and the broader public should have a much stronger interest in.

Do you see other news outlets taking interest in this when reporting on the region?

I don’t see a lot on it. There was recent New York Times coverage and it said something like, the US security assistance in the Sahel over the past twenty years has been no silver bullet. To me, that was the understatement of the year: when you have a 30,000 percent increase in terrorist attacks I think it’s more than: it’s been no silver bullet—it’s been a dismal failure. And that’s one of the rare times that it’s actually mentioned. If it’s in a report, it’s downplayed.

I don’t think you can really look at the US counterterrorism campaign in the region or the results of it and not factor in that the US has invested a tremendous amount of time and money. And it’s not just treasure—it’s blood and treasure. US troops have died there. and certainly, many of the local forces that we’ve trained have died and civilians have died in large numbers. But I don’t think it makes a lot of stories. And the stories that do mention the rise in terror, they don’t mention just how involved the US and other international partners have been, including France and a lot of European Union countries. I think it bears looking at whether all these security systems have exacerbated the problem.

Whenever there’s coverage of the US training in the region, it’s divorced from the reality of the facts on the ground. Every year, Special Operations Command Africa and Africom invite a select handful of reporters—often the same reporters again and again—to an exercise called Flintlock. Every year, it’s sort of the same story: it always begins, like, In the searing heat, under the pewter sun and talks about these, like, raw African troops who are having orders barked at them by Americans or other Western trainers. And it talks about a fraught security environment, but the US has sent in Green Berets, and they’re going to turn things around. There’s always some sort of caveat thrown into the piece that, you know, terrorism has gone up, but expectations are high that this is going to turn it around. This has been going on now for more than a decade, and the major outlets write the same story, that’s mostly upbeat.

Other notable stories:Yesterday morning, The Atlantic published the first excerpt from a forthcoming book by Franklin Foer, a staff writer at the magazine, that promises to “dramatize in forensic detail the first two years of the Biden presidency.” (The excerpt concerns the withdrawal from Afghanistan.) Politico’s Playbook newsletter reported yesterday that the book is the “first insider account” of Biden’s administration—it’s based on some three hundred interviews conducted since 2020—and that its release will thus test “how a generally leak-proof White House grapples with the first detailed excavation of its successes and failures.” The book has been kept tightly under wraps, but other excerpts have now started to appear, including in Axios (and The Guardian, as it often does, got a copy).

Nieman Lab’s Sarah Scire dug into the recent layoffs at the Texas Tribune, the first in the outlet’s fourteen-year history; the cuts spooked many media-watchers given the Tribune’s status as the “gold standard of nonprofit journalism and a role model other outlets have been encouraged to follow,” and led to calls for more transparency, on the Tribune’s part, as to what exactly led to them. “The layoffs suggest a changing funding environment as much as budget planning mistakes or a lack of business-side personnel,” Scire writes, though “some of the journalists who were laid off have posted about what they see as ‘leadership failures’ and ‘a financial and leadership tailspin.’”
CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge and Lillian Rizzo report, citing court records linked to a lawsuit against the sportswear brand Under Armour, that Kevin Plank, the company’s founder, “forged an unusual relationship with television anchor Stephanie Ruhle that included trips on his private jet, access to confidential company information and a secret phone reserved just for their communications.” Ruhle, who is now a prominent anchor on MSNBC, worked at the time for Bloomberg and covered Under Armour. (Under Armour has denied any impropriety; MSNBC and Ruhle have yet to comment.)
On Monday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill went into lockdown after a gunman fatally shot a faculty member. This morning, the Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at the university, published a striking front page filled with texts that students exchanged during the lockdown. Caitlyn Yaede, the print managing editor, wrote that she “shed many tears” while typing up the messages. The Raleigh News & Observer has more on the front page and the Tar Heel’s broader coverage of the lockdown.

And Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader who was killed in a plane crash last week months after leading a mutinous march on Moscow, was buried in St. Petersburg yesterday amid an atmosphere of secrecy and confusion. According to the Post, the service was closed to the public and “hearses and funeral corteges laid false trails at several local cemeteries” in an apparent bid to confuse journalists.

ICYMI: Prigozhin and the press

Feven Merid is CJR’s staff writer and Senior Delacorte Fellow.

LGBTQ RIGHTS

How Mastercard is Endangering Sex Workers

LaLa B Holston-Zannell,
Trans Justice Campaign Manager
August 30, 2023

Back in 2021, Mastercard developed a new policy for adult content websites using its credit card or payment options. The policy imposed requirements such as pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and keeping records of age and identity verification for all performers. These restrictions not only restrict free speech and harm the livelihood of sex workers, but fail to make adult content platforms safer. Over 16,000 of you joined us in calling for an end to this policy, telling Mastercard about the harm such practices pose for Black, immigrant, and transgender sex workers especially

American Civil Liberties Union
Mastercard: Sex Work is Work. End Your Unjust Policy.
Mastercard put into effect a new policy that makes it extremely hard for sex workers to earn a living online.

Now, we’re taking the fight to the next level. In a complaint filed to the Federal Trade Commission, we led a coalition of organizations and advocates opposing Mastercard’s policy and urging the FTC to open an investigation and put an end to these discriminatory and dangerous practices.

Adult content is constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. As our complaint explains, Mastercard’s vague and ambiguous policy requirements, coupled with the dangerous combination of platform over-compliance and inadequate automated tools, has led to the vast censorship of this entirely lawful category of speech.

In addition to the free speech and privacy implications of Mastercard’s adult content policy, we are fighting because of the harm this policy causes to sex workers. Since its implementation, Mastercard’s payment policy has forced sex workers into arduous — and often impossible — mazes of verification and regulation, requiring multiple levels of identity verification and putting needless bureaucracy in the way of legal conduct and speech. As a result, sex workers are losing income and stability.

Vanniall, a sex worker in New York City who relies on platforms like OnlyFans and Pornhub, described the new policy as a “whole different ball game.” If Mastercard’s policy flags her content for noncompliance, it can result in the removal of entire accounts — even from websites whose explicit purpose is to host adult content. And the impact on her life is catastrophic. After Vanniall had her OnlyFans account flagged, she says, “I lost all of my rent for that month overnight because of a tagging system that they had just put in place.”

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In an attempt to comply with the Mastercard policy, adult content websites are putting in place all sorts of burdensome and sometimes impossible barriers. Many now require adult content producers to verify their identity through biometrics systems, a service that Mastercard now offers and benefits from financially. And these biometrics services have a long record of racist implications.

“These biometrics have to be taken multiple, multiple times,” said Vanniall. “I’m talking to multiple dark-skinned people who have had this same problem.”

When sex workers are pushed off of digital platforms, they’re forced into more dangerous and more onerous means of survival. Since the 2018 passage of SESTA/FOSTA, many sex workers have been pushed offline and into street sex work, where they have to work in isolated areas to avoid arrest and deal with clients without background checks.

While working with our coalition of sex workers and impacted individuals, one thing remained clear: Every one of us is invested in keeping sex workers safe, preventing sex trafficking, and pursuing wrongdoing on the internet. It is also clear that Mastercard missed the mark when they implemented this policy, and they are actively causing harm to the lives and livelihoods of sex workers. The Mastercard policy is yet another barrier needlessly put between sex workers, their rights, and their safety. But we see a future where that can change, and hope to help Mastercard improve their policies for the sex worker community.

“There can be no conversations about us without us,” says Vanniall. “We have to be in the room … It has to come from a place of love or understanding or something other than straight-up hate.”

Coral diplomacy: the UAE's role in safeguarding Florida's marine heritage

Charity receives funding from UAE to help bolster reef-saving initiatives

Coral bleaching occurs when corals, stressed by anomalies such as escalated temperatures, eject the symbiotic algae living within them. AP

Mohamed Maher
St Petersburg, Florida
Aug 30, 2023

As coral bleaching devastates reefs in the Florida Keys, a new partnership between a local charity and the UAE could help turn the tide against the climate change-related phenomenon.

The United Way of Collier and the Keys has announced a $50,000 collaborative effort with the UAE aimed at bolstering coral conservation initiatives undertaken by Reef Renewal USA.

This is not the first time the UAE has sent assistance to Florida: following catastrophic Hurricane Irma in 2017, the UAE donated about $10 million to Florida for reconstruction purposes.

Florida coral in hot water as bath-like temperature poses risks

Out of this, $3.5 million went directly to the Florida Keys, with a portion of these funds directed towards coral conservation, cementing the UAE's position as the leading international benefactor of the state's beloved reefs.

“Coral bleaching occurs when corals, stressed by anomalies such as escalated temperatures, eject the symbiotic algae living within them,” says Phanor Montoya-Maya, marine biologist at the Coral Reef Foundation.

“It's like a plant shedding its leaves during drought.”

In Florida, the waters are becoming so hot that some corals are dying from heat stress before they even bleach.

Recent reports suggest that parts of Florida's waters registered a searing 37.8°C this summer, with experts noting that these temperatures are not only disastrous for the coral ecosystem but also for the myriad species that rely on them.

A heart-rending testament to this is the 100 per cent coral mortality reported at Sombrero Reef, which had been under restoration for more than a decade.

“It's challenging to predict the exact long-term outcomes for Florida's coral reefs under current climate change scenarios, particularly as hard corals across Florida's Coral Reef, including the Upper Keys, are currently being stressed by heat,” Dr Montoya-Maya tells The National.

“However, if water temperatures continue to hit excessive highs for extended periods, their survival becomes increasingly uncertain in the future.”

The Florida Keys Barrier Reef, unique in the US for its biodiversity, boosts South Florida's economy and ecology, attracting tourists and offering a crucial defence against storms.

Sarah Fangman, superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, draws attention to the broader scope of the problem, stressing that climate change is a global concern.

“No singular country or organisation can tackle the ramifications of climate change in isolation,” she tells The National, highlighting the UAE's crucial aid following Hurricane Irma, a calamity that ravaged both the marine life and communities of southern Florida.

Ms Fangman explains that the South Atlantic and Caribbean reef system is extremely important for maintaining the environmental balance in the region.

The UAE funding will help Reef Renewal USA in developing targeted projects that focus on removing the corals at risk of bleaching from their current environment and relocating them to deep water or land-based nurseries, the United Way said in a press release.

The joint effort between the United Way and the UAE is a beacon of hope in these challenging times, Tiffani Mensch, president and chief executive of the organisation, tells The National.

“There is no hesitation when help is needed to safeguard these fragile ecosystems for future generations,” she says.

“Our collaboration with the UAE and global partners presents an unprecedented opportunity to make a lasting impact on the marine environment.”

This international endeavour will work closely with Mission: Iconic Reefs, a project focused on the restoration of seven reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

“This is a local emergency that is part of a global crisis,” Dana Al Marashi, head of cultural diplomacy at the UAE embassy in Washington, said in a statement.

“The funding will play a crucial role in accelerating Reef Renewal USA’s efforts to save its genetically valuable coral. Together, UWCK is joining Reef Renewal USA and other partner organisations demonstrating a commitment to being part of the solution during the coral bleaching crisis.”

With a searing July predicted to be the hottest month in millennia, the importance of international alliances such as this cannot be overstated.

“Our goal is to ensure that coral reefs exist in the future,” Dr Montoya-Maya says.

“To achieve this, we must prioritise funding and implementation policies, recognising that our coral reefs require a co-ordinated effort across multiple countries.”

Coral bleaching is affecting large sections of Florida's famous reefs. The state has received funding from the UAE that has gone towards combating this climate change-related phenomenon.

All photos: Coral Restoration Foundation