Alternatives International

The Green Economy and Corporate Concerns in Rio+20

Tamkinat Mirza — 2012-03-30T19:45:00Z

Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 20-22 June this year, will mark the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also know as the Earth Summit (UNCED).

The 2012 conference has three objectives: to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development; to assess the progress and implementation gaps in meeting already agreed commitments, and to address new and emerging challenges facing the environment.

The conference this year will focus on issues such as the move toward a sustainable economy in the context of poverty eradication and governance reform.

The UNCSD Secretariat, along with its partners, has published issue briefs for each of the twelve issues under debate. The themes are trade and green economy; options for strengthening IFSD; issues related to an intergovernmental body on SD; Oceans; Sustainable cities; current ideas on sustainable development goals and indicators; green jobs and social inclusion; reducing disaster risk and building resilience; food security and sustainable agriculture; regional, national and local level governance for sustainable development; water, and science and technology for sustainable development.

During the preparatory process leading up to Rio+20, there has been extensive debate regarding the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)'s “Green Economy” agenda.

Monetizing Nature: The UNEP's “Green Economy”

Promoting the idea of a “green economy” as a necessary precursor to sustainable development, the UNEP's Green Economy Report (GER) was published in February 2011.

The GER postulates that the environment could be preserved alongside faster and more efficient economic growth, if funds from environmentally damaging governmental subsidies (fossil fuels, fisheries, etc) were to be reallocated toward investment in new technologies.

The GER advocates “investing two per cent of global GDP in greening ten central sectors of the economy in order to shift development and unleash public and private capital flows in a low-carbon, resource-efficient path.”

The report states that this reallocation—achieved through measures that include policy reforms such as taxation—will result in normal economic activity in the short run and significantly heightened activity in the long run, while reducing the risk of crises and shock endemic to the current model.

The report demonstrates that investment will enhance new sectors and technologies that will be the future's main source of economic development: renewable energy technologies, energy efficient buildings and equipment, low-carbon public transport systems, infrastructure for fuel efficient buildings and equipment, clean energy vehicles, and water management and recycling facilities.

The market-based approach propagated by the GER involves measuring and quantifying the value of natural resources, to assign monetary values in an attempt to foster their protection.

The report has been criticized by NGOs for neglecting underlying causes of the ecological crisis. The NGOs argue that economic growth, technology and market-based approaches cannot be the only solutions pursued. Monetizing natural resources would mean their consequent privatization, which would eradicate state and community rights to protect the resource commons.

“We need to move from protecting the environment from business to using the business to protect the environment,” ehe report's chief spokesperson, Pavan Sukhdev, said at Green Week in Brussels this May. Sukhdev is a banker by profession, and played a major role in drafting the report.

The Corporate Role

The UN has faced criticism for its increasingly close ties with big business, ties that many speculate motivate the UN's advocacy for a market-based approach toward natural resources.

Corporations are indeed closely linked to the main objectives of Rio+20, as global sustainability is rooted in responsible and environmentally ethical business practices. Rio+20 will set the sustainability agenda for the next decade, delineating objectives to achieve corporate sustainability. For example by requiring businesses to prove their ability to address and provide practical solutions to global challenges, while highlighting the business case for supply chain transparency.

The UN Global Compact was set up by Kofi Annan and Nestle's ex-CEO Helmut Maucher in 2000, to promote voluntary improvements by businesses. It has 7000 member companies that have signed up to ten general principles.

For many NGOs, by promoting voluntary engagement, the compact implies decreased state intervention.

This claim is backed in the days leading up to Rio+20, as the Global Compact and the Rio+20 have organized the Corporate Sustainability Forum, scheduled for 15-18 June, in an attempt to strengthen business contribution to global sustainable development. The Forum is an effort to build consensus on more sustainable practices, to advance and diffuse sustainable innovation and to stimulate collaboration among players within the market. It is expected to have over 2000 participants representing business; investors, governments, local authorities, civil society, and UN entities.

The collaboration between UN and business holds much potential. While the move toward a green economy reliant on private interests is a long way off from now, increased business participation in global sustainability debates does show corporate commitment toward universal systemic change. The Corporate Sustainability Forum demands active demonstration of corporate promises, meaning that its recommendations may potentially become standardized within business structures.

Here, the green economy is seen to be a model that relies on “business to protect the environment.” It remains to be seen if this is a wise decision.

Project Briefs

Stephen Eldon Kerr, Tamkinat Mirza — 2012-03-30T19:42:48Z

Stop Online Spying

Alternatives is in support of stopspying.ca. The Canadian government and Minister Vic Toews are currently trying to ram through an anti-Internet set of electronic surveillance laws that will invade your privacy and cost you money. The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to surrender our personal information to "authorities" without a warrant.

This bizarre legislation will create Internet surveillance that is: Warrantless: A range of "authorities" will have the ability to invade the private lives of law-abiding Canadians and our families using wired Internet and mobile devices, without a warrant or any justification.

Invasive and Dangerous: The laws leave our personal and financial information less secure and more susceptible to cybercrime.

Costly: Internet services providers may be forced to install millions of dollars worth of spying technology and the cost will be passed down to YOU.

Alternatives encourage all our supporters to sign the petition now, forward it to everyone you know, and visit the Stop Spying website to learn much more.

Alternatives Montreal — Montreal, Canada

Alternatives is in support of the Voices-Voix coalition. Voices-Voix is a non-partisan coalition of Canadians and Canadian organizations committed to defending the people's collective and individual rights to dissent, advocacy and democratic space. It believes that both citizens and governments have positive roles to play in supporting civil society, and in encouraging respect for democratic rights and values, including free speech, transparency and equality. Voices-Voix documents attacks against organizations, individuals and institutions that have raised their voices, to show the pattern of government silencing of free speech, and offer solidarity to those who have been targeted. The organization promotes debate amongst its members and allies about how to defend the space for democratic dissent and advocacy in Canada, through its forum and events. It also encourages Canadians to raise their voices so that governments meet their core responsibilities to respect the equality, transparency and diversity of voices that make a democracy thrive.

Honduras and Nicaragua: Union Advocacy and Training

Alternatives support Union advocacy and training in both Nicaragua and Honduras. In conjunction with Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), Confederacion Unitario de Trabajadores de Honduras (CUTH ), Central Sandinista de Trabajadores (CST) this project offers workers in Honduras and Nicaragua greater autonomy through the creation of dynamic participation. The objective is to create a training program in order to reinforce the governing capacity of union organizations in these countries. The project also aims to encourage union organizations to confront the challenges of regional integration in favor of women's participation in the work force.

This project serves to heighten the influence of union organizations within decision-making bodies and to increase the number of unions and the number of women in union organizations. In addition, the project aims to improve organizational and administrative capacities of union leaders in order to increase the influence and representation of central unions for the defense of worker's rights.

Contact Person & Details: Marcela Escribano ; 514-982-6606 p.2229
Read more

Maghreb/Mashriq: Civil Society Web Portal: E-Joussour.net

In collaboration with Alternatives (Morocco) and other partners of Alternatives International, Alternatives is supporting the establishment of the Web Portal “E-Joussour.net” to contribute to the increasing participation of social movements in the Maghreb/Mashreq region, offering citizens ideas and alternatives on a number of political phenomena.

The project will allow participating organizations to express their contributions and positions on diverse issues related to development, human rights, governance, economy, women's issues, youth, etc. The autonomous and automatic system of publication developed by Alternatives has already demonstrated its potential. It provides instantaneous publication of all pertinent information and eliminates the necessity for organizations to require high levels of computer performance.

CIDA under-fire for partnering with mining company

Stephen Eldon Kerr — 2012-03-30T19:36:50Z

The Canadian government's decision to partner with mining firm Barrick Gold and development NGO World Vision Canada for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project in La Libertad, Peru, has been met with criticism from human rights activists.

The project, led by World Vision, was announced last September by Canadian Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda, and will be funded equally by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Toronto-based Barrick Gold. The La Libertad project is one of three pilot CSR projects that CIDA claims will reduce poverty in Peru, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.

Justin Broekema, press secretary at the Office of the Minister of International Cooperation, said that the project will "increase the incomes and standard of living for nearly 1,000 families [by supporting] small income-generating projects in agriculture". Broekma said that CIDA decided to support the project to help the local community diversify their economy and reduce their dependence on the mining industry.

Dave Toycen, President and CEO of World Vision Canada, is grateful for CIDA's support, and said that the project "will help residents of Quirulvilca, Peru, especially women, youth, and people with disabilities, become more involved and influential in their own community planning."

However, Miguel Palacin, the General Coordinator of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), criticized the project in a strongly-worded letter sent to World Vision, Barrick Gold, and CIDA.

In the letter, Palacin noted the "bad track record" of Canadian mining companies, arguing that "companies such as Barrick Gold are the source of many conflicts because of the dispossession of lands, destruction of water sources, and the ignoring of international rights." Rather than partnering with mining companies, Palacin believes CIDA should ensure Canadian companies respect the rights of indigenous peoples affected by mining.

However, CIDA is adamant that the La Libertad project will benefit the local community. Broekma stated that the municipal authority, government departments, the private sector, and the local community are all involved in the project's implementation and are consulted on a regular basis.

Mining is big business in Canada: Over 75 percent of the world's exploration and mining companies are headquartered in the country. In 2008, these 1293 companies had an interest in 7809 properties in over 100 countries around the world. Mining and exploration companies based in Canada account for 43 percent of global exploration expenditures, exploration which is funded by financial markets in Toronto and Vancouver — the world's largest source of equity capital for exploration and development.

Yet Canadian mining companies have long been criticized for misconduct abroad. In a report commissioned by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada in 2007, Canadian companies were singled out for perpetrating almost half of all documented cases of misconduct around the world, including causing community conflict, engaging in environmentally unsound practices, and violating human rights. The report was unreleased until it was leaked by MiningWatch in 2010.

Given the history, it is perhaps unsurprising that in Peru local opposition to Barrick Gold's presence goes back several years, and has been increasing. On February 9, 2007 at least 3,000 people demonstrated against ongoing Barrick Gold operations in the district; in June 2011, the municipality of Santiago de Chuco created a conservation zone around one of Barrick's mines, because the area provides clean water for over 8000 farmers; and on February 9 of this year, rural dwellers descended on Lima — some having walked 557 kilometers — to join thousands of others in the National March for Water.

This local-level opposition is fodder for critics who contend that Barrick Gold's CSR program is an attempt to placate the local population. Barrick Gold denies this, arguing that mining companies must work with local communities to obtain a "social license to operate."

The company's rhetoric does not accord with its actions: Barrick Gold was quick to contest the Santiago de Chuco municipality's creation of the conservation zone by appealing to the Third Constitutional Court in Lima.

Barrick Gold's heavy handed approach to local resistance is consistent with the behavior of Canadian mining companies abroad. A series of documents sent to The Guardian by WikiLeaks show that mining companies are attempting to pacify local resistance across Latin America. In one, Felipe Cantuarias, Vice President of Commercial and Corporate Affairs for Minera Antamina, a copper and zinc producer, notes that mining companies will "have to take on more social responsibilities in the communities, providing jobs or visible infrastructure projects," if they are to appease often-hostile local politicians.

In another, Cantuarias recommends that foreign Embassies "urge the Catholic Church to rotate bishops operating in [mining] regions," to ensure that "anti-mining teachers and priests, who engage in inappropriate activities," do not ferment opposition to the mines.

Regardless, CIDA will push ahead with the La Libertad project, a fact consistent with the organization's focus on promoting and supporting CSR by Canadian companies operating abroad, as outlined in their 2009 document "CSR: Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector". Broekema noted that ultimately CIDA "would like to see all Canadian companies donate to international development projects."

The leaked cables also reveal that the Canadian Ambassador to Peru was "impressed that NGOs, such as Oxfam UK, regularly consult the public opinion surveyors to obtain a feel for what issues and concerns motivate communities, [and] appeared to be well ahead of the [mining] companies" in this area.

The failures of CSR programs on this front are well documented. Catherine Coumans, research coordinator at MiningWatch Canada, has written that CSR projects "will not and cannot address the long-term harm and development deficits caused by mining impacts, such as the depletion and contamination of surface and ground water upon which local food security and livelihoods depend, or the loss of national level revenues through tax evasion schemes, or the creation of resource dependent economies as described in the ‘resource curse' literature."

In a separate report, Coumans reviewed CSR programs and found them inadequate with respect to human rights norms, accountability mechanisms, and support for community agency. Coumans noted that CSR programs are "characterized by the evolution of an ever-increasing array of voluntary codes, standards, and alternative accountability mechanisms," and are implemented by companies that strongly resist regulatory and legal reforms.

Others agree with Coumans. Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, Associate Professor of Latin American History at McGill University, calls CSR "a well-established piece of the PR strategy deployed by the mining industry and its champions."

But CIDA continue to throw their weight behind CSR programs, calling them "win-win" programs, even if this means supporting companies such as Barrick Gold.

In 2009, a team of researchers from Harvard and New York University's Law Schools found clear evidence of environmental and health problems around a Barrick Gold run mine in Papua New Guinea. The researchers also documented accounts of physical abuse, forcible evictions, and gang rape perpetrated by the mine's security personnel.

In one account, a 25 year old woman relates how waste from the mine had ruined her farming land, forcing her to search for gold in a waste dump, where she was caught by security personnel. She was gang-raped by three of the armed guards and forced to eat the condoms they had used.

Another woman was raped near a mine dump area, and said that "whenever security guards catch the ladies, that's what happens." The woman was tried for trespassing and told the magistrate that she had been raped, but the magistrate said that women normally "give this excuse," before he sentenced her to five months in prison.

The researchers also noted the close relationship between the mine's security personnel and the Papua New Guinean police force.

Reports by Amnesty International in 2010 and Human Rights Watch in 2011 stress that the abuses have not stopped, and that Barrick Gold do seem to understand the gravity of the abuse. In fact, writing in the Globe and Mail, Barrick Gold Chairman Peter Munk said that "gang rape is a cultural habit" in Papua New Guinea, prompting Papua New Guinean Minister of Mining John Pundari to demand an apology from Barrick Gold.

Emilie Lemieux, a former Gordon Global Fellow, has looked at the initial stages of the CIDA-funded CSR project at Barrick Gold's mine in La Libertad, and found that the project "seems to fulfill the basic social needs the company is looking to address, as well as the Canadian embassy's interest to work in CSR, rather than the needs of the local population."

José de Echave, director of the Collective Rights and Extractive Industries Program at CooperAcción, a Peruvian NGO that supports local actors affected by mining, agrees. He said that "as long as resources are not managed by the Peruvian government, mining companies direct their actions based on their own interests."

According to De Echave, the result of this is that mining companies hire development experts to co-ordinate initiatives such as the World Vision led project in Peru. The companies' approach to becoming involved in health, nutrition, and education relies on forming alliances with experienced NGOs, meaning companies most often work with non-local NGOs instead of relevant actors and authorities in the community.

Lemieux corroborates this, noting that CSR codes "do not require that communities be consulted or that they provide consent for the implementation of CSR projects decided upon by corporations." Lemieux found that, in Peru, "consultation with local actors is non-existent and the project is led exclusively by external actors."

Professor Studnicki-Gizbert, echoing Lemieux's sentiments, said that development projects are "as much about form as financing," and that the decision to reorient CIDA towards co-financing development projects with NGOs and mining corporations is consistent with "the Conservative government's support of corporate self-regulation instead of public accountability."

However corporate self-regulation, as it stands, remains an ineffective means of regulating the mining industry. CIDA's pilot project with Barrick Gold and World Vision Canada in La Libertad is not proving otherwise.

Canada tries to remove human right to water and sanitation

Stephen Eldon Kerr — 2012-03-30T19:35:56Z

On World Water Day, United Nations water and sanitation expert Catarina de Albuquerque critiqued countries including Canada for spearheading a move to eliminate references to the human right to water in a United Nations document that will frame negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit.

De Albuquerque, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, stated that "some States, including Canada and the United Kingdom, are apparently proposing the removal of an explicit reference to the right to water and sanitation for all, from the first draft of the ‘Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development' outcome document." The declaration is currently being discussed in New York.

Further, an international coalition of over 400 NGOs from 67 countries is challenging "an apparent systematic effort by particular governments to delete virtually all references to well-established rights to water, energy, food and development."

Canada's opposition to the right to water is well known. Sources at the World Water Forum in Marseille, France confirmed earlier this month that the Forum's Ministerial Declaration fails to explicitly affirm the UN recognized rights, because Canada insists on the weaker language of: “human rights obligations relating to access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation”.

Following the conference, Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda said that "access to clean water and basic sanitation is fundamental to human health and sustainable development," but stopped short of acknowledging access to water and sanitation as a human right.

In contrast, Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, announced on World Water Day that "the EU acknowledges the recent recognition of the human right to water and sanitation by the UN General Assembly, and the Human Rights Council's specification that this right is part of the human right to an adequate standard of living."

In a February 28 statement, Amnesty International expressed concern that the Ministerial Declaration does not commit states to implement the human rights to water and sanitation, because of "a small number of states, such as Canada, that have persistently opposed recognition of the rights to water and sanitation at the international level, over the last decade."

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly to recognize the human right to water and sanitation, but Canada abstained from the vote—having tried unsuccessfully for years to prevent the decision. Canada and Tonga are now the only countries in the world that do not to recognize water and sanitation as a human right.

Interestingly, the Canadian government's opposition to the human right does not reflect the views of Canadian citizens. A poll conducted by the Trudeau Foundation and University of Manitoba found that 96 per cent of Canadians agree that water is a human right.

The Canadian public's support for the human right to water and sanitation is unsurprising. Canada has vast supplies of fresh water for its small population of 35 million, who expect the government to ensure water and sanitation services for all.

The Canadian government appears to disagree. In June 2010, prior to the UN vote, then-Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon stated that he “will not put Canada in a position where our sovereign right to protect our natural resources is compromised by any international treaties…”

UN experts have assured the Canadian government that the UN resolution obliges Canada to provide clean water and satiation to its own people, but does not require Canada to share its water resources with another country.

Critics contend that the government is acting in the interests of multinational corporations, and not Canadian citizens. Council of Canadians Chairperson Maude Barlow said: "Here we have an example of a country like Canada that is using the World Water Forum, a non-democratic forum run by multinational water corporations, to try and negate what has been achieved at the United Nations General Assembly."

"Canada is legally obligated to write a right to water implementation plan," Barlow said, "but the Canadian government is using the illegitimate space at the World Water Forum to try to negate the right to water."

The World Water Forum has come under increasing attack lately, accused of being dominated by corporations, and of trying to rewrite the historical UN General Assembly vote. The damage is beginning to show. 25,000 attended the last forum in Istanbul, but Benedito Braga, the chief organizer for the Marseille forum, admitted that attendance at this year's forum was about 9,000 people. There have been reports of up to 1,000 lunches being thrown away each day because of the drop in attendance.

However, this year's Alternative World Water Forum was bigger than the one in Istanbul, and activists now point to it as the future venue for international agreements on water issues.

Even the Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on the issue, saying at a Sunday Mass that "despite some progress, an adequate access to potable water is not yet guaranteed to a good portion of the world's population". The Pope added that all countries must "consider water a common resource and not saleable goods, [ therefore] water management with a non-merchandising approach [is required]."

Top Vatican official and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Bishop Mario Toso, supported the Pope's speech, and said that "reasonable access to clean water is a fundamental human right and its distribution should not be left solely to private companies seeking profit."

De Albuquerque agrees, saying "In the context of the Rio+20 agenda...who does not want a future where every single individual enjoys safe drinking water? Who does not want a future where nobody dies due to drinking unsafe water? Who does not want to eradicate the indignity and humiliation of open defecation?"

The Canadian government is under pressure to prove that they understand these rhetorical questions.

Preview: The People's Summit for Social and Environmental Justice

Tamkinat Mirza — 2012-03-30T19:34:21Z

The People's Summit for Social and Environmental Justice will be held on June 15-23 in Rio de Janeiro this year, running parallel to Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

The People's Summit is organized by 150 organizations and social movements from various countries, who hold in common the the objective to “request governments to give political power to the Conference, in order to avoid the need for a ‘Rio+40' and holding of conferences that have limited implementation power.”

The People's Summit was created in January 2011 during the World Social Forum in Senegal, after the Brazilian Civil Society Facilitating committee for Rio+20 first proposed it. The committee comprises a group of networks and organizations from Brazil, which are active in areas such as environment and sustainability, human rights and social development. It is responsible for facilitating the participation of the global civil society in the Rio+20 conference.

This year, The People's Summit aims to oppose the commodification of nature propagated by the UN through its “green economy” agenda. Organizers of the People's Summit see this model as unsatisfactory for dealing with the global environment crisis, caused in the first place by capitalist production and consumption.

The Summit is predicated on a collective belief in the political power of mobilized people, reiterated in their call to everyone to “come reinvent the word.” It will be free of corporate presence, and is based on “the solidarity economy, agriculture in digital cultures, [and the] actions of indigenous and quilombola.”

The People's Summit attempts to provide local and regional movements with a platform to articulate their struggles, as through its Civil Society's Facilitator Committee, which combines self-organized discussion groups, a People's Permanent Assembly, and a showcase space to foster dialogue regarding the experiences and issues faced by each organization. Within this structure, the People's Permanent Assembly is the Summit's main political forum, and aims to discuss the structural causes of universal crises, while building practical alternatives.

Dialogue within the People's Summit aims to address the rhetoric in the text for the outcome of Rio+20, which significantly reduces state responsibility to safeguard human rights and access to water and land, implicitly encouraging increasingly privatized natural resources to encourage corporate responsibility. The organizers of the People's Summit have criticized the UN for its avoidance of prescriptive language which would hold states and corporations directly responsible for their actions. They also state that the Rio+20 rhetoric avoids concrete targets and timelines, ultimately benefiting business.

The People's Summit is predicated on an opposition to this, along with a recognition of the impact on corporate profits when the state is assigned clear obligations to ensure universal human rights such as access to water, to respect customary land use rights and the practices of indigenous people, and to make technology assessments based on the precautionary principle. Rio+20 aims to overturn these obligations.

The mandate of the People's Summit, then, implies an opposition to the UN “green economy”, and it further reduces state obligation to uphold basic human rights. This model will be debated over in the days leading up to—and during—the Rio+20 conference.

Green school initiatives: Saving money, resources and student health

Michael D'Alimonte — 2012-03-30T19:31:24Z

Green Schools, education institutions that promote interaction with nature as a learning tool while fostering an environmentally friendly campus predicated on healthy living, are now receiving state recognition for their efforts through the Green Ribbon Schools (GRS) award program.

The 2011-2012 school year has been the first in which the United States Department of Education (USDE) has officially recognized the efforts Green Schools have been making to promote environmentally sustainable learning environments.

By awarding achievements in environmental conservation, the USDE hopes to standardize cost-effective green practices which have statistically improved environmental awareness among students across the nation.
Within the GRS Program, schools are focused on resource conservation and sustainable education practices. For example by minimizing their staff and students' ecological footprint, and encouraging interaction with nature. These structural alterations are achieved entirely by schools, with the USDE remaining an external player.

To be nominated by the USDE, schools must follow the pillars of the GRS Program. The first of these involves reducing a school's overall ecological footprint and increasing its energy efficiency— achieved by reducing green house gas emissions and waste production while also promoting alternative modes of transportation.
Second, the GRS program encourages schools to implement health programs comprising high nutritive standards and fitness mandates for students; outdoor recreation and the integration of natural systems into curriculum is similarly supported.

There are also fiscal benefits to going green. National studies within the US have demonstrated lower running costs for such schools. The Council Rock School District in Pennsylvania reduced its energy consumption in 16 schools by nearly 50 percent. By spending only $150 000, the district saved more than $7 million over 4 years. This demonstrates that major renovations including solar panels and new ground source heat exchange systems—which do involve relatively high initial costs of installation—can eventually save schools more than 50 percent in energy costs, financially benefiting both the school itself and the average taxpayer.

The Green RIbbon has fueled involvement in environmental issues among students. Moreover, students engaged in green activities were found to have an increased interest in science- and math-based academic subjects, while also becoming significantly more involved in extra-curricular environmental projects.

Jonny Cohen, a 17 year old from Highland Park, Illinois, invented a way to retrofit school bus windshields. This resulted in reduced aerodynamic drag, increased mileage, decreased emissions of pollutants, and cut school bus fuel use cut by as much as 25 percent.

Schools have now begun to collaborate and share information within the Green School National Network (GSNN).

The GSNN aims to further the growth of the green school movement by providing networking space to those within the education, non-profit, corporate, and public sectors. The GSNN aims to establish a “green culture” within schools to ensure that future generations of students are environmentally educated and aware of the everyday practices entailed in creating a sustainable community.

The GSNN has five main goals: focusing on education and professional development by conducting conferences and seminars; providing resources and information to those within the network by maintaining a website and newsletter; facilitating communication within the network to foster collaboration; working with national partners in attempts to reform environmental advocacy and policy, and, lastly, the GSSN pays strong attention to environmental research in order to collect statistical evidence of the benefits green initiatives bring.

The GSNN founded the Green Schools National Conference to foster communication, research and media attention. The first of these conferences was held in February in Denver, Colorado. During the conference the US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discussed the financial savings green initiatives bring, a fact that in direct opposition with the US government's hesitation to encourage green practices because of the high startup costs. Duncan said that green schools can potentially save up to $100 000 per year—equivalent to the salaries of two teachers or 500 new text books. He pointed out that “Green Schools really are more of a win-win game,” rather than the “zero-sum game propositions” previously thought true.

Duncan also noted the health benefits green schools provide. Citing recent studies, he stated that “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that reducing indoor air pollution could prevent more than 65 percent, or 2 in 3 asthma cases among elementary school children.”

He also stated “Healthier school environments and healthier habits of nutrition and exercises make for happier, healthier, more attentive, and more productive students.”

The GSNN made student achievement and financial benefits of green schools the topics of primary focus within two seminars at the National Conference. A seminar entitled “Connecting Green and Healthy Schools with Student Achievement” focused on establishing a factual link between high levels of academic achievement and Green School environments. Another seminar examined existing green school financing and funding solutions alongside new strategies to encourage funding.

A relatively new concept, green school initiatives may seem a daunting endeavor for older, established educational institutions. Lacking the new equipment and financial resources to acquire these, some schools may feel unable to create functional environmental initiatives.

Duncan addressed this in the GSNN conference, stating “any school can take some relatively simple steps to become greener and promote environmental stewardship.” It is up to the schools themselves to make use of the resources and information provided by organizations such as the GSNN.

Once part of this network, any school can be environmentally friendly through a sustained effort that ultimately benefits both the nation and the global society.

Social Licence: Cultural Complicity in the Age of Extraction

Clayton Thomas-Muller , Kevin Smith — 2012-03-30T19:23:33Z

At first glance, there might not seem to be an obvious common ground between indigenous activists in Canada, performance artists in the UK, and climate activists in both countries. However, the international controversy over Canada's tar sands industry in northern Alberta has galvanised individuals from all these communities into new cooperative relationships in order to oppose the developments.

Over the last few years, environmental groups and artists have influenced each other's practices, resulting in innovative, cross-platform public interventions. While traditional environmental NGOs have lobbied government officials and targeted the oil companies that are involved on both sides of the Atlantic, people in UK's cultural sector have recently started to interrogate their own complicity in enabling oil companies to commit environmental and human rights abuses in other parts of the world.

In London, UK, an overwhelming majority of cultural institutions have acquired sponsorship from major oil companies, usually BP or Shell. For over 20 years, BP has been the main sponsor of the Tate museums. The relationship between the cultural behemoth and the corporation has been so close that the ex-CEO of BP, Lord John Browne, has been on the Tate Board of Trustees since 2007. In December 2011, BP announced a £10 million sponsorship deal spread over 5 years between Tate, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery.

Why do oil companies fund culture? Lets take a step back and look at the costs involved in extraction. The construction of an offshore oil platform is one of the most expensive projects on earth. Usually it can only offer a high return on capital if oil production if maintained over two or three decades. The maintenance of this production is often threatened by social and political shifts in the countries of extraction.

Any such threat to production — or the perception that that threat might exist — can immediately undermine the profitability of a corporation. BP's share value was almost halved by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, not because of the potential costs of the oil spill clean up, but because investors were concerned that the company's future prospects in the United States were being undermined by the collapse of support in Washington DC and in the media.

To guard against such threats company value, BP works constantly to engineer its “social license to operate,” a term widely used in business and government circles to refer to the process of engendering support for a company's activities in the communities that live close to their factories, oil wells, and so on. This term can shed light on how corporations construct public support far from the places of extraction or manufacture — for example how BP builds support in London. The construction of the social licence to operate is what links gallery-goers in London to the devastation of Boreal forests and indigenous communities in Canada, through tar sands extraction.

In December 2010, BP invested £1.6 billion in the Sunrise Project. Located in northern Alberta, the project could be producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day in the space of a few years. Sunrise will use so-called SAG-D (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) extraction methods, in which water is super-heated into steam with vast amounts of natural gas, then injected deep into the earth to “melt” the oil from the sand and clay.

The entire tar sands infrastructure in Canada has been the subject of extensive criticism for clear-cutting Boreal forests, polluting waterways, as indigenous communities living downstream from the polluted waterways are experiencing higher that expected rates of rare cancers.

According to a report by the Alberta Health Services released in 2009, in Fort Chipewyan, a remote community 300km north of Fort McMurray often described as the ground zero of tar sands extraction, 51 cancers developed in 47 people between 1995 and 2006, almost a third more than would have been statistically predicted.

Extracting oil from tar sands is far more polluting and destructive to the climate than light sweet crude oil, which comes naturally out of the ground in liquid form. Tar sands are only 10% oil mixed with 90% sand, clay and corrosive agents such as quartz and other minerals, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The extra energy involved in super-heating the bituminous substance to create a usable, transportable makes it a far more carbon intensive fuel source than light sweet crude. The size of these oil reserves (the greatest in the world outside of Saudi Arabia), combined with this increased carbon intensity, has lead NASA Scientist and climate advocate James Hansen to state that if the development of the tar sands continues, then it is “essentially game over” for the climate.

Since the initial visit of the IEN activists to the UK, action on tar sands has been a regular feature of the political scene. The initial targets in these collaborations were the UK oil companies that were involved in the industry and the UK banks that were involved in financing other tar sands companies, but this has now widened to include those galleries and museums that are complicit in allowing oil companies to divert attention away from their destructive activities.

Activist groups such as Art Not Oil have been protesting against the involvement of oil companies in UK galleries since 2004. The issue gained a new level of prominence in 2010 in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico Disaster. Just weeks after the oil rig blow-out that caused 11 deaths and devastated vast stretches of US coastline, the annual Tate Summer Party was celebrating 20 years of BP sponsorship. Platform coordinated a letter in the Guardian newspaper signed by over 160 people in the cultural sector calling on Tate to end its relationship with BP and distributed literature about oil sponsorship of the arts to party goers entering Tate Britain where the party was taking place.

Meanwhile, recently formed art-activist group Liberate Tate performed Licence to Spill, with 11 performers dressed in black with their faces covered in veils pouring gallons of an oil-like substance over the entrance steps of the gallery. This was a symbolic act designed to create maximum disruption to the ‘celebrations' and draw attention back from the canapés and champagne to the horrors of the Gulf of Mexico. Inside the party, two elegantly dressed ladies going by the names of Toni [Hayward] and Bobbi [Dudley], released another oil spill from beneath their bouffant dresses, a “relatively tiny one, compared to the size of the gallery,” echoing the comments of then-BP CEO Tony Heyward in describing the size of the oil spill relative to the Gulf of Mexico.

The following year, more evocative and headline-grabbing performance interventions took place in gallery spaces. Sunflower (September 2010) took place in Tate Modern's iconic Turbine Hall, with 30 performers forming a circle before stepping on tubes of black oil paint, monographed with BP's green and yellow sunflower logo. The prescient performance was later echoed by Ai Wei Wei's Sunflower Seeds (2010) installation that saw millions of handcrafted porcelain seeds deposited in the same location. On the anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, Liberate Tate did an intervention, Human Cost (April 2011), in the exhibition Single Form at Tate Britain. In the performance, a naked figure lay on the ground and was covered with another oil-like substance, an image of which appeared on the front page of the Financial Times the next day.

While BP's criminal negligence in causing the Gulf of Mexico disaster was one of the re-invigorating factors behind the Liberate Tate performances and campaign, BP's involvement in tar sands extraction has become one of the main focus points.

In April 2011, Clayton Thomas Muller and Jasmine Thomas, a member of the Frog clan from Saik'uz, spoke outside Tate Modern about the art world's complicity in the destruction of indigenous communities during a protest by climate action group Rising Tide.

In July, Liberate Tate and UK Tar Sands Network invited performance artists Reverend Billy and the Church of the Earthalujah to perform an exorcism of BP in the Tate Turbine Hall, accompanied by a 12-piece gospel choir singing about the evils of tar sands extraction.

In March 2012, Platform and Liberate Tate, working with content contributed by the Indigenous Environmental Network, launched the Tate a Tate Audio Tour, a site-specific sound work in three pieces that enables listeners to tour the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the boat journey between the two institutions while listening to the voices of impacted communities, artists and oil campaigners.

Of course, all the activities around sponsorship are occurring at a time when the arts are facing massive cuts in public funding, as part of the austerity measures being carried out by the coalition government. Many feel that now is not the time for the art world to start getting choosy about where the money comes from, with Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones going as far to assert that museums should take “money from Satan himself” if it means they can “stay strong and stay free.”

However, it is precisely because of the decrease in public funding that a debate about the ethics of particular corporate sponsors is more relevant than ever. Rather than pitting the need for ethical discussion against the need to secure funding, we must ground this debate in a respect for the value of the arts to society, and the importance of access. State support commits arts institutions to remaining open to all, ensuring that everyone has the possibility to connect with a vivid and changing cultural history, and valuing what the arts can bring to people's lives and experience.

Raoul Martinez, a portrait painter whose work has been exhibited as part of the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery for the past two years' running, has written that:

Unless we're willing to accept the sponsorship of the pornography industry or arms manufacturers, we clearly believe a line must be drawn somewhere. So the issue is not whether we draw a line, but where we draw it. In the case of BP, I believe there is a strong case for placing them on the wrong side of that line… If society decides it genuinely values institutions like the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern, it can provide money to support them.

The call to end oil sponsorship of the arts is not without precedent. Sponsorship shifts have occurred on numerous occasions according to changing social norms and contexts. A few decades ago, many of the same cultural institutions were receiving tobacco money – the creativity of art provided a great decoy to the devastating consequences of cancer – yet now tobacco logos are absent from the cultural sphere. Smoking is simply not socially acceptable anymore.

The major cultural shift over tobacco sponsorship is now widely applauded as an appropriate response, and was in part due to the push given by anti-smoking campaign groups. Yet despite widespread public concern about the dramatic threat of climate change and the ongoing violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, oil money still greases the wheels of so many of our cultural institutions.

The idea that it is therefore normal to continue to burn fossil fuels subtly seeps into our imaginations, fixing the image of a certain kind of culture, a certain kind of destructive behaviour.

Breaking the sponsorship link between Tate and BP will not by itself prevent the devastating tar sands projects being inflicted across the Northern wildernesses of Canada. By creating and informing a public debate that questions the legitimacy of these companies being associated with respectable and cherished cultural institutions, we can strengthen attempts to hold them accountable in other political and financial spheres.

This is an essential step in ending the stranglehold that the companies have on the corridors of power – a major obstacle that we face in the transition to a low carbon society. The shift away from oil takes place in many municipal sites as well as in our personal daily experience. From the infrastructure of transport, to the shareholdings of pension funds, from where the food we eat is grown, to divorcing fossil fuel industry interests apart from the seats of governmental power.

For a fair and just transition to a post-oil era, we see the creativity and collaborative practices of artists as essential to the process, and cultural institutions as a key space to nurture that evolution.

The face of transcendence in Palestine

Lucie Bourgeois — 2012-03-30T19:20:09Z

We spent Wednesday morning discussing and aligning around our own theory of change, our underlying beliefs and hypotheses as to the way in which it can be encouraged and facilitated for individuals and communities. In the afternoon, we discussed power relations knowing that unbalanced power relations fuel injustice and poverty. Participants identified and mapped their key actors and their related propensity towards their strategic change objectives. They also analyzed how they can leverage these relationships to facilitate change. As you will see below, the content of the session was directly related to Refaat's testimony below.

Declaration of the Forum of Civil Society Organisations

Forum of Civil Society Organisations — 2012-03-30T19:18:34Z

Bamako, on March 22, 2012.

Following the events that occurred in the night of March 21, 2012 in Bamako and in the regions, the Forum of Civil Society Organisations of Mali has held a meeting at its headquarters.
After analysis and review of the situation, the Forum of Civil Society Organizations condemns, as a principle all forms of coup d'état and acts of violence for the settlement of problems within the Malian nation. The Civil Society Forum takes note of the declaration made on March 22, 2012 by the CNRDR, and among them the following points:
– The establishment of an inclusive Government of National Unity to be constituted after consultation with all the active social forces of the country;
– The non-confiscation of power;
– The restoration of national unity and territorial integrity;
– The commitment to work with all forces of the nation without any distinction;

However, the Forum of Civil Society Organizations also declares:
Considering that:
– Mali, our beloved country, is the subject of a violent attack by armed secessionist groups who want to break away the Northern and Central part of the nation,
– The complexity of this crisis and the diversity of players involved render its resolution difficult;
– There is a deep unease in all layers of Malian society in the face of this crisis and the exit strategies or solutions to it are not immediately and clearly visible or understandable;
– The food crisis, nutrition and health problems have a strong impact on almost the entire country;
– The school and university crisis remains unsolved;
– Because of the security situation in the North / Center of the country as well as the state of the current electoral register, it has not been not possible to organize a legitimate election process. At the same time the primary concern of most politicians appear to be holding on to power or gaining access to it immediately;
– The national army clearly encounters many problems in its struggle to preserve the unity and integrity of the country;
– The task of preserving the honor of the Malian people and of defending the integrity of our national territory is the sole responsibility of the Malian army;
– The overwhelming support of the people towards the national army is an expression of the peoples' attachment to national sovereignty and not an act of charity;
– The people are experiencing a growing concern for the preservation of their safety and that of their property;
– In the current situation, an offer of ceasefire or a peace agreement could be perceived by the people as an act of capitulation.
The Civil Society Forum makes the following proposition to the National Committee for the Rebuilding of Democracy and the Restoration of the State (CNRDR):
1. The establishment of a government of national unity with limited powers and objectives and that will be given the means and powers to carry out the four following priority missions:
safeguarding of national sovereignty, of territorial integrity and of national unity;
preparation and organization of national roundtables on citizenship, governance and sustainable development in Mali;
preparation and organization of credible elections (presidential, parliamentary and municipal) within the present year, based on a finalized and reliable updated version of the RAVEC registration database;
strengthening the application of laws and legislations on decentralization and the principles of good governance with a focus on proper management of public funds and administration of justice (intensifying the fight against financial crime and corruption);
2. Public auditing of all the development plans and programs in the country;
3. Suspension of the territorial reorganisation scheme, actually in progress;
4 Reallocation of the country's budgetary resources in order to be able to complete the above outlined tasks
5. Implementation of measures and infrastructures to reduce the impact of the food crisis and of the nutrition and health problems as well as improving the quality of the education and university system.
In doing so, while wishing speedy recovery to all the people wounded, the Forum of Civil Society bows to the memory of all civilian and military casualties and invites the CNRDR to ensure respect for individual and collective rights and freedoms.

In conclusion, the Forum of Civil Society Organizations makes itself available to anyone and to any national initiatives whose aim is the implementation of the above proposals.

US defeat won't be Afghan victory

Pervez Hoodbhoy — 2012-03-30T19:17:05Z

Ever since US Sergeant Robert Bales surrendered after calmly massacring Afghan women and children, he has been depicted as a man under unusual personal circumstances. A high-ranking US official told the New York Times: “When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues – he just snapped”. Unlike those sentenced to death by drones flying high over Waziristan, Bales will enjoy a thorough investigation. Whisked out of Afghanistan, he may or may not ever be convicted. If convicted, the penalty is unlikely to exceed a few prison years; “good behaviour” may qualify him for an early parole.