Monday, July 29, 2024

 Sustainable development must work or world faces ‘massive tragedy’, expert says

Protected Gabon forest (Emily Beament/PA)

By Emily Beament, PA Environment Correspondent



A failure to deliver sustainable development that conserves nature and helps people will be a “massive human tragedy”, a former African environment minister has warned.

Professor Lee White was minister of forests, oceans, environment and climate change in Gabon under president Ali Bongo Ondimba before a coup in the central African country in August 2023, overseeing its policies on sustainable forestry.

Under the former government, policies were put in place to deliver sustainable forestry, switch from an extractive forest economy to one that kept more money in the country, and to try and secure carbon credits which would see other countries pay to keep Gabon’s forests intact for climate and nature.

Gabon’s forests are part of the highly-threatened Congo basin rainforest, and the country is home to a wealth of biodiversity including western lowland gorillas, forest elephants and chimpanzees.

Prof White warned the loss of the region’s forests would put a huge amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, hit water supplies to the Nile and Egypt’s agriculture, and accelerate desertification in the Sahel.

If we can't make it work, climate change will accelerate, biodiversity loss will accelerate

Lee White

This would create hundreds of millions of climate refugees and destabilise the entire African continent, he said.

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“The impacts of climate change in the medium term on peace and security, the stability and therefore the economic impacts and the social impacts are potentially, just absolutely catastrophic.”

And Prof White warns that conservation with the kind of sustainable development Gabon has tried to create has to work, or there will be catastrophic impacts of climate change around the world.

“If we can’t make it work, climate change will accelerate, biodiversity loss will accelerate, and we’re going to have to put the planet on life support in 10, 20, 30 years,” he warned.

He pointed to the devastating hurricanes already seen this year, and the threat to water supplies to billions of people in Asia from the melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

“We have to change, we can’t not change, and therefore carbon credits for rainforests, and biodiversity credits and sustainable development just has to work,” he said.

Forests in Gabon are sustainably managed (Emily Beament/PA)

Prof White, from Manchester, was speaking as Sky Documentaries releases an “enviro-thriller”, detailing his life, the fight against corruption and illegal logging cartels and the efforts to secure support for protecting Gabon’s forests at UN climate negotiations.

Gabon claimed to have achieved near-zero rates of deforestation through rules limiting logging in forestry concessions, with the forests monitored by satellites and drones to prevent illegal logging.

And the export of unprocessed logs was banned more than a decade ago, with efforts to encourage international companies to invest in processing factories in Gabon, to ensure more the value of the timber and associated jobs are kept in the country.

The idea is to sustain the forest, while shifting Gabon from an extractive economy – where the value of its products end up in other countries where processing takes place – to one where the forests benefit local people.

The country also developed carbon credits under a UN scheme for its forests, but efforts to sell them have been derailed by the coup and saw Prof White arrested and accused of stealing money from the credits scheme before being allowed to leave Gabon.

The former environment minister said it was still early days for the new regime but so far it looked as though the country is maintaining existing policies, and sustainable forestry was contributing more and more to the Gabonese economy so “there’s a good chance that the model is working and will stick”.

– Gabon: Earth’s Last Chance is available to watch on streaming service NOW.

Assassination: “for the good of Rome”

"The question with Trump is, Would his death have made any difference to the misery and suffering in the world? "

byDylan Neri
29-07-2024 10:29
in Opinion, Politics


Photo by Zwiebackesser/Shutterstock.com


The euphemistic word ‘assassination’ might have something to do with the ironic regret felt among many (even if it isn’t widely admitted in the mainstream) that, in a nation where statistically everyone owns a gun, the one who eventually stepped up to do the job managed to miss the target. No points for near-misses here; only the bullseye will do. The word suggests something clinical, bloodless, without suffering. Routine; all in a day’s work. Imagine the headline: ‘Two children assassinated’. Crikey. Must have been some bad kids. But murder them? Different story. Though even murder has an air of formality about it. As if the crime is the work of some schemer, to be solved only by a Holmes or a Columbo. Then there’s always ‘kill’. A reliable Germanic root. Kill. Almost forces the meaning into you as you read it. (There’s something about four-letter, one-syllable English words of the form consonant-vowel-double consonant that has that wonderful effect.) To be sure, the almost-assassin was, in every account, killed.
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

That is, there are connotations to the type of death, or near death, one can experience. And in the case of the former president of the USA it is at least logical to assume some element of the political was involved; that this attempted execution, or termination, or cessation of life, was indeed an assassination. (But maybe he just didn’t like the guy; maybe he was a neo-Hinckley.) In the realm of politics and propaganda, death becomes a subject in itself. Brutus did not assassinate Caesar, but rather “as he was ambitious, I slew him”, implying an element of the sacrificial, the scapegoat, a submission, or resignation, to a higher purpose. In this case “for the good of Rome”, for the survival of democracy. They were “sacrificers, not butchers”. The result was that the tyrant didn’t merely die but rather “suffered death”, as if it were a natural cause. While Marc Antony, the master of political propaganda, saw those daggers as the daggers of “butchers”, of “villains, murderers” and “traitors”.
Taking a “bullet for democracy”?

In much the same way, it was universally reported that democracy itself survived an assassination attempt. Donald Trump declared that he had taken “a bullet for democracy”, while it was almost impossible to avoid seeing the image of him standing before an American flag with his clenched fist raised in defiance, a symbol of the protest synonymous with social justice fighters of the 20th century (who were, you might note, largely anti-democratic). This is the age of the image, after all; any doubt about the connection between democracy and the political system, here represented by Trump, has only been reinforced, either forcefully or subliminally.
Is assassination ever justifiable?

Every sane and reasonable commentator has pointed out that murder is wrong. That it is never the way to go about things. It is one of the most memorable ‘thou shalt nots’ in the Bible, after all the neurotic preamble about other gods. As Andrew Marr writes in the New Statesman, “assassination as an idea is inhumane; as a political strategy is a dead end; as a tactic is worse than futile.” (The tautology here confirming the lazy use of assassination as a synonym for murder.) But just as the Bible then goes on to offer a mandate for genocide in the name of the Lord, it is always possible to justify murder in some hypothetical context, provided the cause is just and the reasoning sound. It is a moral question. Everyone has asked, “Would you kill X if you could?” Marr offers the example of Hitler and notes that, as in other historical cases of assassination, it would only have led to another figure taking his place. But given what we know now, the question is at least debatable, if meaningless. The point is, if you knew that murder, assassination, whatever, would lead to less misery and suffering, then it would be more than morally justifiable to act.

Thus the justification for official murder is given by those who control the sources of information. When the US vapourised South Vietnam, for example, it did so because it knew that it was saving the Vietnamese (and the wider region) from the greater evil of communism. Or when US-supplied weapons are used by Israeli forces to destroy Palestinians, it is only in retaliation against immoral acts by religious fanatics, in the morally righteous cause of self-defence. You can think of your own examples. Marr offers Saddam Hussein, asking whether it would have been moral to assassinate him rather than launch a war: “the obvious answer may be yes”. Here we see how intellectuals can internalise the moral actions of the state (as if states themselves were moral agents) while also arguing that, when it’s a state or organisation we disagree with, it becomes morally debatable. Marr does not for example ask whether it would have been acceptable to assassinate Saddam Hussein while the US and UK and other Western allies supported him in his genocide of the Kurdish minority in Iraq. “Assassination is never the answer to political pain” – unless we are the assassins, he might have added, then it is possibe.
Attempted assassination of Trump

The question with Trump then is, Would his death have made any difference to the misery and suffering in the world? In the neoliberal age, in which politics (particularly in the US and the UK) serve the interests of corporations, especially the financial sector, at the expense of worker rights and the wellbeing of the poor – what’s euphemistically called a “friendly business environment” – the differences between leaders becomes almost negligible for anyone in need of political action. For corporations and shareholders the difference between a Democrat 28% and a Trump 15% rate of corporate income tax is perhaps significant; but the misery and suffering element is lacking. While state-sponsored terror – whether in Indochina, Latin America or the Middle East – and the cross-party focus on the neoliberal economic model, which has led to enormous levels of income inequality since 1980, are guaranteed whether or not the leader is blue or red, Obama or Bush. And while there might be an argument that Trump’s climate change denial is an existential threat to our species, it is almost certain that another Republican with an emphasis on individual (ie corporate) liberty will continue to downplay the impact of man-made emissions for the greater good of deregulation and lower taxes.

The point is that individuals and personal whims doubtless make a difference, but speculations about such things are baseless and hold little interest. To understand and change the world, it is important to pay attention to what is really happening, not what might happen. It was first and last a question of morality: murder is wrong, unless it could be justified. This says nothing about the state of democracy, but to suggest it does is to miss the point entirely and sweep away the crucial question along with the bogus ones. As Marr writes, “…economically secure, well-educated, well-defended societies provide little space for populists, never mind tyrants… we must always look for political answers”. Perhaps ask how the people of Vietnam, Nicaragua, Palestine, view the democratically elected US presidents. The word tyrant might come up. He also notes that America is a democracy and that its victims of assassination were not tyrants but “chosen leaders”. His examples of Lincoln (elected when over half the population couldn’t vote) and Kennedy (who escalated the war in Vietnam from aggression to outright attack) suggest otherwise; while his other example, Martin Luther King, was not elected at all.

What this does is lump all political action that is outside the accepted channels, whether it is an assassination attempt or a popular grassroots movement, into the group marked ‘populist’. By extension, any political opinion that is not within the narrow spectrum of accepted discourse is censured. Democracy is a word that must be defined in advance and is constantly redefined to suit the needs of the user. To the modern western intellectual this means anything resembling the current system, in which the electorate freely votes to transfer its wealth to the top 0.1%, and to surrender its hard-won rights and privileges to multinational corporations. It is a world where politics is ‘done’ by one group of people on behalf of others; in which political action must never be in the hands of the majority, and change can only come from above. The attempted murder of Trump has only entrenched this position, only solidified the solidarity among what Marr unironically calls the “trade union of the political top dogs”. So, it isn’t so much that Trump took a bullet for democracy, but rather it seems that democracy took a bullet for Donald Trump and the establishment.

 

Starfish and other seabed species plummet near oil and gas rigs off UK coast


A major study found large seabed predators such as starfish were completely absent near rigs, as Labour's pledge to end North Sea drilling is thrown into doubt

Oil and gas drilling has led to a significant decline in Britain’s marine biodiversity, research has shown, as Labour faces challenges to end fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea.

A major study of Britain’s seabed has revealed the extent to which our aquatic ecosystems have been impacted by decades of oil and gas extraction.

The research by the University of Essex, Natural History Museum and Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science found that the number of species plummeted by nearly 30 per cent in the immediate vicinity of oil and gas rigs off the coast of Britain.

It also found pollution spikes of more than 10,000 per cent within half a kilometer of offshore sites.

Researchers said the study was the “first time” such a strong link had been found between oil rigs and biodiversity loss.

The study comes amid questions over the future of the oil and gas industry in the UK as Labour seeks to fulfill its manifesto pledge to end new fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea.

The UK’s oil and gas resources are dwindling, but the previous Tory Government controversially introduced a plan to grant new drilling licences each year to “max out” the North Sea reserves.

Labour has vowed not to issue any new licences, but faces a decision over what to do about the existing licensing round started by the Tories, which is yet to complete.

The Government could decide to immediately cancel the licensing round, but this risks a flurry of legal action from companies that may have spent millions preparing their bids.

Alternatively it could allow the North Sea Transition Authority to hand out a final small number of licences, but risk breaking its manifesto pledge.

Either way, Labour has said it will not revoke existing oil and gas licences, including the 31 new permits that were granted under the Tories in May this year.

Environmentalists have warned about the impact of the latest round of oil and gas drilling, with a quarter of newly granted licences overlapping protected marine nature zones.

The new study provides fresh evidence of the impact oil and gas drilling has had on marine biodiversity.

An analysis of data for 4,216 species collected between 1981 and 2012 at nine British oil and gas rigs found a 30 per cent decline in biodiversity around the platforms.

It also discovered pollutants like hydrocarbons were up to 10,613 per cent higher within 500m of the platforms than unimpacted, further away sites.

Amounts of heavy metals – like lead, copper, and nickel – were 455 per cent higher within the same distance.

“We’re seeing a decline in the types of species, we’re seeing changes in the abundance, changes in the body size,” said Dr Natalie Hicks, a researcher from the University of Essex.

She said one of the most notable findings was that larger seabed predators, such as starfish, were completely absent around the rigs, having a major impact on food chains in the area.

“This is one of the first studies that’s shown this clear linkage and it’s something we need to really be considering when we make decisions around where we’re going to place these things or how we’re going to place them, or more importantly how we’re going to decommission them,” she said.

“Many of our oil and gas platforms will be nearing the end of their serviceable life in the North Sea and understanding how we can deal with those in an environmentally friendly way or in a way that minimises the environmental impact is really key for informing that decommissioning practice.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “Making Britain a clean energy superpower is at the heart of the government’s agenda, securing our energy independence and tackling the climate crisis.

“We will not issue new licences to explore new fields and will not revoke existing oil and gas licences, which have only been awarded where compatible with environmental regulations. We will manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan.”

SHEFFIELD 
City bin workers' strike gets under way


Grace Wood
BBC News
Aaron Chown/Press Association

Crews are working extra hours to empty bins as soon as possible

Refuse workers at a Sheffield depot are beginning a five-day strike over claims management have refused to acknowledge their union.

The industrial action by staff with the Unite union at the Lumley Street site is planned to last until 2 August.

Veolia, which manages waste services on behalf of the council, said it was expecting “temporary disruption” but other non-striking crews would work extra hours to try and keep up with collections.

It added that green bin collections had been suspended until 11 August to prioritise waste and recycling bin rounds.

Veolia said residents should put their black, blue and brown bins out before 07:00 BST on their scheduled collection day and leave them until they had been emptied.

Workers at the depot in Lumley Street are represented by unions Unite and GMB, with some staff belonging to both unions.

Unite regional officer Shane Sweeting said the union had “significant numbers” at the depot and he could not understand why Veolia “was not being reasonable”.

He said they had attempted to use the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to resolve the issue.

According to Veolia, Unite represented 47% of the Lumley Street workforce and 39% of the overall refuse workforce - which meant it did not have the requisite membership for recognition.

A Veolia spokesperson said they were disappointed Unite had not respected the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Code of Conduct and it had a long-standing recognition agreement with GMB.

They added: “We acknowledge and respect the right of our people to be members of a trade union and remain committed to fair representation and delivering outstanding services to Sheffield."

 UK

Union Leaders Demand Starmer Reinstates Suspended MPs

“The union leaders warn Starmer that the disciplinary action brought against the 7 MPs is a wholly unnecessary and counterproductive distraction”

By Taj Ali, Tribune Magazine

Ten trade union general secretaries have written to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for the scrapping of the two-child limit on benefits and the ‘immediate reinstatement’ of the seven MPs suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party after voting against the two-child limit on benefits on Tuesday evening.

The intervention from trade union leaders reflects the wider discontent in the Labour Party and its affiliated trade unions at the government’s defence of the two-child limit and its decision to punish and exclude MPs for voting to expedite actions on child poverty.

The letter, headed up by the Trade Union Coordinating Group’s chair, Jo Grady, General Secretary of the University and College Union, has been signed by leading figures, including Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack, who serves as the President of the Trades Union Congress, representing 48 affiliated trade unions with a total 5.5 million members.

Other signatories include Mick Lynch of the RMT union, Daniel Kebede of the National Education Union, Steve Gillan of the Prison Officers Association, Fran Heathcote of the Public and Commerical Services Union, Sarah Woolley of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union, Michelle Stanistreet of the National Union of Journalists, Paul Fleming of the Equity union and Bob Monks of the United Road Transport Union.

Whilst recognising the opportunities presented by the election of a Labour government promising to implement the New Deal for Working People bolstering workers’ rights, the union leaders have told Keir Starmer:

“We greatly regret the omission from the manifesto and subsequent King’s Speech of any plan to scrap the two-child limit to Universal Credit claims, which the Resolution Foundation has said impacts on 1.6 million children who live in families affected by this policy — of which households more than 3 in 5 have someone in work.”

The letter also challenges Labour’s argument that abolishing the limit would be an ‘unfunded promise’, urging the government to announce it will scrap the two-child limit in the Autumn Statement, to be paid for by taxes on unearned income.

The union leaders warn Starmer that the disciplinary action brought against the 7 MPs is a wholly unnecessary and counterproductive distraction when the government should instead be working with trade unions to start delivering on the much-needed action to strengthen workers’ rights and invest in public services.

Many of those who voted against the two-child limit during the King’s Speech represent constituencies with some of the highest levels of child poverty in the country. Leading experts have argued that the two-child limit is the single biggest driver of child poverty in the UK. If it is not abolished, over half of children in larger families will be growing up in poverty by 2027/28.

The Labour leadership has defended its position on the two-child limit, stating that the economic mess they have inherited from the previous government makes its abolition unaffordable.  But child poverty campaigners have argued this ignores the long-term economic cost of keeping the policy in place. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, the societal cost of child poverty is estimated to be £39.5 billion a year. The group points out that scrapping the limit is the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty and would lift 300,000 children out of poverty overnight at a cost of £1.7 billion a year — a minuscule amount in the context of a £2.7 trillion economy.

As teachers, parents, charities, trade unions and Labour MPs continue to speak out, it’s clear that dissatisfaction over this policy won’t be going away anytime soon.


UK

Arms sales to Israel, two-child limit & election analysis – Jess Barnard reports back from Labour’s NEC

“I asked Starmer, given his international commitments, would he ensure a Labour Government is not complicit in war crimes and therefore would he end arms sales to Israel.”

Jess Barnard, Labour Members’ NEC Representative, reports back from this week’s NEC, the very first since the election of the Labour Government.

We received a brief report back from Starmer and a very short Q&A. The brief headlines were:

  • Tory mess left behind worse than expected, including decisions taken with no funding allocated.
  • The Prison situation is much worse than expected
  • The new Government was well received by NATO and full support was given to Ukraine
  • Keir Starmer is keen to ensure decision making is in the right place by people with skin in the game
  • The Government has been able to establish so much in just the first 18/19 days of labour government

I asked Starmer, given his international commitments, would he ensure a Labour Government is not complicit in war crimes and therefore would he end arms sales to Israel. He said that international and domestic law needed to be followed and the Foreign Secretary was engaged in those.

I also asked about high rents causing housing insecurity, poverty & debt for millions. A promising reply, he discussed the measures already announced, for example scrapping s21, but also ending the bidding wars and that rents need tackling – agreed to discuss at next in-person NEC.

On two-child benefit, he said he is absolutely determined to address child poverty and the issues surrounding this. Work beginning this week to start bringing down the NHS waiting lists which was a clear priority for Labour in the election period.

We also had an update from Angela Rayner, she praised the King’s Speech and the content, particularly the new deal for workers, a key win for the unions. On housing, she said the costs of rent were a supply/demand issue and sang the praises of plans including the Labour renters reforms.

Next up, a general election ‘wash up’ Some stats which caught my eye: Labour canvassers spoke to 3.1 million voters during the election, 5 million in 2024. On polling day we spoke to 500,000 voters using the app. 90% of polling day contacts made were in battleground seats.

Labour received more money from online donations than in any other elections and the General Secretary said he is not sorry for all the emails. 15000 new members since the election was called. Angela’s bus covered 6500 miles 34,000 people volunteered for Labour for the first time.

Lots of info breaking down the election win and voters but essentially we won because the Tory vote collapsed and we focused on convincing ex-Tory voters to vote Labour. Membership update: 358,000 members in total but 10,000 of those are in arrears. 3,825 joined since the election win.

I asked if the General Secretary would look into the anonymous briefings against some candidates in the media and stressed the need to support all candidates, not just those from one faction. I also asked if there are efforts to reach out to predominantly Muslim councillors who quit Labour over Keir Starmer and Gaza.

I didn’t get a response on the briefings but the General Secretary did respond that the party has been working with police and intelligence to support MPs who had been targeted/faced abuse during the election.

Lots of people stressed the need for the party to rebuild bridges with local members who had been denied the right to select their candidates – usually having them imposed by a small committee of the NEC (I did not sit on any of these).


  • Jess Barnard is a members’ representative on Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) and the former chair of Young Labour. You can follow her on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.
  • This article is a slightly amended version of the statement published by Jess Barnard on Twitter/X.