CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY?

CORPORATE SOCIAL IRRESPONSIBILITY ?

Capitalism and environmental protection are not compatible. The capitalist is driven to maximise profits, the ecologist  to safeguard nature. The United Nations declares that we should be concerned with ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

The capitalist will claim the loyalties of the investors and their workers in order to maximise profits for the company. It is 'grow or die!'.  The executives of Corporations and governments will assert that they operate to protect the environment and the interests of communities. They will endeavour to ‘green’ their products. But statements of Corporate Social Responsibility are a sham, a con trick perpetrated by companies to protect their commercial interests.

Social Ecologists argue: it is grow and die! Economic growth leads to the destruction of the biosphere, and to the deaths of many people. Major health problems such as lung cancer, brain tumours, mesothelioma, starvation, have become associated with capitalist enterprise. Medical authorities should take action to minimise the effects of pollution on people, and ban the products. The corporations and the governments persist with the production of  tobacco, asbestos, oil, mobile phones, among others, on the basis that the customers choose to buy and so are responsible for any harm that they suffer. Governments rely on the taxes raised on these products. In effect, there is no corporate social responsibility.

NO TOBACCO DAY, MAY 31 2014

The new laws in Australia, Aug 14, mark a significant shift in attitudes to smoking tobacco.
Obviously, the Tobacco corporations have a different notion of Corporate Social responsibility to any other organizations and they are examples of social ir-responsibility!
Tobacco companies see nothing wrong with selling products that infect and kill their customers…….it is estimated that 6 million die each year across the world from the effects of smoking tobacco. They have been making cigarettes for many years, knowing that they were increasing the risks of chest infections and disease amongst their customers. Chris Woolston  [www.ahealthyme.com] reported that in the early 1960s, researchers at Brown & Williamson, one of the world's largest tobacco companies, made a sickening discovery......... Smoking causes lung cancer. But, in public, the company claimed cigarettes were perfectly safe: smoking is good for you. Behind closed doors, their scientists searched for ways to remove cancer-causing compounds from cigarettes. As their own internal documents show, the search for a safe cigarette was doomed from the start. The researchers found that burning tobacco produces a stunning collection of dangerous chemicals, no matter how it's grown, treated, or packaged. Simply put, cigarettes are not safe! are not good for you! In the USA, this finding was confirmed in 1964 by the report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health which declared that cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer: the more you smoke, the more likely you are to contract lung cancer.........and chronic bronchitis........... and chronic bronchopulmonary diseases.
Today, of course, the facts are well known. Everyone from the Surgeon General to the kid on the street corner knows smoking causes lung cancer. In fact, it causes the vast majority of all lung cancer, a disease that killed an estimated 160,000 Americans in 2007. Even the tobacco companies are now willing to admit the obvious. A statement on the Philip Morris Web site says it all: ‘We agree with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that
cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other serious diseases such as throat cancer, bladder cancer.’ Despite this, their drive for sales continues. Their profits expand and grow, and many of their customers die from smoking their cigarettes! In 1980 their research indicated that secondary smoke from cigarettes was toxic, but this was not made public for 20 years.

Australia last year, 2011, passed legislation requiring all tobacco to be sold in plain packets with graphic health warnings from 1 December 2012. It is the first country to pass such stringent packaging legislation. August 2012, the law requiring all packets to be plain and have graphic warnings about cancer, along with pictures of cancers was upheld by the High Court.

Countries such as the USA, Britain, Canada and

New Zealand and the EU, are considering similar

moves, but are still talking.
Why don’t health authorities simply ban tobacco

products ? make them illegal, and prosecute the

tobacco corporations for selling products that

they all know  damage and/or kills their customers?

ASBESTOS

The recent developments in Asbestos, Quebec mark the hypocrisy of producers.
But even when a product has been banned, like asbestos, its effects continue. Asbestos fibres can cause various forms of cancer. The World Health Organisation estimates that 170,000 people die world wide annually from asbestos poisoning. People who worked with asbestos 50 years ago are coming forward with mesothelioma today. Others who were present when buildings exploded, such as the World Trade Centre in 2001, were exposed to asbestos fibres, and many have died of asbestos cancers. The  MAA Center [www.maacenter.org] is one of the centres  that monitors the many different ways in  which the companies producing asbestos continue to endanger the workers and users of asbestos through the spread of mesothelioma.             
The dangers of asbestos were known 100 years ago. Companies like Bendix, Borg Warner,Chevron, Chrysler, Dow Chemicals, Kodak, Ford, General Electric manufactured and sold asbestos products.  Its use, and the profits generated, were more important than the lives of the workers and the consumers. Mining and processing was banned  in the EU, 2005: but continues in Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Canada, Brazil. China is the major producer, and consumer  of asbestos. Canada has long banned the use of asbestos, but allows the mining and export of up to 120,000 tons of white asbestos each year from Quebec.  The asbestos is to be exported to India, Indonesia, and the Philippines for use in the construction industry.             

What is the point of making statements and policies of CSR  when they mean nothing in practice, and only represent the double  standards of governments and corporations?
This is despite the fact that asbestos fibres are the cause of various forms of lung cancer. http//www.mesothelioma.as This is despite the fact that the Government  knows of these dangers, and actively removes asbestos from buildings, and forbids its use in building operations in Canada. These actions are tantamount to hypocrisy driven by the desire to 'make money'.

 It is worth noting that Asbestos products have not been banned in the USA, and the Surgeon General did not issue a health warning until April, 2009.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the National Toxicology Program, and the Environmental Protection Agency all declared asbestos a known human carcinogen decades ago. And yet U.S. imports of crude asbestos fibers rose by 235% between 2009 and 2010. Worldwide nearly 2 million tons of it were mined for use in things like cements, automotive
parts, protective footwear, and textiles. All of Europe, many countries in South America, and Saudi Arabia and others have banned asbestos. However, the United States has not seen fit to ban asbestos.

The health effects of asbestos are wide ranging, from an asbestos-related lung condition called asbestosis,  to mesothelioma, which is a tumor that affects the lining of the lungs, in the pleura, the lining of the abdomen, and this is a tumor that is unique to asbestos. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization, has now designated asbestos as cause of laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and other forms of gastrointestinal cancer.  So it’s one substance that has had a wide variety of use but has been associated with multiple types of diseases including respiratory disease and cancer. More than 60 countries have banned asbestos.

December 10th 2009 marks the start of the 'trial of the century' in Italy.  Two executives of the company, Eternit, have been accused of  causing an environmental disaster leading to the deaths of 2,200 workers, and ill health of hundreds of others, due to asbestos poisoning in four factories.

February 13th 2012 the court in Turin found ETERNIT guilty, and sent the two executives to prison.     


Oil: who is to be trusted?
With the exploitation of oil, action can be taken to protect local communities from pollution. But as the legal battles between Chevron and the government of  Ecuador show, such actions are never straightforward and can drag on for years.
October 2009, the multibillion-dollar legal case between Amazon peasants and Chevron over oil pollution in Ecuador’s rain forest keeps unfolding more like a mystery thriller than a battle of briefs.  Since the oil giant released videos in August 2009 that were secretly taped by two businessmen, Ecuadorean officials and Chevron have accused each other of gross improprieties, including espionage. Chevron gambled that the disclosure of the videos would enable it to cast doubt on the integrity of the trial, and the honesty of the Ecuadorean legal system. But the tapes have also raised questions about its ties to the men who made the recordings, potentially opening the company to a new legal fight. The tapes were the latest turn in a legal marathon over oil contamination left by Texaco years before it was acquired by Chevron.  The fight has become one about 'damages' not about environment. On Monday 14th February, 2011, after 17 years of legal battle, the second-largest oil company in the US, Chevron, was found guilty by Ecuadorian courts of massive environmental contamination of the Amazon. Chevron was ordered to pay a fine of $9 billion in damages. This is the largest judgement ever made against a US company for environmental contamination and is the first time that indigenous and farming communities have won judgements in foreign courts against a US company for environmental crimes abroad.
From 1964 to 1990, Chevron made billions of USD in profits through oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In the long- running trial in US and Ecuadorian courts, Chevron admitted to deliberately discharging around 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water into the water systems of the Amazon. The company committed a series of environmental crimes, such as spilling 17 million of gallons of pure crude oil from ruptured pipelines and abandoning more than 900 unlined waster pits which leeched toxins, contaminating the air, soil and water. Chevron ordered workers to destroy records of these crimes and never carried out any environmental impact studies.
May 2010 witnessed the oil pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, and the shorelines of Louisiana, following the destruction of  the Macondo platform. The chief executives of BP, in public, were more concerned with minimising the significance of the oil spill, asserting that the quantities of oil were minor in comparison to previous spills. To say this, is to ignore the horror of the catastrophe for the local communities, and the destruction of fisheries, and marine life.  The US government has declared the oil spill the biggest ever ! If such oil companies as BP  took corporate social responsibility seriously, they would not have  drilled for oil in such ocean localities in the first place: the Deep Water Horizon well extracts oil from a depth of 2 miles! July 2010 - the CEO of BP has paid the consequences of his public indifference by being dismissed.

Nov. 2011 the exploitation of the tar sands in Canada has led Shell into conflict with the First Nations of Athabaska for failure to meet contractual agreements.

In Nigeria, Shell are legally obliged to restore Ogoniland from the effects of oil pollution. 'Fracking', a process whereby oil and gas are forced out of the ground by water, has resulted in earthquakes in Lancashire, UK. What sort of madness is this?
Mobile phones

Multi-tasking in a vehicle leads to distracted drivers.
And how should we regard Motorola or AT&T? and  the marketing of cell phones/mobile phones ? During the 1960's both corporations have admitted that they knew that 'multi-tasking' by the driver in the car, with a cell phone causes distraction, and accidents, and death....... So, of course, they mounted a campaign against the use of these phones by drivers? Not a bit of it. Motorola mounted a campaign promoting their use by lorry drivers.  Now, they have developed 'hands-free' mobile phone kits fitted in the car and lorry. This is despite the fact that they are aware that  'multi-tasking' is dangerous: leading to 2,600 fatal crashes, and 570,000 accidents in the USA, in 2007.  In Dec 2009, the BBC reported that the Transport Research Lab.UK revealed that in London the use of mobile phones in vehicles was on the increase, despite the fact that it was illegal.
January 2010, the lawmakers of the USA are drawing up legislation to control 'distracted driving'. Four bills are pending in Congress that would push the States to regulate various types of cellphone use by drivers, including banning texting, requiring hands-free devices or prohibiting motorists under the age of 21 from using any devices. In the USA, generally, States regulate their roadways — which is why, safety advocates say, the actions of state lawmakers play such a critical role in addressing the issue. (Currently, 19 states and Washington D.C. ban texting while driving, and six states and Washington require use of hands-free devices by motorists talking on phones.) In December, 2009, the House of Representatives passed an order banning 8,000 House staff members from texting while driving (following  an order signed in October by President Obama banning 4.5 million federal employees from texting in state-provided cars or phones or during work hours).
Nov.2011; a court in California ruled that using a hand held phone at a traffic lights is part of the ban, and illegal.
December 14 2011, the US  National Transportation Board issued a report  urging all states of the US to ban all use of mobile phones in automobiles. Their research into the links between distracted drivers  and accidents over the last 10 years had forced them, in the face of opposition from phonemakers and carmakers, as well as lawmakers, to draw the conclusion that mobile phones in autos are dangerous!

December 2011, there are 3 billion users of mobile phones across the world. To put it another way: 3 billion people are  directly subject to the effects of micro-wave radiation, and may be subject to  skin rashes, brain tumors, sleeping disorders. Mobiles can damage your health. Governments and manufacturers know this, but say nothing...... However, on April 26 2012, the Health Protection Agency in the UK  issued a report that declared that there is no hard evidence of bad health effects from mobile phones.

The report confirmed that the greatest dangers of mobile phones is their use in cars and lorries, leading to 'distracted driving'.

CSR and pollution
McDonalds has been encouraging the growth of soya beans, which has led to the resumption of clearing of forests for farmland in the Amazon valley.

Elsewhere, in the forests of Indonesia, Wilmar, a palm oil producer, has been caught by Friends of the Earth, violating its own CSR policies by cutting forests and occupying land without permission.  
Ethics World tells us that there can be a lot of ‘greenwash’ ! Ethics World newsletter tells us that www.policyinnovations.org. reports :Much of the past fifty years has been characterized by a corporate attitude of denial or obligation. Only over the past fifteen to twenty years have companies begun to look at social and environmental challenges as business opportunities by "greening" their current products and processes. For example, Walmart declares its food products ‘organic’ and ‘green’ so as to attract customers ……….even though there is evidence from WalmartWatch denying these claims;they suggest that for Walmart sustainability is a public relations campaign.

DEVELOPMENT ISSUES: water, biofuels,
land grabs, wealth distribution.

WATER SUPPLIES

All the latest work on global water supplies presents us with contradictory findings.

A report from the analysts, Maplecroft, in 2010. says that the ten countries most at risk are: Somalia (1), Mauritania (2), Sudan (3), Niger (4), Iraq (5), Uzbekistan (6), Pakistan (7), Egypt (8), Turkmenistan (9) and Syria (10). The ranking was based on an assessment of access to water, water demands and the reliance on external supplies with countries like Mauritania and Niger more than 90 per cent reliant on external water supplies.

2012: Researchers at the University of Kassel in Germany, led by Martina Floerke, projected that by the 2050s, as many as six billion people could face water scarcity.

But a new report, by the British Geological Surveys, issued 20 April 2012, declares that  there are huge ground water resources  under Africa.  Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface. Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.  Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped the groundwater resource across the continent.  "Where there's greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad. The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75metre thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount." Due to changes in climate that have turned the Sahara into a desert over centuries, many of the aquifers underneath were last filled with water over 5,000 years ago.  The scientists are cautious about the best way of accessing these hidden resources. They suggest that widespread drilling of large boreholes might not work.   "Appropriately sited and developed boreholes for low yielding rural water supply and hand pumps are likely to be successful."  With many aquifers not being filled due to a lack of rain, the scientists are worried that large-scale borehole developments could rapidly deplete the resource. Sometimes the slower means of extraction can be more efficient:  " our work shows that with careful exploring and construction, there is sufficient groundwater under Africa to support low yielding water supplies for drinking and community irrigation."  The scientists say that there are sufficient reserves to be able to cope with the vagaries of climate change! Clearly, these reserves will have to be carefully monitored and supervised so as to avoid massive piracy.

Weather events this year, 2012, have led to floods and droughts. If we could control water flows, water suppplies might cease to be a problem. During 2012 many countries  have been subject to   continuous flooding… Philippines, southern Russia, central China, Japan, parts of Australia, and much of the UK, along with the monsoons of southern Asia, India and Pakistan: Others places have suffered  unprecedented drought, such as the prairies of North America. or the grasslands of Chad, and Sudan. As a result of which there have been failed harvests of corn, wheat, barley, rice, and rising prices, and increasing levels of starvation.

Amazon Watch reports, August 2012, that the Belo Monte Dam Project on the Xingu River is boiling up to a conflict between the local peoples and the Brazilian government and the development corporations and the courts. Indigenous leaders say that these plans will
affect more than 50 Amazonian nations representing hundreds of thousands of Indians.
Tayajin Shuwi Peas, warns: “We are not scared and we will fight to the death over this.” The Appeals court has found in favour of the indigenous peoples, banning the construction of the Dam.

Dry Toilets

In 2010 the UN declared  that access to water is a human right.

RIO+20 confirmed that every community must have safe water to drink, and sources for safe sanitation. But it is recognised that water toilets use too much water. The Bill/Melinda Gates Foundation, this week, [August 15 2012] offered up to $370 million to design teams to establish 'dry toilets', toilets that do not use  fresh water, but may use urine, and can operate for less than 5cents a day.

This is a good example of wealth redistribution, and design innovation. The dry toilet would be more appropriate for use in dry regions, rather than adopt water facilities developed in areas where water is plentiful.

Biofuels = starvation.

2010. New Economic Foundation’s report, ‘Growth isn’t possible’ revealed that concern for climate change and the rising price of oil has resulted in new policies that aim to substitute petrol and diesel with biofuels. There are, however, a number of unintended consequences of agro-industrial  biofuels.

‘The grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol…could feed one person for a year; this shows how food and fuel compete. Rising prices of staple crops can cause significant welfare losses for the poor, most of whom are net buyers of staple crops’. The rise in popularity of biofuels is creating competition for land and water between crops grown for food and those grown to make biofuels. This has led to civil unrest around the world. For example, the ‘Tortilla Riots’ in Mexico in 2007 followed the dramatic rise in price of corn (a staple food for poor households) as more land was given over for biofuel production.  Research published earlier in 2007 showed that the growth of palm oil for biodiesel for the European market is now the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia.
Is the complete or even partial substitution of diesel and petrol fuels with biofuels possible?
If the UK directly substituted all its diesel and petrol fuels to rapeseed oil biodiesel and corn bioethanol, the amount of agricultural land required would be approximately 36 million hectares. Total land area in the UK is just over 24 million hectare; less than 20 per cent  is suitable for agriculture.
To meet the USA  goal of increasing bioethanol production from the five billion gallons produced to 35 billion gallons by 2017 would require more corn than the USA currently produces.
To replace 10 per cent of global petrol production with bioethanol, Brazil would have to increase its ethanol production by a factor of 40, and would result in the destruction of around 35 per cent of the remaining Amazon Rainforest.
By increasing the consumption of bioethanol to around 34 million barrels per year by 2050, we find that  this would require a 25 per cent increase in cultivated land by 2050. This will clearly mean claiming a vast amount of land from the already stressed natural environment. It seems that the biggest enemies of the environment are the Ministers and Governments of specific countries!

Land Grabs for oil

But it is not only land for farming. It is also land for oil. It is not only 'neo-colonialists', it is the home governments that are selling land off for revenue. For example, the BBC reports that  it is six years since Chad's first US-led oil project at Doba came on stream. Human rights activists in Chad say they fear a new Chinese-backed oil project will displace hundreds of people and will destroy at least 10 villages. The deal is directly between the Chadian government and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), without any  scrutiny from the international community.  Work has begun to build a 300km (185 mile) pipeline from the Koudalwa oilfields in the south of the country, to a new refinery north of the capital. Chad's government says those who have to move will be compensated. The activists assert that the locals have not been consulted. These land grabs are not only occurring in Africa. In Peru, in South America, for the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the Government’s plans to auction off  75 per cent of the Amazon — which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country’s territory — to oil, gas and mining companies. They oppose 11 decrees issued by President García, under special legislative powers granted to him by the Peruvian Congress, to enact a free trade agreement with the US. These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams.

AID and REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.
Oxfam International  www.oxfam.org/Email: advocacy@oxfaminternational.org  agrees that not all aid works, and that a lot of it could work better. This is an argument for aid to be fixed – not abandoned  -- Aid that does not work to alleviate poverty and inequality ; aid that is driven by geopolitical interests ;aid which is too often squandered on expensive consultants; aid which spawns parallel government structures accountable to donors and not citizens; aid conceived by ‘experts’ in Washington, Geneva, or London and imposed without meaningful consultation with, or participation by those it intends to help; All such aid has little to do with the poor. Development  aid must be monitored and regulated.
In a world where 10million people control $42 trillion, of which 1226 billionaires control $4 trillion, and up to $30trillion is hidden ‘offshore’, the long term solution for AID has to be one whereby wealth is taxed, and the wealthy given incentives to give significant sums to charity, and the proceeds used to provide housing, to facilitate subsistence farming, to prevent starvation,  to cure diseases, to ease water supplies, and provide sanitation; to build schools and teach billions to read and write; to make villages and neighbourhoods, places where peoples can survive. What is more, such redistribution will have to be accompanied by serious attempts to stop fraud and corruption so as to make sure that the monies go to the poor and not into the pockets of some third party. There is no prospect of the poor majority  becoming ‘rich’ and ‘comfortable’. The only hope is that they will survive in better conditions than at present. Most people in the world today are poor, and living in appalling conditions. There is overwhelming evidence that rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than $1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. Urban slum growth is outpacing  urban growth by a wide margin. Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions. The UN wants each citizen of the planet, by virtue of his or her humanity, to be given a right to  minimum living standards. The UN accepts that the provision of basic social services will be through long-term financial transfers - redistribution of wealth. This change of philosophy implies a real revolution for the development community.
In a way, official development flows are moving away from a logic of investment towards one of global wealth redistribution. If financial transfers and redistribution of wealth is to work globally there will need to be ‘global networks’ of allocation, enforcement and supervision similar to the United Nations and its various organisations. To help ensure that it is successful, several agencies, including the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank are collaborating to mobilize ongoing political and operational support, including fighting for universal access to care for all women and children.

DEVELOPMENT

 

PUT FARMING FIRST.

The increasing emphasis on subsistence  farming  has led to several contradictory trends in the last 10 years.

First, a decline in global commodity trading.

Second, the development of sustainable agriculture.

Third, a global land grab by cash rich countries.

Fourth, increasing pressure on water resources.

Since the economic meltdown of the USA and the EU following the collapse of banking, and the mortgage crisis, in 2008/09, there has been an increasing demand to put ‘farming first’: to return to urban farms, and allotments and to abandone the global trade of staple foods. There has been an increasing number of community markets selling locally grown produce. This can be seen as a return to ‘subsistence farming’.
'Development' must include everyone, and a sustainable future for the 100% of the world’s population is a ‘subsistence’ future, made easier by the provision of modern technology e.g solar energy, water purification, drugs to cure diseases. Profits should have social objectives, and be spent for the benefits of local communities in the form of health care, sanitation, education, not for the luxuries of the plutocracy.
Without sustainable agriculture, sustainable development in Africa will remain a dream, argues Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, of Farming First. A top priority of the UN is to halve the number of people in the world experiencing poverty and hunger. While several countries have made progress in this area (China alone has lifted more than 175 million of its people above the poverty line), many other countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, still face the same hunger and poverty levels that they experienced 20 years ago. Up to 300 million Africans are facing chronic hunger.
So what can Africans do to put food on the table and money in their pockets? The answer is simple – invest in agriculture. After decades of stagnation in agricultural yields and little investment in rural economies, African countries are beginning to prioritise the development of agricultural production and markets. Rural development and agricultural productivity improvement now feature prominently on the agenda of national governments.
Continent-wide plans and investments, through programmes under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Research into Use (RIU) and the Alliance for Commodity Trade in East
and Southern Africa (ACTESA) and many others are encouraging.
With the majority of African governments spending on average less than 5% of total national budgets on agriculture, one of CAADP's key objectives is to increase this to 10%, with the target of raising agricultural productivity by at least 6% per annum. Achieving Africa's agricultural growth requires massive investments from the global community and the on-going global financial crisis poses a threat to Africa's efforts.
Over the past generation, agriculture and farmers have been sidelined in international policy circles. During this time, agriculture's share of total aid has dropped from 17% to 3% of total spend. As a result, productivity is low. While total aid to sub-Saharan Africa remained stable during the 1990s, the proportion allocated to agriculture declined year on year. Aid to agriculture in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member states declined as a proportion of total aid from 20% in the early 1980s to 8% by 2000. If poverty in Africa is to be reduced, aid to agriculture must be increased substantially and made to work more effectively.
The G8 agriculture ministers in discussions of the world food emergency, have done well to recognise the role agriculture plays in the success of a broader development agenda.  The G8 ministers have endorsed CAADP as an excellent plan of what is needed to achieve food security. It is time we realised that there can be no sustainable development without sustainable agriculture. For Africa to develop sustainable food policies, partnerships are key. The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) has joined forces with international groups from the science and technology, farming, and private sector communities to endorse a plan called - Farming First  

among global policymakers. Farming First calls on world leaders to take action by developing a locally sustainable value chain for global agriculture. It emphasises the need for knowledge networks and policies centred on helping subsistence farmers to become small-scale entrepreneurs, and it proposes six interlinked imperatives for sustainable agriculture:
safeguarding natural resources,
sharing knowledge,
building local access,
protecting harvests,
enabling access to markets
and prioritising research imperatives.
Implementation of programmes under CAADP is critical for reducing hunger and achieving the global priorities expressed in the
Millennium Development Goals.
• Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda is CEO of the Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network.

DEVELOPMENT AS LAND GRAB.

At the same time as 'putting farming first', locally, we must pay attention to the cash rich countries, who are buying up agricultural land in Africa. Local farmers could be crushed unless there are international rules to protect them.

In Africa they are calling it the land grab, or the new colonialism. Countries hungry to secure their food supplies – including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, South Korea (the world's third biggest importer of corn) China, India, Libya and Egypt – are at the forefront of a
frantic rush to buy up farmland all around the world, but mainly cash-starved Africa.
Saudi Arabian investors have paid $100m for  Ethiopian farms where they hope to grow wheat and barley, adding to the millions of acres they already own in the war-ravaged country, as well as in neighbouring Sudan. The Saudis also have land in Indonesia and Thailand for growing rice. China owns vast tracts of overseas land, mainly in Algeria and Zimbabwe.  Kenya and Tanzania have leased land while the Ugandans have been big sellers, allocating two million acres of land to Egypt for wheat and corn.
The Saudi government and other Gulf States are negotiating with Pakistan to buy another million acres. The deal includes the services of a 100,000-man private army to protect the food being exported. Buyers or lease-holders  have also been promised legal cover in case a future government in Islamabad is less welcoming.
By far the most aggressive buyer is Saudi Arabia, where the government is now actively encouraging private investors and companies to buy farmland abroad after abandoning its attempt to be self-sufficient because of worries over water scarcity. It cut its wheat production by 12.5 per cent last year, prompting the search for new land.

 

At the African Union (AU), the agriculture commissioner, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, is worried that many land buyers are ignoring the interests of local farmers and communities. But the AU also recognises that bringing new capital into Africa could be positive if it is
directed in the right way. Instead of purchasing land, she says, buyers or lease-holders should invest through production and trade agreements with the host country. Deals, which increased overall food production should be encouraged, a move which would bring
more food to the international markets, as well as to the poorest African households. Some of the AU's new guidelines on land sales include recommendations that new investors should promise to help with infrastructure, such as health facilities, agree to pay local taxation and look at ways to get more involved on the food-processing side which would create more local jobs. It estimated that 20 million hectares of land – twice the size of Germany's croplands – have been sold since 2006 in more than four dozen land deals, mainly in Africa. So far, most of the buyers are a mix of private investors, US private equity houses such as Sanlam Private Equity, the Saudi Kingdom Zephyr fund, the UK's CDC and sovereign wealth funds.
Subsistence farmers and nomadic tribesmen are of particular concern, since many of them do not have titles to their land and could be easily exploited by their own governments, which are desperate to sell to boost their foreign reserves. If the latest invasion of overseas money can be handled well, it could bring huge advantages to Africa after a generation of declining investment.  But much of the new money is going into capital intensive farming – and speculative bio-fuel crops – which do not bring great benefits to local farmers. One of the implications of this investment in farming is that the amount of water used to produce food and goods imported to developed countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world. April 2010, the 'Engineering the Future' alliance, reported that  this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.  "We must take account of how our water footprint is impacting on the rest of the world."  Developing countries are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West. The report says, "The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on areas that are already short of water.”  The report says it means nations such as the UK have a duty to put farming first and help curb water use in the developing world, where about one billion people already do not have sufficient access to clean drinking water.  UK-funded aid projects should have water conservation as a central tenet of development. The report recommends, companies should examine their supply chains and reduce the water used in them. This could lead to difficult questions being asked, such as whether it is right for the UK to import beans and flowers from water-stressed countries such as Kenya.  
Nevertheless, the FAO predicts the number of chronically hungry will shoot up by 100 million this year – on top of the 1.4 billion people already living on the poverty line.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CORRUPTION  OR SOCIAL BENEFIT?

The Rio+20 Conference has been and gone. The 50,000 delegates have had a working holiday. The principles and goals were all agreed again. Agenda 21 was confirmed again. But there was little agreement about who pays. As always the ‘rich’ protest that they have no money. And the ‘poor’ assert that they want help to survive. In the Sahel region of Africa, 18.4 million people in nine countries are running out of food  today. [May 2012].

Once upon a time, I believed that 'development' and 'globalisation' were strategies designed by multinational corporations, and countries represented by  the G8, the G20, the UN, and the World Bank, to provide aid to poor countries of the world and help their people to improve their living conditions and enable more people  to survive and thrive. I was even persuaded, as a result of my English State schooling, that colonialism as practiced by the British was for the benefit of the native peoples across the world.

I no longer believe these propositions. I regard them as strategies designed to exploit the poorest countries.
The richest countries, as represented by the G8, and more recently the G20, or G77, and the multinational corporations that drive 'free market  capitalism', have exhausted many of the resources of the 'developed world', and are now looking everywhere else for new sources of
key materials. Capitalist development is the exploitation of resources and materials so as to gain maximum profits for shareholders and corporations in the home country. Globalisation and development and colonialism and slavery, are strategies of intervention by these countries and corporations for the benefit of shareholders, and the exploitation of the world's poor! and the enrichment of ‘developed countries’.

There is no doubt that the United Nations General Council are determined to utilize Development aid for the social benefit of the peoples of the ‘developing world’. They declare that the  U.N. Millennium  Development Goals, are aimed at [1] eliminating extreme poverty and hunger; [2] achieving universal primary education; [3] promote gender equality and empower women; [4] reduce child mortality; [5] improve maternal health; [6]combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB; [7] ensure environmental sustainability, [8] develop a global partnership for development.

DEVELOPMENT AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.

It is worth noting that any government or agency that declares that a country needs ‘development’ aid is in fact asserting that the ways of the indigenous peoples are not good enough to exploit their homeland for maximum production and profit. Furthermore, it is a statement about the viability of capitalist economies, and the desirability of large industrial scale enterprises.

It is recognized by economists and government ministers and civil servants  that capitalist growth destroys resources, and communities.  In places like Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, the USA, Canada, as well as Congo, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Burkino Faso,  organizations of indigenous peoples are pointing out that their ways of living are designed to protect and preserve crops and trees, and maintain the sustainable development of their lands, and not to destroy the environment. It was significant that indigenous communities were present at Rio, determined to state their cases for protection.

One of the long term effects of capitalist enterprise is to devalue indigenous communities. Analyses carried out by  researchers at the Centre of International Development of Columbia University; as well as by Anup Shah of Global Issues.org; Greenpeace International, and reporters with Corporate Watch, Ethics World, Global Witness, and Aljazeera, and the Congo Week, among others, reveal that enslavement and colonialism have resulted in the dislocation of communities, the imposition of  colonial inequality, the perpetuation of long term debts, the constant introduction of virulent diseases, as well as the permanent failure of cooperative partnership.  Development projects lead to the destruction of indigenous communities.

It is not surprising  that most of the countries in Africa are poor and indebted and bankrupt. For example, the World Bank identifies Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia as among the 40 most ‘heavily indebted poor countries’ in the world [HIPC].
With very low domestic saving and low rates of market-based foreign capital inflows, there is little in Africa’s current dynamics that promotes an escape from poverty. Furthermore, given that most of the world’s population is poor, trying to survive on less than $10 a
day, there is little hope that the peoples of Africa, as well as India, and China, many of whom are on $1.25 a day, will gain an acceptable standard of living.

 DEVELOPMENT AND CORRUPTION
Ethics World informs us that often the local communities of indigenous peoples do not benefit from any capitalist projects, because the labour is imported, and all the wages and profits are directed to the home office. Greenpeace recently revealed that companies working in the poorest countries in the world take great pains to avoid paying taxes and fair wages. For example, Swiss logging company Danzer, operated tax evasion schemes such as transfer pricing, offshore accounts, use of expatriate labour, to divert profits from its forestry activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, depriving the local people of an estimated 7.8 million euros in tax revenue.  
Anup Shah,  www.globalissues.org  suggests that the scramble for Africa in the 19th century disrupted the creation of communities and countries. Artificial borders were created by Imperial Europe at the 1884 Berlin Conference simply by drawing lines on a map. These
artificial boundaries created by colonial rulers had the effect of bringing together many different communities that had little in common, and separating those who had everything in common! And thereby laying the foundations of the many conflicts that disrupt Africa today!
The Centre of International Development of Columbia University indicates that in the post-colonial age, the rich countries, including those colonial powers such as UK, France, Germany, Belgium, have often used their majority vote within the International Monetary Fund to  impose draconian adjustments on poor debtor countries. For twenty years, many of the poorest tropical countries have had insolvent governments, burdened by un-payable external debts. The international system has delayed or blocked the obvious solution: that is,  

debt cancellation. This has contributed to continuing low growth and instability in the so-called  ‘Highly Indebted Poor Countries’, the extremely poor and highly indebted countries that are subject to special scrutiny and policies of the international creditor governments.
Corporate Watch regularly reminds us that the prosperity of ex-colonies continues to be hindered by corruption and illegal practices by corporations, as well as by institutions of government. The continent of Africa is rich in resources and minerals. But its peoples remain
poor and indebted. Many other countries and corporations want access to the riches, but do not want to pay a fair price. They use their racism as the excuse for the exploitation of the lands and peoples of Africa!  A  report by Transparency International [Feb 2009]
revealed that these corporations and their agents are busy corrupting their customers for preferential terms on multiple projects. For example, in Southern Asia and parts of Africa the shortages of water to drink, and for sanitation, for the poor are not caused by the lack
of water resources, but by unfair distribution of water supplies to the wealthy as a result of bribery and corruption over water projects.
'Development' must become a social strategy for the alleviation of poverty not a capitalist strategy to line the pockets of the rich!
 
Transparency International [2010] reveals that corruption is not only fostered by corporations, but also by countries. Some of the poorest countries in the world are reported as actively promoting corruption.  The most corrupt governments were judged to be Chad, Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo. Mali These countries are involved in military action, and are in receipt of vast sums of aid funds, little of which is used to benefit the local communities and much of which is used to organize military groups.

Gandhi once proposed that there is enough wealth in the world for everybody's need, but not enough for anybody's greed.
People such as Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, among many others, have argued that there is enough wealth in the world today to totally alleviate poverty. But to do this, the wealth has to be redistributed, not spent on the luxurious lifestyles of the richest
individuals nor on the funding of military forces.

   
Development will be disrupted by climate change.

Kofi Annan's thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum, has announced that by 2030, climate change could cost $600 billion a year.
The UN study says it is impossible to be certain who will be displaced by 2030, but  tens of millions of people "will be driven from their homelands by weather disasters or gradual environmental degradation. The problem is most severe in Africa, Bangladesh, Egypt,
coastal zones and forest areas. ."
The study compares for the first time the number of people affected by climate change in rich and poor countries. Nearly 98% of the people seriously affected, 99% of all deaths from weather-related disasters and 90% of the total economic losses are now borne by
developing countries.

 CARE International reported that up to 200 million people could be on the move by 2050.
Climate Change will exacerbate stressful conditions unless vulnerable populations, especially the poorest, are assisted in building climate-resilient livelihoods."New thinking and practical approaches are needed to address the threats that climate-related migration poses to human security and well-being,"  said Warner of the UN.    For development experts, such as Ehrhart, climate change is a formidable foe that must be tackled. He doesn't want to see the hopes of the world's poorest turned to dust. It is obvious that in areas where the total population exceeds the capacity of the land to support them, the people do not thrive, and will die soon. A UN report says hunger in South Asia has reached its highest level in 40 years because of food and fuel price rises and the global economic downturn.  
The report by the UN children's fund, Unicef, says that 100 million more people
in the region are going hungry compared with two years ago. It names the worst affected areas as Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The report says South Asia's governments need to urgently increase social spending to meet the challenge.

Unicef says the region's governments need to increase spending on food, health care and education to alleviate the crisis. But it acknowledges that the economic slowdown means there is less money to spend.  But the problems of poverty and hunger are being compounded by the effects of climate change e.g. areas in Africa, Australia, and South America, that were once wet, have become dry, and their grasslands have disappeared and farming has collapsed. New deserts have formed.Rivers that once flowed to the sea are drying up, depriving many communities of sources of water. Forests become tinder dry and burst into flames, destroying vast areas, as seen recently in Victoria, Australia and California, USA and Greece in Europe. Ironically, these effects have been generated as a result of excessive pollution in the rich countries of the world such as the USA, China, and the EU.
The generation of excessive carbon dioxide, and other gases such as methane, chloroflourocarbons, and soots, cause heat retention in the atmosphere, and rising temperatures.
Oct 2011: the Berkeley Earth Project, California, published a report that confirmed that global average temperatures are rising. The project denied the viability of the 'climate change deniers'. We have to conclude that the 1 billion starving today will soon become 2 billion, and all will soon die. Doomsday – tomorrow! Their deaths will be the result of the spread of industrial farming, and the impacts of climate change. They will die not as the result of their own actions but the changes generated by other people living on the other side of the world. Our free market capitalist society enables the rich to prosper and to live for more than 70 years. The poor majority struggle to survive, and 80% die before the age of 70. If the population balance is altered by starvation, disease, and calamity, and conflict, the projected increase to 9 billion in 2050, will become a decline! Doomsday - today! Tomorrow!