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Nothing is more global
than global warming
Joseph Stiglitz
The world is engaged in a grand experiment, studying what happens when you increase carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by larger and larger amounts. The scientific community is fairly sure of the outcome - and it is not pretty. The gases act like a greenhouse to capture solar energy and, gradually, the Earth warms up. Glaciers and polar ice melts, ocean currents change, and sea levels rise. It is not yet clear how long this will take to happen, but it has been taking place far faster than even many pessimists thought even ten years ago, with far more adverse consequences.
If we had access to a thousand planets, then you could imagine conducting such an experiment on one, and if things turned out badly - as the vast majority of scientists worry it will - moving on to the next. But we don't have that choice; there isn't another planet we can move to. We're stuck here on Earth.
No issue is more global than global warming: everyone shares the same atmosphere. So while the United States alone adds almost six billion tons of carbon dioxide to it every year, contributing to climate change, everyone everywhere else will suffer the consequences. If the greenhouse gases emitted by the US stayed over its territory, America could conduct its own experiment to study the results of filling the air over its cities with these gases. But, unfortunately, carbon dioxide molecules do not respect borders.
And though emissions from the US or China or any other country affect the global atmosphere, the US (or China, or any other country emitting greenhouse gases) does not have to pay for the consequences of its pollution outside its borders. Thus, it has insufficient incentives to conserve.
As I point out in my recent book, Making Globalization Work, America - in spite of its protestations - can well afford to reduce pollution: there are countries that emit only a fraction as much greenhouse gases per person while enjoying just as high a standard of living. But not taking responsibility for its emissions does give American producers a competitive advantage over producers from countries that are doing something about their pollution. It is not surprising that many countries have not reduced their emissions. It is more so that - as part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol - European countries, Japan, and a few others have put their own self-interest aside, in the interest of the well being of the whole world, and agreed to do so.
As with so many aspects of globalisation, it is the poor that are most likely to be most adversely affected - and they lack the resources to adapt to the consequences. Bangladesh and the Maldives are being threatened by forces beyond their control - the polluting actions of others - with a fate far worse than is caused by even the worst of wars. Much of Bangladesh is a low lying delta, great for rice growing, but vulnerable to even small changes in the sea level, and frequently buffeted by deadly and destructive storms. If, as a result of global warming, those storms get more intense, the annual death toll will soar. If sea levels rise, one-third of the country will become submerged, and some 140 million Bangladeshis will become even more crowded together than now. Their incomes, already barely above subsistence, will fall still further.
And Bangladesh is not even the country likely to be worst hit. Once viewed as a tropical paradise, the Maldives - a small island state of 1,200 islands and 330,000 people in the Indian Ocean - will be totally submerged in as little as fifty years, according to reliable predictions. Along with many other low-lying islands in the Pacific and elsewhere, it will simply be no more - our own 21st century Atlantis.
Important as the Kyoto Protocol was, it left out some 75 per cent of the sources of emissions: the developing countries have no obligations; America, the world's largest polluter, did not sign on; and nothing was done about deforestation, which contributes vastly to global warming.
Efficiency requires reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the most cost effective manner. Planting forests may be one way, but it may be even more efficient simply to preserve the world's rainforests, mostly located in developing countries. Deforestation is bad for the atmosphere for two reasons: there are fewer trees converting carbon dioxide into oxygen; and carbon stored in the wood is released into the atmosphere as it burns or decomposes.
Tropical rainforests not only reduce the level of carbon in the atmosphere: they also help preserve biodiversity. Many medicines, for example, have made use of this precious resource. The Biodiversity Convention, signed in 1992, was designed to ensure its maintenance - including providing some incentives for developing countries but, regrettably, the US has refused to ratify this agreement too.
The 2.7 billion people in the over 60 developing countries that contain these tropical forests are not being compensated at all for the enormously valuable environmental services they provide for the whole world. Though it is difficult to assign a value to preserving biodiversity, we can obtain rough calculations of the benefits of, say, reducing the annual rate of deforestation by a modest 20 per cent. In late June 2005, for instance, carbon was trading at around $30 a ton on carbon emissions markets. At that price, the annual value of this avoided deforestation is between $30 and $40 billion a year. By comparison, according to the OECD, all foreign assistance to developing countries was around $78 billion in 2004.
The forests also 'clean' the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These 'negative' emissions of the rainforest countries are estimated - at the same $30 dollars a ton - to be worth some $100 billion a year. Compensating developing countries for the environmental services that they provide would not only be fair and help their economies, but also provide incentives for them to maintain their forests. It would also help give them the resources that they need to prevent illegal logging.
In principle, this would be relatively easy to do by carbon trading. Just as many energy companies in Europe buy 'carbon offsets' (allowing them to emit more carbon than otherwise would be allowed) by paying for the planting of a forest in a developing country, so countries could be paid for not cutting down their trees. Yet the Kyoto Protocol allows compensation only for planting forests, not for avoiding deforestation. So rainforest countries are doubly better off if they cut down their ancient hardwood trees and then replant. From a global perspective, this obviously makes no sense. What is needed is simple: developing countries should be given incentives to maintain their forests.
Now a group of developing countries, led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica - the Coalition for Rainforest Nations - has come forward with an innovative proposal. They are offering to commit to greenhouse-gas limits, but ask to be able to 'sell' carbon offsets, not just for new forests, but also for avoiding deforestation. This would ensure their most efficient use from the global perspective by maintaining them as forests, rather than harvesting them for timber. At least twelve developing countries - including Costa Rica, Nigeria, Vietnam and India - support this new organisation, announced by Sir Michael Somare, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, at Columbia University in New York, in January 2005. A team at the university is working on the technical details.
Without some form of compensation for maintaining their forests, developing countries have neither the means nor incentives to continue underwriting conservation. Cutting them down - even when they presently receive only 5 per cent of the final price the wood fetches in, say, New York - is the only way their impoverished people can make ends meet.
Some have suggested waiting to address this issue until 2012, when a revised Protocol is supposed to come into effect. But can we afford to do so? At current rates of deforestation, the combined contributions to greenhouse gas concentrations from Brazil and Indonesia alone offset some 80 per cent of the emission reductions gained from the Kyoto Protocol. It is urgent to fix the problem now so that deforestation does not undo Kyoto's gains. And some of the ancillary damage - the loss of old hardwood forests and biodiversity - may be reversible if we act soon.
What is so impressive about the new rainforest initiative is that it comes from the developing countries themselves, demonstrating their creativity and social commitment. For the first time, they seem willing to undertake the kinds of commitments that Europe, Japan, and the advanced industrial countries (other than the U.S.) have made to avoid what could be a global disaster.
Costa Rica, which pays its citizens for preserving their forests, has already shown that a system of reimbursement for providing environmental services can work in ways that preserve the environment, boost the economy, and benefit small landholders. It has had enormous success not just in avoiding deforestation, but also in significantly increasing forest cover, even though it receives only limited compensation from the advanced industrial countries for its 'carbon services'. But it has benefited from the tourism (and specifically, from the 'eco-tourism') that its rainforests attract, and which it has vigorously promoted. Most of the other rainforest countries stand to gain less from tourists - and, for them, the best private use of their forests still remains cutting them down.
Global warming and global poverty are two of the greatest problems facing the planet. The ingenious Coalition for Rainforest Nations would make a major contribution to tackling both. It is based on the most basic of market principles - incentives - and enhances the global efficiency with which the global community addresses global warming. It is a rare opportunity through which the world could do well for itself, and simultaneously do good for many of those in most need.
*The author is a Nobel peace laureate and economist
-Third World Network Features
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The smoke signals!
Nasrine R. Karim
Recently Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has defended Japan's wartime record and publicly denied that Japanese troops forced Asian women to act as sex slaves in the 1930s and 1940s. In response, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao shortened his visit to Tokyo this month. Even Australian Prime Minister John Howard was compelled to distance himself from Abe's statement, partly to placate Beijing, but also because the "comfort women" abused by Japanese troops included Australians. At the same time, Howard diplomatically shrugged off the issue, saying: "We shouldn't allow history to be the master of what we now do and what we will do in the future." The interesting thing is to watch the new unlikely alliances.
The recent Japan-Australia declaration does not establish a formal military alliance such as Japan's security treaty with US post-World War II. However, the statement includes joint military exercises, intelligence sharing and cooperation in counter-terrorism and disaster relief. The two governments intend to draft an "action plan" setting out more specific defence arrangements. However, both Howard and Abe insisted publicly that the declaration was not aimed at China. (Methinks they protesteth too much!)
Washington has been pushing for closer Australia-Japan defence ties seemingly as part of its broader strategy of containing China's growing influence throughout the Asian Pacific region. A triangular alliance was in the offing since March 2006 after both Foreign Ministers met with Condi Rice in Sydney.
The Australian Govt., an ally of the US administration has to be wary of not jeopardising the present lucrative trade with China. The communiqué was accordingly drafted treading very carefully not to destablise a very fragile situation.
While he described relations with Beijing as good, Howard rather pointedly declared that the new security cooperation with Tokyo "will be closer than with any other country with exception of the United States". In other words, Australia's decision to sign the joint declaration with Japan would seem to ensure Australia's support of US and Japan in the event of any conflict with China?
Canberra-Tokyo ties
Canberra has clearly been under pressure from Washington to strengthen its military ties with Tokyo. Howard backed the Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to secure Washington's support for Australian interventions in the Pacific. For Abe, the signing of the security declaration was also a significant. It is the first agreement with any country since the 1952 US-Japan Security Treaty. (Japan is formally prohibited from signing a defence pact with any country by the "pacifist" clause in its post-war constitution.)
However, like the Australians, Abe is also under pressure from Japan's corporations to maintain good relations with China. His predecessor Junichiro Koizumi exacerbated tensions with China and South Korea by stirring up controversial sentiments and publicly visiting the notorious Yasukuni shrine to Japan's war dead. Abe's first trip on assuming office last September was to visit Beijing and Seoul to diplomatically ease tensions. Abe, however, had initially supported his predecessor's actions. Japanese public has been very cautious as Japan has over the last few years, have made substantial investments in China.
Prime Minister Abe ironically, has now taken steps to hold a national referendum in May to completely revise the constitution and transform Japan into "a normal nation". By removing the pacifist clause, Japan would be able to sign full military alliances and engage in its own wars of aggression. This action was triggered off when North Korea tested its missiles without conferring with anyone, especially China. It is a fact that Japan is able to turn into a nuclear State within months.
"The Australian" editorial noted the move "makes it all the more difficult to pretend that the growing web of alliances between Australia, the US and Asian nations is not about keeping China in a military box". If Beijing comes into conflict with Washington, this US-led group "might cut it [China] off from world market and resources, and upset its expanding yet fragile economy". While the editorial was in no doubt that extending the trilateral alliance to India "will be interpreted by Beijing as a threat," it concluded that an enlarged alliance "still makes sense".
US-India relations
The Bush administration has been trying to woo New Delhi as a major regional military power and a fast rising economy as a strategic counterweight to Beijing. At the centre of this strategy is the US-India nuclear accord signed last year. It conveniently enables the US and allies to supply New Delhi with nuclear technology and fuels without India having to give up its nuclear arsenal or sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
China has played down the new Japan-Australia defence declaration. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China "hoped" the reassurances by both Japan and Australia were not hollow.
To counter the US threat, China, on the other hand, has been forging closer relations with Russia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which includes the Central Asia republics and, as observers, India, Pakistan and Iran. Russia and China are planning to hold their second large-scale joint military exercise "Peace Mission 2007"in Urals region in July. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Hu Jintao will personally attend the war games, which are designed to test not just conventional weapons, but the ability of their armed forces to function during a nuclear war. In short both countries would show off their prowess.
China is militarily larger than both Japan and Australia, but due to China's rapid economic growth, its military spending has been growing at double-digit rates for the past 18 years. This has the potential to disrupt the balance of power in Asia. Which is why the whole exercise of putting a "gang" together becomes important for the US and allies. This year Beijing increased defence spending almost 18 percent to $45 billion at par with Japan's military budget and twice that of Australia.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced the military budget in his NPC report, arguing for the need to modernise the country's 2.3-million strong Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). "We will intensify defence-related research and efforts to produce advanced weaponry and equipment," he said. The spending increase followed a rise of 14.7 per cent last year.
Top US officials reacted immediately to the announced military budget, reiterating Washington's standard demand for "greater transparency". Visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte demanded China explain its "plans and intentions". US national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe declared: "This is inconsistent with China's policy of peaceful development. We hope they will demonstrate more transparency in the future."
NPC spokesman Jiang Enzhu responded to the US criticisms by stating that China "has neither the wherewithal nor the intention to enter into an arms race with any country" and posed no threat to any country. He pointed out that Chinese military spending is "modest" compared to the massive US defence budget of $532.8 billion. Jiang explained the increases were mainly to lift the living standards of poorly paid peasant soldiers.
Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang expressed the frustration in China's ruling circles over Washington's hypocritical calls for more transparency. "What's your response if your neighbour keeps peeking into your house through a crack in the door and yelling 'Open the door, let's see what's inside'?" he exclaimed. "Will you call the police?"
Hostile stance
The Bush administration's hostile stance was its decision to sell 450 advanced missiles worth $421 million to Taiwan to arm the island's 150 F-16 jet fighters. The Taiwanese military tested a cruise missile capable of striking deep inside China. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian provocatively declared that Taipei "wants independence". Obviously, buoyed by the sale!
The Chinese government denounced the decision as "rude interference" into its internal affairs. Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has threatened military action in the event that Taipei declares formal independence. Beijing fears that President Chen, who leads the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), may use his last two years in office to push for de jure independence through constitutional reforms. Obviously the Chinese leadership is not prepared to compromise. China called for the immediate cancellation of the missile sale, and predictably was rejected by the Bush administration.
The official Chinese goal of military modernisation is "defensive" and to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence. But the real motive seems to be to counter the growing American strategic encirclement of China with US allies and bases. Since the early 1990s, China's rapid economic growth has enabled the Chinese to make significant investment in the military which has the potential to disrupt the balance of power in North East Asia.
Although Washington officially adheres to the one-China policy, which formally recognises Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, but in reality continues to oppose Chinese takeover of the island by force.
Taiwan is just one part of the emerging US strategic "containment" aimed against China, which includes formal military alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia, growing strategic relations with India, the US occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and US military bases in Central Asia. In response, China is, naturally, just seeking to develop an "active defence" with strike capabilities beyond immediate Chinese territory.
Agence France Presse reported that a new report obtained by the US Office of Naval Intelligence warned that China is focused on building submarine and anti-ship missiles to counter US aircraft carriers, not just near the Chinese coast, but within the Asia Pacific region. China is apparently adding five new Type 094 nuclear-powered submarines, each with 12 long-range ballistic missiles, as a sea-based nuclear "deterrent" force. "In order to protect oil and other trade routes, the PLA (N) the Chinese navy is beginning to develop the foundation of a naval capability that can defend sea lines of communications," the report said.
China's space militarisation
Let us not forget that the Chinese government tested an anti-satellite missile by destroying one of its aging weather satellites on January 11th which jolted the world. US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe confirmed that the US had detected the test. "The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," he declared. Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea quickly condemned China's "militarisation of space". Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, although describing the test as "provocative", urged the US administration not to start a space arms race.
It is right to say, that most people on this earth have little knowledge of what is in Space and what is actually happening there except what is published.
A New York Times editorial on January 20th also called for moderation, stating: "The United States, with many more satellites in orbit than any other power and a military that has become increasingly dependent on satellites, has the most to lose from an unbridled space arms race."
As the Asian and European rivals seek to defend their vital economic and strategic interests, the expanding Chinese military budget is just one more sign that the Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy is encouraging a new arms race both on the ground and space..
Bangladesh, on the other hand, has just seen the best celebration of the Bengali New Year in a long, long time! People should enjoy whatever little life we have. We really have no idea what will happen next! As Benjamin Franklin said: "The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance". But in our case, ignorance IS bliss. Shubo Nobo Borsho 1414!
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