. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Thalif Deen for the Inter Press Service News Agency (reprinted by permission)

Despite Western opposition, the 134-member Group of 77 is continuing to pursue a longstanding proposal for an inter-governmental UN-affiliated tax body aimed at combating corporate tax dodging and curbing illicit financial flows, including money laundering and off-shore banking.

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The proposal has already been shot down twice by Western nations, first, at the Financing for Development (FfD) conference in Addis Ababa in July last year, and more recently, at the 14th session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 14) in Nairobi last month.

But a G77 source told IPS the proposal is very much alive – and still on the negotiating table.

The proposal by the G77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, calls for the establishment of a standing intergovernmental group of experts to address tax issues, including international tax issues, and to assist countries better mobilize and employ fiscal revenues.

This includes international initiatives to counter tax avoidance and tax evasion, as well as strengthening the capabilities of developing countries to address tax avoidance and tax evasion practices.

In Africa alone, the estimated resources leaving the continent, in the form of illicit financial transfers, was nearly 530 billion dollars between 2002 and 2012, according to UNCTAD.

The three key causes of illicit financial outflows are largely commercial tax evasion, government corruption and criminal activity, including money laundering.

Bhumika Muchhala, Senior Policy Researcher, Finance and Development Programme, at the Malaysia-based Third World Network (TWN), told IPS the key reason why the global tax system has failed is that more than half of the world’s countries are currently excluded from the decision making processes on global tax standards.

“We in global civil society hope that the G77 and China, both in New York and Geneva, will continue to persistently raise the need for an intergovernmental tax body, under the auspices of the United Nations, in every relevant conference, negotiation and discussion within the UN, regional commissions, Bretton Woods Institutions and other international institutions, particularly the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which has a monopoly role in global tax governance by developed country donors”, she said.

“We know by examples of history that truly meaningful reforms and establishment of new bodies that break old rigid structures of imperialism, exclusion and unequal power requires a long arc of time and needs to be pushed through every open crack in the status quo by repeated and persistent demands by a group that takes the leadership to exert collective pressure,” she added.

As to whether the G77 and China will bring up the proposal again, Muchhala said, the hope is they will continue to persistently bring it up in every possible space, conference and discussion.

Dr Manuel Montes, Senior Advisor on Finance and Development at the Geneva-based South Centre, told IPS the proposal was meant to create an intergovernmental process, whose deliberations would have brought up in the agenda issues of interest to developing countries.

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Right now, he said, agenda-setting is made in OECD, which the G20 countries commissioned to put out the 15 action items under Base Erosion and Profit Shifting work.

The G77 proposal did not survive the Nairobi outcome even though there is this text that allows UNCTAD to work on tax issues as a matter of research, including assistance to developing countries to design and implement policies and actions aimed at improving the efficiency of trade transactions as well as the management of transport operations.

Additionally, it should also continue to cooperate with member States in implementing ASYCUDA, the automated system for customs data, and work on taxation as it relates to investment policy.

The upgrading of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters to an intergovernmental level was the last outstanding item that prevented agreement at the FfD conference in Addis Ababa.

“The developed countries, led by the US, blocked the proposal,” Dr Montes said.

The OECD dominance in this regard could have been mitigated somewhat if the UN process in tax cooperation had been upgraded to an intergovernmental level, as proposed in the Addis Ababa conference.

The OECD secretariat “reports” to its member states, and changes in agenda have to be first accepted by its member states, even though it has been making a lot of effort increasing the participation of developing country officials and the UN– but by invitation.

The OECD would still be an important and perhaps a dominant player in such a UN process, but it would not be the sole source of the intergovernmental agenda and norm setting, he declared.

Martin Khor, Executive Director of the South Centre who participated in UNCTAD 14, told IPS the developing countries under G77 and China succeeded in defending their development interests and in obtaining a renewed mandate for UNCTAD to continue their work.

“They had to face major developed countries and their groupings that were quite insistent on narrowing the scope of UNCTAD’s future work and thus the scope of the UN.”

As a result, he said, there was unfortunately no mandate for the UN to set up an inter-governmental group on how to deal with tax issues as the developed countries prefer to use their group, the OECD to make decisions on issues like tax evasion and tax havens.

There are other examples in the areas of trade, debt and finance where the outcomes could have been much better but were instead disappointing.

Nevertheless the renewal of UNCTAD’s mandate for its next four years work was an achievement of UNCTAD 14, given the shaky state of North-South cooperation on global economic issues, said Khor.

Prerna Bomzan, Policy Advocate for LDC Watch, representing the 48 least developed countries (LDCs), told IPS: “Given its historic role in contributing to defining the LDC category, we welcome the re-statement of UNCTAD’s mandate to strengthen its focus on the trade and development needs of LDCs. This is in accordance with the Istanbul Programme of Action and other relevant outcomes on LDCs.”

However, she said, this mandate must be further strengthened, focusing on building consensus with development partners so that they deliver on their key long-standing commitments to LDCs, such as 100 per cent duty-free-quota-free market access on a lasting basis; simpler and preferential rules of origin: a meaningful service waiver and eliminating domestic cotton subsidies”.

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Derek Markham in Treehugger

The Lorax might have spoken for the trees, but it turns out that trees can speak for themselves. At least to other trees, that is. While it’s not news that a variety of communication happens between non-human elements of the natural world, the idea of mycelia (the main body of fungi, as opposed to the more well-known fruiting bodies – mushrooms) acting as a sort of old-school planetary internet is still a fairly recent one, and may serve as a spore of a new breed of forestry, ecology, land management.

TED talk by Suzanne Simard

Paul Stamets famously posited that “mycelia are Earth’s natural Internet,” and a variety of research has borne out that concept, but like many things we can’t see an obvious connection between, most of us tend to ignore the micro in favor of the macro. And when it comes to conservation and natural resources, our systems may be falling prey to the lure of reductionist thinking, with a tree being considered merely a commodity in the forest, which can be replaced simply by planting another tree. In fact, many reforestation efforts are considered successful when a large number of trees are replanted in areas where clearcutting has rendered large tracts of land treeless, even if those replanted trees are essentially turning a once diverse forest into a monocropped ‘farm’ of trees.

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When you cultivate plants, do you cultivate peace?

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A recent talk at TEDSummit 2016 by forest ecologist Suzanne Simard seems to put the lie to the idea that a forest is merely a collection of trees that can be thought of as fully independent entities, standing alone even while surrounded by other trees and vegetation. As Simard, who has put in about three decades of research work into Canada’s forests, puts it, “A forest is much more than what you see.”

“Now, we know we all favor our own children, and I wondered, could Douglas fir recognize its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cub? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger’s seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin. Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings. So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings, not only carbon but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk.” – Simard

I’m a bit of a fungi nerd, and with good reason, as fungi are one of the key elements of life on Earth while being one of the least understood, at least in terms of the sheer volume of varieties and how they interact with the rest of the systems on the planet. I’m currently reading Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working With Fungi, which is an incredible foray into the world of fungi, and was kind of blown away by the fact that of an estimated 15 million species on Earth, some 6 million of them may be fungi, and yet only about 75,000 of them, or 1.5%, have been classified as now. This means that the study of mycology is one of the areas of the life sciences that is still relatively untapped, and because of what we’re now starting to learn about fungal networks and mycelial ‘internets,’ could be a key element in our journey to a more sustainable world.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Kate Yoder for Grist

The scrappy plane we’ve all been rooting for just completed the first solar-powered flight around the world, no fossil fuels burned. On Tuesday, Solar Impulse 2 ended its epic 24,500-mile journey and landed back home in Abu Dhabi.

The one-seater plane, sporting 17,000 solar cells on its wings, is as wide as a Boeing 747 but light as a feather — well, as light as a car, anyway. Though the 16-month trip was largely a stunt to promote renewable energy, it’s a milestone for aviation as well.

Bertrand Piccard, one of two Swiss pilots who flew the Solar Impulse, predicted that medium-size electric planes will begin carrying passengers within the next decade. We’re a fan of that possibility — and the EPA might be, too. The agency recently announced plans to begin limiting carbon emissions from airplanes since they pose a threat to public health.

One thing we can say now: Renewable energy is gellin’ — as in Magellan.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

Are we making progress in renewable energy?

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Bruno Maresca in the Huffington Post (translated by CPNN)

Driven by popular acclaim – more than 700,000 cinema viewers in three months against 265,000 for The Titanic Syndrome Nicolas Hulot! – the film “Demain” [i.e. Tomorrow] , by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent, released at the time of COP21, received the trophy for best documentary in the 2016 Caesars.

This unusual success seems to be explained by two factors. First, they feature local initiatives around the world that show that it is possible, at different levels, to engage in the fight against climate change. Second, they show that these initiatives can be done now (food, energy, local economic processes, education and direct democracy) and, as such, they inspire action by showing what is already working. The film succeeds in showing that French society wants to escape from the present atmosphere of doom and gloom.

This willingness to explore initiatives that invent alternatives to the global system of production and consumerism is in the air. It is the subject of the journalist Eric Dupin in his innovative book, “The pioneers: a voyage in France” (La Découverte, 2014). His book explores the diversity and richness of initiatives and people who “explore, in a pragmatic way, other lifestyles, such as new ways of working.” It includes those who invest in shared housing, organic farming or alternative schools, those who share a great desire to escape , with varying degrees of radicalism, from the globalization of production and consumption.

At the end of his account, Eric Dupin is ultimately pessimistic. He stresses that the diversity of initiatives does not by itself produce a coherent movement that can converge to a coordinated action and thereby produce change. Is it not the case that his “pioneers”, like those of “Demain”, privilege above all a ‘culture of exemplary individuals”? “Each person doing something at his level” seems to be their credo, which is far from the search for a collective change, which would mean developing political institutions. For this reason, the pioneers – and they are many – do not seem themselves to be a social movement.

“Demain”, meanwhile, wants to convince us that we can change the world by spreading many examples of experiences, both small and large. But can they escape from pessimism? Can their experiences outweigh the destructive and reactionary forces of the world economic and political system? Two impressive sequences illustrate the problem, one at the beginning and one at the end of the film: the apocalyptic vision of the city of Detroit, abandoned since the collapse of the auto industry, and the financial crisis in Iceland, which got to the point that the civil society overthrew the country’s political class. After viewing the film by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent and reading the book of Eric Dupin, we are confronted by the question: can we arrive at a new future by change from below, by the proliferation of individual initiatives? And finally, how should we explain the great attraction of “Demain”?

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(Click here for a version of this article in French)

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

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On the release of his book, the journal Libération called Eric Dupin a “pilgrim of utopia”.

On the websirte of Mediapart, Jean-Louis Legalery notes that after seeing the film “Demain”, viewers gave it a standing ovation, reminding him of the reaction to the film Z by Costa Gavras in 1979. The films that aroused spectators in the 1970s were eminently political; they called for collective mobilization to radically transform institutions. With hindsight, one can say they were driven by a high load of utopia (utopia that crashed against hard reality, as in the situation of Greece today).

Question: What are the consequences of the state subsidies paid to large farms?

Perhaps what works in “Demain” is this utopian vision that gives everyone the impression he can take part in something that is already going on. Instead of staying each in his virtuous corner, inscribed in the register of eco-gestures, one is invited to engage in something new, something that breaks with the dominant system, such as “urban farms” or “local currencies” and other initiatives shown in “Demain.” If these inventions are sufficiently taken up around the world, they could subvert the global economic system.

However, we are not seeing such a significant change in scenery. Farms with over 1,000 cows are now appearing in France, as in Denmark and Poland. And even if many people are changing their practices by sharing, recycling, carpooling, etc., it is difficult to disentangle this from a change in lifestyle necessitated by the stress of the economic crisis. A widespread changeover seems still far away. In the variety of examples shown in “Demain”, Africa and Asia are not very present.

But the real challenge of the transformation of production and consumption is in Asia, which, in 2030, will contain over 66% of the global middle class (against 28% in 2009, according to the OECD ). This emerging middle class, in strong numerical growth, is adopting the consumption patterns of the Western middle class, industrial power, private cars, expansion of suburban areas for access to the house, mass tourism, etc. Like a huge pendulum, the Western middle classes, being squeezed out by rising unemployment and inequality, adhere increasingly to the “small is beautiful” approach to local agriculture, solidarity businesses, alternative transport, renewable energy, etc.

What is unquestionably positive in “Demain” is that the Western middle classes want to reclaim the management of their daily lives, in their own life space, through collective initiatives of goodwill and kindness. They are engaged in a movement of self-awareness of their real interests, their need to live and consume differently.

This “self-consciousness” is what the middle classes had lost at the turn of the 1980s. When social struggles were diluted by access to welfare and mass consumption the middle class was reduced to being just a cog in the functioning of the global economy.

So let us dream, like many of its fans, that “Demain” is the flight of the swallow that heralds a new phase in the history of the middle class. Given the collective optimism that this film has inspired, it is possible to dream . . .