It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, November 29, 2024
Waste pickers battle for recognition at plastic treaty talks
PRECARIAT PLASTIC PROLETARIANS
By AFP November 28, 2024 Waste pickers are seeking recognition in any new treaty to curb plastic pollution - Copyright AFP/File Michele Spatari Roland DE COURSON
As diplomats negotiate behind closed doors in Busan on a treaty to curb plastic pollution, the waste pickers who are on the front lines of the problem are fighting for recognition.
Between 20 and 34 million people are believed to work as waste pickers worldwide, playing a crucial role in recovering recyclable material.
“We’re the biggest business in the world,” 54-year-old Maria Soledad Mella Vidal, a Chilean waste picker, told AFP.
“We don’t have money, infrastructure or machinery… but we are extremely proud because our contribution to the environment is real.”
Representatives of nearly 200 nations are gathered in South Korea to agree on a landmark deal to curb plastic pollution that litters the planet.
Just nine percent of plastic is currently recycled globally.
But estimates suggest over half of what is recycled is recovered by waste pickers.
Johnson Doe joined the sector at 16 in Ghana’s capital Accra.
“There was no formal job around, so the only work to do was to be a waste picker,” he told AFP.
Every day, the 39-year-old waits for waste trucks to arrive at one of the city’s dumps so he can collect recyclable items for sale to an intermediary.
He earns three dollars a day on average, “enough to sustain myself”, he said.
After more than two decades in the job, plastic no longer holds any secrets for him.
“We can tell,” he said, examining a plastic bottle placed before him and rattling off the different plastic components.
“I love this job,” he added. “But what we need is integration, respect and inclusion.”
– ‘We should be involved’ –
As observers, waste pickers can sit in on negotiations, but do not have the right to participate despite their direct experience with the problem.
“If there is a discussion… we should be involved,” Doe said.
Mella Vidal, the waste picker from Chile, is also an expert on plastics and wants a ban on single-use items, which is under discussion in the negotiations.
She also wants a redesign of plastic products to facilitate recycling, giving the example of the pill strip for the paracetamol she is taking to combat a cold.
“It’s PS (polystyrene). It has no value in the market. And on top of that, there’s a thin layer of aluminium stuck on top. It’s an eco-design problem, like yoghurt pots,” she said.
Mella Vidal no longer works at dump sites, which have disappeared with new rules in Chile on sanitary landfills.
Instead, she gets up at 5:00 am to scour the street for recyclables before waste trucks pass through, sorting what she finds in the courtyard of her house.
“No machine can replace the relationship between a waste picker and waste,” she said.
“A nail or a piece of glass can jam a sorting machine. Nothing stops us.”
In 2022, a UN resolution recognised the contribution of waste pickers to the fight against plastic pollution, and the sector wants that enshrined in any deal in Busan.
– A growing movement –
They say it would open the door to legal recognition of their work.
“A lot of people prejudge us. They think we’re criminals or drug addicts,” said Mella Vidal.
The profession is also dangerous, exposing workers to toxic chemicals, poorly regulated work sites and even violence.
In 1992, 11 waste pickers were killed in Colombia by security guards who planned to sell their corpses to a medical school.
A twelfth was able to escape and alert police.
The crime shocked Colombia and helped galvanise a movement.
March 1, the day the massacre was uncovered, is now International Waste Pickers Day. About 460,000 people now belong to the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, a union whose members attend international meetings like the negotiations in Busan. Among their demands is better health protection given the toxic substances to which they are regularly exposed.
“We are not getting support from the government or from anybody,” said Doe.
“And it’s because we are not mentioned in the policies. So if we have a legal treaty that mentions waste pickers, we will have support.”
Pelicot trial: ‘There’s no such thing as ordinary, accidental, involuntary rape’
Analysis
Prosecutors in France’s mass rape trial denounced the “casualness” of defendants who claimed their rape of Gisèle Pelicot was unintentional as they wrapped up their case on Wednesday, requesting lengthy jail terms and calls for a wider societal reckoning with the scourge of sex abuse and rape.
As she wound up her marathon closing speech, a painstaking summary of the decade-long horror inflicted on Gisèle Pelicot, the public prosecutor paused to reflect on the wider significance of the drama unfolding in Avignon.
For three consecutive days, Laure Chabaud had laid out the verdicts and punishments sought for dozens of men accused of raping Pelicot while she was drugged and rendered unconscious by her husband Dominique, her partner of 50 years, whom she has since divorced.
Chabaud and her fellow prosecutor called for a maximum 20-year prison sentence for the ex-husband, who has admitted enlisting dozens of strangers online to rape his sedated wife. They also sought jail terms of between 10 and 18 years for 49 co-defendants, and a four-year sentence for the last of the accused.
Such a verdict would “deliver a message of hope to all victims of sexual violence”, Chabaud told the court in southern France on Wednesday as she sought to draw lessons from the most notorious rape trial in modern French history.
03:01
“With your verdict, you will make clear that there is no such thing as ordinary rape; that there is no such thing as accidental or involuntary rape,” she said. “You will send a message to the women of this country that it is not inevitable that they should suffer, and to the men of this country that it is not inevitable that they should act.”
‘A rape is a rape’
Stretching over three days, the prosecution’s closing statement mirrored the extraordinary nature of a trial that has roiled France since early September and made headlines around the world.
The affaire Mazan, after the small town in Provence where the Pelicot couple lived, has sparked horror, protests and debates about male violence and the shortcomings of French laws on rape. It has also made Gisèle Pelicot an international feminist icon and champion of women’s fight against sexual abuse.
Waiving her right to anonymity, Pelicot pushed for graphic images that her husband filmed of the rapes to be presented in the courtroom, showing that she was unconscious and inert, sometimes audibly snoring. In their closing arguments, the prosecutors praised her courage and her desire to make shame change sides, so it falls on rapists and not their victims.
Throughout the trial, feminist campaigners have plastered the walls of Avignon with messages of support for Pelicot and of condemnation for the accused men and the wider “rape culture” they have come to symbolise. Some of the messages quoted the defendants, who told the court they raped “unwillingly”, out of “curiosity” or “fatigue”, acting through “my body, not my brain”.
Some of the accused have faced boos and jeers from members of the public lining up outside the courthouse. Banners hung opposite the building this week read “20 years for each of them” and “a rape is a rape”.
Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers walk past a banner reading "A rape is a rape, 20 years for each" near the courthouse in Avignon on November 26, 2024.
Kicking off closing arguments by some 30 defence lawyers, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told the court on Wednesday that her client had “accepted and admitted the harm of which he is accused”.
Zavarro, who described herself as the “Devil’s adocate”, recalled that Dominique Pelicot had been a “good husband, father and grandfather” according to all who knew him. She plunged back into his traumatic childhood – which he claims included sexual abuse – and shaky mental state to explain his “perversity”, while also insisting that he was not the “conductor” many of his co-defendants painted him as – an accusation their lawyers are expected to pursue as they deliver their closing remarks from Thursday.
While Zavarro said she was not surprised by the 20-year sentence requested for her client, several other defence lawyers have described the demands as “staggering” and “out of proportion”, alleging that prosecutors were under pressure from “public opinion”. Most defence lawyers are expected to argue that their clients were manipulated by Gisèle Pelicot’s former husband.
According to government figures, between 2017 and 2022 more than two thirds of convictions for aggravated rape led to prison sentences of 10 years or above.
In previous testimony, many of the accused said they believed Dominique Pelicot's claim that they were participating in a libertine fantasy, in which his wife had consented to sexual contact and was only pretending to be asleep. Others said they thought the husband’s consent would be enough. More than half also argued that they were not in their right minds when they abused Gisèle Pelicot, a claim not backed up by any of the psychological reports compiled by court-appointed experts.
Dominique Pelicot had previously told the court that all of his co-defendants understood exactly what they were doing when he invited them to his home in Provence between 2011 and 2020 to have sex with his unconscious and unwitting wife. A watershed moment
In her closing arguments, prosecutor Chabaud lamented the “inappropriate casualness” displayed by some of the defendants during the proceedings. She said claims they had “no intention” of raping Gisèle Pelicot would not make their responsibility “disappear”.
“In 2024, we can no longer say ‘she didn’t say anything, she agreed’, that’s from another era,” Chabaud told the court. She hoped that the sentences handed down at the verdict, due no later than December 20, would lead the defendants to “a real and profound awareness” of their actions, “particularly with regard to the notion of consent”.
The public prosecutor expressed hopes that the landmark trial would herald a fundamental change in society, describing the proceedings in Avignon as “a stone in the edifice that others after us will continue to build”.
“There will be a before and an after” this trial, Chabaud said in a phrase also used on Monday by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, whose government unveiled new measures to combat violence against women, including raising awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.
The trial has notably given fresh impetus to calls to introduce the notion of consent in French laws governing sexual abuse. Several lawmakers were in Avignon to attend the court hearings this week, including Green MP Marie-Charlotte Garin, the deputy head of a parliamentary fact-finding mission tasked with redefining rape in French criminal law.
Catherine Le Magueresse, a former president of the European Association Against Violence toward Women in the Workplace, said the Pelicot trial had highlighted the need to "come up with a positive definition of consent”. Speaking to AFP, she commended the prosecutors for their concern “to reach out to a wider audience and provide the legal elements needed to understand the issues at stake in this trial, particularly on the question of intentionality, which lies at the heart of the defendants' strategies”.
Le Magueresse said Gisèle Pelicot’s ordeal highlighted the need to provide sex education in schools and rethink the way we approach relations between women and men.
“The Pelicot trial has affected every one of us and raised difficult questions about the social attitudes of some men,” she said. “What have we done wrong as a society to produce men who are capable of such inhumane behaviour?”
France unveils new measures to protect women in wake of Pelicot affair
Analysis
France announced on Monday a new campaign to combat violence against women, including raising awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse, as the country reckons with a mass rape trial that has shocked the public.
The French government announced on Monday, November 25 new measures to combat violence against women, including state-funded test kits, the ability to file complaints at more hospitals and increased emergency aid.
“These last months the French have been deeply moved by the incredible courage of Gisèle Pelicot,” said Barnier, referring to the mass rape trial that has sent shockwaves across France and beyond. Dominique Pelicot is on trial for raping and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated, now ex-wife Gisèle for almost a decade in the southeastern French village of Mazan, where the couple lived and where most of the events took place.
To combat the “as yet little-known issue of chemical submission”, Barnier announced that the French national health insurance programme will be providing state-funded test kits in several regions on a trial basis. No timetable has yet been defined for this initiative.
A campaign to raise awareness of chemical submission will also be spearheaded by the M'endors pas (Don't sedate me) association co-founded by Gisèle Pelicot's daughter and the helpline of France's Reference centre for substance-facilitated aggression (Centre de référence sur les agressions facilitées par les substances) in partnership with the French Order of Pharmacists.
In October, the government entrusted a similar mission to Senator Véronique Guillotin, of the centrist Radical Movement party, and MP Sandrine Josso, of the centre-right Democratic Movement party. The latter recommended that pharmacies be allowed to issue a “morning-after" test kit via medical prescription to women who think they may have been drugged. Contained in the kit would be urine sample bottles, useful addresses and full instructions on how to access the results, to be used as evidence.
“We feel that the [Pelicot] trial has raised awareness of this type of violence,” said Mine Günbay, director general of the national federation Solidarité Femmes (Women’s Solidarity), who has noted a significant increase in women calling 3919, the national number dedicated to female victims of violence. “Women are speaking out,” said Günbay. “It's very important that a parliamentary report be written up and that resources also be made available to deal with this issue.”
The security services recorded 271,000 victims of domestic violence in 2023, according to the French interior ministry. This type of violence accounted for 93% of the calls handled by 3919.
Expanded system for filing complaints in hospitals
The French government also announced the expansion of the system enabling female victims of violence to file a complaint in a hospital with an emergency or gynaecology department.
While this system, whereby the hospital itself contacts the police or the public prosecutor's office to lodge a complaint, is already available in many French hospitals, it will be extended to 377 facilities by the end of 2025.
“Hospitals and doctors are often the first professionals that women go to, sometimes even before the police ... It is therefore essential that the police come directly to the hospital so that a complaint can be lodged,” added Gunbay, who advocates these systems that “effectively facilitate the victim's journey” and calls for “continued training of police, justice and health professionals”.
Increased universal emergency aid
Günbay also welcomed the increase in universal emergency aid to help victims of domestic violence and support them when they leave their homes.
The budget for this aid will increase from €13 million in the 2024 finance bill (projet de loi sur les finances, or PLF) to €20 million in the 2025 PLF, according to the government. This measure has benefitted 33,000 people, who have received an average of €800, since it was launched at the end of 2023.
“It's a one-off helping hand that's much in demand by the women we support in their dealings with the CAF [Caisses d'Allocations Familiales, the French government agencies responsible for distributing various social benefits and allowances to families], but it doesn't get them out of the violent situation,” said Günbay. The director of Solidarité Femmes nonetheless welcomed the announcement of these measures, “which are nothing new to the associations, but which are more in line with what has been thought out and undertaken as part of the Grenelle [governmental-level consultations] and ministerial plans”.
The government's plan also calls for every French regional department to have a specialised women's centre by the end of 2025.
‘€2.6 billion are needed for a real plan to combat discrimination’
In total, “we have managed to obtain a 10 percent increase in the budget” devoted to gender equality, which has risen to €85.1 million (€+7.7 million) in the PLF 2025, Secretary of State Salima Saa said during an interview on French public radio network Franceinfo on Monday morning.
But the budget increase still falls far short of what is needed for the associations, which are calling for a total budget of €2.6 billion per year and a “comprehensive framework law” to replace the current legislation, which they deem “fragmented and incomplete”.
“We, the feminist associations, are asking for [this total sum] to combat all forms of violence against women. This includes the issue of prevention from a young age, training for professionals, psycho-trauma centres and shelters for women and their children. The €85 million will not be enough. We need €2.6 billion to be able to really combat the problem,” said Günbay.
The director of Solidarités Femmes said she is very worried about the drop in funding for local authorities, which also finance associations in their area. “In addition to this budgetary ‘women's rights’ envelope, our associations receive funding from local authorities on a departmental and regional level as well as from the local authorities, municipalities, etc. As a result, we have several associations in our network that are in a very precarious economic situation. I just learned this very morning [Monday] that a post funded by the Pays de la Loire region [in western France] had been cut. It was an essential post, because it enabled us to coordinate with a large number of associations across the region.”
“We'll only consider the fight against violence against women to be a major national cause once we have €2.6 billion designated to combat violence against women,” said Günbay, who is now waiting for the "welcomed" but "insufficient" governmental measures to be implemented.
With AFP and Reuters
This article has been translated from the original in French by Mariamne Everett.
Uber and Bolt unveil women-only service in Paris
By AFP November 28, 2024 Uber has 1,500 women drivers working in Paris
- Copyright AFP/File Mauro PIMENTEL
Two rival ride-hailing platforms announced on Thursday options allowing Parisian women to order a car driven by a female driver in a bid to ensure “greater safety” for its customers.
The “Uber by Women” option, available from Thursday, comes at no extra cost but with potentially longer waiting times.
Uber launched a similar scheme in other European countries as the company grapples with a litany of sexual assault or harassment claims against their drivers.
The change will ensure “greater safety” for its women customers, said Uber, with some 1,500 female drivers already available in Paris.
There is a reminder on the app that the option is for women only, and drivers can cancel if a man tries to use it, the platform told AFP.
“Waiting times … could be higher than with other options, 15 minutes on average compared to four minutes” for a standard order, Uber said.
But the ride-share company also hopes the change will attract more women drivers by offering them a “substantial reduction” on the fees charged for each ride.
Uber by Women is an “excellent way of increasing the attractiveness of the ride-hailing profession to women who would otherwise not consider it”, said Uber’s head in France, Laureline Serieys.
European rival Bolt also announced the launch of a similar option in France called “Women by Women”, set to roll out by the end of 2024.
“It is essential to guarantee the safety of all women using ride-hailing services,” said France’s Bolt director Julien Mouyeket.
“The ‘Women for Women’ category embodies this commitment, meeting the safety expectations of female users while protecting female drivers,” he added.
Video: British Farmers Block Ferry Ports to Protest Government Budget
REACTIONARY LAND OWNERS WHO USE FARM LABOUR
Holyhead Port and the Stena Line ferry terminal were blocked in an overnight protest by the farmers ( Gareth Wyn Jones on social media)
Farmers across the UK are angrily speaking out against the proposed Labour Government budget which they say is the latest blow to their way of life and the future of the UK’s farms. Seeking to influence the government and call attention to their demands, the farmers have staged a series of protests and overnight blockaded the Welsh port of Holyhead.
According to media reports, around 40 to 50 farmers turned out to the port of Holyhead shortly after 10 p.m. local time on Wednesday, November 27. Farmers took the roads on their tractors and blocked the primary exit from the port shortly before the evening ferry from Ireland was due to arrive at 10:30 p.m. local time.
Stena Line which operates the ferry port and the port authority confirmed that the access roads were blocked. The farmers were carrying signs including “No Farmers No Food No Future.” Traffic Wales reported “heavy congestion” in the port area that continued till approximately 0400 Thursday morning when the farmers left in what organizers called a “peaceful protest.”
Foot traffic and private cars were permitted to leave the ferry and the port area via a separate gate. Trucks however were stranded in the port during the protest.
The farmers are demonstrating against what they called a “disastrous budget,” and a long heritage of anti-farm policies. They are incensed over a government proposal in the new budget that would impose a 20 percent inheritance tax starting in 2026. Farms and groups including Save British Farming and the Farmers for Farmers of Kent argue farmers will be forced to sell their properties to pay the tax.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves responded for the government saying that “only a very small number of agricultural properties” will be affected.
The farmers began their protest including a march on London which was called a landmark event. Reports said more than 10,000 farmers and their supporters descended on London to express their anger and demand changes including excluding agricultural land from the inheritance tax. Organizers called the London march a “warm-up act” promising to continue their protests.
During the day on Wednesday, November 27, farmers also took to the roads in Dover another of the UK’s busiest ports. Reports said at least 100 tractors drove through the streets of Dover going slow to disrupt traffic. They called on the government to “stop betraying British farming and rural communities.”
Farmers in France last week also blocked the port of Bordeaux with a protest over French and EU trade regulations. They were calling for stopping an agreement to increase trade between the EU and South America. The French organizations, like their British counterparts, have promised to return with more protests at French ports.
French farmers wall off public buildings in protest over regulations
PROPRIÉTAIRES TERRITORIAUX RÉACTIONNAIRES QUI UTILISENT LA MAIN-D’ŒUVRE AGRICOLE
By AFP November 28, 2024 Protesters erected a brick wall in front of France's agricultural research institute - Copyright AFP Gregoire CAMPIONE
French farmers blocked off entrances to two public buildings in Paris on Thursday in protest at “constraints” imposed by regulatory agencies, which they say result in lost production.
Around 100 farmers erected a cardboard wall in front of France’s food safety agency ANSES, south of Paris, after placing breeze blocks barring the way into INRAE, the country’s agricultural research institute in the capital.
This follows demonstrations on Tuesday against a planned free trade deal between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc, which France opposes over concerns it would hurt its domestic agricultural industry.
Farmers fear any agreement would open EU markets to cheaper meat and produce from South American competitors, who are not forced to adhere to strict EU rules on pesticides, hormones, land use and environmental measures.
Thursday’s protesters — led by the heavyweight FNSEA farmers’ union — say they are also feeling the sting of restrictions imposed by France’s regulatory agencies on products like insecticides.
There are no “effective, alternative solutions”, said Remi Pierrard, a beet and cereal grower in the town of Provins, who said he has seen “productivity losses of up to 50 percent each year”.
“We’ve been banned from using an insecticide that protected beetroot. Now we have to use a sprayer, which is far less effective,” Pierrard said.
The French government says that pesticides pose a danger “health and the environment”, with exposure to the chemicals linked to cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Farmers say that institutions like INRAE could help them be more efficient but are instead foisting regulations on them that undermine production.
“We’re funding a national institute that costs a billion euros a year but all it does is impose constraints on us,” said the head of a young farmer’s association, Donatien Moyson, referring to INRAE.
“We’re here to fight against obstacles to agriculture,” he added.
Elsewhere, farmers in the southern city of Nice dumped manure and sheep’s wool in front of the regional prefecture, according to local press.
French Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard condemned the protests as “attacks on people and property”, telling AFP such actions “undermine the legitimate demands of farmers”.
Canada watchdog sues Google over ‘anti-competitive’ ad tech
By AFP November 28, 2024 Google's advertising practices are also subject to investigations or proceedings in Britain, the EU and the United States - Copyright AFP/File Josh Edelson
Canada’s competition watchdog announced Thursday it was taking Google to court, accusing the company of “anti-competitive behavior” in online advertising.
Ads are typically bought and sold through automated auctions and managed by businesses using ad tech — a system that also decides which online advertisements people see when they visit websites.
A Competition Bureau investigation found that Google is the largest provider of these tools in Canada.
Commissioner Matthew Boswell said in a statement it “has abused its dominant position… by engaging in conduct that locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools.”
The watchdog accused Google of giving its own tools preferential access to ad inventory, at times selling ads at a loss to block rivals, and dictating terms for the use of others’ ad tech tools.
Boswell said he would ask a tribunal to level the playing field by forcing Google to sell two of its ad tech tools and pay an unspecified penalty.
Google spokesman Dan Taylor said the company is prepared to fight the allegations that he said “ignore the intense competition (in this sector) where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice.”
France’s competition watchdog fined Google 220 million euros in June 2021 for favoring its own services in the online advertising sector.
Google’s advertising practices are also subject to investigations or proceedings in Britain, the EU and the United States.
The technology giant and the US government faced off in a federal court this week in a case revolving around Google’s alleged unfair domination of online advertising.
If the judge finds Google to be at fault, a new phase of the trial would decide how the company should comply with that conclusion.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Norway faces WWF in court over deep sea mining
By AFP November 27, 2024 Protesters hold placards during a demonstration against seabed mining outside the Norwegian Parliament building in Oslo - Copyright NTB/AFP Javad Parsa
The World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Norwegian chapter will have its day in court Thursday, after it sued Norway for opening up its seabed to mining before performing sufficient impact studies.
Already Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, Norway could become one of the first countries to authorise seabed mining, arguing the importance of not relying on China for minerals essential for renewable technology.
While deep-sea mining is contentious due to its potential impact on vulnerable marine ecosystems, Norway’s parliament in January formally gave its green light to open up parts of its seabed to exploration.
“We believe the government is violating Norwegian law by now opening up for a new and potentially destructive industry without adequately assessing the consequences,” Karoline Andaur, CEO of WWF-Norway, said in a statement.
Norway “must halt the rushed process, must actively support a national and global moratorium — a temporary ban on seabed mining until there is sufficient knowledge,” Andaur said in an online meeting earlier in November.
With their lawsuit, WWF-Norway is also calling on the Norwegian government to stop giving public support to mining companies for the exploration phase and to allocate these funds to independent research institutions.
That would help “to close the many knowledge gaps about marine life”, Andaur said.
The trial will run until December 5.
– Possible dangers –
On April 12, Norway’s Ministry of Energy announced that it was opening up an area of the Norwegian Sea and Greenland Sea to exploration, with the aim of awarding the first licences in the first half of 2025.
Within the area, which is the size of the United Kingdom, it has designated locations covering 38 percent of the area suitable for exploration for a first licensing round.
“Before any exploitation can begin, it has to be shown that the proposed exploitation can take place in a sustainable and responsible manner,” Astrid Bergmal, state secretary at the energy ministry, told AFP in an email.
The first projects will also have to be approved by parliament, Bergmal added.
“The first phase will consist of mapping and exploration, which has little environmental impact,” she said.
But critics see this stage as a first step towards exploitation.
According to several NGOs, opening up the seabed poses an additional threat to an ecosystem that is little-known and has already been weakened by global warming.
Possible dangers include the destruction of marine habitats and organisms, noise and light pollution, as well as the risk of chemical leaks from machines and species being displaced.
Norwegian authorities meanwhile stress that by allowing the prospecting they want to fill in the gaps in knowledge.
In early 2023, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate published a report concluding that “substantial resources are in place on the seabed” including minerals such as copper, zinc and cobalt.
COP16 biodiversity talks to restart in February: UN
By AFP November 28, 2024 Bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, in April 2024 - Copyright AFP/File Joe Klamar
Crunch United Nations talks to find funding to curb the destruction of nature will resume in Rome in February, the UN said on Thursday, after negotiations this month in Colombia ended without a deal.
The largest summit yet on biodiversity — the so-called COP16 talks in Cali, Colombia — were aimed at boosting efforts to protect nature from deforestation, overexploitation, climate change and pollution.
But the meeting, which stretched hours into extra time, ended on November 2 with no agreement on a roadmap to ramp up funding for species protection. Many delegates had already left for home by then, meaning the Colombian presidency was unable to establish a quorum.
The new round of talks will be held at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization from February 25 to 27 to tackle issues “left unresolved following the suspension of the meeting”, the UN said in a statement.
“In the weeks to come, and during our meeting in Rome this February, I will work alongside parties to build the trust and consensus needed to achieve Peace with Nature,” said Colombia’s Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, the COP16 president.
She added that securing a key financial accord “will be central to our efforts”.
Money has been a particularly thorny subject at recent UN environment negotiations, as nations face global political and economic uncertainties.
Negotiators at fractious UN climate talks were able to approve a deal in the early hours of Sunday morning after two weeks of chaotic and bitter wrangling, but the $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters was immediately dismissed as insultingly low by many poorer nations.
– Deadlocked –
The Cali summit, which drew an unprecedented 23,000 participants, was tasked with assessing, and ramping up, progress toward reaching a range of targets set in Canada two years ago to halt humankind’s rapacious destruction of the natural world by 2030.
They include placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection, reducing pollution, and phasing out agricultural and other subsidies harmful to nature.
For this purpose, it was agreed in 2022 that $200 billion per year be made available to protect biodiversity by 2030, including the transfer of $30 billion per year from rich to poor nations.
The Cali meeting did make advances on Indigenous representation and gene profit sharing.
But negotiators, largely split between poor and rich country blocs, were deadlocked over the biggest ask — to lay out a detailed funding plan.
That was despite new research showing that more than a quarter of assessed plants and animals are now at risk of extinction.
Only 17.6 percent of land and inland waters, and 8.4 percent of the ocean and coastal areas, are estimated to be protected and conserved.
Air pollution from fires linked to 1.5 million deaths a year
By AFP November 28, 2024 The study was released a week after Ecuador declared a national emergency due to forest fires - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER
Air pollution caused by fires is linked to more than 1.5 million deaths a year worldwide, the vast majority occurring in developing countries, a major new study said on Thursday.
This death toll is expected to rise in the coming years as climate change makes wildfires more frequent and intense, according to the study in The Lancet journal.
The international team of researchers looked at existing data on “landscape fires”, which include both wildfires that rage through nature and planned fires such as controlled burns on farming land.
Around 450,000 deaths a year from heart disease were linked to fire-related air pollution between 2000 and 2019, the researchers said.
A further 220,000 deaths from respiratory disease were attributed to the smoke and particulates spewed into the air by fire.
From all causes around the world, a total of 1.53 million annual deaths were associated with air pollution from landscape fires, according to the study.
More than 90 percent of these deaths were in low and middle-income countries, it added, with nearly 40 percent in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
The countries with the highest death tolls were China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
A record amount of illegal burning of farm fields in northern India has been partly blamed for noxious smog that has recently been choking the capital New Delhi.
The authors of the Lancet study called for “urgent action” to address the huge death toll from landscape fires.
The disparity between rich and poor nations further highlights “climate injustice”, in which those who have contributed the least to global warming suffer from it the most, they added.
Some of the ways people can avoid smoke from fires — such as moving away from the area, using air purifiers and masks, or staying indoors — are not available to people in poorer countries, the researchers pointed out.
So they called for more financial and technological support for people in the hardest-hit countries.
The study was released a week after UN climate talks where delegates agreed to a boost in climate funding that developing countries slammed as insufficient.
It also came after Ecuador declared a national emergency over forest fires that have razed more than 10,000 hectares in the country’s south.
The world has also been battered by hurricanes, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events during what is expected to be the hottest year in recorded history.
Air pollution linked to longer duration of long-COVID symptoms
New study explores the association between different environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Catalan population cohort
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Exposure to air pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10) is associated with an increased risk of persistent long-COVID symptoms, partly due to its impact on the severity of the acute infection. This is the main conclusion of a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), and published in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Long-COVID is a heterogeneous condition in which symptoms like fatigue, breathlessness, and cognitive issues persist for months after a COVID-19 infection and cannot be explained by other diagnoses. The real burden of long-COVID remains unclear, but millions of people are estimated to be affected worldwide. Its risk factors are also not well understood, since even people with mild or no symptoms during acute infection can develop long-COVID.
“We previously found that air pollution exposure is linked to a higher risk of severe COVID-19 and a lower vaccine response, but there are very few studies on long-COVID and the environment,” explains Manolis Kogevinas, ISGlobal researcher and senior author of the study. In this study, he and his colleagues investigated whether air pollution and other environmental exposures such as noise, artificial light at night, and green spaces, were associated with the risk- or persistence- of Long-COVID.
The study followed over 2,800 adults of the COVICAT cohort, aged 40- 65 years living in Catalonia who during the pandemic completed three online questionnaires (2020, 2021, 2023). These surveys collected information on COVID-19 infections, vaccination status, health status, and sociodemographic data. Researchers estimated residential exposure to noise, particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, green spaces, and light at night for each participant.
Long-COVID risk factors
The analysis showed that one in four people who contracted COVID-19 experienced lingering symptoms for three months or more, with 5% experiencing persistent symptoms for two years or more. Women, individuals with lower education levels, those with prior chronic conditions, and those who had severe COVID-19 were at highest risk of long-COVID. Vaccination, on the other hand, made a positive difference: only 15% of vaccinated participants developed long-COVID compared to 46% of unvaccinated ones.
Air pollution and persistent long-COVID
Exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) in the air was associated with a slight increase in the risk of persistent long-COVID (i.e. people who reported long-Covid in 2021 and whose symptoms were still present the last week before the 2023 interview). The risk of persistent long-COVID increased linearly with greater exposure to particulate matter in the air. In contrast, factors such as nearby green spaces or traffic noise showed little impact on long-COVID.
The researchers note that while air pollution may not directly cause long-COVID, it could increase the severity of the initial infection, which, in turn, raises the risk of long COVID. “This hypothesis is supported by the association between particulate matter and the most severe and persistent cases of long-COVID, but not with all cases of long-COVID,” says Apolline Saucy, first author of the study.
Further research is needed to break down the different types of long-term symptoms and get a more detailed picture of how environmental factors might play a role. “This type of studies is particularly relevant as more people continue to recover from COVID-19 and deal with its potential long-term effects,” says Kogevinas.
About COVICAT
The COVICAT cohort is a COVID-19-population-based cohort designed to characterize the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the population in Catalonia, Spain. Baseline data originates from the GCAT (Genomes for Life) project of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP).
Reference
Saucy A, Espinosa A, Iraola-Guzman S, Castaño-Vinyals G, Harding BN, Karachaliou M, Ranzani I, De Cid R, Garcia-Aymerich J, Kogevinas M. Environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Prospective Population-Based Study in Catalonia (COVICAT study). Environmental Health Perspectives. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP15377
Environmental exposures and Long-COVID in a Prospective Population-Based Study in Catalonia (COVICAT study)
Article Publication Date
27-Nov-2024
Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings
By AFP November 28, 2024 The International Court of Justice in The Hague - Copyright AFP Nick Gammon Jan HENNOP
The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organisations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
– ‘No distant threat’ –
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
– ‘Legal blueprint’ –
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers”.
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organisations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organisations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.
Contentious COP29 deal casts doubt over climate plans
The $300 billion a year pledged by wealthy countries for climate finance at COP29 was slammed as too little, too late - Copyright POOL/AFP Sarah Meyssonnier
Kelly MACNAMARA
A bitterly-fought climate finance deal reached at COP29 risks weakening emissions-cutting plans from developing countries, observers say, further raising the stakes for new national commitments due early next year.
The UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which concluded last Sunday, were considered crucial to boosting climate action across huge swathes of the world after what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
Beginning days after the re-election of climate sceptic Donald Trump as US president, and with countries weighed down by economic concerns, the negotiations were tough-fought from the start and at one point seemed close to collapse.
Wealthy polluters ultimately agreed to find at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and prepare for increasing climate impacts such as extreme weather.
But it was slammed by developing nations as too little, too late.
Taking the floor just after the deal was approved, Nigeria’s representative Nkiruka Maduekwe dismissed the funding on offer as a “joke”, suggesting it would undermine national climate plans due early next year.
“$300 billion is unrealistic,” she said. “Let us tell ourselves the truth.”
Current climate plans, even if implemented in full, would see the world warm a devastating 2.6 degrees Celsius this century, the United Nations has said, blasting past the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C since the pre-industrial era.
A next round of national pledges is due in February and will cover the period to 2035, which scientists say is critical for curbing warming.
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, a Kenya-based think tank, said the COP29 talks produced not just a “low-ball” figure, but a delivery date of 2035 that falls at the end of the range for climate plans.
This “will certainly constrain the ability of developing countries to pledge ambitious emission cuts”, he told AFP, calling for an improved goal and other measures, like debt relief and technology support.
– ‘Our only chance’ –
Global emissions need to be reducing by more than seven percent every year “to avoid unmanageable global outcomes as the world breaches the 1.5C limit”, said Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“Our only chance is full focus on financing and implementing emission cuts now.”
Yet carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — are still rising, according to the Global Carbon Project.
The COP29 deal acknowledged that lower income countries will need some $1.3 trillion annually to pay for their energy transition and build up their resilience to future climate impacts.
Details of how to bridge the $1 trillion funding gap remain vague, but it would likely require a major effort to attract money from private investors, development banks and other sources.
Other ideas include raising money through pollution tariffs, a wealth tax or ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Friederike Roder of campaign group Global Citizen said discontent over COP29 piles pressure on countries to come up with concrete suggestions before the next climate meeting in Brazil in November 2025.
That would “help rebuild some of the trust and give confidence to countries to come forward with ambitious targets”, she told AFP.
– EU-China ‘momentum’ –
So far only a handful of countries — recent and future COP hosts Britain, the UAE and Brazil — have unveiled new climate plans.
Observers say many other nations are now unlikely to meet the February deadline, as governments grapple with shifting political and economic situations.
The new year will see a new Trump administration in the White House, with potentially sweeping implications for international trade and US climate policy.
Germany, Canada and Australia will all hold elections in which conservatives less supportive of green policies stand a chance of victory.
With the United States retreating from climate diplomacy, the relationship between China and the EU will likely become “the best source of momentum” on climate, said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
One positive takeaway from COP29, he added, was early evidence of a willingness to work together, despite the trade rivalry between Beijing and Brussels.
A lack of progress on emissions at COP29 has also caused alarm over stalling efforts on curbing warming.
But Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said the rejection of a watered down text on the subject this year meant national climate plans should still reflect last year’s COP28 pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
It is small consolation.
“Here we are in the hottest year on record. The impacts are enormous,” she said.
EVEN the low expectations that preceded the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29), which concluded in the early hours of Sunday, turned out to have been too high.
After the gavel came down in Baku on a deal proposing $300 billion in financial assistance by 2035 to developing nations struggling to decarbonise and cope in other ways with the swiftly mounting consequences of climate change, Indian representative Chandni Raina justifiably decried a “stage-managed” process that had produced “nothing more than an optical illusion”.
A week earlier, Pakistan’s former climate change minister Sherry Rehman had declared: “We’re here for life and death reasons”, demanding “internationally determined contributions” from the biggest historical contributors to global heating, and pointing out the pitfalls of leaving too much to the private sector.
Inevitably, given the timing of the conference, the malevolent spectre of Donald Trump hung over the proceedings. Even at the best of times, the US has hardly stood out as a leader in the combat against devastating climate change, with the majority of its legislators — all too many of them addicted to contributions from fossil fuel firms and lobbyists — turning pale at the prospect of a Green New Deal. But Trump and some of his closest associates are seemingly determined to pump up the volume of oil and gas extraction because all the hullabaloo about climate change is, after all, no more than a hoax.
He may well agree with Argentina’s Javier Milei, a kindred spirit from the loony right who claims to have been hailed by Trump as his “favourite president” — and who withdrew his nation’s delegation from Baku after the first three days — that the climate crisis is just a “socialist lie”.
Can humanity recover from the bungle in Baku?
What is a little more perturbing is that Azerbaijan’s leadership appears to be on more or less the same page, with President Ilham Aliyev hailing oil and gas as a “gift from God”, with no acknowledgement of the various other natural wonders that are at risk because humans insist on burning fossil fuels for energy. Besides, aren’t alternative sources of energy such as sunshine and wind equally gifts from the same source?
There’s no dearth of sunlight in Azerbaijan, but 90 per cent of its foreign income comes from fossil fuel exports — which include nearly 40pc of Israel’s oil imports, currently facilitating a genocide. The quid pro quo is weapons supplies from Israel, which may well have facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It certainly might be worthwhile conducting such conferences in oil- and gas-producing nations genuinely interested in reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. But this year’s host appeared to be even less interested in investigating that path than last year’s previous petrostate venue.
COP28 in Dubai was presided over by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and swarmed with oil and gas lobbyists. The conference formally acknowledged for the first time the link between fossil fuels and climate change, something that was evident decades earlier. And it did so in the face of staunch resistance from Saudi Arabia, where the crown prince’s now diminished Vision 2030 excludes any inclination towards compensating the victims of its incredibly lucrative oil boom. By all accounts, the Saudis were again desperate to achieve the same outcome at Baku. Their ploy flopped again. But does it matter?
The previous $100bn-a-year finance deal did not add up until well after its 2020 deadline. Its tripling (or doubling, if inflation is taken into account) is likely to meet the same fate. The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold might be breached as soon as this year, amid an increase in emissions notwithstanding previous COPs, and a near-consensus that 2024 will turn out to be the hottest year on record. Climate scientists are constantly being flabbergasted by what Harold Macmillan might have designated as “events, dear boy, events”. Who knows where the world might be in 2035, by when the $300bn level is supposed to be reached. That’s only a fraction of the notionally required resources, and it may even be too late to make much of a difference with the trillions that no one seriously expects to be doled out.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the UN’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency have been ineffective. But anyone who suggests that a failing process should be abandoned must present a viable alternative. That’s not easy, short of straying into fantasy world. It’s a small mercy that COP30 will take place in Brazil, whose present government is dedicated to thwarting climate change. Perhaps putting the remarkably astute Greta Thunberg and fellow young activists from around the world in charge of working out the way forward might be the ideal option. But I must be dreaming.
