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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 September 1999 Issue No. 448 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 September 1999 Issue No. 448
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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A week in the world
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Comment Focus Special Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Wet and windy
By Peter SnowdonWith impeccable timing, Hurricane Floyd spluttered ashore on the east coast of the USA on Thursday. Approximately two million Americans evacuated their homes, fearing widespread mayhem. Yet by the time Floyd hit the ground, wind speeds had dropped below 100 miles per hour, and while there was widespread physical damage and flooding, only seven people were reported killed during the first, and most dangerous, 24 hours. Despite this anti-climactic finish to weeks of hysterical preparation, the most over-hyped weather event of the decade continued to attract undue attention from a global media in thrall to low-cost special effects, and largely dominated by American interests. Typhoon Olga last month struck the Philippines a considerably more vicious blow than any Floyd could muster, leaving 269 dead in her wake. But who remembers Olga now? Indeed, who heard anything of her at the time?
As the great "human drama" was unfolding live on CNN, the book that could explain Olga, Floyd and all their ilk was being launched in London with considerably less fanfare. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report entitled Global Environment Outlook 2000, which named imminent water shortages, global warming and rising nitrogen pollution, the latter largely a consequence of the spread of chemical agriculture, as the three greatest threats to the future of human life on this planet. Klaus Töpfer, executive director of UNEP and former German environment minister, told the audience that three million people had died in the last five years as a result of extreme weather events, which are now much more common than in the past as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change. The report also projects that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will not have enough water to drink, with North Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia bearing the brunt of the catastrophe.
These processes could be reversed, Töpfer said, but only if the industrial societies (the Northern majority and the Southern elite) are prepared to reduce their consumption of natural resources by 90 per cent. This figure may sound drastic, but the means exist today to achieve such economies without having to abandon civilisation as we know it -- though the profits of a large number of international corporations might well suffer as a result.
In this context, the Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a total of 5 per cent by 2010 would be laughable, if it were not truly tragic. UNEP reconfirmed that the only safe strategy is a 60 per cent reduction, to be made as soon as possible. The world's largest single producer of greenhouse gases, responsible for 25 per cent of all emissions, is -- of course -- the United States of America. Yet Congress has not even ratified the Kyoto Protocol yet, let alone done anything concrete about it. Don't expect to be reminded of this dereliction of duty on CNN.
On Monday, UK-based charity Christian Aid joined the debate with a report arguing that the OECD countries, far from being entitled to repayment of $200 billion of loans from the developing world -- the infamous "Third World Debt" -- in fact owed these countries a total of $612 billion, as compensation for the North's continuing to burn more than its sustainable share of fossil fuels. Part of this cost represents the damage that is done by extreme weather events that are directly caused by climate change. In the first seven months of 1998 alone -- the hottest year in historical record -- so-called "natural" disasters cost the world $72 billion. Most of this damage was concentrated in the South.
At the same time, Jubilee 2000, the Northern NGO coalition campaigning for the outright and unconditional cancellation of all Southern debt, issued a report based on research by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, pointing out that the cost of writing off the debts of 52 of the world's poorest countries would only cost OECD taxpayers one US cent a day per person.
There was good news from South Africa, where multi-national drug companies decided to provisionally halt their court action against the government for ordering the compulsory licensing of anti-AIDS cocktails, currently the only known way of stemming the evolution of the disease. In the US, the cocktails cost each patient around $10,000 a year. The average annual income in South Africa is only $1,000. By removing patent protection, local doctors hope to be able to provide the same level of treatment for around $200. This strategy was initiated in 1997 by then President Nelson Mandela. The pharmaceutical lobby has been trying to pressurise South Africa into rescinding the measure, on the grounds that they need the revenues from sales to fund the kind of highly expensive research which led to the development of such treatments in the first place. But it is those countries which most need the drugs which are then unable to afford them. Fortunately, compulsory licensing is entirely legal under World Trade Organisation regulations, and has already been successfully used by Thailand in its fight against meningitis. The drug cartel's decision coincided with the 11th World AIDS Conference, which has been meeting in Lusaka, Zambia. To date, 11 million Africans have died of the disease. In 1998 alone, two million African lives were claimed by AIDS -- ten times as many as died in the wars which ravaged the continent during the same year.
Meanwhile in India, police on Sunday began to arrest inhabitants of the Narmada valley who have been staging a Jal Samarpan (offering to the waters), in protest at the decision to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam by eight metres. This decision is the latest development in a long-running battle which has pitted state authorities against local people and intellectuals from the capital. One thousand five hundred protesters from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), including their leader Medha Paktar, had pledged to remain in their houses as the monsoon flood waters rose, effectively committing suicide.
The Sardar Sarovar dam is part of the Narmada Development Project, a programme of 3,200 dams which is destined to transform one of India's sacred rivers into a gigantic ladder of dead and dying water. This one dam alone, it is believed, will lead to the displacement of up to 80,000 tribal families, or close on half a million people. Since independence, an estimated 50 million Indians have be made homeless by the government's determination to build ever larger and larger dams -- three times as many people as were displaced by the trauma of Partition.
