Take a Lesson from Paul Nitze: Abolish Nuclear Weapons

by John Laforge

 September 11, 2024
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Image by Alex Shuper.

Melvin A. Goodman, national security columnist for Counterpunch.org, presents a fine review of the absurdities today’s U.S. nuclear weapons production. (“A Looming Nuclear Catastrophe,” Aug. 30). The Pentagon’s new nuclear weapons only enlarge the genocidal and self-destructive arsenal already deployed on U.S. bombers, submarines, ICBMs, and in NATO bunkers at six European air bases.

For weapons contractors, Congress, the White House, and the military to point to the nuclear arsenals of other countries as reasons for increasing U.S. over-kill capacity, is, as Goodman points out, the height of “strategic madness.”

Goodman correctly targets the late Paul H. Nitze as one of the best-known advocates of nuclear “escalation dominance” in “Nukespeak.” Nitze was a life-long military hawk and nuclear threat strategist, an anti-Soviet propagandist, and a founder of the Committee on the Present Danger ⸺ a group once known as “the most effective organ of Cold War revivalism.” But Goodman’s analysis missed the chance to bolster his analysis with the fact that after retiring Nitze rejected decades of pro-nuclear advocacy by publicly abandoning the fundamental basis of nuclear deterrence theory ⸺ namely, that it is practical and rational to threaten massive nuclear retaliation in response to a nuclear attack — and calling for elimination of the U.S. arsenal regardless of what other countries do.

In his October 28, 1999 op/ed in The New York Times, titled “A Threat Mostly to Ourselves,” Nitze wrote:

“I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them … adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even if retaliation for their prior use against us.”

Nitze, a former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, noted that the destructiveness of “conventional” weapons make nuclear warheads redundant and unnecessary. Nitze wrote:

“In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal.”

Recent history illustrates Nitze’s point in spades, as conventional U.S. bombs, missiles, and troops: killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, and again in the 2003 Iraq War (“100,000 Iraqis killed since U.S. invasion, analysis says,” Mpls Star Tribune, Oct. 29, 2004, -&- “Greenpeace Count Puts Dead From War in Gulf at 200,000,” New York Times, May 30, 1991); leveled Afghanistan’s major cities beginning in 2001; and, turned Syria’s cities into smoking ruins after first attacking ISIS then Syrian government forces. The Pentagon says that “Operation Inherent Resolve” conducted 13,331 airstrikes in Iraq and 11,235 airstrikes in Syria by August 9, 2017. No nukes required.

The unimaginably expensive maintenance, refurbishment, and expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a hugely profitable jobs program which is defended and protected by Congressional representatives from coast to coast, because weapons contracts in one’s district mean votes. But the weapons themselves are just for show. Our nuclear weapons “theater” is the government’s perpetual public threat to conduct nuclear attacks, a permanent bomb threat known as “credible deterrence.” This nuclear terror is used by the government to claim that our conventional wars of mass destruction are “measured,” “surgical,” “limited,” and “moderate” — because the shooters didn’t resort to nuclear attacks.

The 30-year $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons rebuild program ⸺ launched in 2014 by Barack Obama and Joe Biden ⸺ must be protested and resisted on economic and environmental grounds, but the absurdity and self-deception of deterrence theory itself must be denounced and abandoned, the way Paul Nitze did, in order to finally end the nightmare and colossal waste of fielding a nuclear arsenal.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

Mexico just approved changing its constitution. Here's what you need to know

By Eyder Peralta
Published September 10, 2024 

Felix Marquez  AP

Senators hold a session in alternate headquarters due to protesters blocking access to their regular chambers, in Mexico City, on Sept. 5. The protesters were opposing major judicial reforms.

September 11, 2024 

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Senate on Wednesday narrowly passed sweeping changes to the courts that include having judges elected by the public rather than appointed, in a major and controversial set of constitutional reforms.

The approval came hours after hundreds of protesters broke into Mexico's Senate, forcing the body to take a temporary recess. The proposed reforms have led judges and other judicial staff to strike and protest, in what’s become one of Mexico’s biggest constitutional debates in years.

Here are the main things to understand about the reforms and why they are so controversial.

The government vows to root out court corruption

For nearly a year, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been promoting a plan to remake the federal judiciary and Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-elect, due to take over in October, backs the reforms. Both accuse the courts of gross corruption and say their changes are crucial.

The biggest proposal changes how federal judges are selected. Instead of working their way up the judiciary, the governing party wants them to be elected by popular vote. Like presidents and lawmakers, the governing party reasoned, judges from the Supreme Court on down to local courts will have to run for office.

Rodrigo Oropeza / AFP Via Getty Images
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AFP Via Getty ImagesLawmaker Ricardo Monreal celebrates after the approval of the judicial reform during a session at an alternate seat of the Mexican Congress in Mexico City's Sala de Armas, on Sept. 4.

The plan also includes reforms like making sure no judicial worker makes more than the president.

Mexico’s June elections handed Sheinbaum the victory and congressional supermajority needed to amend the Constitution.

López Obrador and his protege Sheinbaum say this will make the judiciary answer to the people instead of big business or organized crime.

After the lower house of Congress passed the reform 359-135, congressman Ricardo Monreal celebrated.

“We believe that we will end nepotism, corruption, influence peddling, the conflict of interest, the sale of justice to the highest bidder,” he said.
The judiciary is up in arms



Judges and judicial staff have been on strike since Aug. 19.

Last week, they formed picket lines in front of federal courthouses and just as the Mexican Congress was set to begin debating the measure, they surrounded the lower bodies’ headquarters in Mexico City to block the session.

“Democracy is in danger," José Fernando Migues Hernández, a Mexican judiciary worker, told NPR.

What’s more, federal courts had issued three injunctions in an attempt to stop the reforms.

But governing party lawmakers worked around the protesters and injunctions, saying they were an infringement of their constitutional rights, and they pressed on. Instead of meeting at Congress, they announced they would debate at a gym outside Mexico City. That’s where legislators from the lower house approved the raft of measures.
This has been tried before

Under its 1857 Constitution, Mexico actually used to elect its judges, according to Mónica Castillejos-Aragón, who clerked in Mexico's Supreme Court and now teaches comparative law at University of California, Berkeley.

When the framers of the current constitution, which was passed in 1917, discussed the judiciary they called electing judges an “inexplicable aberration.” They believed that elected judges led to corruption, so they reasoned that unlike the other two branches of government, the judiciary should be above politics.

“The framers expressed the need to establish an independent judicial power with security of tenure,” she says.

As the country took steps toward democracy in the 1990s, it also began appointing judges the way the United States does at the federal level. (Some U.S. states elect local judges.) And in the early 2000’s, nearly 80 years after it became independent on paper, the court finally began issuing landmark opinions.

“For the very first time in history, the Mexican judges were able to interpret and expand the scope of the rights already recognized in the Mexican Constitution,” Castillejos-Aragón says.

Guillermo Arias / AFP Via Getty Images
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AFP Via Getty ImagesJudicial workers, judges and magistrates go on strike and demonstrate in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on Aug. 25.

In recent years, the courts have struck down key policies of the president. For instance, in April 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Guard — a large paramilitary force created by President López Obrador to patrol the country — could not remain under military command.

Castillejos-Aragón says the new reforms might put in danger hard-fought independence that allowed the judiciary to check the presidency. She believes the current leadership is reacting to decisions like that National Guard ruling: The executive, now armed with a supermajority, wants to make sweeping changes without the courts getting in its way.

The only big democracy to elect judges at the federal level by popular vote is Bolivia, says Julio Ríos, who studies judiciaries at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. According to Ríos, the Bolivian reform, instituted in 2009, did diversify the courts but it did not make them any less corrupt. He says it just politicized the courts and weakened the public’s confidence in them.

However, according to constitutional lawyer Juan Carlos González Cancino, Mexico’s changes are necessary.

He says the federal judiciary is corrupt. Big tax cases or business cases get decided with a phone call or a bag of money, he says. In his mind, this is not about democracy. It's about factions of the Mexican elite fighting for power and the money that power begets.

“But that ends because this reform destroys that power structure,” he says.

Ultimately, he says, it doesn’t matter what the courts think about these reforms. The Mexican people spoke loud and clear when they handed the government the supermajority needed to reform the Constitution.

Copyright 2024 NPR

Protesters raid Mexico’s Senate to stop ruling party from passing judicial reform

Mexico's ruling party poised to approve controversial reform which has triggered nationwide protests

Jorge Antonio Rocha |11.09.2024 -

An aerial view of a rally called 'In defense of the Republic and Democracy' against the Mexico's controversial judicial reform, at Reforma avenue, in Mexico City, Mexico on September 08, 2024.

MEXICO CITY

Hundreds of demonstrators stormed Mexico’s Senate on Tuesday as lawmakers debated a plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary.

Protesters against the proposed judicial reform overcame security and entered the Senate chambers. Singing the national anthem, they forced lawmakers to suspend the session.

Lawmakers were debating an initiative promoted by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and fast-tracked by a ruling party majority in the lower house last week, which triggered nationwide strikes and prompted all courts and tribunals in the country to shut down in protest of the reform.

The constitutional reform would have judges and magistrates in Mexico elected by a direct vote, raising concern that the federal government will use its influence to co-opt the judiciary politically.

Although the ruling Morena party has no majority to pass the reform without a great deal of struggle, the opposition bloc has denounced that the government led by Lopez Obrador is trying to co-opt senators from opposing parties to support the reform.

However, the session resumed, and lawmakers are expected to hold a final vote on Wednesday.

Will We Be Ready? Geoengineering Policy Lags Far Behind Pace of Climate Change

Now, as climate change impacts intensify, the debate over what safe, effective national and international geoengineering policies should look like has intensified among academics, regulatory and advisory bodies and researchers.

September 11, 2024 by Mongabay 


By Charles Pekow

The history of geoengineering policymaking has been piecemeal over past decades, with U.N. bodies failing to create or implement rigorous binding international regulatory frameworks for geoengineering management, and with academia and think tanks delivering reports and recommendations that offer little definitive detailed regulatory guidance.

Now, as climate change impacts intensify, the debate over what safe, effective national and international geoengineering policies should look like has intensified among academics, regulatory and advisory bodies and researchers.

Meanwhile, scientists continue trying to find out if geoengineering (the deliberate altering of global atmospheric or oceanic conditions), can help cool off a dangerously warming planet without triggering harmful effects.

Some warn geoengineering is too risky and want field research stopped. Others say research is urgently needed so decision-makers can understand geoengineering options and risks, so as to make informed choices. For now, few definitive road signs exist to guide policymaking.

In the 2020 science-fiction novel The Ministry for the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a near-future climate catastrophe in which a deadly heat dome stalls over India, killing millions of people. Its government, in defiance of the United Nations, launches fleets of aircraft to seed the stratosphere with cooling sulfate aerosols, despite a dearth of knowledge on geoengineering risks.

An international taskforce is hurriedly formed to deal proactively with the out-of-control climate crisis. Throughout the book, this body, dubbed the Ministry for the Future, races to recover from three decades of failed international climate policymaking. Elsewhere, geoengineering researchers hurriedly launch studies to save Antarctica from melting, and the world from cataclysmic sea level rise.

The novel received worldwide attention, with entrepreneur Bill Gates calling it “harrowing” for its depiction of near-future events. But it’s a tome that would likely be beyond the realm of possibility if only world leaders had long ago set humanity on a glide path to deep carbon cuts and an energy transition.

Now, with every passing year and each failed U.N. climate summit (this year will mark COP29), policymaker discussions have increasingly turned to a desperate Hail Mary pass that might yet buy humanity some time before climate catastrophe strikes: geoengineering. Today, decision-makers are considering strategies that range from redirecting solar energy back into space using giant orbiting mirrors to releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere and dumping various things into the ocean or on croplands to suck carbon out of the sky.

But it’s not clear if or when such technologies can work, let alone who should perform or control these planetary interventions. Nor is it known if altering the skies or seas to cool one region might bring intense heat or destructive drought elsewhere.

“Changes that help one region could harm another, and the effects may not be clear until it’s too late,” wrote David Kitchen, geology professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. In an interview, Kitchen said, “Everybody understands something needs to be done but nobody knows quite how to go about it.”
A history of flawed policymaking

Governments, international organizations, think tanks and academic institutions haven’t ignored the monumental questions posed by geoengineering. They’ve wrestled with them for more than a decade but mostly without coming to firm conclusions or consensual decisions. That has left the world far from formulating an international strategy for guiding geoengineering research and deployment.

In that administrative vacuum, individual nations have acted — while others have failed to act. Mexico banned geoengineering experiments in 2023 after a private company invaded its airspace with balloons conducting rudimentary geoengineering research. In the U.S., the only regulation relevant to the issue dates to 1972 and merely requires notifying the Commerce Department in advance of any plan to seed clouds to induce rain, or set fires to reduce fog or influence air currents.

But as the world gets hotter, louder warnings sound: In a 2021 paper, the Brookings Institution wrote, “Although much is still unknown about geoengineering, the United States cannot afford to wait to act.” The think tank called for the development of international monitoring (likely by satellite) and policies for responding to unsanctioned geoengineering deployment by other countries, and it stressed the need for the U.S. to lead in creating global standards.

Major American universities are presently examining regulatory options. In 2023, the University of Chicago started a Climate Systems Engineering initiative, which is studying geoengineering strategies ranging from the redirection of a portion of the sun’s rays to the injection of sea salt into clouds as a means for protecting glaciers. In April, the Simons Foundation, which funds science projects, awarded 14 grants to explore ways to cool the atmosphere, while another recent report evaluated 61 options for cooling the Arctic, including marine cloud brightening and other untried geoengineering techniques.

In the U.K., the Climate Geoengineering Governance Project, a collaboration of English institutes of higher learning, warned a decade ago of possible military or rogue uses of geoengineering and of the likely difficult path to negotiating an international treaty regulating planetwide atmospheric changes.

The U.K. project warned that “it is hard to avoid the conclusion geoengineering won’t work, it will be ungovernable … and will have extremely costly social and economic consequences of such a magnitude to make [it] untenable.” The writers pointed to past failed efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons as an example of the problems facing geoengineering deployment.

Five years ago, the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements warned that a “treaty prohibiting solar geoengineering would have little effect, because the countries likely to use geoengineering would choose not to participate in the treaty.”
Policymakers struggle to regulate solar radiation modification

The most talked-about geoengineering technique currently is solar radiation modification (SRM), especially adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to cool the planet. But a 2023 review of SRM by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found “little information” available on its risks and concluded there “needs to be significantly more scientific research into the potential impacts of SRM technologies on low- and middle-income countries.”

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SRM has also attracted the attention of the Biden administration, but it hasn’t yet formulated a policy. A White House study released in 2023 merely concluded that the risks and benefits of SRM need to be considered vs. the risks and benefits of no SRM. That study, too, cited the need for more research and suggested international cooperation, but it didn’t get specific about making this happen.

The U.S. doesn’t stand alone among nations lacking policy. Last December, the German government issued an 87-page Strategy on Climate Foreign Policy that devotes just one paragraph to SRM, noting that the government isn’t currently involved in it but will “analyse and assess the extensive scientific, technological, political, social and ethical risks and implications.”

Perhaps the closest thing to an international SRM agreement is found within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that UNEP adopted in 2010. The CBD disallows any climate-related geoengineering activities taking place “in the absence of science based, global, transparent and effective control and regulatory mechanisms,” and rules that no deployment should take place “until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities … [with] consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity [plus] social, economic and cultural impacts.” The CBD allows an exception for “small scale scientific research … to gather specific scientific data.”

The CBD, which the United States never joined, could one day become a nuanced international mechanism for geoengineering management, according to some experts. But the periodic summits of its parties have only called for further study, and CBD has not received a mandate to do more.

The U.S. and other “states that are non-parties to the CBD have to take into account what the vast majority of countries in the world have recognized: that deployment of geoengineering poses unacceptable risks and should not go ahead,” Mary Church, the geoengineering campaign manager for the Center for International Environmental Law, said in an email.

There is a second U.N. agreement that has bearing on geoengineering, but only in connection with ocean dumping: the London Convention and Protocol on the Prevention of Marine Pollution. In a 2013 amendment, policymakers outlined international restrictions on ocean fertilization as a means of absorbing carbon. But that amendment has only been accepted by six parties, (the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Estonia and Germany) and has yet to come into force. Last October, the 101 protocol parties agreed that ocean geoengineering outside of scientific research “should be deferred,” particularly for four technologies: “ocean alkalinity enhancement; biomass cultivation for carbon removal; marine cloud brightening; and surface albedo enhancement involving reflective particles and/or other materials.”

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Starting in 2016, the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative initiated an eight-year project to study the challenges of carbon removal and SRM in order, it said, to bring the topic to the attention of world governments. In 2023, declaring its mission complete, the initiative folded. Since then, “discussions by governments have moved forward — perhaps not as fast as the world might need,” executive director Janos Pasztor wrote in an email to Mongabay. The “task now is to actively advocate for or against the research of, and for or against the eventual deployment, of such techniques.”

The Carnegie initiative did come to one firm conclusion: that the geoengineering strategies it analyzed won’t solve the climate crisis alone. If ever implemented, deployments would still need to be accompanied by simultaneous reductions or elimination of carbon emissions.

Wrangling over international policy

In line with the CBD and London Protocol, a U.N. Environment Assembly (UNEA) expert panel on SRM determined in 2023 that “a speculative group of technologies to cool the Earth … requires far more research into its risks and benefits before any consideration for potential deployment.”

The U.S. State Department agreed with that finding and provided Mongabay with a statement noting “[W]e recognize the considerable lack of information and transparency on SRM, and that this information gap varies widely from country to country. This is one reason that, during the Sixth UNEA [meeting] that took place earlier this year [in Kenya], we expressed interest in supporting proposals for a repository of scientific information jointly hosted by relevant UN organizations.”

But at that February 2024 meeting, the U.S.-sponsored geoengineering research proposal, put forward by Switzerland, was soundly rejected by African nations concerned that the Global North would deploy geoengineering projects harmful to the Global South; they instead proposed a geoengineering “nonuse” agreement, which was also a nonstarter.

The U.N. Human Rights Council Advisory Committee has expressed concerns that geoengineering deployment could interfere with human rights, especially in less developed countries. “So far, new and emerging technologies intended for climate protection have not been extensively examined from the human rights viewpoint,” the committee stated in a 2023 report.

It warned further that unproven technologies could “change precipitation patterns and pollute freshwater resources and thus pose a threat to food and water security, imperil livelihoods and lead to mass displacements of persons. Most carbon dioxide removal technologies require vast swathes of land and extensive water resources, potentially increasing the demand for water and, therefore, affecting food production and access to water. SRM could also reduce the availability of freshwater on islands that already face water shortages.”

The 2023 report recommended that nations “rigorously apply the precautionary principle and develop and conduct meaningful, comprehensive risk, human rights and environmental impact assessments” and develop “effective procedures to seek the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples and meaningfully consult peasants, local communities and other affected or particularly interested groups.” Put simply: Because geoengineering strategies would alter the planet’s climate, everyone needs a say.

“We must pursue the path best aligned with human rights, including the ‘right to science’ (the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications)…. We believe that at this time, efforts which could legitimize potential deployment of climate altering technologies are inconsistent with such a path,” Ana Paula Souza, human rights officer on the Environment and Climate Change Team of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in an email to Mongabay.

The commissioner hasn’t taken any action on geoengineering since the 2023 report was issued, Souza said. But in May, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea issued an advisory opinion stating that marine geoengineering violates the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea when it turns one pollutant into another, and that nations must take all steps to prevent it.

To study, or not to study?

Geoengineering policy discussions continue to evolve, but some officials, scientists and activists argue that basic research needs either a moratorium, more regulation or even an outright ban.

Geoengineering Monitor, for example, cites an “alarming expansion of geoengineering research and experimentation.” The monitor, operated by energy watchdogs Biofuelwatch and ETC Group, counted more than 1,700 research projects globally. The monitor is part of the Hands Off Mother Earth! campaign against geoengineering started in 2010. At last count, 195 organizations from 45 countries have signed its manifesto to ban all geoengineering efforts, including experiments.

“That kind of tinkering will make [climate impacts] worse faster. Proponents of different sorts of engineering tend to pick from the sciences what most serves their narratives,” said Gary Hughes, the Americas program coordinator of Biofuelwatch.

But some scientists vigorously argue that basic research should be allowed to go on, and note that field research won’t inevitably lead to deployment. “[T]he way we do existing environmental science research works pretty well. Nothing about solar engineering changes that,” said David Keith, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago who has been exploring SRM for years.

In science, “Individual researchers at universities are largely allowed to choose what they want to work on themselves,” subject to funding availability, Keith said. “My job is to try to improve our [scientific] understanding and tell the public and policymakers about it.” Without that understanding, policymakers lack data to guide their decisions, geoengineering research proponents say.

Regarding SRM benefits, Keith was candid: “Nobody can claim to know what the correct answer is.… It would be much better for the world if people were having more [geoengineering] conversations, especially by political leadership.” But, “The power of research is that nobody is in charge. It would be extraordinary (and unprecedented) to put international regulations” on geoengineering studies.

Keith agreed that an international body needs to set and enforce rules, but he noted that governments are nowhere near to figuring that out. Input from everyone is needed, he added, including UNEP, the National Academy of Sciences, the World Meteorological Society and others.

With this July marking the 14th consecutive month to set a global heat record, and 2024 and 2023 likely to be the hottest back-to-back years in history, there is growing concern that global warming and its impacts are escalating far faster than geoengineering policymaking is moving ahead, making the horrific climate disasters painted in the Ministry for the Future increasingly likely, and leaving the world largely unprepared to safely deploy geoengineering as a last resort.

Citations:

Haque, F., Khalidy, R., Chiang, Y. W., & Santos, R. M. (2023). Constraining the capacity of global croplands to CO₂ Drawdown via mineral weathering. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 7(7), 1294-1305. doi:10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00374

Nightingale, P., & Cairns, R. (2014). Just a moment... Retrieved from Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Paper Series: 018 website: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308795801_The_Security_Implications_of_Geoengineering_Blame_Imposed_Agreement_and_the_Security_of_Critical_Infrastructure

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Previously Published on news.mongabay with Creative Commons Attribution

 

Brazil’s Lula visits Amazon as fire ‘pandemic’ rages

By

 AFP

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced new measures on Tuesday to alleviate drought in the Brazilian Amazon, as his government faces mounting pressure to combat a “pandemic” of fires.  

Brazil has been parched by a historic drought that experts link to climate change, sparking fires that have spread more easily and produced clouds of smoke that have reached neighbouring Uruguay and Argentina.  

The country’s Supreme Court has ordered immediate government action to contain what it has called a “fire pandemic”, which is also threatening to destroy the biodiversity-rich wetland sanctuary of Pantanal. 

“We take the need to combat drought, deforestation, fires, very seriously,” Lula said in the northern state of Amazonas. 

Accompanied by several ministers, the president visited riverside communities living in the world’s largest rainforest, which are suffering from the worst drought in 70 years to hit Latin America’s biggest country. 

The high temperatures have dried up rivers used by isolated communities for navigation, food and water supply. 

The Brazilian government announced dredging works on the Amazon River and other waterways and the delivery of water purifiers.

In the state capital Manaus, Lula announced the creation of an authority to tackle “extreme climate risks”. 

“Our focus must be on adaptation,” he said. 

The new authority was among Lula’s campaign promises for his third government (2023-2026), devised by his environment minister, Marina Silva. 

“These events are going to become more and more frequent, more and more intense,” Silva said. 

Sao Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, was the world’s most polluted major metropolis on Tuesday for a second day in a row, according to Switzerland-based air quality monitoring company IQAir. 

Lula said “the situation is delicate” and deteriorates every year. 

With more than 5,000 active fire outbreaks on Tuesday, Brazil accounts for 76 percent of the areas affected by fires in South America, according to data from the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) published by official media. 

So far this year, some 6.7 million hectares have burned in the Brazilian Amazon, amounting to 1.6 percent of the rainforest, according to official figures. 

 

Kenya airport strike leads to chaos

By

 AFP

There were chaotic scenes at Kenya’s main airport overnight as staff went on strike early Wednesday over a planned takeover by an Indian company. 

A source told AFP that Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) was at a complete standstill early Wednesday, with management preparing a statement. 

The Kenyan Aviation Workers Union confirmed on X that its strike started at midnight. 

Images on social media showed a scrum of passengers trying to get their baggage at JKIA as the strike took effect. 

Plans to lease the airport to India’s Adani Group for 30 years in exchange for a $1.85 billion investment sparked widespread anger. 

Critics say the plan will lead to job losses for local staff and rob taxpayers of future airport profits.

Freight and passenger fees from JKIA account for more than five percent of Kenya’s GDP.

The Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya Human Rights Commission won a delay from the High Court on Monday, arguing that the deal lacked “transparency”. 

Kenya’s government has defended the deal as necessary to refurbish JKIA.

It is one of Africa’s busiest hubs, handling 8.8 million passengers and 380,000 tonnes of cargo in 2022-23, but is often hit by power outages and leaking roofs. 

Adani would add a second runway and upgrade the passenger terminal, according to the Kenya Airport Authority.

 

Controversial Cambodia carbon credit project reinstated

By

 AFP

A carbon credit scheme in Cambodia that was put on hold after allegations of rights abuses has been reinstated after more than a year of review, a verification body said.

The Southern Cardamom REDD+ project was halted after a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report alleged forced evictions and harassment of residents living near the forest protected by the scheme.

The project of over 450,000 hectares generated carbon credits — bought by companies to offset emissions — by protecting forest it said would otherwise have been cut down.

But HRW and local villagers said rangers and officials from the Wildlife Alliance (WA) group overseeing the project had destroyed crops, dismantled homes and set fire to rice.

Locals also complained that the protected area was poorly delineated and that they had not been properly consulted about the project.

However Verra, the world’s lead certifier of carbon credits, said late Tuesday that WA had now taken “sufficient action” to address the allegations.

That included an improved human rights policy and training, better processes for consulting locals and revising a complaints mechanism.

The measures “address the alleged harm, mitigate the risk of future harm, and continually improve the Project,” Verra said, without addressing whether HRW’s allegations were substantiated.

In a statement, WA said the review had found “no non-conformities” with Verra’s standards and that the hold had forced it to operate with “dwindling reserves.”

“The Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project — and all that it has achieved — is under threat,” the NGO said.

The project is located in the Cardamom Mountains region, a lush habitat of rainforest home to dozens of threatened species.

It is also the planned location for the reintroduction of tigers, currently extinct in Cambodia.

Cambodia has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation, and carbon credit projects have been touted as a way to compensate local communities for protecting rainforests.

However the industry has been shaken by repeated scandals, including overblown claims about avoided emissions.

Projects have also often come into conflict with local communities who find themselves cut off from land previously available for farming or religious rites.

A community representative from Chhay Areng village in the Southern Cardamom region told AFP Wednesday that “the carbon scheme remains a concern for us.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, he said villagers were still being detained for farming on local land, blaming a lack of clear boundaries.

“We worry that our access to forests will be more restricted,” he said.

suy-sah/rsc

 

HRW decries ‘inadequate’ asylum policies in face of Venezuela, Haiti crises

By

 AFP

Flawed asylum policies in the Americas are forcing thousands of migrants from troubled countries like Venezuela and Haiti into a perilous US-bound jungle crossing, Human Rights Watch said in a report Wednesday.

Analyzing the migration policies of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru, the report found “governments in the Americas offer inadequate access to asylum and other forms of international protection for people fleeing ongoing human rights crises.”

This left migrants with no option but to pursue illegal and dangerous exit routes, it said.

In particular, many are “forced… into the dangerous Darien Gap” — an inhospitable jungle area between Colombia and Panama “where they are exposed to abuses, including sexual violence.”

More than 700,000 migrants and asylum seekers, the report said, had crossed the “gap” in the last 18 months.

Fleeing violence, persecution and humanitarian catastrophes at home, they included over 477,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 Ecuadorans, and 41,000 Haitians.

The report expressed concern that a recent migrant deal between Panama and the United States could worsen the situation.

Under the deal, Washington pledged $6 million for migrant repatriations from the Central American nation in the hopes of reducing irregular crossings at its own southern border — a contentious issue in a US election year.

But “given Panama’s inadequate and under-resourced asylum system, large-scale removal of asylum seekers could violate Panama’s legal obligation” not to return people to countries where they are likely to experience abuse, said the HRW.

“It also means that the US would shirk its responsibilities by outsourcing its migration controls to a country with demonstrably less capacity to provide full and fair consideration of asylum claims.”

– Don’t ‘stand idly by’ –

The report called for governments in the Americas to take urgent steps to expand access to asylum and meaningful social and economic integration opportunities.

In Latin America, such shortages “have left hundreds of thousands unable to remake their lives, forcing many to head north.”

More than seven million people have fled Venezuela as the South American country’s economy collapsed, with GDP contracting by 80 percent in a decade under President Nicolas Maduro.

After July 28 elections the opposition says it can prove Maduro stole, 43 percent of respondents to a survey said they were also considering leaving — including 1.5 million who said they would do so by year-end, according to the report.

Haiti, for its part, has seen about 600,000 people internally displaced in the first six months of 2024 as violent criminal groups vie for power in a vacuum left by a political crisis.

Ecuador, too, has seen a surge in emigration fueled by a sharp rise in violent crime driven by drug trafficking.

The HRW said governments should create a region-wide temporary protection system granting Venezuelans and Haitians legal status for fixed but renewable terms. 

They should also create a mechanism to determine the states responsible for examining asylum claims and protecting refugees.

“Governments in the Americas should not stand idly by as the crises in Venezuela and Haiti deepen,” said HRW executive director Tirana Hassan.

“They should respect and promote human rights domestically and grant those fleeing meaningful opportunities to obtain protection and remake their lives.”

 

Hundreds flee after Philippine volcano warning

By

 AFP

Hundreds of people fled their homes in the Philippines on Wednesday after it spurted harmful gases, an official said, as experts warned of a potential eruption.

About 300 residents of villages within four kilometres (2.5 miles) of the Kanlaon volcano crater in the centre of the country were evacuated on Tuesday as a precaution, the local government of nearby Canlaon City said.

The evacuees have taken temporary shelter at schools and community centres away from the volcano, city information officer Edna Lhou Masicampo told AFP on Wednesday.

“People from villages near the foot of the volcano have been complaining about the strong smell of sulphur,” Masicampo said, adding most residents are farmers.

Classes were suspended and some tourist spots in the city of around 60,000 people were closed on Wednesday due to the volcano warning.

Kanlaon’s daily average emission of sulphur dioxide almost tripled to 9,985 tonnes on Tuesday.

“This is the highest emission from the volcano recorded since instrumental gas monitoring began,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement.

“Current activity may lead to eruptive unrest,” it added, putting residents of the four villages at risk from red hot swiftly moving ash clouds, “ballistic projectiles, rockfalls and others”.

Rising more than 2,400 metres (nearly 8,000 feet) above sea level on the central island of Negros, Kanlaon is one of the Philippines’ 24 active volcanoes.

It has erupted 15 times in the past nine years.  

In August 1431, three hikers were killed due to Kanlaon volcano’s ash ejection. 

In June, the state volcanology agency raised the alert level for the volcano from one to two on a zero-to-five scale, warning more explosive eruptions were possible.

The Philippines is located in the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire” that contains more than half the world’s volcanoes.