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Africa/Global: Health challenges & threats

worker | October 13, 2015 | 6:07 pm | Africa, Health Care, political struggle | Comments closed

Africa/Global: Health Challenges & Threats

AfricaFocus Bulletin
October 13, 2015 (151013)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Last week was the first week since March 2014 that no new cases of
Ebola were reported in the affected West African countries. And late
last month the World Health Organization announced official
guidelines for beginning antiretroviral therapy for all persons
infected with HIV even before they show symptoms of AIDS. Fully
eradicating either disease and building sustainable health system
remainÂ formidable challenges, however. At the same time, U.S.
policy to promote greater protection for large pharmaceutical
companies in trade negotiations poses a still rising threat to
global efforts to guarantee the universal right to health.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/rth1510.php, and
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This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains one short article on the threat
to health in the least developed countries from hard-line U.S.
policy on protection for pharmaceutical companies, followed by links
with short excerpts from other recent articles on Ebola, the cost of
medicine and the current dysfunctional pharmaceutical system,
HIV/AIDS, and a promising advance inÂ medical technology providing
cost-effective blood auto-transfusion in developing countries.

While progress has been made both on the long-term pandemic HIV/AIDS
and the West African Ebola epidemic more recently, neither battle is
completely won. Neither have the economic, personal, and societal
damages been repaired, nor the world’s health systems prepared for
new epidemics, nor the necessary resources invested to guarantee the
universal right to health.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on health and related issues,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-health.php

The WHO Ebola Situation Report is available at
http://apps.who.int/ebola/ebola-situation-reports

Updates on AIDS are available at http://www.unaids.org

Frequent updates on the status of access to medicines are available
on the MSF / Doctors Without Borders website on this issue at
http://www.msfaccess.org/

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

LDCs be damned:Â USTR and Big Pharma seeks to eviscerate Least
Developed Countries’ insulation from pharmaceutical monopolies

Professor Brook K. Baker, Health GAP and Northeastern U. School of
Law

HealthGap blog, October 12, 2015

http://www.healthgap.org/blog – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/pbhd94q

Professor Brook K. Baker, Health GAP (Global Access Project) &
Northeastern U. School of Law, Program on Human Rights and the
Global Economy
Honorary Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Univ. of KwaZulu Natal, SA

In November of 2001, at the height of the global AIDS pandemic,
every WTO member country in the world, including the United States,
voted unanimously in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and
Public Health that WTO Least Developed Countries members should be
granted an unconditional extension of any obligation to grant or
enforce patents, data protections, or exclusive marketing rights on
pharmaceutical products.Â These countries desperately needed access
to affordable generic medicines and freedom from the pillage of Big
Pharma’s monopoly pricing.Â This sensible and humane transition
policy was confirmed by votes of the WTO TRIPS Council and General
Council in 2002.

Fast forward to 2015, and LDCs are again seeking an extension of
that same no-pharmaceutical-monopolies policy, which expires on
January 1, 2016.Â Their request has reportedly received approval in
nearly every capital of the world – except Washington D.C. (with
some weakening opposition from Australia, Canada, and Switzerland).
Nothing in the plight of least developed countries has changed –
they remain desperately poor, they continue to lead the world in
negative health statistics and early death, and they continue to
struggle with development challenges and inadequate capacity in
their industrial, technological, and administrative sectors.Â More
to the point, they continue to need access to affordable medicines,
and, if possible, new manufacturing capacity and expertise to
produce at least some medicines on their own.

What the LDCs seek is simple: rather than another time limited
extension (even a relatively long 15 year one like the one they
first got), is an extension that lasts as long as they remain an
LDC.Â Once an LDC member transitions to lower-middle income status,
its obligation to begin to process, grant, and enforce patents and
data protections on medicines would change.Â But in the meantime,
countries that were still LDCs could import cheaper generics legally
from abroad or manufacture them locally with no intellectual
property restrictions whatsoever.

What does the United States Trade Representative want – what pound
of flesh is it seeking from LDCs for an further extension that is
guaranteed to them by paragraph 7 of the Doha Declaration and by
Article 66.1 of the TRIPS Agreement?Â After all those documents
state that initial TRIPS transition periods, like LDCs had for
pharmaceuticals, were granted without prejudice to further
extensions and that WTO member “shall, upon duly motivated request
by a least-developed country Member, accord extensions [of LDC
TRIPS-compliance transition periods].”Â In this context, “shall”
means “must,” no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts.”

Instead of acceding to these clear TRIPS mandates, the USTR is
unwilling to discuss an extension for as long as an LDC remains an
LDC and instead is demanding a more miserly, time-limited extension.
The US has been unwilling to state its position publicly.Â Instead,
it has selectively listened to corporate “stakeholders” at home,
namely PhRMA and BIO, who oppose an unlimited extension because …
well, because of what they say to back up every IP monopoly demand:
“We need more profits, even from the poorest countries in the world,
in order to research the next generation of life saving medicines.”

Unfortunately, the USTR has not listened to access-to-medicines
advocates who wrote a letter urging US support for the LDC extension
over a month ago with no response to date.Â Nor is the USTR
listening to other “key” US stakeholders including Senator Sanders,
and Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.),
Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), RaÃºl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Keith Ellison
(D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Sam Farr (D-Calif.), elected
officials who have all have expressed unequivocal support for the
LDC request.Â Even the European Commission has voted unanimously in
favor of the unlimited extension.

At a meeting in Geneva with 15 Ambassadors from the LDC Group on
Friday October 9, Ambassador Michael Punke, Deputy United States
Trade Representative and U.S. Ambassador and Permanent
Representative to the World Trade Organization, and gave a
startling, unbelievably craven and subservient justification for the
US demand for a short-duration extension.Â He said that Big Pharma
was disappointed with the additional intellectual property and
pharmaceutical protections the US secured for it in Trans Pacific
Partnership negotiations and thus that the US could not give ground
on the LDC extension.

Right, the poorest countries in world should get shortchanged on
their desperately needed access to more affordable generic medicines
because Big Bio did not get 12 years of data exclusivity monopoly
protections on their $100,000-plus per-patient-per-year biologics.

The USTR’s policy positions on the LDC extension request are deadly.
They cynically safeguard Big Pharma’s global monopoly empire with
potential catastrophic effects on LDCs ability to strengthen their
human and technological well-being.Â At a time when we see migrants’
bodies washing onto European beaches, the USTR wants to make sure
that pharmaceutical capacity is stillborn in many of the countries
those migrants come from.Â This dour and ethically demented policy
position cannot stand.

Is President Obama’s administration so out of touch with
humanitarian values and common decency that it wants the US to be
the sole country at the WTO to oppose a mandatory, unconditional
pharmaceutical extension for LDCs that is their legal right?

*************************************************************

Links on Ebola (with very short excerpts)

(1)http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/q7trnqv

Amy Maxmen, “To Prevent The Next Plague, Listen To Boie Jalloh,” NPR
Goats & Soda, Oct. 8, 2015

“This is a landmark week in West Africa. For the first time since
the Ebola outbreak, there were no new cases reported in Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone.

There are many unsung heroes who deserve credit for this milestone.
One of them is Dr. Boie Jalloh, age 30. Ten days after he showed up
for his medical residency at 34th Military Hospital in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, he received a letter requesting his presence at the
hospital’s newly constructed Ebola unit.”

“To me, first and foremost, I wish the government and our
international partners would invest in medical education. We really
need more doctors and nurses here â€” we needed them before Ebola. You
can supply all the drugs you want, but people won’t be able to get
those drugs if there is only one health care provider for 10,000
people. [Note: According to the World Bank, the number is 1.8 â€”
compared to 100 in the U.S.]”

(2) http://www.eboladeeply.org / Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/obf26pm

Brooks Marmon, “In Liberia, Paying Tribute to Those Who Sang Against
Ebola,” Ebola Deeply, Sept. 22, 2015

Last week, the conference room of Monrovia’s Young Men’s Christian
Association (YMCA) was decked out in red, white and blue balloons:
the colors of Liberia’s Lonestar flag. The event? A tribute by the
Musicians’ Union of Liberia (MULIB) to the artists â€“ singers, hip-co
stars, songwriters and other musicians â€“ who joined the Ebola fight.

Bernard Benson, better known as D.J. Blue, the manager of Hott FM,
one of Liberia’s most popular radio stations, was the M.C. for the
event. He set the tone by noting, ‘We took Ebola from 100 percent to
0.0 â€¦ no one must underestimate what Liberian music did. It
resonated to every Liberian, to the people that matter.’ G. Bennie
Johnson, MULIB’s vice president, echoed his words, adding that
‘musicians have the power, real power, to do something good for this
country.’

Nearly a dozen videos accompanying Ebola awareness songs were
screened as part of the festivities.”

[see full article at link above for embedded videos.]

*************************************************************

Links on Cost of Medicines (with very short excerpts)

(1) http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qchbgz5

MSF / Doctors without Borders, “The Cost of Medicine,” Alert, Fall
2015, pages 10-12 on “Fundamental Changes Needed in the Biotechnical
Innovation System.”

“A primary driver of biomedical innovation is public funding coupled
with the granting of patents and other intellectual property rights
that give pharmaceutical companies exclusive domain to make and sell
a new medicine or vaccine for a stipulated period of time. This in
turn gives companies monopoly control over the market for that
product, allowing them to charge high prices and inhibiting
competition that would drive down costs.

Companies therefore decide where to allocate resources based on the
revenues they believe a particular product could generate, not the
public health burden they could address. What this means in
practical terms is that public health priorities and needs rarely
determine how corporate efforts are directed. In the current
ecosystem, companies watching their profit margins and stock prices
are effectively dis-incentivized from focusing resources and
attention on diseases and conditions that primarily affect people in
the developing world, people who don’t represent a lucrative market.

From our vantage point, it’s a broken system that is both
inefficient and ineffective at responding to the most pressing
global public health needs. And our field teams witness these costs
on a daily basis.”

“In addition, there is a lack of transparency from the
pharmaceutical industry, so we don’t really know what the R&D costs
are for specific products, what proportion of a given product was
publicly financed, or how much it costs to manufacture. The accuracy
of industry-funded estimates on the cost of developing a drug is
questionable at best.

(2) http://www.msfaccess.org/ / Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/o7yj4ms

MSF Access, “TPP trade pact will deepen global crisis of exorbitant
drug prices unless dangerous terms are removed.” Press release,
Sept. 25, 2015

“As public outrage about exorbitant drug prices features in new
headlines in the US and around the world, negotiators and trade
ministers from the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries are
converging in Atlanta to potentially finalize the trade pact, which
has been negotiated in secret over a period of more than five years.
Recent leaked copies of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter
confirm the inclusion of harmful rules that will lock in high prices
and block affordable generic medicines for years.Â MSF urges all TPP
countries to firmly reject provisions that will deepen the global
crisis of unaffordable medicines and health products.”

Also includes link to 4-page briefing paper on the TPP: “Trading
Away Health”

*******************************************************

Links on HIV/AIDS (with very short excerpts)

(1)http://www.healthgap.org/blog – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qdbyf52

Health GAP,Â “Celebration and Call to Action – New WHO Guidelines on
HIV Treatment and PrEP

“(September 30, 2015) Health GAP welcomes the World Health
Organization’s release of new global guidelines on HIV treatment,
recommending that all people living with HIV be started on HIV
treatment regardless of disease stage and encouraging expanded
availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to groups at
particularly high risk of contracting HIV.

Earlier guidelines recommended that health care providers wait until
people with HIV reached a certain level of disease progression
before starting treatment, despite the fact that years ago many
wealthy countries including the United States had already begun
providing treatment immediately upon diagnosisÂ to all people living
with HIV regardless of how advanced their disease. The shift in
guidelines comes after new results from the NIH-funded START trial,
which provided conclusive evidence of the benefits of immediate
initiation in May of this year.”

“Only 15 million people are currently on treatment and 37 million
are infected, meaning that an additional 22 million people are now
eligible for immediate treatment. HIV testing has to be
significantly increased, people need to be enrolled in treatment
when they test positive, and they will need durable connection to
quality care.”

“Unfortunately donors and major funders are acting as if additional
resources are not needed. Just a few days ago the US announced a
major initiative to expand treatment and to reduce infections among
young women, but it identified no additional resources. ‘Preliminary
estimates show that the US must add at least $300 million new
dollars each year over the next few years to existing global AIDS
funding to help meet the new treatment and prevention goals,’ said
Professor Brook Baker, Health GAP’s Senior Policy Analyst.”

(2) http://www.thelancet.com/ – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/nq5btzp

“Vancouver Consensus: antiretroviral medicines, medical evidence,
and political will,” The Lancet, August 8, 2015

“In 1996, the global HIV community gathered in Vancouver, Canada,
for the XI International AIDS Conference and shared the clear
evidence that triple-combination antiretroviral treatment held the
power to stem the tide of deaths from AIDS. The HIV treatment era
had begun. As we gathered again in Vancouver in July, 2015, it was
clear that a new transformative moment is upon us. The Vancouver
Consensus statement,1 which emerged at the recently concluded 8th
International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment
and Prevention (IAS 2015), signals the scientific affirmation that,
rather than limiting access to those who are immune compromised,
immediate access to antiretroviral medicines holds the power to
rapidly advance the fight to end AIDS.

The consensusâ€”signed by more than 500 researchers, clinicians, and
civil society expertsâ€”is clear: ‘All people living with HIV must
have access to antiretroviral treatment upon diagnosis. Barriers to
access in law, policy, stigma and bias must be confronted and
dismantled. And as part of a combination prevention effort, PrEP
(Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) must be made available to protect those
at high risk of acquiring HIV. The strategic use of ARVsâ€”through
treatment and other preventive usesâ€”can save countless millions of
lives, reduce new infections, and move us vastly closer to our goal
of ending the epidemic. A new era of opportunity against this
epidemic has dawned, and we must seize it.’

…

Medical evidence is unambiguous. At this point, further delays
threaten not only millions of lives but also threaten a resurgence
of this pandemic. But if we act rapidly, we can drive down HIV
incidence, death, and long-term costs. Political will is needed to
complete the work of what can be one of the most effective public
health interventions in history.”

*****************************************************

Links on technical advances for developing countries

Sisu Global Health (http://www.sisuglobalhealth.com/)

A recent start-up led by three women from Michigan, Sisu Global
Health was initially based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has
recently moved to Baltimore, near the Inner Harbor.

“The Hemafuse [now being tested by doctors in Zimbabwe and Ghana] is
a manual autotransfusion device is that used to retransfuse a
patient’s own blood during an internal hemorrhage, specifically
ruptured ectopic pregnancies or road traffic accidents. The current
procedure commonly used in Sub-Saharan Africa consists of salvaging
blood with a kitchen soup ladle and filtering it with gauze.
Compared to this soup ladle autotransfusion, Hemafuse takes 1/3 of
the time, 1/9 of the staff, and is significantly safer. The Hemafuse
functions much like a giant syringe to suction blood through a
filter when a handle is pulled up. When the handle is pushed down
the blood is transferred directly to a blood bag in a closed
system.”

“This device is surgical – meaning that it can intervene during a
pivotal moment in an individual’s care. Compared to most moments
when autologous blood transfusion occurs, the Hemafuse, as an
intervention, will be both more urgent and more evident in terms of
results. Its handheld, sleek design reduces both blood flow issues
and failure modes from a slippery, gloved hand mid-surgery. In many
of the surgical suites that we’ve been in, space is at a premium.
Improvements on hospitals and buildings are not keeping up with the
increase in patient admittance and population growth, meaning
smaller rooms for more people.

This device, as one Tanzanian doctor put it, will eliminate a
‘messy’ and sometimes futile process.

All opinions from these doctors point to the success of this device,
however, the glaring fact that autotransfusion, the recycling of a
person’s own blood, has been debated solely in Western countries. Of
all the published material concerning African healthcare, only 1-2%
have contributions from the continent’s own physicians.
Additionally, these articles and the repository services that
attempt to collect thousands of articles are often not
internationally indexed to include African medical papers. They come
from a continent that has been performing autotransfusion for years,
but whose voices have not been given the mechanism to be heard in
the medical community.”

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

Africa/Global: Climate Action Beyond Paris

worker | September 30, 2015 | 8:48 pm | Africa, Analysis, Climate Change, political struggle | Comments closed

Africa/Global: Climate Action Beyond Paris

AfricaFocus Bulletin
September 30, 2015 (150930)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa have risen at more
than twice the global rate over the last five decades.” – CSIR,
South Africa. *** “To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals
across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have
committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.” – Arabella
Advisors, USA. *** “Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid
solar power. A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that
14 per cent of the surveyed population use solar as their primary
lighting and charging source.” – The Nation, Kenya

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
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While news media in coming months may focus primarily on the global
climate summit coming up in Paris two months from now, it is already
clear to everyone that governmental commitments to reduce carbon
emissions to be made in Paris will fall short of that needed to curb
global warming short of catastrophic results for the planet [See
http://tinyurl.com/nq3m2wt for summary and links to a report on the
“intended national determined contributions” (INDCs).]

Even more than the results in Paris, however, the race to save the
planet and to limit the damage to regions already most affected,
particularly those in Africa, will be determined by actions before
and after Paris, around the world. Shell’s decision to stop drilling
in the Arctic in response to massive public pressure is one example.
The quotes above point to a few of the other places that action
is making a difference and can make more.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two short articles and one
excerpt from a longer report on different fronts of the fight for
significant action on climate change and climate justice: global
fossil-fuel divestment, Africa-based and Africa-specific research on
the rapidly mounting damage from global warming, and one example of
the accelerating growth of off-grid solar power, particularly in
East Africa (See M-KOPA website at http://solar.m-kopa.com).

Another relevant article not included here is “55GW of Solar PV Will
Be Installed Globally in 2015, Up 36% Over 2014; Solar will account
for roughly half of new electricity capacity out to 2020.”
GreenTechMedia, June 17, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/pkkkttq
Note that GreenTechMedia (http://www.greentechmedia.com/) is a
fundamental source for following global technological developments
in renewable energy.

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate
change and the environment, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean
Energy Investment Movement

Arabella Advisors, September 2015

[Excerpts only. For full report visit
http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/o6ng6p5]

Executive Summary

To date, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries
and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuel companies. The divestment movement has grown
exponentially since Climate Week in September 2014, when Arabella
Advisors last reported that 181 institutions and 656 individuals
representing over $50 billion in assets had committed to divest. At
that time, divestment advocates pledged to triple these numbers by
the December 2015 Paris UN climate negotiations. Three months before
the negotiations, we have already witnessed a fifty-fold increase in
the total combined assets of those committed to divest from fossil
fuels.

* Pledges have spread to sectors not traditionally associated with
divestment, including pension funds and private companies. In 2014,
foundations, universities, faith-based organizations, NGOs, and
other mission-driven organizations led the movement. Today, large
pension funds and private-sector actors such as insurance companies
hold over 95 percent of the total combined assets of those committed
to divest.

* While historically based in the United States, the divestment
movement now spans the globe. In 2014, 78 percent of divesting
institutions were US-based. Today, 57 percent are US-based.
Institutions that have chosen to divest represent more than 646
million individuals around the world.

* Climate risk to investment portfolios is helping drive the
exponential growth of divestment. Reports by Citigroup analysts,
HSBC, Mercer, the International Energy Agency, Bank of England,
Carbon Tracker Initiative, and others have offered evidence of a
significant, quantifiable risk to portfolios exposed to fossil fuel
assets in a carbon constrained world. The leaders of several of the
largest institutions to divest in the past year have cited climate
risk to investment portfolios as a key factor in their decision.

* Thanks to increasing commitments to invest and a proliferation of
fossil free products, more capital is flowing toward climate
solutions. Globally, investment in clean energy reached $310 billion
in 2014. Among those pledging to divest, many are also committing to
invest in climate solutions: those institutions and individuals that
have pledged to both divest and invest in clean energy collectively
hold $785 billion in assets. Other Key Areas of Growth:

* The faith community is making a strong case for the moral
responsibility to act on climate and to provide clean energy access
to the world’s poor, bolstering the divestment movement. Faith
leaders of diverse religions and creeds are demanding our world’s
leaders take meaningful action to curb climate change at the UN
climate negotiations in Paris in December. Many are also divesting
their own assets of fossil fuels: 126 faith-based organizations with
a collective $24 billion in assets have committed to divest.

* University commitments have nearly tripled in the past year, as 40
educational institutions with $130 billion in assets have pledged to
divest. A number of prominent universities have committed in the
last year, including the University of California, Georgetown, and
Oxford. The University of California is the largest higher education
commitment to date, with a $98 billion portfolio.

* Divestment by state and local governments worldwide is also
growing: The California General Assembly voted this month to divest
its $476 billion public employee pension funds from companies that
get at least half of their revenue from coal mining. Providence,
Rhode Island became one of the largest cities to commit to divesting
all its funds from top coal companies. In Australia, the city of
Newcastleâ€” home to the largest coal port in the worldâ€”voted to
divest, as did the government of the Australian Capital Territory.

* Foundation pledges have grown rapidly since September 2014, as 116
foundations with over $10 billion in assets have committed to divest
from fossil fuels.

The surge in the divestment and investment movement comes at a
critical moment, as the world’s leaders converge on Paris in
December 2015 to negotiate an agreement to curb catastrophic
warming. The growth of divestment is adding to mounting pressure
globally for governments to make meaningful commitments to
transition to a clean energy economy. Divesting and investing in
clean energy has offered millions of individuals across the world an
opportunity to take direct action on climate. A large and mobilized
constituency is now demanding political and financial action on
climate, and this pressure will likely continue to build
irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations in Paris.

A History of the Divestment Movement

The fossil fuel divestment movement was born when climate advocates
decided to directly challenge the fossil fuel industry. Inspired by
the moral arguments of the historical anti-war and anti-apartheid
divestment campaigns, a group of students launched a coordinated
series of divestment efforts on half a dozen college campuses in
2011, calling on their administrations to divest endowments from
coal and other fossil fuels and invest in clean energy and “just
transition” strategies to empower those most impacted by
environmental degradation and climate change. By spring 2012, the
campaign had spread to an estimated 50 campuses. Since then,
students, alumni, and professors have launched sit-ins, rallies, and
occupations of administration offices on campuses around the world.

The movement gained steam as the moral arguments of the student
divestment campaigns converged with an increasing recognition of
financial risks associated with investment in fossil fuels. In the
summer of 2012, author and longtime climate activist Bill McKibben
published “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” in Rolling Stone,
forging a link between fossil fuel divestment and the need to keep
global warming under two degrees Celsius (2Â° C). Drawing on the
groundbreaking analysis “Unburnable Carbon” by the London-based
Carbon Tracker Initiative, he argued that a broad-based global
movement should directly confront the fossil fuel industry because
its viability is rooted in existing carbon reserves that cannot be
burned without severe consequences for the climate. McKibben,
350.org, and other leading climate organizers threw their support
behind the student divestment campaigns, launching a global
divestment effort.

The movement quickly grew beyond universities as new sectors
responded to the call to act. A diverse group of faith
congregations, environmental NGOs, municipalities, and health care
organizations signed on as early adopters of divestment. Led by the
Wallace Global Fund, 17 foundationsâ€”controlling $1.8 billion in
assetsâ€”launched “Divest-Invest Philanthropy” in response to the
movement’s charge that foundations should not hold assets in a
fossil fuel industry that worked in direct opposition to their
stated missions. Ten cities, led by Seattle, announced they would
also divest from fossil fuels. “Cities that do so will be leaders in
creating a new model for quality of life, environmental
sustainability, and economic success,” argued Seattle Mayor Mike
McGinn.

As the broader climate movement reached a crossroads in the fall of
2014, the divestment campaign won global recognition as a critical
component of climate action. In September 2014, the world’s leading
climate advocates converged on New York City for Climate Week, which
included the “People’s Climate March,” an unprecedented event that
saw 400,000 people take to the streets to demand that the world’s
leaders act on climate. The week of action coincided with the United
Nation’s Climate Summit, which sought to catalyze meaningful climate
action in advance of formal international negotiations to reach a
global climate treaty in 2015. During Climate Week, divestment
advocates announced that, as of September 2014, 181 institutions and
local governments and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion
in assets had pledged to divest from fossil fuels. A report by
Arabella Advisors (http://www. arabellaadvisors.com/) found that, in
just three years, the divestment campaign had mobilized billions of
dollars in capital and engaged a broad segment of society in its
efforts to accelerate the transition to a clean-energy economy.

The movement’s growth was heralded by world leaders and covered
widely in the global media. Prominently featured was a notable
commitment by the heirs of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller
to divest the Rockefeller Brothers Fund endowment. The divestment
and investment movement was recognized in the UN’s formal climate
summit proceedings as one of many important actions to catalyze the
transition to a clean energy economy. At the same time, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu issued a stark call to action on climate, calling for
“an end to the fossil fuel era” and an “apartheid- style boycott to
save the planet.” In a press conference announcing that the
divestment movement had exceeded $50 billion in total assets of
those committing, leading advocates set the bar even higher for
2015, pledging to triple the total assets by the 2015 Paris UN
climate negotiations. Since then, the total combined assets of those
committing to divest has increased, fifty-fold, expanding in scope
and scale in ways no one fully anticipated.

****************************************************

CSIR projects drastic temperature increase over Africa

11 September 2015

CSIR climate modellers believe that 2015 is on its way to be the
warmest year ever recorded. This is partially due to climate-change,
and partially due to a massive El Nino event currently developing in
the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures over subtropical southern Africa
have risen at more than twice the global rate over the last five
decades.

Moreover, further warming of between 4 – 6 degrees C over the
subtropics and 3 – 5 degrees C over the tropics are projected by the
end of the century under low mitigation, relative to the present-day
climate. This was revealed in a CSIR study using a regional climate
model integrated on a powerful computer-cluster at its Centre for
High Performance Computing (CHPC), to obtain detailed projections of
future climate change over Africa.

This study comes ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP 21),
due to take place in Paris, France in November 2015. This meeting
aims to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on
climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees C.

“If the negotiations fail to ensure a high-mitigation future, we are
likely to see rapidly rising surface temperature across the
continent,” says Dr Francois Engelbrecht, CSIR Principal Researcher
and leader of the study entitled, “Projections of rapidly rising
surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation.”

Africa is particularly vulnerable to excessive temperature increases
due to the continent’s dependence on subsistence farming and rain-
fed agriculture. “For many regions, the impact of temperature
increases on the agricultural and biodiversity sectors may be
significant, stemming from temperature-related extreme events such
as heat-waves, wild fires and agricultural drought,” explains Dr
Engelbrecht.

Heatwaves are rare events over Africa under present day conditions.
The highest number of heat wave days occurs over the Limpopo river
basin region in southern Africa, the eastern interior and east coast
regions of South Africa and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa.
Drastic increased occurrences of heat wave days may be expected
across the continent under climate change, contributing to decreased
maize crop yield through the exceedance of critical temperature
thresholds increases in livestock mortality and adverse impacts on
human health. If a heat wave occurs during a drought, which dries
out vegetation, it can contribute to bushfires and wildfires.
Wildfires cause large financial losses to agriculture, livestock
production and forestry in Africa on an annual basis.

“Globally, Africa is the single largest source of biomass burning
emissions,” says Engelbrecht. “It is very important to understand
the impacts of increasing occurrences of fires on the African
savannas, as well as potential feedbacks to the regional and global
climate system”. Moreover, Engelbrecht and his co-authors point out
in the paper that general reductions in soil-moisture are plausible
to occur across the continent, as a result of enhanced evaporation
that occurs in response to increasing surface temperatures. “In the
subtropics, this effectively implies a longer burning season and a
shorter growing season”, says Engelbrecht.

Considering the fact that African temperatures in the subtropics are
projected to rise at 1.5 times the global rate of temperature
increase (an estimate that may be conservative) and the aim of the
upcoming UNFCCC negations seeking to keep global warming below 2
degrees C compared to pre-industrial temperatures – the Long Term
Global Goal (LTGG), Engelbrecht is of the opinion that the trends
and projections of rapidly rising African temperatures should be a
key consideration at the UNFCCC negotiations. “The relatively high
rate of temperature increases over Africa should be considered when
deciding on the suitability of the LTGG of the UNFCCC in terms of
climate-change impacts in Africa” Under low mitigation, the world is
likely to experience an increase in global average surface
temperature of 3 degrees C or more, and the relatively strong
temperature signal over Africa is of particular concern within this
context.”

The full paper, which has been published in Environmental Research
Letters, is available here: http://tinyurl.com/qxlzq59

***************************************************

“M-KOPA Solar connects 250,000 homes to power in East Africa”

Daily Nation, September 23, 2015

http://www.nation.co.ke – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/oyof6hz

In Summary

M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.

Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.

The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phone-
charging facility and a chargeable radio.

By Edwin Okoth

A local ‘pay-as-you-go’ off grid energy provider has announced
connecting 250,000 homes across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to a
solar power system.

M-Kopa Solar which provides payment plan for supply of a solar
lighting system, a radio and phone charging apparatus said the
achievement was in line with its target to connect one million
customers by 2018 to its solar power systems.

The firm’s Managing Director and Co-Founder Jesse Moore said the
growth in connected customers was satisfactory as the region renewed
focus on renewable energy.

“Last September we celebrated 100,000 customers, and a year later we
are already at a quarter-million. With hundreds of great customers
coming on board every day, we are helping East Africa leapfrog over
the grid to enjoy cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable solar power,”
Mr Moore said.

Off-Grid Solar Power

Kenya is emerging as a hotspot for off-grid solar power.

A 2014 study by M-KOPA Solar and InterMedia shows that 14 per cent
of the surveyed population use solar as their primary lighting and
charging source.

M-KOPA is one of the fastest growing power providers in the region,
connecting solar to over 500 new homes each day.

The battery-powered 8W home system has three lights, a phone-
charging facility and a chargeable radio.

The savings generated by using off grid solar over kerosene are said
to be substantial for individual households and the broader East
African economy.

Alex Nduati, an Athi river resident became the plan’s 250,000th
customer when he purchased an M-KOPA III solar home system.

“I am so excited to take home a solar system that will give me much
more value than kerosene, and with M-KOPA’s daily payment plan it is
affordable for me. I purchased this system for my rural home where
there is no access to electricity,” Mr Nduati said.

Each M-KOPA Solar home is calculated to save $750, compared to using
kerosene over a four-year period.

This means that the combined projected savings by the 250,000
households using M-KOPA Solar is $187 Million.

The Nairobi-headquartered, M-KOPA Solar now has a network of over
1,500 direct sales agents and 100 customer service centres across
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

*****************************************************

Africa/Global: Climate Change Roundup

worker | August 3, 2015 | 12:49 pm | Africa, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
August 3, 2015 (150803)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Coal is the most damaging of fossil fuels, both for human health and
for the planet. Although it still dominates in some countries,
including South Africa, the case against coal is rapidly gaining
ground around the world. On business grounds as well, coal is losing
its competitive advantage. 2015, many are suggesting, may be the
beginning of the end for coal.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1508.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1508.php

President Obama’s just released Clean Power Plan, if implemented,
will accelerate the rate of closure of coal plants in the United
States. Even the world’s largest producer of coal, China, is
reducing its coal imports and has started to curb its
overwhelming dependence on coal for industrial growth.

Yet these efforts, and the sum of commitments on reducing carbon
emissions made by countries before the Paris climate change summit
this December, still fall short of that needed to protect the planet
as well as the health of those affected by air pollution.

Just released on web: “Must-watch” 1/2 hour video from GroundWork
(South Africa) and Friends of the Earth. “The Bliss of Ignorance” –
on damage to health and environment from South Africa’s addiction to
coal. View at https://vimeo.com/111593436

This AfricaFocus contains a roundup of AfricaFocus Bulletins over
the the last year on climate change and the environment, covering a
range of topics related to this issue, including the divestment
movement, progress in renewable energy, the still enormous gap
between international rhetoric and action in both financing and
action to stem climate justice, and the disproportionate effects of
failure to act on Africa in particular.

For more on “The End of Coal?,” see the Storify compilation of links
by AfricaFocus Bulletin: https://storify.com/wminter/the-end-of-coal

Other recent articles of interest:

“Fact Sheet: President Obama to Announce Historic Carbon Pollution
Standards for Power Plants,” White House, August 3, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/nzjl5qh

Washington Post, August 2, 2015 – summary preview of Obama Clean
Power Plan, including limits on coal emissions
http://tinyurl.com/nmggmuw

Munyaradzi Makoni, “One Tune, Different Hymns â€“ Tackling Climate
Change in South Africa,” Inter Press Service, August 2, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/o8oxt2a

“Can technology free developing countries from light poverty?,” The
Guardian, July 30, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/oj3ybw7

Kofi Annan on CNN: “Africa does little to pollute our world, but
will pay the highest price,” Augusst 3, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/ng3h8bj

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Announcement

AfricaFocus Bulletin publication break. Publication will resume in
early September. Website, Facebook page (
http://www.facebook.com/AfricaFocus), and other social media will
continue to be updated occasionally during the break.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

AfricaFocus Bulletin: Climate Change and the Environment

For updated page visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php.

Talking Points

* Global warming and environmental damage from the fossil-fuel
industry already affect all of us, although responsibility lies
primarily with the rich industrialized countries and the newly
industrializing powers. Africa is the most vulnerable continent, but
extreme weather and sea-level rise have hit New Orleans and New
Jersey as well as Lagos.

* When industries make decisions based on short-term profits,
encouraged by government subsidies to established industries, they
systematically discount damages from “externalities.” Visible
results include the devastation of oil-producing areas in the Niger
Delta and of coal-producing areas, whether in South Africa or West
Virginia. The longer-term consequences in rising temperatures and
more extreme weather will be even more devastating.

* Action to combat climate change depends in part on decisions made
in international conferences, where the primary obstacles to action
are the rich countries and the newly industrializing powers. But
efforts at many other levels are also of decisive importance.
Fossil-fuel divestment campaigns, as they grow and multiply, can
affect investment choices. So can technological innovation. Notably,
clean energy can already be more cost-effective than large-scale
fossil fuel plants in supplying distributed energy access to Africa.

Bulletins on climate change and the environment

August 2014 – July 2015

July 6, 2015Â Africa/Global: People’s Test on Climate
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php

With less than six months before this year’s UN Climate Change
conference in Paris, it is clear that commitments by governments to
action on climate change will fall short of that necessary to keep
global warming under the internationally agreed target of 2 degrees
Celsius, despite recent new pledges by the United States, Brazil,
and China (http://tinyurl.com/qhtfdk9; http://tinyurl.com/q8g3srl).
But, beyond national governments, there are signs of growing
momentum for more rapid “transformational” action. Particularly
notable is the recognition that such action must simultaneously
address economic inequality and development as well as the natural
environment.

May 18, 2015Â Africa/Global: Decarbonizing Development?
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/wb1505.php

Decarbonizing Development, a new report from the World Bank, lays
out a target of “zero carbon future” by the end of the century. The
target year goal is the most conservative of the options laid out
for negotiations in the climate summit in Paris in December. Such a
long transition can rightly be criticized by climate activists and
scientists as falling far short, as can the Bank’s own record of
continued support for fossil fuels implicitly faulted in this
report.

May 5, 2015Â Africa/Global: Renewables Gaining Ground
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/ren1505.php

“A key feature of 2014 was the continuing spread of renewable energy
to new markets. Investment in developing countries, at $131.3
billion, was up 36% on the previous year and came the closest ever
to overhauling the total for developed economies, at $138.9 billion,
up just 3% on the year. Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, Kenya, South
Africa and Turkey were all in the billion-dollar-plus club in 2014
in terms of investment in renewables.” – UNEP / Bloomberg New Energy
Finance

March 30, 2015Â South Africa: Energy Futures Contested
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sa1503.php

The energy crisis in South Africa, with regular “load-shedding” due
to shortages of power from the monopoly utility Eskom, is now at the
top of the political agenda, featuring in President Jacob Zuma’s
State of the Nation Address in February and in ongoing disputes
about who is responsible and when the situation can be fixed. The
long-term strategy to exit the crisis and begin a transition to a
sustainable energy system is also marked by strong disagreements
between utility and government officials and their critics.

March 10, 2015Â Africa/Global: Falling Short on Climate Finance
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1503.php

Africa, the continent with warming deviating most rapidly from
“normal” conditions, could see climate change adaptation costs rise
to US$50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming international
efforts keep global warming below 2 degrees C this century,
according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
report.

March 3, 2015Â East Africa: Water, Wind, and Lake Turkana
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/turk1503.php

Lake Turkana, in the far northwest of Kenya and extending over the
border into Ethiopia, is the world’s largest desert lake, in a
region that is central to archaeological investigation into the
origin of humanity. It is now also central to two different projects
for expanding renewable energy due to come on-line in the next three
years, one based on hydropower and the other on wind. While both
will significantly expand the input to the East African power grid,
critics charge that expansion of hydropower on Ethiopia’s Omo River
also poses serious threats to the livelihood of local people both
around Lake Turkana and upstream along the Omo River.

February 11, 2015Â Africa/Global: Archbishop Tutu on Fossil-Fuel
Divestment http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1502.php

“The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights
challenge of our time. … The most devastating effects are visited
on the poor, those with no involvement in creating the problem. A
deep injustice. Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who
conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and
abetting an immoral system, today we say nobody should profit from
the rising temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the
burning of fossil fuels.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

December 15, 2014Â Africa/Global: Postponing Climate Decisions
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1412.php

“It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy
in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the
climate crisis. … In the wake of the climate disaster that was
Hurricane Katrina almost ten years ago, I saw the same images of
police, pointing war-zone weapons at unarmed black people with their
hands in the air. … When crisis hits, the underlying racism in our
society comes to the surface in very clear ways.” – Deirdre Smith,
350.org, August 20, 2014

November 11, 2014Â Africa/Global: Fossil-Fuel Divestment Growing
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411b.php

The latest international scientific statement on the disastrous and
potentially irreversible damage from climate change is unambiguous,
as is the imperative for drastic action to curb greenhouse gas
emissions. But political obstacles to moving from rhetoric to action
are virtually unchanged, despite massive demonstrations coinciding
with the UN climate summit in late September. The dispersed fossil-
fuel divestment movement, however, although still too small to curb
the industry, is growing rapidly.

November 11, 2014Â Africa/Global: Climate Change Summary Report
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411a.php

“The world’s top scientists and governments have issued their
bluntest plea yet to the world: Slash carbon pollution now (at a
very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts
for people and ecosystems.’ Scientists have ‘high confidence’ these
devastating impacts occur ‘even with adaptation’ — if we keep doing
little or nothing.” – Joe Romm, Editor, Climate Progress

September 22, 2014Â Africa: Climate Action & Economic Growth
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1409.php

It is still conventional wisdom to pit action to curb climate change
against economic growth. But the evidence is rapidly accumulating
that this is a false dilemma, buttressed by vested interests in the
fossil fuel industry and a simplistic concept of economic growth.
According to a report just released by the Global Commission on the
Economy and Climate, falling prices for renewable energy and careful
analysis of both costs and benefits of low-carbon vs. high-carbon
investment strategies point to a clear conclusion: saving the planet
and saving the economy go hand in hand.

August 18, 2014Â Africa: From Kerosene to Solar
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/sol1408.php

The largest marketer of solar lamps in Africa, which recently passed
the one million mark in lamps sold, has set an ambitious target for
the industry. “Our mission is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from
Africa by the end of this decade,” proclaims Solar Aid. Although
achieving this goal would require the pico-solar market to emulate
mobile phone industry’s exponential growth path, it may not be as
utopian as it sounds. According to market research company Navigant
Research, “Off-grid solar lighting for base of the pyramid (BOP)
markets, the leading solar PV consumer product segment, is
transitioning from a humanitarian aspiration to big business.”

*****************************************************

USA/Africa: Obama Visit Roundup

worker | July 29, 2015 | 8:21 pm | Africa, environmental crisis, Health Care | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 29, 2015 (150729)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

In analyzing high-profile presidential visits, it is difficult to
sort out symbolism from substance in the sheer volume of news
coverage and commentary. And despite the flurry of announcement of
“deals” at each stop, the main lines of policy are rarely altered
and often reflect continuity not only within one presidential
administration but also from one administration to another. The
content of private conversations of lower-level officials as well as
others involved in the visits may be just as significant as the
formal meetings of presidents. Even more significant may be the
issues not discussed because common assumptions go unquestioned on
both sides.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/usaf1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/usaf1507.php

As regular readers know, AfricaFocus seeks to select and repost
particularly insightful news and commentary that readers might not
have seen elsewhere. With such a visible event, that is difficult.
The “news” is available to anyone who has internet access and is
paying attention. And almost all the commentary is predictable and
repetitive.

So this issue of AfricaFocus is different, and consists primarily of
links for readers to explore as they wish, to supplement what they
have already seen or read.

I have included (1) links to the speeches that seemed to me most
significant, (2) suggestions for custom google searches that might
turn up a wide variety of other sources, (3) links to a few
commentaries, including audio from radio programs in which your
editor was included, and (4) links to previous AfricaFocus Bulletins
covering questions that were “off the radar screen” in the visit as
well as in media commentary.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

President Obama’s Speeches

Among the speeches and other events made available by the White
House in video form or transcripts, these stand out, particularly
the first. Unfortunately neither the introduction by his sister in
Kenya nor the remarks by African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini
Zuma were kept on-line by the White House, although they were
available in the live webcast.

President Obama’s Speech to Kenyan People, July 26, 2015
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Kw9YnNXJk
Transcript: http://tinyurl.com/qbh23t9

President Obama’s Speech to African Union, July 28, 2015
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNife3N3X0Q
Transcript: http://allafrica.com/stories/201507281847.html

Custom Google Searches

Note: With the “site:” operator, one can limit a google search to a
single website or to all websites with the same country code, to get
a better idea of how an event or a topic is covered. Some examples
for President Obama’s trip include these, including the two
principal international organizations focusing on human rights
issues:

* Obama visit to Africa 2015
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:nytimes.com
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:amnesty.org
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:hrw.org
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:allafrica.com (includes many
articles from African press)
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:saharareporters.com
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:.keÂ (from websites in Kenya)
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:.et (from websites in Ethiopia)
search web not news since .et not well-represented in news)

Additional country codes can be found at
http://www.web-l.com/country-codes/

Several short articles I found worth noting:

Simon Allison, “Barack Obama’s convenient truths,” Daily Maverick,
July 27, 2015
Oped: http://tinyurl.com/o64s46p

Simon Allison, “Obama at the African Union,” Daily Maverick, July
28, 2015
News: http://tinyurl.com/oduwce4

Hassen Hussein, “What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy?,” Al
Jazeera,
July 28, 2015
Opinion: http://tinyurl.com/ne2f28y

Paul Korin, “A visit of firsts, but Obama’s Africa policy mostly
symbolic,” Globe and Mail, July 28, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/pnj3sp6

Audio of radio interviews in which I participated:

KPFA Sunday Show, July 26, 2015, 1st hour, interview with William
Minter, Editor, AfricaFocus Bulletin
Audio: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=210725

KPFA Upfront, July 27, 2015
Horace Campbell, Syracuse University and William Minter, Editor,
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Audio: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=211164 (start at 34 minutes)

WPFW, July 29, 2015 1pm-2pm Eastern US time – Mwiza Munthali with
Nii Akuetteh and William Minter – will be live at
http://www.wpfwfm.org/radio/
and later archived at
http://www.wpfwfm.org/radio/programming/archived-shows

Aspects of Topics Avoided, with some links to previous AfricaFocus
Bulletins

* On Counter-Terrorism

With the exception of President Obama’s diplomatic critique of
Kenyan and Ethiopian use of the threat of terrorism as an excuse
human rights violations, there was little reference to other
critiques of the policies of USA, Kenya and Ethiopia.Â For
alternative views, see in particular the background history and
commentary on the USA, Kenya, and Ethiopian involvement in Somalia
at http://www.africafocus.org/country/somalia.php, particularly
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/gar1504.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/som1502.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/som1108.php, and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs07/som0701a.php

* On Corruption & “Illicit Financial Flows”

While President Obama spoke eloquently about corruption in Africa,
and briefly mentioned “illicit financial flows” in response to a
remark by African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, there
was clearly no recognition of the critical role played by
multilateral institutions in the United States and the international
financial system more generally in extracting capital from Africa.
For coverage of this, see, in particular, the recent
AfricaFocus Bulletin on “Stop the Bleeding”
(http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1507.php) as well as previous
AfricaFocus Bulletins on related issues
(http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php)

See also the July 27 article by Soren Ambrose of ActionAid
International, “Opinion: Developing Nations Set to Challenge Rich
Ahead of SDG [Sustainable Development Goals] Summit,”
http://tinyurl.com/nr7po7g

* On Economic Policy

Despite brief mentions of the need to address inequality and jobs,
the dominant assumption in President Obama’s speeches was the
“trickle-down” theory that all “trade and investment” will
eventually pay off for all, and that the primary engine of growth is
the private sector. And while there was much mention in the press of
the competition between China and the United States, there was scant
mention, if any, of alternate African and global perspectives on
sustainable development strategies deviating from the dominant U.S.
market fundamentalism.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins including material on economic
growth and strategies, visit http://www.africafocus.org/econexp.php

* On Climate Change

Although there was much talk of “Power Africa,” the approach
paralleled the Obama administration’s domestic policy in its stance
toward fossil fuels and renewable energy, namely “all of the above.”
Despite brief references to off-the-grid and renewable energy, much
of the private investment to come under the “Power Africa” label is
likely to support traditional fossil fuels, particularly natural gas
power generation. And there were no new commitments to major
increases in global funding to support climate change mitigation.

For a wider discussion of these issues in previous AfricaFocus
Bulletins, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

* On Health

In spite of token references to AIDS and Ebola, the visit did not
focus major attention on health challenges, including the need for
adequate financing for major investments in public health

See http://www.africafocus.org/intro-health.php for AfricaFocus
talking points and previous Bulletins.

*****************************************************

Africa/Global: “Stop The Bleeding”

worker | July 24, 2015 | 8:04 pm | Africa, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 21, 2015 (150721)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

With the exception of inclusion of a statement promising to address
“illicit financial flows,” the outcome document of the Financing for
Development conference in Addis Ababa (July 13-16) broke little new
ground. Significantly, rich countries vetoed action on a greater
role for the United Nations in setting international tax standards,
preserving that role for the club of the OECD countries dominated by
the United States and Europe. But civil society momentum for more
significant action is continuing to grow, as was marked by the
launch of the “Stop The Bleeding” campaign at a continent-wide
gathering in Nairobi in June.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1507.php

As noted in previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on illicit financial
flows and tax justice (http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php),
there is strong momentum for African countries to take action to
curb the $50 to $60 billion a year outflow of capital due to clearly
illegal trade fraud and other financial crime. Campaigners for tax
justice point out, however, that even legal economic measures such
as ill-advised tax incentives also bleed African economies of
resources. Depending on how it is defined, “illicit,” it should be
noted, can include not only “illegal” flows, but also “illegitimate”
flows which are even harder to track and combat.

The “Stop the Bleeding” campaign is intended to build public support
and pressure for action on these drains of resources from Africa. It
is a joint effort of the Tax Justice Network-Africa, Third World
Network-Africa, Africa Forum and Network on Debt and Development
(AFRODAD), the African Womenâ€™s Development and Communication Network
(FEMNET), the African Regional Organisation of the International
Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) and Trust Africa, supported
and joined by the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, including
international partners such as ActionAid, Oxfam, and Public Services
International. For more, see
http://stopthebleedingafrica.org/ and, for frequent updates,
https://twitter.com/stop_AfricaIFFs

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains (1) An article on the
#StopTheBleeding campaign by Alvin Mosioma, Executive Director of
Tax Justice Network-Africa, (2) a reflection by your editor on the
different meanings of “illicit financial flows,” (3) two reactions
by civil society organizations to the failure of the Addis
conference to endorse a global tax body with universal membership to
set standards to block tax evasion and tax avoidance, and (4) links
to specific examples of illicit financial flows from previous issues
of AfricaFocus Bulletin.

A few additional links on the Addis conference:

Official conference website
http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ffd3/

IRIN, “Do #summits solve problems?”, July 16, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/qjv4pox

Quartz, “Rich countries rejected an international plan to let the UN
help fight tax evasion,” July 15, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/qzlpfuq

Global Financial Integrity and Jubilee USA, July 15, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/oobrons

Women’s Working Group, July 16, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/nbajbmy

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

#StopTheBleeding?: Kenya, East Africa’s economic powerhouse is
bleeding

By Alvin Mosioma
Business Daily (Nairobi), June 24, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/o8ulcmc

Alvin Mosioma, is Executive Director of Tax Justice Network-Africa,
a Pan-African research and advocacy organization based in Nairobi,
Kenya.

Between 2002 and 2011 East Africa’s powerhouse lost at least KSh151
billion (US$1.51 billion) to trade misinvoicing, which is where
companies deliberately cheat how much they are selling abroad.
Companies do this to evade taxes, avoid customs duties, transfer a
kickback or launder money. That is three times the country’s
national health budget. The losses are equivalent to about 8.3 per
cent of government’s total revenue.

And Kenya is not alone, according to a newly published report from
the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa High Level
Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, the continent loses at
least KSh 5,000 billion (US$50 billion) each year. This could build
151,000 modern schools in just one year.

Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) is bigger than just misinvoicing.
They are defined as money that is illegally earned, transferred or
utilized. These funds originate from three main sources, commercial
activities (tax evasion, trade misinvoicing and abusive transfer
pricing); criminal activities (including the drug trade, human
trafficking, illegal arms dealing, and smuggling of contraband); and
corruption by government officials. Of the three types, aggressive
tax practices by the commercial sector particularly multinational
companies operating in Africa’s mining, oil and gas sector
constitute the worst offenders.

Kenya is one of six countries which the High Level Panel conducted
in-depth case studies for its groundbreaking report. The others were
Algeria, DR Congo, Liberia, Mozambique and Nigeria. The Panel also
visited Mauritius as a representative of a small island economy and
South Africa to gain understanding of how institutions and processes
in Africa’s second largest economy are geared to addressing illicit
financial flows.

In addition to IFFs, Kenya loses over KSh100 billion (US$1.1
billion) each year from legitimate tax incentives and exemptions
granted to multinational companies. Of these, trade-related tax
incentives were at least KSh12 billion (US$120 million) in 2007 and
2008.

In 2010/11, the Kenyan government spent more than twice the
country’s health budget in tax incentives. Can we really afford this
when 46 per cent of Kenya’s 40 million people live in poverty (less
than US$1.25 a day)?

Many studies including from the African Department of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), focusing on East Africa, state
that “investment incentives â€“ particularly tax incentives â€“ are not
an important factor in attracting foreign investment”.

Another recent study found that the main reasons for companies
investing in Kenya are access to the local and regional markets,
political and economic stability and favourable bilateral trade
agreements, fiscal concessions offered by EPZs were mentioned by
only one (1%) per cent of the businesses sampled. They are an
expense Kenya can do without.

The multiplier effects of these losses are much larger. IFFs and
other outflows in real terms mean loss of jobs, income, decent
education and health facilities and other basic infrastructure
critical to structurally transform Kenya’s economy and the socio-
economic conditions of the average citizen.

It is against this backdrop that the Interim Working Group of the
“Stop The Bleeding” Africa IFF Platform comprising six large Pan-
African organisations namely Tax Justice Network-Africa (TJN-A),
Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Af), the African Forum and Network
on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), the African Women’s Development
and Communications Network (FEMNET), the African Regional
Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-
Africa) and Trust Africa supported and joined by the Global Alliance
for Tax Justice (GATJ) launched a unified African campaign platform
on IFFs.

Dubbed “Stop The Bleeding” (Hash tag #StopTheBleeding) campaign, the
launch took place on June 25, 2015 at Uhuru Park, in Nairobi.
The main goal of the campaign is to stop IFFs from Africa through
first the implementation of the recommendations of the HLP report by
all African countries through enactment and enforcement of
appropriate laws to curtail IFFs from Africa. The aim of the launch
is to implement a unified Africa campaign on IFFs that is led and
driven by African civil society organisations with support from
other partners including international NGOs.

Today there is a consensus of the damaging impact of IFFs on
Africa’s economies and the continent’s future between our
governments and civil society. But ultimately ending illicit
financial flows is a political problem, not least because of the
issues, the nature of actors involved, the international character
of the phenomenon and ultimately the corrosive and crippling effects
of IFF on the state and society.

We therefore urge our leaders to adopt measures to curb the
haemorrhaging of Africa’s resources, harness these resources and
invest them in the productive sectors of their economies to improve
living conditions on the continent.

*****************************************************

Defining Illicit Financial Flows

AfricaFocus Bulletin, July 21, 2015

“Illicit financial flows” out of Africa are estimated to exceed $50
billion a year, the most commonly used estimate coming from Global
Financial Integrity and the African Union High Level Panel on
Illicit Financial Flows from Africa. This is roughly equivalent to
the annual total of official development assistance to Africa.

This is a minimum estimate for illicit financial flows, based on
indirect calculations from global statistics. It also relies on the
most restrictive definition of the term, namely funds transferred
across national boundaries that are “illegally earned, transferred,
or utilized,” that is, “illicit” in the sense of “illegal.”

The term “illicit” can actually have two meanings according to most
dictionaries:
(1) not allowed by the law or
(2) not approved of by the normal rules of society
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/learner/illicit).

In practice the lack of transparency makes it difficult to
distinguish between the two in many if not most cases. Actions that
are clearly illegal, such as fraud in customs declarations to evade
taxes (trade misinvoicing), are among the easiest to track and to
combat, if national tax authorities are adequately equipped to do
so.

But for financial arrangements within a multinational corporation or
agreements between such corporations and governments on terms of an
investment, information needed to determine whether such
transactions are illegal, legal but illegitimate, or legitimate is
rarely available for public scrutiny or for adequate government
regulation.

So in practice financial flows between countries fall into four
categories:
(1) illicit because clearly illegal,
(2) clearly illegitimate because there is enough information is
available to show that they would be regarded as such according to
“normal rules of society,”
(3) clearly legitimate because there is enough information is
available to show that they would be regarded as such according to
“normal rules of society,” or, finally,
(4) hard to tell or debatable because there is not enough
information or there is disagreement on what the law is or what
“normal rules of society” should be.

The same difficulties apply within countries, in distinguishing
between (1) tax evasion, which is clearly illegal, and (2) tax
avoidance, which may be legal but would be regarded as illegitimate
if the facts were known. In addition, of course, laws or their
interpretations can be changed, often as a result of lobbying by
interested parties.

Such distinctions were highlighted by U.S. political cartoonist Tom
Toles in 1993. In the cartoon Russian President Yeltsin tells Uncle
Sam:Â “We’re having problems switching to capitalism. The trouble is
that all our capitalists are criminals, breaking our laws.” And
Uncle Sam replies: “That’s just an early stage of capitalism.
Eventually they become powerful enough to rewrite the laws.”

*****************************************************

Global Alliance for Tax Justice, “Financing for Development outcome
rejects a key tax justice measure for ending poverty and
inequality,” July 16, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/njhew6z

On 15 July 2015, at a summit of world government representatives in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Third International Conference on
Financing for Development final outcome text was concluded. A key
proposal was rejected to set up an inclusive United Nations
intergovernmental global tax body, where every country would have a
seat at the table and equal say in reforming global tax policies.
This measure had been advocated by many G77 countries and strongly
backed by Global Alliance for Tax Justice members and allies.
Establishing such a political body on tax within the UN was seen as
an effective way to ensure developing countries could increase
domestic resource mobilization through fairer international tax
policies.

Instead, only a few minor tweaks have been made to the existing UN
expert committee. The United States and the United Kingdom were
among the developed countries pressuring to ensure that the “the
rich countries club” of the OECD remains the only intergovernmental
body that sets global tax standards for all.

No specific debt relief initiatives are contained in the FfD outcome
document, while privatization and private finance are heavily
promoted as ‘solutions’ to financing for development. The problem of
illicit financial flows was strongly debated, but final language
around the issue remains weak, with no clear measures for
implementation. Member states are simply urged to “redouble efforts
to substantially reduce illicit financial flows by 2030, with a view
to eventually eliminate them, including by combatting tax evasion
and corruption through strengthened national regulation and
increased international cooperation.”

Global Alliance for Tax Justice Chair Dereje Alemayehu said: “This
came down to a matter of power between rich and poor, developed
countries and the rest of the world, and private corporate interests
versus the common good. The most powerful countries have ensured the
status quo continues in their favour â€“ but only for the moment. Tax
justice activists can take heart that our years of advocacy,
research and campaigning have ensured that mobilization for real
progressive change on these issues will only continue to grow at
national, regional and global levels.”

During various FfD events, Independent Commission for the Reform of
International Corporate Taxation members JosÃ© Antonio Ocampo, Joseph
Stiglitz and Eva Joly, UN Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean Executive Secretary Alicia BÃ¡rcena, UN Economic
Commission for Africa Executive Secretary Carlos Lopes, former South
African president Thabo Mbeki, and even the World Bank’s President
Jim Yong Kim commended civil society activists for pushing tax
justice demands â€“ including the call for an inclusive global tax
body, to the top of the agenda in both formal and behind-the-scenes
Financing for Development discussions, and urged civil society to
continue efforts on this front.

********************************************************************

Failure in Addis Ababa: trouble ahead for development

Financial Transparency Coalition
July 15, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/oqbx6p5

Tonight, the Addis Ababa outcome was closed. The final outcome
rejects the proposal of establishing an intergovernmental UN body on
tax matters, and instead introduces some minor changes to the
existing UN expert committee. This means that the OECD will remain
the only intergovernmental body that adopts global standards on tax
matters.

“This is not only a tragic day for the world’s developing countries,
who will now have to accept that global tax standards will get
decided in a closed room where they are not welcome. It is a tragic
day for all of us, because a global tax system where half of the
world’s countries are excluded from decision-making will never be
effective. As long as our governments keep failing to cooperate on
tax matters, multinational corporations will be able to dodge taxes.
At the end of the day, the Addis Ababa failure will impact us all.”

“This came down to power,” said Alvin Mosioma. “The powerful simply
did not want to cede one ounce of their authority to the rest of the
world, and they succeeded in preserving their control.”

“Developing countries have fought hard for this body but today’s
agreement will do nothing but keep them in a patronizing system
where a group of 34 countries hold all of the power,” said Pooja
Rangaprasad of the Financial Transparency Coalition. “Rich countries
decided to maintain a system where money goes from south to north,
but the rules follow the opposite route.”

“This is a dangerous failure of multilateralism and a triumph for a
few, said Jorge Coranado,” President of the Latin American Network
on Debt, Development and Rights. “The agreement will simply continue
to allow the powerful to dictate rules for the entire globe.”

“Developing countries, including a number from Latin America, made
their voice heard on the need for a democratic process,” said Jorge
Coranado, President of Latin American Network on Debt Development
and Rights. “But rich countries and their multinationals decided
there would be no room for them.”

“It was a painful moment to see the developed countries celebrating
the fact that nothing will change and everything will remain the
same,” added Ryding. “This sets a terrible precedent for the
post-2015 and climate negotiations. This was never a negotiation in
good faith, and the developed countries have consistently refused to
even discuss the issues on the table.”

***************************************************************

A Few Examples of Illicit Financial Flows cited inÂ AfricaFocus
Bulletins, 2013-2015

Note: With the exception of trade misinvoicing, which is by
definition illegal, in most of these examples, it is not clear,
without both more information and detailed expertise on the laws in
different laws, what portion of the financial flows are “illegal”
and how much are “only illegitimate.”

Lonmin in South Africa

June 30, 2015Â South Africa: Marikana Perspectives, 2
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506b.php

Philia (oil) in Congo (Brazzaville)

March 23, 2015Â Africa/Global: Swiss Connections
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1503.php

Mining companies in Sierra Leone

January 6, 2015Â Sierra Leone: Losing Out
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sl1501.php

Swiss oil trading companies

September 16, 2014Â Africa: Tracing the Oil Money
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/oil1409.php

Equatorial Guinea

August 11, 2014Â Africa: Investment for Whom?
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/iff1408.php

South African diamonds

June 1, 2014Â South Africa: Disappearing Diamond Revenue
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/dia1406.php

Trade Mis-Invoicing

May 26, 2014Â Africa: Fraudulent Trade & Tax Evasion
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/iff1405.php

Fisheries & Forests

May 12, 2014Â Africa: Report Highlights Resource Plunder
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/app1405.php

Nigeria Oil

March 25, 2014Â Nigeria: Corruption & Its International Partners
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/nig1403.php

Tax Havens

May 31, 2013Â Africa/Global: Rich Without Borders
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/tax1305.php

Tax Havens

Apr 11, 2013Â Nigeria: #Offshoreleaks
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/tax1304.php

Zambia Sugar

Feb 15 2013Â Zambia/Global: The Price of Tax Avoidance
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/tax1302.php

*****************************************************

Over a Million People Literate in Angola Due to Cuban Method

worker | July 7, 2015 | 8:35 pm | Africa, Cuba, political struggle | Comments closed

ByÂ Yadira Olivera RodrÃguez
July 3,Â Â 2015

Luanda, AngolaÂ (Prensa Latina) A total of 1,139,729 Angolans were literate from 2012 until today with the Cuban teaching method “Yo si puedo” (“Yes, I can”), with the coordination of 42 advisers from the island. “Due to this result, Angola is the first African country to have over a million literate people using this method”, declared Alfredo DÃaz, CubanÂ advisor of the Angolan Ministry of Education. The program is used in 18 provinces inÂ Angola and in only 13 weeks, people who are over 15 learn to read and write. He added that it has been a policy of the Angolan government since 2012 to rehabilitate education in general, specially for adults and one of the main goals was to restore literacy. Cuban specialists advise Angolan facilitators who carry the main weight of the program execution applied in Haiti for the first time, and spread to 30Â other countries, using audio-visual media to support the teaching process. In addition, in 176 municipalities the results of the advisers are excelent, DÃaz declared. He highlighted the support offered by churchs, the Armed Forces, the Women Organization, the Ministry of Interior and Youth Training and the ruling party Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. This year the program is taken to prisons. In some provinces like Luanda, Bie and Huila, facilitators are inmates formed by Cubans. The Angolan Government wants 85 percent of the population registered as literate by 2025. In 2006 the Cuban literacyÂ method, “Yo si puedo” (“Yes, I can”),Â Â got the Sejong Award granted by Unesco.

Africa/Global: People’s Test on Climate

worker | July 6, 2015 | 8:09 pm | Africa, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 6, 2015 (150706)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php

This recognition is particularly relevant for Africa, where fossil-
fuel companies and much conventional wisdom have posed a false
dichotomy between development and the transition to renewable
energy, claiming that continued reliance on fossil fuels is
essential to promote economic development and address poverty. In
fact, the needed climate transition is imperative both for the sake
of the planet and for the sake of sustainable economic development
that benefits the majority of Africa’s population rather than only
foreign interests and local elites.

Such a broader perspective was featured in June, both in the widely
publicized encyclical by Pope Francis and in this year’s report from
the Africa Progress Panel headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, entitled “Power, Planet, and People” (
http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/). But it is also visible at many
other levels, includingÂ among multilateral agencies, civil society
groups, and many private-sector investors as well. And it is
reflected in practical terms in the rapid advances of renewable
energy on the ground, despite failures of governments and the
immense power of vested interests in fossil fuels and business as
usual.

Thus the Global Status Report on the status of renewable energies,
also released in June (http://www.ren21.net / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/p2uz9mk), noted an 8.5% increase in renewable
energy from 2013 to 2014 and, significantly, a “decoupling” of
positive economic growth (3%) from energy-related CO2 emissions,
which were unchanged in 2014 from 2013 levels.

Another key report released in June is the International Energy
Agency’s “World Energy Outlook Special Report 2015: Energy and
Climate Change” (http://www.iea.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qcpm3sd). This report evaluates the country
pledges to date, finding that these will not ensure a peak in
energy-related CO2 emissions by 2030. In contrast, it proposes a
“bridging” strategy that can reach such a peak turning point by
2020.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the “People’s Test on Climate”
statement by a wide range of international civil society groups,
including the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, as well as two
articles on (1) “off-grid” strategies for energy access and (2) the
rapid growth of windpower for the electric grid in South Africa,
where the existing coal-based strategy continues to demonstrate its
ineffectiveness to prevent energy shortages.

For more on the parallel “decline of coal,” see
https://storify.com/wminter/the-end-of-coal

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate change and the
environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

The People’s Test on Climate 2015

http://peoplestestonclimate.org/Â – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/oq3woz2

Nothing less than a systemic transformation of our societies, our
economies, and our world will suffice to solve the climate crisis
and close the ever-increasing inequality gap.

After over 20 years of stunted and ineffective action to reduce
climate pollution by governments — particularly in wealthy
countries that have failed to meet their legal and moral
responsibilities — only urgent and transformative and systemic
change that can address the root causes of the crisis and deliver
what is needed to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees
Celsius, the limit beyond which climate impacts will become
potentially catastrophic.

The urgency to keep temperatures down is not just about the planet
and the environment. It is about people, and our capacity as
humanity to secure safe and dignified lives for all.

As social movements, environmental non-governmental organizations,
trade unions and other civil society organizations with deep roots
in communities around the world struggling to cope with the climate
crisis, we take hope from the fact that while the scale of the
challenge is enormous, people already have solutions and
alternatives that work at the scale we need. From decentralized
community-owned renewable energy for mitigation, poverty reduction
and sustainable development, to agro-ecological methods for
adaptation, there already exists a wealth of proven ideas and
experience from which to build a global transformation — and it is
booming.

People’s demands and solutions are based in our vision of the world
that recognizes the need to live in harmony with nature, and to
guarantee the fulfillment of human rights for all, including those
of Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and workers.

These people’s solutions upset “business as usual” because they
must, in order to lead us towards a more equitable, just and
sustainable world — but for this very reason, they face serious
barriers. This is why the demands of our Southern people’s
movements, which represent the world’s communities that are most
vulnerable to climate impacts yet have had no role in creating the
problem, are so critical if we want a better, more just, and
sustainable society. These demands include, but are not limited to:

* Sustainable energy transformation — redirecting finance from
dirty energy to clean, affordable, reliable and safe renewable
energy, supporting people’s solutions including decentralized
community renewable energy systems, banning new dirty energy
projects, ensuring that access to clean, affordable, reliable and
safe renewable energy is a public good, reducing energy consumption
particularly by wealthy elites, and ensuring that reducing poverty
and achieving justice is prioritized throughout the transformation;

* The right to food and water — ensuring people’s access to water
and to land for climate resilient food production, stopping land
grabs and the ongoing conversion of land from food to commodities
like biofuels that are falsely presented as solutions to the climate
crisis, and supporting sustainable agro-ecology and climate
resilient food production systems;

* Justice for impacted people — securing and building the
resilience of impacted people including reparations for the world’s
impoverished and marginalized people who have no role in causing
climate change, yet whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by
its effects, supporting a just transition for workers into the new
environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive economy, and
supporting people- and community-driven adaptation and
rehabilitation solutions.

Securing our vision in a just and equitable manner cannot be left to
governments’ voluntary “good will.” Our governments are too heavily
influenced by the entrenched interests whose power, profits and
lifestyles would be impacted by the transformation. The poorest,
most vulnerable and worst impacted are often excluded entirely from
decision-making processes; for any just outcome, space must be
created for inclusive people’s participation in decision-making and
in implementation of those decisions at all levels.

With all that said, history is full of examples of people’s power
overcoming the power of a few narrow interests.

This year will bring governments back to the climate negotiations,
in Paris, to scale up climate action in the immediate short term,
and to agree upon a new global climate agreement to come into place
post-2020. When measured against the people’s demands above, as well
as the imperatives of science, the Paris Summit looks like it will
be very far from what is needed by people or the planet. Instead, it
risks legitimizing the current unjust and unsustainable balance of
power in favor of elites, while only making minor tweaks around the
margins of the status quo.

Yet the balance of power can and will change, because people across
the world are prepared to fight to protect their homes, their right
to energy, their right to food, and their right to a decent job.
That power can be mobilized to come together and make clear demands
of the Paris Summit, to force it to be a signal that the real
transformation we need has arrived.

To meet that test, the Paris Summit must:

* Catalyze immediate, urgent and drastic emission reductions — in
line with what science and equity require, deliver urgent short-term
actions, building towards a long-term goal that is agreed in Paris,
that shift us away from dirty energy, marking the beginning of the
end of fossil fuels globally, and that keep the global temperature
goal in reach;

* Provide adequate support for transformation — ensure that the
resources needed, such as public finance and technology transfer,
are provided to support the transformation, especially in vulnerable
and poor countries;

* Deliver justice for impacted people — enhance the support to
adaptation in a new climate regime, ensure that there will be a
separate mechanism to provide reparations for any loss and damage
that goes beyond our ability to adapt, and make a firm commitment to
secure workers’ livelihoods and jobs through a Just Transition; and

* Focus on transformational action — ensure that renewable and
efficient solutions are emphasized rather than false solutions that
fail to produce the results and protection we need, such as carbon
markets in land and soil, dangerous geoengineering interventions,
and more.

Governments and the Paris Summit outcome will be judged on this
fundamental litmus test. But Paris will not only be about a long
series of negotiations under the UNFCCC. Paris will not only be
about what our governments achieve — or fail to achieve. Paris will
also be the moment that demonstrates that delivering concrete
actions for the global transformation will come from people and not
our politicians.

We see Paris as a beginning rather than an end — an opportunity to
start connecting people’s demands for justice, equality, food, jobs,
and rights, and strengthen the movement in a way that will force
governments to listen and act in the interests of their people and
not in the vested interests of elites. Paris will launch us into
2016 as a year of action — a year when people’s demands and
people’s solutions take center stage.

Climate change needs our urgent commitment and action, in global
solidarity. We are continuing to hold corporate and political elites
accountable for their actions on climate change. And our numbers
will grow as the climate movement of movements becomes more and more
united and linked beyond the COP in Paris. We will encourage more
and more citizens to support people’s solutions. We will continue
our struggles at local, national, regional and global levels to
ensure that it is people that spearhead the just transformation of
our society.

Adriano Campolina, Chief Executive, ActionAid International

Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator, Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and
Development (APMDD)

Maria Teresa Hosse, Facilitator, Bolivian Platform for Climate
Action

Bernd Nilles, Secretary General, CIDSE (network of Catholic
development agencies)

Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/
Oil Watch

Jagoda Munic, Chair, Friends of the Earth International

Dr Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director, Greenpeace
International

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC)

Demba Dembele, President, LDC Watch (Least Developed Countries
Watch)

Carolina Amaya Tobar, Executive Director, Mesoamerican Campaign for
Climate Justice

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International

Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General, Pan African Climate and
Environmental Justice Alliance (PACJA)

May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org

******************************************************

Why Should Climate Philanthropy Care About Energy Access?

Justin Guay, Program Officer, Climate at Packard Foundation

Huffington Post, July 1, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/of4gm6a

Investing in clean energy access provides a disruptive opportunity
to revolutionize electricity systems and get on the right side of
the politics of development — philanthropy just hasn’t realized it
yet.

To be fair, philanthropy needs to step up its game on climate across
the board. Our investment is woeful — only 2 percent of all
philanthropic funds are devoted to transitioning to a clean energy
economy and staving off the worst impacts of climate. That’s why
some big name foundations are calling on their colleagues to step up
giving, and act on climate.

But it’s not just the sheer dollars that matter — it’s also how we
spend them. While we have a lot of work to do to be more strategic
one of our most glaring blindspots is energy access. To turn that
around someone needs to take the time to make the case that spending
scarce climate dollars on energy access will drive transformational
change. So let me give it a try.

Clean Energy Access Gets the Politics Right

For the more politically oriented amongst us let’s be overt – the
politics of climate at the global level are broken and they
contaminate everything. We need to proactively seek opportunities to
change those politics by aligning development and climate goals in
an explicit way. Supporting the entrepreneurs working to bring poor
rural communities their first energy services from clean energy
sources like solar home systems and mini-grids aligns renewable
energy with development. It means our solutions to climate are also
the solutions to poverty alleviation,not the obstacle it’s
historically been. With exciting new research from the World Bank
suggesting that distributed solar is also driving financial
inclusion we have the opportunity to invest in an intervention that
has cascading development benefits. All of which reframes our issue
in a powerful way: the world’s most advanced technology — clean,
distributed smart grids — are the most appropriate for the world’s
poor. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands this, that’s
why he promised solar, not coal, for all by 2019.

Clean Energy Access Is Disruptive

In the 21st century where mobile phones are ubiquituous no rural
villager demands, or expects, land line telephones. What’s more,
those villagers will increasingly demand access to more
sophisticated communications services like the internet via their
mobile devices. But they struggle to keep their phones charged
thanks to a lack of power which is causing Telecom companies and
their counterparts in the tech industry from Silicon Valley, giants
like Facebook and Google, to lead the drive to electrify the poor.
That constituency realizes the only way to quickly and cheaply power
those devices is not to wait for the centralized dumb grid — it’s
to quickly and nimbly deploy smart distributed generation. More
importantly, the companies leading this charge are doing it with a
potent mixture of mobile money financed distributed clean energy
solutions, super efficiency, and innovative pay-as-you-go business
models that deliver energy as a service. Ultimately, that creates a
clean distributed smart grid that serves the poor first, not last.
Meanwhile the rest of us deal with our 19th century dumb grids and
their entrenched dinosaurs who fend off the future by trying to tax
the sun while they fight for the right to continue to pollute our
air and water.

Clean Energy Access is Mitigation

You’ll notice that the direct mitigation piece of this puzzle comes
last. That’s because the politics and disruptive potential of these
interventions are the real selling point. But that’s not to say
there aren’t tons of C02 to be mitigated. Far from it. Take India
where 75 GW of Diesel gen sets are installed which form the
‘distributed reliability backbone’ to the notoriously unreliable
grid. That total is equivalent to half the country’s coal fleet
which is being added to at an incredible clip of 17 GW this year
alone. A consumption whose giant sucking sound evaporates the
country’s foreign reserves and decimates the rupee’s value.

But while diesel replacement is big, the far more interesting
opportunity lies in the super efficient appliances necessary to
wring services out of pico solar and their rebound effect for the
developed world. No, not that rebound effect — I’m talking about a
positive effect that makes super efficient TVs (7 watts in off grid
settings) the norm across the globe thanks to the sheer purchasing
power that 1.2 billion consumers wield. Just imagine the US congress
trying to justify appliance standards that are weaker than those in
Bangladesh and you get the sense of the disruptive impact super
efficiency could have on global appliance markets.

All said and done there is quite a case to be made for clean energy
access. But outside the admirable efforts of the Rockefeller
Foundation or the newly announced super efficient appliances work
supported by Climate Works this issue still largely remains under
the radar. It’s high time we seized this opportunity and asserted a
vision of the future that puts the needs of the poor first – by
building a clean energy future from the bottom up.

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South Africa: Wind Energy No Longer a Minor Player in SA

By Adam Wakefield

News24Wire, July 3, 2015

http://allafrica.com/stories/201507031961.html

Wind energy is around half of all renewable energy currently
produced in South Africa. As we lurch from one day of load shedding
to the next, the sector is showing no sign of losing speed, rather
the opposite.

Johan van den Berg, CEO of the SA Wind Energy Association, told
News24 in an interview that 2011 was the year government formally
introduced it into the energy sector, with commercial wind farm
construction beginning in 2013.

Today, wind power contributed around 740 megawatts (MW) of
electricity into the grid, “as a proportion of about 45 000 MW of
all power installed in South Africa”.

The average capacity factor for the entire fleet – as wind does not
blow consistently – is currently over 70%.

“In terms of energy delivered, South Africa produces about 2.5% of
what Denmark produces as a proportion of their ultimate electricity
usage. So there’s a lot of space for us to still improve,” said Van
Den Berg.

South Africa is a very large landmass, which is a very positive
starting point. Mapped winds indicated that certain parts of the
republic experienced very good winds by international standards.

“Almost everybody has agreed we can build a wind sector in excess of
20 000 MW and then it depends. You can pick a number somewhat or way
above that,” he says.

“20 000 MW is a big windy industry and from there, anything above
that, we will see where it goes. That equates to maybe 7 000 towers
and turbines ultimately, considering that the towers are getting
stronger and more powerful all the time.”

U shape of wind

The mapped wind of interest to the industry showed a U shape from
the south, starting 350km to 400km north and somewhat west of Cape
Town, running down the South African coastline to almost the edge of
the Transkei.

Winds were also found inland, somewhat surprisingly Van Den Berg
said, in the central Karoo.

“It’s a surprisingly good wind area… Bloemfontein will not be your
best place. Pretoria, I think, has the lowest wind speed in South
Africa.”

The second phase of the South African Wind Energy Programme (Sawep),
an initiative with the UN Development Programme which paid for the
mapping, has recently been approved. The rest of the country would
now be mapped, with Van Den Berg expecting some positive surprises.

An advantage of wind power was its relatively short up-time compared
to fossil or nuclear power generation.

It could take three to four years to be ready to bid, with an
environmental impact assessment taking a year and a half within that
period. This has already taken place with many wind projects at the
execution stage.

Wind measures are also done on site, with wind mast set-ups placed
at the same height as the intended turbine for a period of one to
two years.

“An international expert then comes and guarantees you a specific
output if you use a specific machine with a specific blade, and you
know exactly what you are going to get,” he said.

A giant is built

From bidding, the next phase moved to what is referred to as
financial closure, where construction begins.

“That can maybe be eight to nine months and thereafter, if it’s a
small wind farm, you build it in 12 to 14 months.”

Very large wind farms were being built in South Africa, “extremely
large by international standards”.

“We are generally building 130, 140 MW – 60 large turbines – and
that normally takes about 18 months, which is still the blink of an
eye compared to fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, that take 10 to
15 years.”

The turbines themselves were very big, though only around 5% of land
at a site or farm is used by the end of construction, including
infrastructure and roads. The rest remains available for use as it
was before.

Each turbine is approximately four to six blade lengths apart, with
the rectangular foundation being around 24 square metres in size.
Once covered, the base of the turbine itself is around 2×2 metres.

“There’s an anecdote about a farmer who assured the developer that
he had his workers ready to guard against theft when the blades
came, not appreciating that the blade is 50m long, and the diameter
100m, sometimes 117m,” Van Den Berg said with a smile.

“The tower is normally about double the height of the blade, so the
tower can be from 80m to 120m. It’s a large piece of infrastructure,
with the nacelle weighing around 120 tonnes.”

Boosting local communities

A feature of the local wind energy industry is how wind power
producers plough back a small percentage of their profits into
surrounding local communities, speaking to the National Development
Plan’s developmental state and public/private partnership.

“The relationship between ourselves and Government’s IPP
(independent power producers’) office is an early successful example
of that,” Van Den Berg said.

“That’s actually starting to work. A lot of people in other
industries got this wrong, but I think we are mostly getting it
right.”

The need in deep rural communities was very strong, with the
prerogative being to try and develop those communities.

“I think the way in which the programme was structured, where you
have to invest around 2% of your turnover into those communities,
was a very far sighted move,” Van Den Berg said.

“I probably spend close to half my time on that aspect, to make sure
everybody is coordinated and pulling in the right direction.”

SAWEA and its partners were trying to see which examples were the
good ones to follow, and even internationally, when Van den Berg
went to conferences overseas, this is the aspect people were most
excited about.

“If you are an engineer, you love mechanical stuff, then building a
turbine is very interesting, but then the next one looks pretty much
the same and so on,” he said.

“In South Africa we’re building the same things that other people
are building in other countries, but we’re doing it in a very
different way and in a very different context and that part is
exciting.”

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