At
UN, Greenwashing Evaded, Vattenfall Uses UN, African Position
Marginalized
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, September 22 -- On the UN's climate change day, corporations
ranging from Duke
Energy to De Beers came and were praised as
leaders. From a closely guarded meeting in the UN's dining room, five
panelists descended to tell the Press how well it is all doing.
Inner
City Press asked what standards the UN has, to allow oil companies
like Shell and BP and Respol
to engage in what some call greenwashing
through the UN Global Compact, which recently rejected a complaint by
80 civil society groups about Global Compact member PetroChina's
involvement in Darfur. Video here,
from Minute 47:26.
Two
responses to
this question were offered, after panelist Al Gore declined to answer
it. UN moderator and
"global goods" maven Robert Orr add that the UN wants to
work with all companies, and that there is a trend of companies they
work with getting better. The head of Calvert
Investment Barbara Krumsiek acknowledged that
the companies attending are doing so from self interest, but that
"appropriate steps" should be taken where companies'
actions "are not positive." But are they?
Afterwards,
Inner City Press asked Orr
about the case of Vattenfall,
whose CEO Lars Josefsson claimed that
his inclusion in one of Ban Ki-moon climate and energy advisory
boards mean that Vattenfall has a great environmental record. Orr
nodded, but it is not clear that anyone has made or even asked
Josefsson and Vattenfall to retract the claim the UN calls
inappropriate.
The panel, corporate domination and greenwashing not
shown
Inner
City Press
asked asked about the African Union figure of $67 billion per year in
climate charge compensation and reparations. Danish Prime Minister
Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he wouldn't discuss particularly numbers,
but he expected this was going talk about in the UN's Monday
roundtables.
But
when Inner City
Press asked UN climate expert Janos Pasztor if such discussions were
taking place, he said there are many numbers, and refused to say. He
said what is needed is not a payment, but a new framework. Good
luck.
* * * *
Climate
Change Compromise by Australia Has No Chance, Pachauri Says, India
Agrees
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, September 21 -- Two days before the vaunted climate change
event at the UN General Assembly, a compromise proposal for the
upcoming Copenhagen climate change negotiations was made by
Australia, the world's largest per capita emitter of greenhouse
gases. The Australian proposal would, as described by Climate Change
minister Peggy Wong, would allow each country to set a national
schedule of emissions.
Hours
later, Inner
City Press both UN climate expert Rajendra Pachauri and Indian
environment minister Jairam Ramesh what they thought of Australia's
idea. Ramesh said that India does not agree with what he called
Australia's "binding" plan, that what is it proposing to do
is to up its reporting from every six year to every two years. He
said he has proposed to the European Union an annual dialogue on
climate change, and would ask the same of the United States.
While
Pachauri left
the front table of the panel discussion, held at Vermilion Restaurant
on Lexington Avenue four block for the police-surrounded UN, Inner
City Press caught up with him and asked point blank, what chance do
you think the Australian proposal has? "None," Pachauri
said. For the reasons said by Minister Ramesh? Yes, he said.
Pachauri, UN's Ban and Pascoe, climate compromise changes not shown
Earlier
in the Q&A,
a questioner had referred to what she said what that day's New York
Post, with "We're Screwed" on the front page. "That
was a hoax," Ramesh gently said. He added that India would be
foolish not to use its coal reserves.
* * *
As UN Asks
for $500 Billion for Climate Change, Few
Details Given, Indigenous REDD Lined
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 1 -- As the
UN released a
report on climate change that largely absolved China for its
emissions while calling on Western countries to pony up $500 billion
for the developing world's adaptation to global warming, skeptics
wondered if this was science or politics? The report, entitled
"Promoting Development, Saving the Planet" and issued by the
UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs, was launched, in UN
parlance, at UN Headquarters by Rob Vos and a series of slides. Inner
City Press asked Vos, who would administer the $500 billion? Vos said
that decision would be made later -- change minds and get the money
first. Video here,
from Minute 47:22.
Afterwards, a true cynic wonder
if the fact that
DESA is headed by Sha Zukang of China had anything to do with the
striking absolution of that country, and of India. It's as if
different parts of the UN are ceded to different political interests.
Peacekeeping is given to the West, hence the presence in Afghanistan,
Iraq and U.S. interests like Haiti. DESA and UNCTAD and other such
agencies are given over to the developing world. $500 billion: but
who's going to pay it?
Meanwhile, there is a
problem, to be sure. Monday
night, the Ambassador of a Pacific island state told Inner City Press
that while he viewed Ban Ki-moon's upcoming September 22 climate
change event as hype, parts of his country face flooding and
submersion, and salt water is seeping into the soil like a sponge,
cutting food production. If the $500 billion would go to states like
this, or to the impact farmers, that would be fine. Which is why the
proposal shouldn't have been made without more specifics.
UN's Vos and slides - nice guy, more more
specifics needed
Inner City Press asked the UN's
head of the Forum
on Forests about problems between indigenous communities and the
vaunted "REDD" program. She acknowledged that there had
been issues, while laying these off on the World Bank. But now, she
said, indigenous people have a seat at the table, right next to
governments. Video from here.
That's not what people in Indonesia,
Guyana
and Panama
are saying. Watch this site.
* * *
Vattenfall
CEO Says UN Climate Change Post Praises Coal Burning, Sachs Blue Wash
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 18 -- The day after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
named an Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, Inner City
Press asked the UN Secretariat's representative Tarik Banuri on what
basis Lars Josefsson, the CEO of notorious Swedish coal burner
Vattenfall AB, had been included. Vattenfall
has stated that it will actually increase its use of fossil fuels in
the years to come, click here.
Banuri first said that Sweden is a
country to be admired for its environmental record, then added that
Josefsson had been appointed in his personal capacity, not as any
statement on this record of the company he heads. But Josefsson
had
already issued said in a statement that "the invitation is also
a recognition of the significance of Vattenfall’s efforts to
advance the energy and climate issue."
So
polluting companies use the UN to blue wash their records, and the UN
does nothing. In fact, UN
envoy Jeffery D. Sachs recently praised Vattenfall at a
corporate-sponsored event that some environmental activists called
turqoise washing.
Vattenfall has already been awarded the Global
Greenwash Award
in
connection with the World Business Summit on Climate Change in
Copenhagen which Ban Ki-moon attended on May 24, just after his
whirlwind "victory tour" of Sri Lanka. Inner City Press,
returning from Sri Lanka, went to the Bella Center where Ban was
speaking to the Summit, but Ban's spokesperson there insisted there
was no way to get UN accredited media inside.
Also
on Ban's new advisory board are representatives of India's Tata,
Norway's StatOilHydro and the Korea Energy Management Corporation.
Inner City Press asked if member Carlos Slim Helu, monopolist and New York Times titan, had attended
the Group's first meeting. Banuri said he had not.
A Vattenfall coal fired plant in Germany - celebrated by UN?
Meanwhile, a group of former Presidents of the UN General Assembly
met in Seoul, on climate change. Not there was the just-past PGA
Kerim, who Inner City Press spotted Wednesday night going in to the
Ban Ki-moon speech in Manhattan which was protested by Tamils. Inner
City Press asked at Thursday's noon briefing
Inner
City Press: this grouping of former Presidents of the General
Assembly, do you know how many, and like how many of them attended? I
hadn’t heard of that group before and I saw [Srgjan] Kerim only
last night at the Ban Ki-moon award and protest. Not at the protest.
Spokesman
Enrique Yeves: To be honest, I am not sure how many of them they
are. But this is not new. They have met several times, and actually
President d’Escoto attended the meeting last year during the
General Assembly with those former Presidents. And he was invited to
go to Seoul to this meeting, and President d’Escoto wanted to
attend, but then when we changed the dates of the summit, it was
impossible for him to attend. So he sent a video message and I think
the full list of participants is on the website.
Inner
City Press: On the website of…? This body has its own…?
Spokesperson:
No, no, on the website. I think they have released just today a press
release.
The
chairman of this body, Han Seung-soo, was named a UN climate change
envoy by Ban, until he returned to South Korea as prime minister. Now
Ban has named Srgjan Kerim a climate change envoy. One wag quipped
that regardless of one's views, climate change is the last refuge of
a....
* * *
On
Oceans Day, Illegal Fishing Stumps UN FAO, Climate Refugees
Denied Indonesia Island
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 8 -- As World Oceans Day was celebrated at the UN in
New York, there was news, some good but mostly bad, about the failure
to include oceans in the current climate change talks, and lack of
welcome for environmental refugees.
Inner City Press asked Ambassador
Hasjim Djalal, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Marine Affairs and
Fisheries of Indonesia, about reports
his country might lease one or
more islands to refugees from global warming, such as from the
Maldives. Video here,
from Minute 42:48.
Hasjim
Djalal, after bragging the Indonesia devoted one of its islands
"south of Singapore" to Vietnam's boat people, said that
now "Indonesians don't want to lose their islands," and so
don't want to rent them. You never know what the refugees will leave,
he said, to countries of reception. Among these he mentioned
Australia which, he said, passes refugees on in turn to Nauru and
Christmas Island.
Indonesia,
of course, recently sent Rohingya prospective refugees from Myanmar
back to Bangladesh. Indonesia's Ambassador told Inner City Press this
is humane and consistent with the Bali protocol. But what about an
island?
Hasjim
Djalal: no more leasing islands, Rohingya not shown
Inner
City Press asked what is being done to stop illegal fishing, for
example off Somalia and Western Sahara. The FAO, it was said, has a
plan of action. There are moves afoot to make countries control what
companies, flying their national flag or not, do out in the ocean.
But the UN is quiet as Morocco and European fish off Western Sahara,
and little
is done of the pillage off of Somalia. So where is the
FAO?
Also
on the panel was professor David Freestone. Inner City Press asked
him if Ban Ki-moon or Yvo de Boer should be more to try to put oceans
on the UNFCCC agenda in Copenhagen. Freestone said that a special
effort should be made. We'll see.
Somalia
Pirates Include Pakistanis and Iranians, Russia Says an International
Court Needed
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, May 29 -- While the campaign of the Contact Group on Piracy
off the Coast of Somalia is portrayed as example of global unity,
there are disagreements about setting up an international court
mechanism to try piracy suspects. After Friday's meeting of the
Contact Group, Inner City Press asked U.S. Acting Assistant
Secretary, Political and Military Affairs Greg Delawie if the U.S.
favors such an international mechanism. No, Mr. Delawie said. Is this
due to the U.S.'s position against the International Criminal Court?
Ironically,
not only Germany and the Netherlands but also Russia favor an
international court, or "mechanism within a national court,"
as a Russian diplomat put it to Inner City Press. He noted that the
U.S. arguments against this are similar to those Russia made against,
for example, the establishment of the so-called Hariri tribunal for
Lebanon. He said that since Kenya, where most trials for now take
place, has an Anglo Saxon system, the U.S. and UK are fine with it,
Russia less so. He said that recently pirates from Pakistan and Iran
have been caught and asked, why turn them over to Kenya?
Pirates? From where? To where?
Somalia's
foreign minister made a pitch for money for his country's courts, and
to develop an official Somali Coast Guard. Inner City Press had asked
Delawie what the group would do about illegal fishing and the
dumping of toxic waste, two roots or rationales for Somali piracy.
Delawie said that things are so dangerous now, he doubts that illegal
fishing persists. The answer seemed insufficient.
Standing
to the side of the stakeout was the UN's envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou
Ould Abdallah, fresh from a press conference in which after Inner
City Press asked about human rights in Somalia, he said the Press is
an accomplice in what Ugandan President Museveni has called a
genocide in motion. As the UN's Olara Otunu might say, Museveni
should know....
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