Fraser Valley turkeys to be put down as another case of ‘bird flu’ confirmed in B.C.

By Staff The Canadian Press
Posted May 21, 2022

B.C. farmers are taking extra precautions to protect their birds from a highly contagious strain of avian flu. B.C. egg farmer and president of the B.C. Egg Producer Association Mark Seimens talks to Global News Morning about the protective measures being put in place to prevent the virus from spreading further. – May 11, 2022

About 4,000 turkeys are expected to be euthanized on a farm in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley on Saturday after the highly pathogenic avian flu spread among the flock, says a spokesman for the B.C. Poultry Association.


Ray Nickel said a quarantine zone has been established for three kilometres around the infected operation in Abbotsford, where he also has several farms producing chickens, turkeys and eggs.

“This is not a virus you trifle with. It’s very deadly for poultry and birds die very, very fast. When we actually notice it, we want the (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to act quickly and put the flock down because it’s the best thing that can happen,” he said.

The agency confirmed the presence of H1N1 on the farm this week.

READ MORE: Avian flu detected on Vancouver Island in small Comox Valley poultry flock

On Friday, it issued a statement saying a small flock of poultry in Richmond, B.C., had also been infected with so-called bird flu though it did not provide information on how many animals were involved, or the type of poultry.

Nickel said a 10-kilometre control zone is expected to be set up around the infected farm in the coming days and nearby poultry farmers will need a permit to move product in and out of their operations.

The Fraser Valley, where the commercial turkey farm is affected, is the location of about 80 per cent of the province’s poultry farms.

Farmers have already endured a drought, labour shortages due to the pandemic and feed costs that have jumped by as much as 60 per cent, Nickel said.

“It’s painful because it involves an enormous amount of resources and timing. In some cases flocks have to be moved around,” he said.

Avian flu cases on the rise in Saskatchewan, Canada – May 8, 2022

The inspection agency said while the so-called bird flu is not a food safety concern, it is spreading across the globe and anyone with birds must use preventive measures like securing their property by a fence.

Small flocks are at risk of contracting viruses like avian influenza, especially if they have access to ponds or bodies of water known to be used by wild birds, the agency said.

H1N1 can also be spread on the clothing and shoes of visitors and employees moving from flock to flock, through contaminated feed, water, bedding and farm equipment as well as via airborne particles and dust blown by the wind.

Avian flu cases have been confirmed in several other provinces, but no infections have been detected in humans.

Nationwide bird flu outbreak leads to online conspiracies

BY: HENRY REDMAN

- MAY 20, 2022 10:53 AM

Hens in cages

A nationwide outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, has struck poultry farms, backyard chicken coops and wild flocks of birds. Nearly 38 million birds have been culled in 35 states, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Yet despite the horrific effects the disease has had on the state’s flocks, the wallets of poultry farmers and, potentially, on already rising food prices, conspiracy theories have popped up online that it’s a hoax or a biological weapon.

“You just want to beat your head against the wall,” Iowa turkey farmer Brad Moline told the Associated Press. “I understand the frustration with how COVID was handled. I understand the lack of trust in the media today. I get it. But this is real.”

Posts on mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as online message boards have alleged the outbreak is designed to reinstitute COVID lockdowns or blame 5G cell towers for the disease.

“There is no ‘bird flu’ outbreak,” one post on Reddit stated. “It’s just Covid for chickens.”

The first confirmed cases of bird flu in Iowa were reported in Pottawattamie County in March. Since then, more than 13.3 million birds have been culled from 15 affected flocks.

The outbreak has led to the quarantine of bird populations. Poultry shows and exhibitions were been canceled, ahead of summer fair season. In Iowa, the virus has been waning, with the last confirmed outbreak on May 2 in a backyard flock in Bremer County.



HENRY REDMAN is a staff reporter for the Wisconsin Examiner who focuses on covering Wisconsin's towns and rural areas. He previously covered crime and courts at the Daily Jefferson County Union. A lifelong Midwesterner, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a degree in journalism in May 2019.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Bird Flu Outbreaks: When Will We Learn Our Lesson?

Experts say previous outbreaks should have taught us how to avoid new ones, like the one that’s killing millions of birds right now.


Turkeys being raised on a turkey farm. USDA photo by Scott Bauer.


May 18, 2022 - by Erica Cirino

Last month a man in Colorado became the first human known to have contracted a new, highly infectious strain of avian flu.

The man — a prisoner culling infected poultry while on a work-release program — only experienced a case of mild fatigue.

The birds contracting this new version of the H5N1 flu have not been so lucky.

Since it first turned up, this highly transmissible and lethal new strain of avian flu has circulated at high rates among domestic fowl on backyard and commercial farms, resulting in the deaths of a reported 37 million birds on farms in the United States alone. Some died directly from the infection, while many others were culled as part of the country’s response to the disease outbreak. Bird flu has spread to at least 176 commercial farms and 134 backyard bird farms, housing mainly poultry like chickens and turkeys, across 34 states. It has hit especially hard in the Midwest and Central United States, regions with intensive commercial poultry operations.

The disease has also turned up in wild birds, with fatal consequences never previously observed. The first confirmed case was reported in a wild bird killed by a hunter and tested in January as part of routine U.S. wildlife-disease surveillance efforts. As of this month, more than 1,000 wild birds across the country have died after being infected.

Wild birds, including many waterfowl species, are often carriers of low-pathogenic or mild bird flu viruses. These viruses rarely cause severe disease in their natural hosts. But lethal bird flu viruses can and do kill wildlife, and this year’s hybrid H5N1 is proving especially deadly to wild birds in the United States and Europe.

It’s also spreading fast: While people have been busy navigating the second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, this worrying bird virus outbreak has spread in more than 60 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Many European countries face record-high levels of lethal bird flu.

Repeat Offender

“This clade [family] of H5 viruses has been with us since 1996,” says Bryan Richards, emerging disease coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Much of the government’s research on bird flu impacts on wild birds is done by the Geological Survey at the National Wildlife Health Center. “As with all viruses, it has changed over time, as have its relative impacts. Over the past two years or so, this specific H5N1 lineage has had increasing impacts in Europe and Asia. Now that this lineage of virus is here in North America, our experience is similar to that in Europe.”

As the virus rages and government workers deal with the gruesome task of killing infected birds and disposing of the corpses, experts have stood up with one key question:

Why have we allowed this to happen again?

Photo: Ella Mullins (CC BY 2.0)

The last time a bird flu epidemic hit this hard in the United States was in 2014-2015. That event, considered the worst-ever animal disease outbreak in U.S. history, struck 211 commercial farms and 21 backyard farms, mainly in the West and Midwest. The government responded by killing tens of millions of domestic birds to try to stop the spread, at huge cost to the federal budget and with no clear beneficial results — the same way it’s responding to the present lethal outbreak.

Then and now, bird flu proves that a reaction-oriented approach to serious viruses emerging at the intersection of human and nonhuman health is inadequate for stopping the spread of disease. Many animal-health and infectious disease experts now underscore the need to prevent rather than fight the next animal disease epidemic.
The Previous (But Not the Last) Outbreak

The 2014-2015 outbreak cost the federal government nearly $900 million to respond to and provide indemnity (financial security) to farmers forced to kill their flocks. Still, U.S. poultry farmers reported economic losses of $1.6 billion, and the poultry industry lost at least $3.3 billion from that single epidemic.

Government staff and scientists examined the outbreak and response strategy to see if they could shed any light to help the country avoid another epidemic. Their final report found that “despite” the government’s massive effort to stop the spread by killing all birds on infected farms, while also using quarantine and disinfection, bird flu continued to swiftly infect huge numbers of domestic birds.

USDA Photo by Preston Keres.

We’re now seeing a repeat of that failed strategy. During the current outbreak, government employees and contractors are again tasked with culling tens of millions of infected domestic birds, mainly poultry like chickens and turkeys. Paying for that plus indemnity to farmers for lost birds has cost the government $400 million in emergency funding since March.

One reason why this response doesn’t work is that wild birds spread bird flu but cannot be contained.

Research shows bird flu can live in the natural environment for extended periods, and healthy wild birds can become infected by living in proximity to those who are ill.
Watching for Danger

As a country we’re constantly on the outlook for warnings of possible new disease outbreaks.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Geological Survey, along with their state and Tribal partners, have for decades collaborated to test deceased, hunter-caught and live wild birds for bird flu, especially at areas popular for congregating birds like lakes and wetlands.

That kicked into overdrive this past year. When bird flu cases surged in Europe in 2021, these partners coordinated testing of thousands of additional birds outside their usual quota of about 3,000 samples per year.

USGS scientist Dede Goldberg swabs a pintail duck for avian influenza at Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado. 

Photo: Robert Dusek/USGS

“This year’s surveillance was extremely effective,” says Richards of the USGS. “It provided situational awareness, early detection and warning. We did a dramatic amount surveillance in fall and winter based on the increased activity in Europe. We’ve been watching.”

But watching for outbreaks is not the same as preventing them.
Failure by Design

Some lethal bird flu cases seem to spring from direct interactions between wild and domestic birds. This can happen in backyards and on poultry farms that have full or partial outdoor access.

On farms where birds are kept exclusively indoors, the movement of farmworkers and equipment outdoors and among farms — common practice on some of the biggest poultry operations — can allow lethal bird flu to enter.

While wild birds carry disease, large commercial farms act as super-spreaders and disease incubators.

Laying hens are housed with other birds in wire battery cages, each allotted a space with a footprint smaller than the width of a single sheet of letter-sized paper. Birds are stacked side by side and sometimes on top of one another.

Meanwhile chickens and turkeys raised to be slaughtered and sold for their meat can live in flocks of 10,000 or more birds, who spend their entire lives indoors.

The more birds on a farm, the less natural the living conditions, the lower the costs to keep each bird — and the higher the potential profits in today’s commercial-dominated food landscape.

“As a general principle, once avian influenza outbreaks are present in farms, the disease can spread easily within and between farms when biosecurity measures are not applied properly,” said a spokesperson from World Organisation for Animal Health, an intergovernmental group focused on animal disease control. “On larger farms, where many birds are kept in close contact with one another, the virus can be amplified as more and more birds get infected. With more infections there is also greater opportunity for the virus to mutate.”

Sometimes the virus spreads beyond close contact, as scientists found when they studied the 2014-2015 outbreak in Iowa, which boasts the nation’s highest egg production and has a high density of commercial poultry farms. The researchers discovered a pattern of farm-to-farm spread within the state and possibly even to nearby states, with the virus carried from neighbor to neighbor through the air. It seems disease builds up in the air on large commercial farms, particularly those with poor ventilation and crowded animal conditions — suggesting these farms played a key role in the spread of avian influenza in 2014 and 2015.

All of this has taken avian flu to the next level in terms of infectiousness and time between outbreaks.

Lethal bird flu viruses arose alongside modern agriculture and globalization and continue to emerge at an increasingly rapid pace, along with animal-rearing rates and farm size. Globally, from 1959 to 1995, lethal bird flu viruses broke out at a rate of once every 2.6 years. From 1996 to 2008, outbreaks arose at a rate of once every 1.2 years.

“Industrial livestock production plays an important part in the emergence, spread and amplification of pathogens, some of which can be transmitted to people,” said Peter Stevenson, OBE, chief policy advisor at Compassion in World Farming, a global movement working to advance farm animal welfare and whose work has helped ban some industrial-farming practices seen as unethical and unhealthy, like keeping hens in battery cages, in Europe. He pointed out that the United Nations Environment and the International Livestock Research Institute identified “unsustainable agricultural intensification and increasing demand for animal protein as major drivers of zoonotic disease emergence.”

Unintended Consequences

In the wild, the 2014-2015 outbreak mainly killed waterfowl and birds of prey that had eaten waterfowl. This time around a much wider range of species — about 50 — has been affected, including many kinds of ducks and geese, birds of prey like eagles, hawks and owls, shorebirds like sanderlings and gulls, and vultures, crows and grackles.

When infected, wild birds typically exhibit neurological abnormalities such as lethargy or seizures before succumbing to disease.

“In 2015 there were no major ‘wild bird mortality events,’ ” or situations where masses of birds are found dead in one area,” says Richards. “But now we’ve seen a few: 1,000 lesser scaup dead in Florida, 50 Canada geese dead in New Hampshire; huge numbers of snow geese, Ross’s geese, and Canada geese in the Midwest.”

Wildlife scientists will continue to monitor lethal bird flu and keep track of its spread. What they’ve seen so far is unprecedented, but — having studied bird flu’s seasonal patterns — scientists expect at least somewhat of an ebb and flow of disease in the coming months.

“Now it is moving north, but we expect it will come back south in the fall with migration again,” says Richards. “It’s a safe bet there will be a lot of surveillance as they migrate south in the fall.”
An Uncertain Future

U.S. agencies and the international OIE reiterate in their lethal bird-flu communications that it’s essential farms and farm employees take disease-preventing precautions — termed “biosecurity” — to slow and ultimately help stop the spread.

However, biosecurity measures — including changing clothes before and after interacting with poultry and frequent disinfecting of boots, tools, and other equipment — are all voluntary and so not easily enforced, especially on large farms with many employees and many birds. That needs to be addressed, experts say.

Biosecurity: USDA and contract workers wear personal protective gear that does not leave a premises without proper cleaning. 

USDA APHIS photo Mike Milleson.

Another lesson that’s come out of the past few outbreaks is this: We need to rethink our farms and food systems.

“A certain way to reduce risk of zoonosis and emerging infectious diseases globally … is to reduce dependence on intensive animal-based food production systems,” says Stevenson, pointing to findings in a recent report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

That involves eating less meat as a society, as well as using well-planned approaches to growing plants and raising domestic animals in ways that are considered ethical, ecologically sound, fair and humane. Experts also point out that it’s vitally important to protect nature so that wild animals stay healthy and aren’t forced to interact with people — a common effect of deforestation and development.

Reducing our dependence on industrial farms is not always cheap, but it saves major costs in the long run as farmers create life-sustaining systems that keep animals healthy and best prevent disease. According to an international team of animal disease and ecology experts, “Even a one percent reduction in risk of viral zoonotic disease emergence would be cost-effective.” In contrast, conventional commercial poultry farms are owned by major corporations that appear to give little thought to any tasks other than maximizing profits. On these major farms, which are prevalent in the United States, birds are commonly sick, crowded and in constant pain.

Besides causing major animal welfare concerns, industrial farming has hugely negative effects on the environment, creating serious pollution and contributing to the climate crisis through generation of greenhouse gases. U.S. farmworkers are often people of color and are often exploited.

Experts say shifting our ideas of what we accept as normal in our food system, both nationally and globally, could significantly transform the way we value people, nonhuman animals, and the planet, and in turn could prevent the next pandemic — to which we’re all vulnerable.

But is there hope for achieving that? The experts we spoke with aren’t too sure.

“These companies have immense political power, which they use to influence policymakers and to obstruct reforms,” says Stevenson. “They are able to shape the narratives that entrench the status quo.”

Until we learn from the lessons of this and other outbreaks, it seems the status quo will continue to involve lethal bird flu and devastating impacts on domestic and wild birds.

Erica Cirino is a freelance science writer and artist exploring the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds. She is author of the book Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis.
http://www.ericacirino.com/

The Revelator Newsletter

An initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity

 

Alarming surge in Conti Ransomware Group activity - report

By Shannon Williams

Fri 20 May 2022

A new report has identified a 7.6 per cent increase in the number of vulnerabilities tied to ransomware in Q1 2022, with the Conti ransomware group exploiting most of those vulnerabilities. 

Ivanti has announced the results of the Ransomware Index Report Q1 2022 that it conducted with Cyber Security Works, a Certifying Numbering Authority (CNA) and Cyware, a provider of the technology platform to build Cyber Fusion Centres. 

The report uncovered 22 new vulnerabilities tied to ransomware (bringing the total to 310) and connected Conti, a prolific ransomware group that pledged support for the Russian government following the invasion of Ukraine, to 19 of those new vulnerabilities.

The report also revealed a 7.5 per cent increase in APT groups associated with ransomware, a 6.8 per cent increase in actively exploited and trending vulnerabilities and a 2.5 per cent increase in ransomware families. To further break down those numbers, the analysis revealed that three new APT groups (Exotic Lily, APT 35, DEV-0401) started using ransomware to attack their targets, 10 new active and trending vulnerabilities became associated with ransomware (bringing the total to 157) and four new ransomware families (AvosLocker, Karma, BlackCat, Night Sky) became active in Q1 2022.

Additionally, the report revealed that ransomware operators continued to weaponise vulnerabilities faster than ever before and target those that create maximum disruption and impact. This increased sophistication by ransomware groups has resulted in vulnerabilities being exploited within eight days of patches being released by vendors. 

It also means that any minor laxity in security measures by third-party vendors and organisations is sufficient for ransomware groups to enter and infiltrate vulnerable networks. To make matters worse, some of the most popular scanners are not detecting several key ransomware vulnerabilities. 

The research revealed that over 3.5 per cent of ransomware vulnerabilities are being missed, exposing organisations to grave risks.

"The fact that scanners are not detecting critical ransomware vulnerabilities is a huge problem for organisations," says Aaron Sandeen, CEO of Cyber Security Works. 

"CSW experts are continuously tracking this as a part of our research and analysis. The good news is that in this quarter, we saw the number coming down. This means that scanner companies are taking this seriously," he says. 

"That said, there are still 11 ransomware vulnerabilities that the scanners are not detecting where five are rated critical and associated with notorious ransomware gangs like Ryuk, Petya and Locky."

Further handicapping security and IT teams is the fact that gaps exist within the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC) list by The MITRE Corporation and the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) catalogue by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The report revealed that the NVD is missing Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs) for 61 vulnerabilities, while the CAPEC list is missing CWEs for 87 vulnerabilities. And on average, a ransomware vulnerability is added to the NVD a week after being disclosed by a vendor. 

At the same time, 169 vulnerabilities with ransomware associations have yet to be added to the CISA KEV list. Meanwhile, hackers worldwide are actively targeting 100 of these vulnerabilities, scouting organisations for one unpatched instance to exploit.

Srinivas Mukkamala, senior vice president & general manager of security products at Ivanti, adds, "Threat actors are increasingly targeting flaws in cyber hygiene, including legacy vulnerability management processes. 

"Today, many security and IT teams struggle to identify the real-world risks that vulnerabilities pose and therefore improperly prioritise vulnerabilities for remediation," he says.

"For example, many only patch new vulnerabilities or those that have been disclosed in the NVD. Others only use the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to score and prioritise vulnerabilities. 

"To better protect organisations against cyberattacks, security and IT teams need to adopt a risk-based approach to vulnerability management. This requires AI-based technology that can identify enterprise exposures and active threats, provide early warnings of vulnerability weaponisation, predict attacks and prioritise remediation activities."

The report also analysed 56 vendors that supply healthcare applications, medical devices and hardware used in hospitals and healthcare centres and uncovered 624 unique vulnerabilities in their products. Forty of those vulnerabilities have public exploits and two vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-0601 and CVE-2021-34527) are associated with four ransomware operators (BigBossHorse, Cerber, Conti and Vice Society). Unfortunately, this could indicate that the healthcare industry may be targeted more aggressively by ransomware attacks in the coming months.

Anuj Goel, co-founder and CEO at Cyware, says, "Ransomware is now one of the most predominant attack vectors affecting the bottom line of organisations globally. 

"The Q1 report underscores the fact with new numbers that show an increase in the number of ransomware vulnerabilities and the APTs using ransomware," he says. 

"However, one of the major concerns that has surfaced is the lack of complete threat visibility for security teams owing to cluttered threat intelligence available across sources.

"If security teams have to mitigate ransomware attacks proactively, they must tie their patch and vulnerability response to a centralised threat intelligence management workflow that drives complete visibility into the shape-shifting ransomware attack vectors through multi-source intelligence ingestion, correlation and security actioning."

SECURITY
Costa Rica’s president says country ‘at war’ with Conti ransomware gang

BY MARIA DEUTSCHER

Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has said that his country is “at war” with the Conti ransomware gang, according to local media.

The Conti ransomware gang, which is believed to be based in Russia, launched a series of cyberattacks against Costa Rican government agencies last month. In April, the country’s Ministry of Finance was the first agency to report a data breach. More than two dozen other government institutions are affected as well.

Conti is demanding a ransom payment of $20 million from the Costa Rican government. The hackers originally demanded $10 million when the cyberattacks began last month. Conti said that “we are determined to overthrow the government by means of a cyber attack, we have already shown you all the strength and power.”

“We’re at war and this is not an exaggeration,” Chaves told local media. “The war is against an international terrorist group, which apparently has operatives in Costa Rica. There are very clear indications that people inside the country are collaborating with Conti.”

Chaves declared a state of emergency over the ransomware attacks earlier this month, just a few days after he was sworn in as president of Costa Rica. Chaves said the cyberattacks have affected 27 government institutions. Those institutions include multiple municipalities and state-run utilities.

Earlier this week, the Costa Rican government stated that the hack has affected automatic payment services in the country. The government warned that civil servants will not be paid on time and must apply for their salaries by email, or on paper by hand.

“Due to the temporary downturn of the institutional systems, the service of issuing certificates regarding the amounts of salaries owed to the civil servants of the Central Administration is suspended,” the Costa Rican Treasury said in a statement on Wednesday. “All applications received via email or in the windows of the National Accountancy will be attended to once systems are restored.”

Other Finance Ministry systems were also affected by the hack, AP reported this week. Some of the government systems that were targeted have not yet been fully restored.

Conti is believed to have carried out hundreds of ransomware attacks over the years. The group has launched cyberattacks against companies, as well as public sector organizations such as Ireland’s healthcare system.

“The FBI estimates that as of January 2022, there had been over 1,000 victims of attacks associated with Conti ransomware with victim payouts exceeding $150,000,000, making the Conti Ransomware variant the costliest strain of ransomware ever documented,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement earlier this month.

 
Photo: Pixabay

UP: Not Provided With Safety Equipment, Another Sanitation Worker Dies Cleaning a Sewer

ARYAN CASTEISM; DALITS ARE SANITATION WORKERS

Tension prevailed on the premises of the Bareilly Municipal Corporation as hundreds of sanitation workers employed on a contract basis went on a strike on Wednesday, seeking action against the contractor and demanding compensation to the deceased family.

Abdul Alim Jafri
25 May 2022

Image Courtesy: The Financial Express


Lucknow: In yet another incident of death of a sanitation worker, a 28-year old working as a contractual sanitation employee, working under a private contractor of the Bareilly Municipal Corporation, allegedly died Tuesday after stepping into a sewer to clean it.

According to the police, the victim, Rajeev, who lived in Katra Chand Khan area of Bareilly district, was sent inside a sewage line in the Harunagla area allegedly without any gear or safety equipment.

Tension prevailed on the premises of the municipal corporation as hundreds of sanitation workers employed on a contract basis went on a strike on Wednesday, seeking action against the contractor and demanding compensation to the deceased family.

Protesting at the premises, the union raised the issue of inadequate supply of safety equipment for cleaning the sewerage tanks. “We have been demanding masks and gloves for many years now, but no one pays attention to it. Earlier last month also, four of the workers had died after inhaling poisonous gas from a manhole,” said Arjun Gautam, president of Safai Karamchari Union.

Rajeev was hired by a contractor named Ratan Singh to clean the sewer line as 226 small, and big drains in the municipal limits are being cleaned while 23 drains are being cleaned on a contract basis. The deceased was hired on a contract basis to clean the sewer. On Monday morning, the contractor took him to work. While cleaning in front of Gulabbari crematorium, he drowned in the drain after he slipped. He pulled it out of the drain with the help of the other labourers working there. But until a lot of dirty water went into his lungs.

His brother Ravi Kumar said that he was immediately admitted to the nearest hospital. When his condition did not improve, he was referred to a private hospital in Bhojipura. Rajiv died late in the night on the way to the hospital.

However, the contractor denied the allegation and claimed the employee had been fired four days ago since he was already ill and used to drink alcohol a lot.

Meanwhile, the deceased wife, Sangeeta, accused the contractor. She said, “I have lost my husband because of the contractor’s carelessness. We live in a 10×10 room, and I cannot even afford the rent now. My 6-year-old daughter started school last month. Our future is in jeopardy now,” an inconsolable Sangeeta said, adding that “Had the safety kit been provided by the contractor, perhaps Raju’s (Rajeev’s) life would have been saved.”

The relatives of the deceased have filed a complaint against the contractor in the Baradari police station and held the contractor responsible for the death.

The Valmiki Dharma Samaj of India officials expressed their indignation at the municipal authorities for not taking any cognizance. The union has demanded a government job and a compensation of Rs 50 lakh for one person in the deceased’s family.

The incidents come just a week after a person died due to asphyxiation when he, along with his two colleagues entered a sewage treatment plant in the Siyana area of Bulandshahr district. Last month, four sanitation workers were killed in separate incidents after they allegedly inhaled toxic gases while cleaning sewers in Lucknow and Rae Bareli.

The deaths have brought to the fore the appalling disregard for safety norms for sanitation workers.

Commenting on the continued deaths of sanitation workers due to a lack of safety equipment in the state, Raja Valmiki, who has worked for three decades as a sanitation worker in Lucknow, said, “According to the rule, it is strictly forbidden to take sanitation workers in the sewer line. The rule of cleaning is only by machine. But, even today, they are being forced to go inside the sewer line without any protection and equipment.”

Valmiki added that “A provision has been made in the Act to provide 48 types of safety resources to the safai karamcharis, in which there are air compressors for the blower, gas mask, oxygen cylinder, hand gloves etc., but nothing is being provided to them, leading to deaths.”

World Food Crisis: Causes, Consequences and Solutions

The war is exacerbating the food crisis, but to end it, the United States must first realise no military solution to the conflict in Ukraine will bring about the defeat of Russia it seeks.

C. Saratchand
25 May 2022


There is a world food crisis spanning the realms of production and distribution. According to the Global Report on Food Crises 2022, acute food insecurity afflicted approximately 193 million people in 2021. They were based in 53 countries/territories. This number was 40 million higher than those plagued by acute food insecurity in 2020. All this before the outbreak of the current armed hostilities in February 2022 in Ukraine, which has undoubtedly aggravated the world food crisis.

Before turning to the causes of this crisis, it may not be inapposite to review the working of the contemporary world food system. It has been argued that the elites of the developed countries, based principally in the temperate lands of the Global North, seek to exercise control over many primary commodities (crops and minerals). This is the case since most such primary commodities are not domestically available in the Global North.

These primary commodities are predominantly (but not exclusively) based in tropical and sub-tropical regions, home mostly to developing countries. This control involves a squeeze on the incomes of the working people, who release a greater volume of primary commodities to the developed world. Consequently, the working people in these countries are subject to chronic hunger, malnutrition and famine. However, this squeeze is not symmetrical across all segments of working people within or across developing countries.

As far as crops are concerned, this export to the developed countries often involves a shift of cultivable land use from food to non-food crops and the export of food crops at the expense of domestic food security. Developing countries where this shift has gone far enough end up dependent on food imports. This not only makes them vulnerable to volatility in the world market but also beholden to corporate agribusiness (and the elites of the developed countries more generally, especially through international finance, which controls much, though not all, of world trade in food and primary commodities.

During the centuries-long colonial period, this control of developed-country elites--the colonisers--over primary commodities resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in colonies and semi-colonies due to famines and epidemics exacerbated by such famines. The British colonial government squeezed the purchasing power of working people in India by prioritising the drain of wealth through the export of primary commodities. It largely ignored public investment in agriculture that could have been land-augmenting, and these played a principal role in such deaths. However, the promise of political decolonisation, inadequately realised during the dirigiste period, was soon belied by the neo-liberal project, which reinstated domestic food insecurity in many developing countries. It attenuated even the limited public support for agriculture put in place during the dirigiste period.

Therefore, the working of the contemporary world food system reproduces food insecurity, especially in developing countries. Corporate agribusinesses, coalescing with international finance and principally based in developed countries, control trade in many agricultural inputs and outputs. Besides, much of the contemporary world food trade is carried out through the US dollar-based financial system. A key element in this control is the speculative stock holding of primary commodities, which are conducive to profitable speculation since supply adjustment (especially for crops) requires a certain amount of time to produce fresh output.

For instance, if bad weather is expected to result in reduced world wheat output in the immediate future, then speculators—in other words, corporate agribusinesses coalescing with international finance—will enhance their speculative stock-holding of existing wheat stocks. This exacerbates food insecurity and will increase wheat prices. If wheat output rises in the future, and if there is a bumper crop, corporate agribusinesses may physically destroy a part of their stock-holding of wheat if that is more profitable (through consequent changes in price and traded volumes of wheat) than selling or storing wheat. In other words, world food insecurity is a principal consequence of the contemporary world food system dominated by corporate agribusinesses coalescing with international finance.

The current armed hostilities in Ukraine and economic war on Russia initiated by the United States and its “allies” has aggravated the world food crisis. This crisis was already severe due to the manner in which corporate agribusiness coalescing with international finance capitalised on the disruptions caused by neo-liberal policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Consider the realm of distribution of existing food stocks. According to the Food Price Index of the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the prices of cereals increased by 17.1% in the world market between early February 2022 and early March 2022. During this same period, the world market prices of oilseeds increased by 24.8%.

Now, Russia and Ukraine together account for 33% of world exports of wheat, 27% of world exports of barley, 17% of world export of maize, 24% of world export of sunflower seeds and 73% of world export of sunflower oil in 2021 according to the Global Report on Food Crisis 2022. Disruption of these supplies is leading corporate agribusinesses, fused with international finance, to profitably enhance their stock-holding of other existing volumes of such (and related) crops, resulting in a prohibitive rise in world prices of primary commodities.

The United States and its “allies” claim that the navy of the Russian Federation is blockading Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, which is preventing ship-based exports of agricultural commodities from Ukraine. Attempts to transport agricultural commodities by rail from Ukraine face two constraints. First, currently, the railways, in a given period of time, can only handle a lower volume of such freight compared to ships. Second, the armed forces of the Russian Federation are militarily targeting the railway system of Ukraine to prevent arms supplies to Ukraine by the United States and its “allies”. If the United States and its “allies” seek to enhance their arms supplies to Ukraine, then this could result in further attacks on the railway system of Ukraine by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.

This will further reduce rail-based agricultural exports from Ukraine and reduce other food imports into Ukraine and the movement of people, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Besides, there are concerns about the size of the next agricultural harvest due to the ongoing armed hostilities in Ukraine. Suppose that harvest turns out to be significantly lower than at present. In that case, domestic food security concerns will adversely influence the magnitude of agricultural exports from Ukraine.

When confronted with this impasse, mainstream media in the United States and its “allies” have come up with two unviable solutions. First, the use of military means by the United States against the navy of the Russian Federation to restore agricultural exports by Ukraine through the Black Sea. Given the massive retaliation one can confidently expect from the military of the Russian Federation to any such move, such an option will remain a non-starter. Second, the United and its “allies” seek to use Belarus as a land transit route for agricultural trade to ports in the Baltic republics in return for a temporary waiver from unilateral sanctions. However, this cannot be a complete alternative to ship based transport of primary commodities through ports in the Black Sea.

Given the recent attempt of the United States and its “allies” in Belarus at regime change and the consequent attenuation of strategic autonomy of the current Belarus government with respect to the Russian Federation, the chances of success of such offers by the United States and its “allies” are underwhelming.

The government of the Russian Federation, on its part, claims the Ukraine armed forces have mined the approaches to Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, which is preventing the navigation of ships from Ukraine. Further, Russia produces and exports more than Ukraine of most crops that both grow. Therefore, the government of the Russian Federation claims that unilateral sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and its “allies” are the main hurdle to its export of agricultural commodities. Given this ongoing food distribution crisis globally, many governments (India, Kazakhstan, etc.) are restricting food exports to try and ensure domestic food security.

Turning to the realm of agricultural production, note that Russia is the leading exporter of nitrogen fertilisers globally, the second-largest exporter of potassium fertilisers in the world and the world’s third-largest exporter of phosphorous fertilisers. Besides, Belarus is a leading exporter of potash fertiliser. The economic war on Russia (and Belarus) by the United States and its allies is disrupting the supply of these fertilisers and a further increase in fertiliser prices that were already high. This further rise in fertiliser prices is principally due to corporate agribusiness, coalescing with international finance, capitalising on this through speculation.

This rise in fertiliser prices and the rise in energy prices due to the economic war on Russia are leading to an increase in cultivation costs. It may compel many peasants to reduce the area under cultivation, or it could cause a further rise in food prices both from the cost side and due to the speculative activities of corporate agribusiness, coalescing with international finance.

Further, the economic war on Russia has accelerated inflation in many countries, including the United States. Consequently, the US Federal Reserve is increasing its policy rate of interest. Unless other central banks hike their policy rates of interest, international finance will exit from these countries. Such hikes in policy rates in developing countries will result in an increase in lending rates to borrowers. Since peasants in developing countries are the least capable of accessing credit at higher interest rates (quite unlike the heavily-subsidised corporate agribusinesses of developed countries), their agricultural production will be further squeezed either by higher interest loans or lower credit access. Since many poor peasants tend to be net foodgrain buyers, this comprehensive squeeze on agricultural production will increase food insecurity for workers worldwide and these peasants.

But this crisis in agricultural production will be further exacerbated by adverse climate change. In the Rabi season 2021-22, wheat output has been estimated to fall by more than 10% due to an unseasonal heatwave in wheat-growing areas of India. Besides, studies demonstrate that the probable frequency of extreme heatwaves in North India and Pakistan will increase this century, compared with the twentieth century, with attendant deleterious consequences on agricultural output. Further, after reports of drought in France, crop yields are expected to reduce this year. Such phenomena will enable corporate agribusiness, coalescing with international finance, to engineer further increases in food prices through speculation resulting in mass hunger and famine.

The severity of the ongoing world food crisis requires a comprehensive set of short term and long term policy responses. In the short term, the United States must realise that there is no military solution to the conflict in Ukraine that will bring about their hoped-for “defeat of Russia”. The United States must recognise that if it imposes sanctions on other countries, these countries’ governments will retaliate. This retaliation will not necessarily be constrained by the usual play-book the United States prescribes to other countries in the “rules-based international order”.

The rest of the world is paying a higher price for the United States’ refusal to accept a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine. Therefore, the governments in Europe, especially France and Germany, must take the lead in bringing about a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine and ending the economic war on Russia. This will provide immense succour to those at the receiving end of the current world food crisis.

Further, all governments need to institute administrative action against speculation in food and related commodities through the deployment of stock-holding limits for private entities, regulation of food trade, direct government distribution of food, and government sale of food in the private market etc. International trade in food and fertiliser in currencies other than the US dollar must be adopted where appropriate. The greater cooperation among developing countries that such measures require will also lay the foundations for longer-term efforts to deal with the world food crisis.

Over the long term, all governments must prioritise domestic food security through suitable changes in agricultural land use towards food crops and regulation of food exports. Besides, government support for peasant production must span the entire gamut of agrarian interventions, including the transformation of agriculture in the direction of climate resilience, grounded in agroecology, through measures such as land augmenting public investment. Such changes are not merely administrative and require fundamental changes in the international political economy. No matter how remote such changes may seem from the vantage point of the current conjuncture, they are superior for working humankind to the alternative, which involves avoidable deaths of millions, as happened during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The author is a professor at the Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. (With thanks to Dr Navpreet Kaur for critical interventions in a previous version of this article.) The views are personal.

Central Trade Unions Come Together to Save Bengal's Jute Industry

In the coming days, the unions will hold conventions and meetings before jute mill gates across the state on a 27-point demand charter.

Sandip Chakraborty
25 May 2022



Kolkata: A decision was taken to forge a joint movement to save the ailing jute industry as representatives of all Central Trade Unions, including CITU, AITUC, INTUC, and BMS, met recently at Shramik Bhavan (CITU state headquarters) in Kolkata at a joint convention. They highlighted that due to illegal hoarding of raw jute by middlemen and without central or state interventions, the jute industry of Bengal is facing a deep crisis.

Jute is grown in vast areas of the state covering South and North Bengal. The state accounts for nearly 80% of the area under jute cultivation and 83% of its total production in the country. This year production of raw jute has increased. The Centre also raised the minimum support price of jute to Rs 4,500 a quintal (TD-5 variety) in 2021 from Rs 4,225 in 2020, which was expected to help the higher production. However, in the absence of an effective role played by the Jute Corporation of India (JCI), farmers say the price of raw jute earned by them is hardly ever equivalent to the MSP in the open market.

Moreover, the huge credit period and understanding among the jute mill owners while directly purchasing from farmers make the jute cultivators incapable of bargaining for better prices. However, this year, the middlemen have hoarded vast amounts of raw jute in their godowns and mills are closing down due to the want for the raw material, the trade union representatives claimed.

The jute mills now work on seasonal capacity, and unlike the earlier permanent arrangements, seasonal employment arrangement has been bolstered with the introduction of cheap and new high-capacity machines called China machines to reduce the worker's roles. According to the CTUs, there are more than 150 jute mills on both sides of river Hooghly in West Bengal, and most of these work on seasonal arrangements and call for layoffs at the slightest of issues. At the convention, the poor state of the jute industry was elaborately discussed by the representatives of the various trade unions.

They also alleged that the jute workers are amongst the lowest-paid workers in the eastern state, and a tendency has grown to make the jute workers toil at less than minimum wage. To ward off any union activity, the Trinamool Congress-led government has arranged police pickets outside the jute mills' gates. Within the mill premises, the authorities now rely on bouncers whom they employ to stop any union activities therein, the unions claimed. They further alleged that these bouncers often physically and mentally torment the jute mill workers.

A total of 21 trade unions working in the jute mill sector of the state met at Monday's convention. There, they decided that through a unified workers' movement, the mill owners would be forced to participate in a tripartite meeting to sign a new wage agreement. The state government's labour department, a party in the tripartite meet, only knows the language of movement, and through fostering of workers' movements, they would be forced to convene tripartite meetings, the unions said.

It was also decided that in all the districts, conventions and meetings before every jute mill gate will be held on a 27-point demand charter. On June 13, there will be a convention in Howrah, followed by one in North 24 Parganas on June 17 and Hoogly district on June 24.

Anadi Sahoo, general secretary of Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Union (BCMU), at the start of the convention, placed the draft proposal saying that, at present times, the jute industry is facing a deep crisis.

Only due to supply constraints of raw jute, over 14 jute mills have closed down, leading to the unemployment of over 50,000 mill workers, Sahoo said. He noted that this year, raw jute production has been up to the mark. However, due to conspiracy by a section of jute barons and mill owners, the industry is facing a shortage of raw materials, he alleged.

The present situation has hit the common workers of the jute industry hard and hunger is now a perennial thing in their homes, the BCMU leader said. He added that while the permanent jute mill workers are being forced to work at Rs 370 per day, all trade unions have demanded to raise the daily wage of an average jute worker to Rs 1000.

Besides, in many jute mills, the owners have looted the retirement dues of the mill workers, Sahoo claimed. In this background, the 27-point demand charter has been drafted.

In the convention, the leaders also accused the ruling party of West Bengal of maintaining backdoor diplomacy with the erring jute mill owners, resulting in losses for the workers. To tackle this, the central trade unions have called for forging a movement on the lines of the farmers' movement in New Delhi, which has shown them the importance of a unified movement.

The unions also noted that many mill contractual workers are now employed without any social security net and are paid only Rs 500 per day. In the jute mills, the authorities now employ women daily wagers by paying them even less than the permanent workers. The women jute mill workers do not have toilets within the mill premises and are exploited to the core, they said. They added that the industry is suffering due to a low-wage structure, and permanent and skilled workers are leaving the arena for greener pastures or returning to their villages in the North Indian states.

After the TMC government was sworn to office, the exploitation of the jute workers increased manifolds as they faced severe exploitation but were unable to convene any strike due to a government ban, the unions said.

In 2019, a wage agreement was signed, but that is yet to be made functional at the mill level across the state, the union leaders said. During the Covid-19 period, the workers didn't get any wages even though the government assured them their salaries. The Mamata Banerjee government chose not to go to the Supreme Court to challenge the decision of the jute mill owners for not giving any relief to the mill workers.

The convention on Monday was administered by a praesidium comprising trade union leaders such as Dipak Dasgupta Ganesh Sarkar, Debasish Dutta, Atanu Chakraborty, and Amal Sen, among others. Many affected jute mill workers also spoke at the convention and highlighted their exploitation.

Europe at Crossroads of Neoliberalism and What People Actually Want

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Nora Garcia Nieves
25 May 2022

Image Courtesy: Brave New Europe

“Neither war that destroys us, nor peace that oppresses us”: This historic anti-war slogan of the Spanish feminist movement holds one of the fundamental keys to building a horizon of peace. It claims that peace is not just a ceasefire, nor is it surrender to or silence before those who impose their wars on others. Rather, peace is the building of a foundation for fostering relations based on mutual respect and cooperation.

Such an idea is neither naive nor impossible. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Building a new path based on a lasting peace is the only possible alternative for the sustainability of all people and the planet. The opposite of this means a silencing of the people, the loss of human lives, a divided world, permanent war, living in constant fear of nuclear weapons, and misery for the people affected by war.

Those who claim to defend freedom do not want those who are not like them to enjoy it. What we are facing is an “either with me or against me” mentality—or, as Josep Borrell, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, recently said, “We will remember those who are not by our side.”

Freedom, therefore, is not solely a choice between two options, but the possibility of creating our own option. That is why it is essential that, in the face of the mainstream perception of the world that tries to rob us of the ability to envision a new alternative, we must articulate one where everyone can fit in—where war is not inevitable.

‘EUROPE IS INDEFENSIBLE’

In the current context, with Russia having invaded Ukraine, we are surrounded by a sense of amnesia and the feeling of having returned to the 20th century. Once again, there is war, hatred, and the familiar rhetoric of division of “us” against the “others.” It is shocking that in the face of the war in Ukraine, Fortress Europe—which in its response to the refugees and migrants of war-torn and poor countries in the Global South has turned the Mediterranean Sea into a mass grave; which illegally carries out pushbacks against migrants; and which locks asylum-seekers in detention centres, without any access to lawyers—now finds it is so easy to make changes in policies and to open its doors to white and blue-eyed people.

The war in Ukraine has proven the EU to be perfectly capable of receiving refugees, but for those trapped in Libya—the country destroyed by NATO—there are no safe routes, no trains, and no free buses. This shows us again: where there’s a will, there’s a way.

All people have the right to flee war and rebuild their lives, like the Afghan, Kurdish, and Syrian people who made their way to Moria, the crowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos that burned down during the pandemic in 2020, with almost 13,000 people living in the camps left without any shelter, and where 10-year-old children have tried to commit suicide due to violence, hunger, and overcrowding. The attitude from colonial Europe’s history has endured, reiterating that there are lives that matter and lives that don’t matter.

But not so many years ago, thousands of Spanish families had to flee fascism, which also persecuted “the others,” a categorisation that included the Roma people, members of the LGBTQ community, and supporters of the Spanish Republic. As Aimé Césaire wrote in his Discourse on Colonialism, “Europe is indefensible.”

The level of hypocrisy is already astounding, and yet we continue down this path where we talk about peace while we send weapons to the warring nations, we talk about democracy while we support censorship, we talk about human rights while we dismantle the United Nations, we talk about freedom while we ignore the creep of fascism. And at the centre of all this is NATO. As if it were not enough to surrender our sovereignty to the capitalist market, we must also surrender it to wars waged by the United States.

‘You Can’t Eat Dignity, but People Without Dignity Get Down on Their Knees and End Up Without Food’

Julio Anguita González, the late mayor of Córdoba and the influential political leader within Spain’s Left wing, famously said, “You can’t eat dignity, but people without dignity get down on their knees and end up without food.” These words echo in my head as I try to figure out what is happening in Europe, or more importantly, what Europe is and how we can make it the opposite of that.

But to understand what Europe is today, we must remember that the debates that built the consensus toward this European Union were laid out in abstract and aspirational terms, associating modernity with neoliberalism. While the people became enchanted by an empty European identity, the foundation for an economy separated from political and democratic power was built.

Like the little mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s popular fairy tale, we sold our voices for a romantic idea of love—in our case, for a sense of belonging to a vague European identity. While we were voiceless, the EU’s manufacturers filled the gap between economic and social structures with institutions that foster inequalities and a European security project that answers to Washington.

The EU’s decisions in the face of the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the war in Ukraine cannot be any further from the real and daily security needs of its people. The lesson we should have taken from the little mermaid, however, is that without our voices, there can be no real love.

THE FIGHT AGAINST AMNESIA

Those of us who have fought against historical amnesia know that we don’t need military alliances, because war is a terrible symptom, but it isn’t the disease plaguing the world. To remove it, Europe urgently needs a heart transplant—an anti-fascist and anti-colonial heart, one that is responsible for the world it builds and the people who live in it and come to it. So how can we make Europe the opposite of what it is now? First, by assuming that we cannot postpone opening our eyes any longer, seeing Europe for what it is, and tackling the most difficult task: building a path of our own. With memory, we will be able to undertake that task, because it has been tried before.

Let’s listen to the past, and let’s make the present better. That journey goes from anti-war activist Rosa Luxemburg to the Non-Aligned Movement, BRICS, Pan-Africanism, and the struggle of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. All this history reminds us that the struggle to build an alternative path to peace is full of courage, and that those who fought for peace learned on their way that their will also counts.

Because where there’s a will, there’s a way.

More weapons won’t save us—we will.

Nora Garcia Nieves, member of No Cold War, lives in Madrid, where she is an activist working in the feminist, internationalist, and cultural struggle.

Source: This article was produced by the Morning Star and Globetrotter.

Making the Belt and Road Initiative ‘small and beautiful’

24 May 2022

Author: Ye Yu, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies

On 21 November 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out the key principles for the next stage of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Risk control of BRI projects was a key focus. Xi encouraged companies and their regulatory bodies to prioritise ‘small and beautiful’ projects in international cooperation and to avoid ‘dangerous and turmoiled places’.

The Central Bank of China also issued a new regulation setting limits on the external lending of Chinese banks, ‘aiming to forge a new development pattern mainly relying on domestic cycles and … promoting interactions of domestic and international cycles’.

Limits on external lending represent a shift in Chinese BRI lending policies. The BRI has featured large direct lending for physical infrastructure projects in developing countries. Chinese state-owned banks financed on average US$85.4 billion a year across 2013–2017. This amount was more than double the United States. The average size of Chinese loans was US$328 million in this period, compared to non-concessional loans of OECD countries valued at US$12.4 million on average in 2019. Although infrastructure projects will continue to be the focus of the BRI, the size of future projects is expected to decline.

The shift can be understood in the context of global financial market dynamics. After the 2008 global financial crisis, European mega banks reduced overseas lending sharply from US$15.9 trillion to US$8.6 trillion from 2007–2016 due to enhanced financial regulations. A similar curve for the BRI will likely be pushed by the regulations of the Bretton Woods institutions and traditional creditors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the IMF and the World Bank, half of the countries eligible for International Development Association assistance are already in or were at high risk of entering debt distress before the pandemic. As proposed by the two institutions, the G20 approved the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and the Common Framework for Debt Treatment beyond the DSSI for this group of countries in April and November 2020 respectively. A total of US$12.9 billion debt service was suspended between May 2020 and the end of 2021. Further countries, such as Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia, are in the process of applying the Common Framework.

The accommodative policies of advanced economies over the last two years have allowed most debtor countries to survive without applying for Common Framework treatment. But the IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury are encouraging more countries to speed up their debt treatment process. They are also pushing for broader debt transparency requirements and stricter debt sustainability analysis for DSSI countries. Inflation is driving a tightening of the global monetary environment and is expected to bring more DSSI countries into the G20 debt treatment process. China — as the largest official bilateral creditor — will be the most affected lender.

BRI deleveraging is different to the retreat of European banks during the global financial crisis due to the highly geopolitical nature of the debt treatment, debates on the role of BRI debt and the appropriateness of international regulations. The Bretton Woods institutions strengthened debt sustainability analysis for poor countries while advanced economies are effectively abandoning public debt limit disciplines. African countries complain about the ‘institutional bias’ in the methodology of rating agencies as attacking poorest countries during their hardest times.

The Common Framework processes will be prolonged due to the broad base of creditors and the lack of trust and leadership. Ensuring a commonly accepted fair burden sharing between commercial creditors of advanced economies, including bondholders, and Chinese banks will be the key.

A serious issue to consider is the optimal regulation for modern development finance to meet the financing gaps of developing countries. Traditional creditors are pushing for development banks and export credit agencies to comply with the strict norms of official development assistance (ODA), such as the ‘full transparency’ requirement and the prohibition of credit enhancement measures. These will heavily discourage the financing of ‘big and stupid’ infrastructure projects where ODA-type finance is insufficient to meet demand.

While it might be easy for the BRI to get wiser, it is still difficult for the poorest countries to find real alternatives. A new tide of ‘development finance competition’ is emerging to fill the financing gap. A dozen initiatives, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor, Build Back Better World and Global Gateway were put forward to replace the BRI. Their key narrative is to adopt innovative financing tools to crowdsource private sector funding for high quality infrastructure projects, but results have been limited. How private sector solutions for infrastructure can really work remains an open question.

Ye Yu is Associate Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.