Negotiators from 46 Least Developed Countries met in Nairobi on 29 October 2012 to develop a common position to be presented at the November climate talks in Doha. The technical experts said that developing nations will agree on shared goals, which include establishment of a new climate treaty, financing and technologies required to accelerate green transition. Kenya's Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Ali Mohammed, said that the global South has borne the brunt of negative impacts of climate change despite minimal contribution to green house gases responsible for warming the planet. He endorsed the multilateral process of the climate talks, which provides vulnerable developing countries with a forum for participating in global discussions and agreements. At the same time, developing countries should strengthen their negotiation capacity to influence a positive outcome of the Doha climate talks and overcome roadblocks in their efforts to table their concerns. Developing countries are in agreement that financing for climate adaptation, operationalisation of a green climate fund and the future of Kyoto protocol are key issues that should be prioritised at the Doha meeting.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Earth Grab analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using growing concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering 'quick fixes'. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a 'greener' economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy. The book exposes how a biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It also shows how the world’s largest agribusiness companies including Monsanto, BASF, Dupont and Syngenta are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be 'climate-ready crops'. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world – something peasant farmers already know how to manage – these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. These crops are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the gluttony of corporate shareholders for profits.
The world's wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption but shares culpability in not tackling money laundering or the anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities that enable it. In this investigative piece shown on Al Jazeera, Zimbabwean journalist Stanley Kwenda takes a journey through the world of offshore banking.
Following a visit to Swaziland, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a press release noting that a budget surplus of 1% of GDP targeted for the 2012 fiscal year is unlikely to be met without additional expenditure cuts. The mission recommended a reduction in the wage bill of 300 million emalangeni (US$3.4 million), cuts in 'non-priority' recurrent expenditures and implementation of an Enhanced Voluntary Early Retirement Scheme. The IMF acknowledged that these cuts will imply sacrifices from Swazi society, and proposed that the basic needs of the most vulnerable be protected. The delegation further recommended that subsistence farmers have access to title deeds to give them collateral to raise funds for basic improvements such as irrigation systems to increase their yields.
This article reports the results from a research project on farmers’ and pesticide dealers’ knowledge and practice when handling pesticides in two districts of Uganda. In Uganda the number of farmers using pesticides is growing because of the evolution of the farming from mainly organic subsistence farming to a mix of cash crop and subsistence farming involving the use of increasing amounts of pesticide. This research project took place in the districts of Wakiso and Pallisa, Uganda, in January and February 2011. In all, 24 small-scale farmers and 20 pesticide dealers were observed and interviewed. Researchers observed many health and environmental problems in the use of pesticides in Wakiso and Pallisa, with faulty equipment, exposure of children to drift spray and environmental pollution. However, no pesticides classified as WHO class Ia or Ib were found apart from dichlorvos. The main problems were found to be a lack of use of personal protective equipment and the farmers’ failure to follow the instructions for the correct handling of pesticides. Training for both farmers and pesticide dealers could be a way to solve the problems. Moreover, the instruction for use should be adapted to the reality of the small-scale farmers.
South Africa grants almost every patent application it receives, making its patent regime one of the world’s most lenient, according to this article. While pharmaceutical companies cash in, patients face staggering healthcare costs, and medicines like cancer treatments, third-line antiretrovirals (ARVs) and treatments for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) are often priced out of reach. According to activists from Médecins Sans Frontières’s (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines and the South Africa AIDS lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), easy patents mean companies can extend their exclusive right to manufacture and sell certain drugs through a process known as evergreening, where minor changes are made to a drug and it is re-issued with a new patent, the process being repeated indefinitely.. The most recent review of South African patents, conducted in 2008, found that about half of all South African patents that year were granted to US companies, followed by companies from the UK, Germany and France. The Department of Trade and Industry’s draft of the new intellectual property policy is set to be submitted to the cabinet on 5 December 2012. A three-month period of public comment on the policy will then be opened before the policy becomes a bill. MSF and TAC are calling on interested parties to get involved and ensure the policy protects public health by including provisions to prevent evergreening and to allow for compulsory licences, which allow generics to be manufactured for use in developing countries without the patent owner’s permission.
UNCTAD’s 2012 technology and innovation report looks at how South-South cooperation could help developing countries breach the technological divide and promote inclusive growth through industrialisation. The report focuses on how technological learning and innovation capacity can be promoted across developing countries. The South is argued to be an important partner to promote technology and innovation capacity in the developing world. Policy experiences of other developing countries in fostering innovation capacities may be more relevant to other developing countries. Further, the technology employed in countries in the South may be more suitable for developing countries’ local needs and conditions. The report proposes a set of five principles around which a framework of South-South collaboration for technology and innovation can be structured: integrate the technological needs of developing countries into South-South exchanges; share and better integrate lessons learned from ongoing catch-up experiences of other developing countries in building innovation capabilities through proactive policies; promote technological learning in particular through alliances and technology transfer initiatives; make South-South foreign direct investment more technology oriented; and pool resources of developing countries to address common technological challenges.
The world’s financial and economic crisis has taken a toll on children and poor households. High food and commodity prices, unemployment and austerity measures have aggravated persistent inequalities and contributed to a substantial rise in hunger and social tensions. Now, more than ever, investments for the world’s poor are needed to recover lost ground in pursuit of development objectives. People everywhere are demanding change. This book describes the social impacts of the crisis, policy responses to date and United Nations alternative proposals for ‘A Recovery for All.' The book guides us through the effects of the multiple crises on the poor, but it also demonstrates convincingly that the fiscal space for a basic floor of social protection that would provide effective protection from the worst social fall-out of such crises can be found. The book reminds that fiscal space is not a question of economic performance or state of development, it is first and foremost a question of political will. It is the lack of political will, i.e., cruel indifference vis-à-vis avoidable ill health, hunger, destitution and deaths, that prevents us from reducing vulnerability of those who have no means to fend for themselves.
Africa’s Pulse provides an analysis of issues shaping Africa’s economic future. According to the report, global economic activity has slowed significantly in recent months, weighed down by policy uncertainty. Despite difficult global conditions, growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has remained largely on track. However, the region’s economic prospects are vulnerable to heightened downside risks. Because Africa’s growth recovery since 2000 - the longest expansion since independence - was based on improved macroeconomic policies and political stability, the prospects of sustained growth are strong. Discoveries of minerals are bringing the prospect of large revenues for newly resource-rich countries. The challenges for these countries will be to strengthen mineral governance and also to ensure that the new revenues are invested in better health, education and jobs for their people, according to the report.
While bilateral investment treaties (BITs) can make a positive contribution to sustainable development, the benefits to host countries are not automatic, according to this speech by South African Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies. He says BITs pose risks and limitations on the ability of the Government to pursue its Constitutional-based transformation agenda. As a result, Cabinet has concluded that South Africa should refrain from entering into BITs in future, except in cases of compelling economic and political circumstances. Cabinet also seeks to incorporate legitimate exceptions to investor protection where warranted by public policy considerations such as, for example for national security, health, environmental reasons or for measures to address historical injustice and or promote development. South Africa’s updated approach would aim to achieve an appropriate balance between the rights and obligations of investors, the need to provide adequate protection to foreign investors, while ensuring that constitutional obligations are upheld, and that government retains the policy space to regulate in the public interest.