GLOBAL ISSUES – Page 202 – IDN-InDepthNews

ECONOMY2013-09-232023-07-10

Effective Financial Regulations Still Missing

Five years have passed since the Lehman Brothers collapse triggered U.S. and global financial crisis with grave consequences. But effective financial regulations are not yet in sight in developed countries. At the same time, the developing countries are confronted with huge new challenges.

By Martin Khor* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – Lehman was the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface were many contributory elements. They include financial deregulation, the conversion of finance from serving the real economy to a beast that thrived on speculation, creaming layers off the productive sectors and unsuspecting consumers through new manipulative instruments.

ECONOMY2013-09-212023-07-10

U.S. Economy Makes The World Go Round Or Rot

By J C Suresh | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TORONTO (IDN) – Though the world is increasingly intertwined, the U.S. plays a unique role in the global economy, accounting for 11 percent of global trade and 20 percent of global manufacturing. The country’s global financial ties also run deep. Foreign banks hold about $5.5 trillion of U.S. assets, and U.S. banks hold $3 trillion of foreign assets.

While these interconnections have great benefits for the United States, they are not without risks, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has warned, referring to the collapse of Lehman Brothers five years ago that ushered in “a harsh new reality” across sectors, countries, and the world.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-08-252023-07-10

Of Spooks and Whistleblowers

By Jayantha Dhanapala* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) – Suddenly, a cascade of leaks has been affecting the sole superpower in the world. First there was Pfc. Bradley Manning, the American who leaked 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, an Australian and the founder of WikiLeaks. Then in May, Edward Snowden, at the time a United States intelligence analyst, fled with his cache of surveillance program secrets first to Hong Kong and on to Moscow.

Manning has been exonerated of the most serious charge of “aiding the enemy” but has been convicted on other charges and was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison. Assange languishes in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while being a candidate in Australian Senate elections. The cumulative damage that all three have caused the security of the United States is incalculable, quite apart from exposing to American friends and allies that they have been the subject of cybersnooping or, to put it bluntly, espionage.

Climate Change2013-08-242023-07-10

Poland Braces For UN Climate Conference

By Anna Rutkowski | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

WARSAW (IDN) – “We need to be prepared for nine billion people on this planet, as we all deserve a decent and secure life. By being creative, the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating jobs, promoting economic growth and ensuring better living standards. Where there is a will, there is a way!” says Marcin Korolec, the Polish Minister of the Environment, who will chair a landmark UN climate change conference from November 11 to 22, 2013 in Warsaw.

A lawyer, career civil servant and negotiator, Korolec wants the global conference to agree on a balance between the needs of the environment and the economy, “in order to seamlessly unite environmental protection and economic growth”. Environmental protection, he says, is an interdisciplinary field that directly influences many other policy areas and is strongly influenced by international arrangements and standards.

Climate Change2013-08-222023-07-10

Uncertainty Looms Over Terrestrial Ecosystems

By Jutta Wolf | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – The doomsday clock has not yet struck zero hour but it is now beyond scientific doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the greenhouses gases responsible for climate change, have reached levels that are higher than any time during the past one million years.

As Markus Reichstein, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) in Jena points out, increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases do not only lead to gradual ‘global warming’, but also to changed patterns of rain and snowfall (precipitation), more weather extremes such as heat waves, longer dry spells, variability of growing season length, recurrent heavy rainfall, and storms. And, there is general concern that climate change will have fundamental impacts on our natural environment, our economic activities and life.

PLANET EARTH2013-08-142023-07-10

Another Step Towards Halting Desertification

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – When representatives of 194 States and the European Union, which are parties to one of the landmark global conventions, meet in the Namibian capital Windhoek from September 16 to 27, they will focus on intensifying efforts for ushering in a world free of poverty generating DLLD – desertification, land degradation and drought.

The significance of this herculean task lies in the fact that unlike flood disasters and tsunamis, whose catastrophic impact is easily brought into drawing rooms around the world, land degradation befalls soil like creeping cancer and its appalling dimensions often elude the eye of a camera.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT2013-08-102023-07-10

‘De-Colonize Development Goals’

By Manuel Montes* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – The big attraction of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), or at least the first seven of these, was their near universal acceptability. It mobilized both resources and politics, nationally and internationally, in pursuit of reducing poverty, hunger, gender inequality, malnutrition and disease.

Since they were introduced, the excitement over the MDGs fully occupied the space for development thinking. The MDG discourse – in international agencies and in national settings – appears to have crowded out the basic idea that development is about economic transformation.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-08-082023-07-10

Remote-sensing could Do Away with Oil Spills

By James Stafford of Oilprice.com* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

LONDON (IDN) – The 2010 Kalamazoo spill and the 2013 Exxon leak in Arkansas are the most glaring incidents, but these are just the big leaks that are found right away and reported.

Most leaks are found eventually – but there is money to be saved and damage to be avoided by catching them at the smallest rupture. Right now, we rely on pigs in the pipeline to do this.

It’s called “pigging”. Pigs are inspection gauges that can perform various maintenance operations on a pipeline – from inspection to cleaning – without stopping the pipeline flow. The first “pigs” were used strictly for cleaning and they got their name from the squealing noise they emitted while travelling through the pipeline. The current generation of “smart pigs” can detect corrosion in the pipeline and are thus relied on for leak detection.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-08-062023-07-10

UN Security Council Urges Regional Cooperation

By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsReport

GENEVA (IDN) – The 15-member UN Security Council has pledged to promote closer and more operational cooperation between the world body and regional and sub-regional organizations in the fields of conflict early warning, prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

In a statement on August 6, the Security Council also recognized the need to enhance the coordination of efforts to strengthen the global response to current threats to international peace and security posed by illegal trafficking, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among others.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-07-312023-07-10

Fuelling an Investment Arbitration Boom

By Martin Khor* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – It must be the world’s most problematic and outrageous judicial system. Its decisions can cost a country billions of dollars. It is riddled with conflicts of interest involving the judges, the lawyers and the proponents of the case. Yet its hearings and decisions are shrouded in secrecy and even the very existence of the cases is often not public information.

This is the arbitration system at the heart of international investment agreements.