Tag Archives: usaid

The State Department could gut Obama’s last remaining executive action on climate change.

by MoniqueFournier Posted on January 19, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

An independent review of the federal government’s actions on climate change might have inadvertently endangered President Obama’s last remaining executive action on global warming.

In 2017, five Democratic senators — including Sheldon Whitehouse, Dianne Feinstein, and Elizabeth Warren — asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a review of how federal agencies were addressing climate change as a “potential driver of global migration.” The nonpartisan “congressional watchdog,” studied executive and federal activities between 2014 and 2018.

The GAO report, which was released on Thursday, adds to the bleak picture of federal climate action under the current administration. It shows that while the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of Defense began to look into the nexus of climate change and migration while Obama was in office, much of that work has been undone by President Trump and his appointees.

The fact that climate connections have languished in several federal agencies over the past two years is not that surprising– President Trump has systematically dismantled musth of Obama’s climate legacy. But the report itself is having some unexpected consequences in certain parts of the federal government.

As a result of its inquiry into federal actions on climate change and migration, the GAO issued a recommendation to the U.S. State Department: it should provide its missions with guidance on how to assess risks posed by climate change. That’s something the department started to do after Obama issued an executive order on Climate-Resilient International Development in 2014. In response, according to the GAO, the State Department agreed to that recommendation this year — but added that the agency will consider asking President Trump to scrap Obama’s order.

“This is unprecedented within my experience that the agency would on the one hand essentially acknowledge and agree to the recommendation, but on the other hand begin working to consider whether to rescind the underlying executive action,” David Gootnick, director of international affairs and trade at the GAO, told Grist.

When the State Department develops its strategy for U.S. priorities in each country without including guidance on how to conduct climate change risk assessments, it misses out on opportunities to identify and address the potential impact global warming may have on migration, the GAO wrote. The department did not immediately provide comment, citing limited capacity due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

The GAO report highlighted research on the global fallout of a warming climate, which it said raises “both humanitarian and national security concerns for the U.S. government.” Scientists have increasingly been able to attribute the growing severity of disasters like hurricanes and floods to climate change. Extreme weather events can often displace entire communities, and push people to move in order to rebuild their lives. Slow changes over time, like prolonged droughts and sea-level rise driven by higher average global temperatures, can also destroy livelihoods and factor into people’s decisions to migrate.

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Although the study notes that it’s difficult to quantify how much of a role climate change plays directly or indirectly on global migration trends, it did point to instances when federal agencies had made that connection in the past. In 2014, the Department of State wrote in its adaptation plan that climate change was a potential driver for migration and could affect the department’s peace-keeping efforts. That year, the Department of Defense stated in its adaptation roadmap that climate change was a “threat multiplier” that could threaten national security through migration. Also in 2014, USAID, which spearheads the nation’s international development efforts, identified climate-related events like flooding as a driver of migration and a risk to its aid programming.

The Trump administration has already revoked two other Obama-era executive actions on climate change: a 2013 executive order “preparing the United States for the impacts of climate change” and a 2016 presidential memorandum on climate change and national security.

Those actions have crippled the federal agencies’ ability to communicate with each other on climate change. It disbanded the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience — both of which brought together expertise from the Departments of State, Defense, and USAID.

“Those kinds of working groups are important for the U.S. government to bring its collective resources to bear and be able to be a partner with other bilateral and multilateral fora,” said Gootnick.

The GAO report also noted how the Trump administration has slashed funding for climate initiatives. And on top of vowing to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Trump administration also said that it would pull out of negotiations on the U.N. Global Compact for Migration, which is shaping up to be one of the first intergovernmental agreements to tackle climate-driven migration.

In an email to Grist, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who commissioned the GAO report, wrote, “President Trump’s immigration obsession has a serious blind spot: the role of climate change in driving people to flee their homes.”

Continue reading here:  

The State Department could gut Obama’s last remaining executive action on climate change.

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The State Department could gut Obama’s last remaining executive action on climate change.

How Liberia’s Government Is Using Ebola to Crack Down on the Media

by FallonSeptimus Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Ebola has already claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people in Liberia. Now, the Liberian president’s critics are warning that her response to the epidemic is threatening to undermine the country’s fragile democratic institutions.

More MoJo coverage of the Ebola crisis.


Budget Cuts “Eroded Our Ability to Respond” to Ebola, Says Top Health Official


Liberia Says It’s Going to Need a Lot More Body Bags


How Long Does the Ebola Virus Survive in Semen?


Liberians Explain Why the Ebola Crisis Is Way Worse Than You Think


Why the World Health Organization Doesn’t Have Enough Funds to Fight Ebola


New Drugs and Vaccines Can’t Stop This Ebola Outbreak

The controversy began back on August 6 when President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced a 90-day state of emergency to deal with the crisis. More recently, Sirleaf wrote a letter to the national legislature requesting the legal authority to suspend a number of civil liberties guaranteed by the country’s constitution. If enacted, the measures would give Sirleaf the power to restrict the movement of certain communities by proclamation and even to limit speech that could create “false alarm.” The government would also be able to confiscate private property “without payment of any kind or any further judicial process” in order to protect the public’s health.

The Liberian House of Representatives rejected the proposals in a landslide vote, but the Senate was still debating them as of yesterday.

Even if the Liberian legislature votes against Sirleaf’s request for more power, the government has already taken actions that erode civil liberties in the name of fighting the disease.

Since declaring a state of emergency, Sirleaf’s government has introduced a nationwide curfew, forcing people to stay indoors at night. Against the advice of Ebola experts and Liberian health officials, Sirleaf also ordered the quarantine of an entire slum in Monrovia in an attempt to contain an outbreak in the Liberian capital. (The slum was reopened 10 days later.) This month—with the legislature’s backing—Sirleaf suspended a special Senate election, citing a lack of essential staff and materials.

Press freedoms have also been eroded: When the curfew was first announced, journalists were not included on a list of exempted professions able to move freely around the country at night. (They were added six days later.) In early October, citing privacy concerns, the government announced that reporters could be arrested for speaking with Ebola patients or photographing treatment centers without written permission from the health ministry.

In her recent letter to the legislature, Sirleaf asked for the authority to further restrict freedom of the press. “Because falsehood and negative reporting on the state of the affairs is likely to defeat the national effort in the fight of the Ebola virus, it is important that such be discouraged and prevented,” she wrote. “Accordingly, the Government of Liberia will restrict speeches that will confuse the citizens and residents including the raising of false alarm thereby creating fear during the state of emergency.”

The rule of law has never been strong in Liberia. Almost from its inception, the country was governed by oppressive regimes. But by the time its 14-year civil war ended in 2003, nascent democratic institutions began to take shape. In its latest ratings, the democracy watchdog Freedom House classified Liberia as “partly free.”

Now, some fear, Sirleaf’s proposals are moving the country back in the direction of authoritarian rule.

“In my view, this is dangerous, and it reminds us of the days when the dictators govern Liberia,” Acarous Gray, a member of the Liberian House of Representatives, told the US-funded news agency Voice of America.

Roosevelt Woods, executive director for the Foundation for International Dignity, a Liberian human rights advocacy group, also slammed the president for overreaching. “This is dangerous for our country,” he told a group of journalists last weekend. “Anything that has to do with absolute power that violates human rights is a bad sign for Liberia. Sirleaf was elected to bring positive change, to restore hopes and not to dash them.”

The news also poses a dilemma for the United States, which has been one of the most active partners in aiding Liberia’s democratic transition. Over the past decade, the US Agency for International Development spent $271 million on democracy and governance programs in the country—almost a quarter of all its aid to Liberia during that time, according to an agency report.

Because it was dealing with such a weak state, USAID looked for ways to build up Liberia’s capacity to govern itself, while simultaneously trying to develop measures to ensure the government respected its citizens’ basic rights. The strategy USAID chose was to help strengthen the country’s historically abusive executive branch while also training local media and community-based organizations to report on corruption and better inform the public. But that approach has potential drawbacks. “The risk…is that we put too much emphasis on governance and too little on democratic governance,” the agency acknowledged in its report.

Now, with the Ebola response threatening some core freedoms, the agency says it’s up to Liberians to determine how far Sirleaf can go. “Whether and how any steps are taken to restrict any of these rights is an issue for discussion among Liberia’s three branches of government, and between the government and civil society,” a USAID spokesperson said in a statement to Mother Jones. “We hope it will not be necessary for President Sirleaf to take steps to restrict civil liberties.”

But Liberian authorities have already done just that—especially in their dealings with the press. In August, the government used tear gas to shutter the National Chronicle newspaper just hours after the information minister threatened reporters critical of the government’s response to the crisis. (The Chronicle had recently published a series of stories discussing efforts by Sirleaf’s rivals to challenge her government.) Days later, the editor of the Women Voices newspaper reported being harassed and interrogated by police after publishing a story alleging that law enforcement officials had misused funds intended for the Ebola effort.

Free press advocates have expressed concern over the recent developments. “Liberia’s public health crisis must not be used as a pretext for cracking down on the media,” Virginie Dangles, assistant research director for Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement. “On the contrary, the media need to be involved as much as possible, to provide the population with constant information about the state of the epidemic, the government’s response and the preventive measures being adopted.”

The Chronicle and Women Voices incidents and others were detailed in a letter from the Press Union of Liberia to Justice Minister Christiana Tah on September 4. She won’t be able to do anything about it now, however. Tah resigned on October 6, accusing the president of undermining the independence of her office.

“The investments of national and international stakeholders promoting the rule of law are being eroded by actions that contradict the values that underpin the fabric of our society,” she wrote in her letter of resignation.

Visit source:  

How Liberia’s Government Is Using Ebola to Crack Down on the Media

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Liberia’s Government Is Using Ebola to Crack Down on the Media

Walmart Sets Its Sights on Africa—With Uncle Sam’s Help

by marques458 Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, the second day of this week’s three-day US-Africa Leaders Summit, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon shared the main stage with the CEOs of General Electric and Dow Chemical. Sitting on a panel moderated by Bill Clinton, he talked about how his company was working with farmers to grow food to sell in its stores, and even export back to the United States and United Kingdom. “As we look at what we’re trying to do in Africa, we are simply trying to provide customers access to fresh produce and other items at a great value,” McMillon said. “To do that, we got to have a great supply chain.”

Yet Walmart isn’t building that supply chain alone—it’s getting a boost from the US government. At the close of the summit—which saw more than 50 African heads of state and government and 100-plus US and African businesses (and more than a few of their lobbyists) pack into a Washington, DC, hotel to plan the future of US-Africa relations—Walmart vice president Maggie Sans announced that the company and its foundation had pledged $3 million to train 135,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia, including 80,000 women. The funds will expand existing projects organized by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the consultancy Agribusiness Systems International, and the nonprofit organizations Global Communities and the One Acre Fund to develop farm-to-market supply chains. Under the program, Kenyan farmers can expect to see their incomes double in a single growing season, Sans said.

Walmart and USAID have worked together before. Beginning in 2007, the agency partnered with Walmart, TransFair (an independent certifier of fair-trade imports), and SEBRAE (a Brazilian nonprofit) to train 5,000 farmers in Brazil to improve the quality of their coffee crop to sell at Walmart stores. In 2011, USAID joined with a Guatemalan nonprofit and Walmart’s Mexican and Central American arm to connect farmers benefiting from a USAID program to boost production to the company’s supply chain. The agency helped train small farmers in Honduras and Guatemala to grow potatoes and onions that fit Walmart’s specifications, and Walmart provided a place to sell them.

A Marko store in Johannesburg, South Africa, part of the Massmart brand, which was purchased by Walmart in 2011 Themba Hadebe/AP

Produce is the central component of Walmart’s expansion into Africa, which began in 2011, when Walmart bought a majority share of the South African-based Massmart chain for $2.4 billion. At the time, Massmart had almost 300 stores in 14 African countries, according to Bloomberg. By August 2013, Massmart had almost 360 African stores, and Walmart announced plans to build 90 more, with a “focus on fresh food,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Three weeks later, Walmart, the Walmart Foundation, and USAID signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of forming a voluntary partnership between the parties, focusing on climate change, farmer training, and agriculture, among other priorities.

USAID administrator Rajiv Shah acknowledged in a 2012 interview with Foreign Policy that working with Walmart was necessary, even if the choice wasn’t universally embraced. “Over the last several decades, it’s been controversial to have companies like Walmart in the development solution,” he said. “I think it is the kind of long-term development program that is needed to succeed at scale over time.”

Shah went further at a speech at the University of Arkansas, shortly after signing the memorandum at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville: “We want to bring Walmart’s core capabilities in philanthropy and business to every part of the world to transform the face of hunger and poverty,” he said. “To end poverty, childhood deaths, and hunger, we need to bring together businesses with supply chains for partnership to reach the farthest corners of the globe.”

While supermarket chains in Africa may benefit the farmers who supply them, not everyone is convinced that expanding their customer base will end hunger. In 2013, World Bank researchers found that the richest fifth of the population of Zambia accounted for two-thirds of all the country’s supermarket sales; the bottom 60 percent accounted for only 12 percent. A year earlier, geographers Bill Moseley, Stephen Peyton, and Jane Battersby compiled a database of supermarkets and population distribution in the Cape Town, South Africa, area that showed that supermarket density was 16 times higher in upper-middle-income neighborhoods than in the poorest areas.

Despite the disparity, poor and urban residents interviewed for the study said they preferred to shop at supermarkets when they could since they stocked higher-quality food. The problem was that the poorest customers had irregular incomes and often lacked refrigerators at home, meaning they could only purchase food in small quantities, which is easier at local shops than at supermarkets selling bulk and packaged goods.

“Supermarket expansion is neither a solution to, nor a curse on, hunger alleviation efforts in urban South Africa and the region more broadly,” the researchers wrote in an Al Jazeera op-ed. “This market-oriented solution to improving urban food access is inherently limited because it just cannot meet the needs of the poorest of the poor.”

Whoever its future customers will be in Africa, Walmart says it’s ready to meet them. “Everywhere we operate, we find our customers have so much in common,” McMillon said. “Our customers in Africa want to spend less on everyday needs so they can provide more for their families. We want to help.”

Read more:  

Walmart Sets Its Sights on Africa—With Uncle Sam’s Help

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Walmart Sets Its Sights on Africa—With Uncle Sam’s Help

U.S. to help Pacific islands cope with climate change

by s1cx54s Posted on March 14, 2013

U.S. to help Pacific islands cope with climate change

By John Upton

Shutterstock / Karin WassmerSome help is on its way for Vanuatu, which is threatened by climate change.

Unless you’re among the growing number of Americans whose homes are powered entirely by renewable energy, every time you switch on a light you’re doing your part to sink a Pacific island.

Many of the thousands of tropical islands that dot the Pacific Ocean are low-lying and will be among the first countries to sink as the world’s seas continue their steady rise.

But beyond the risks posed to their very survival, these islands face additional acute threats from freshwater shortages, coral bleaching, higher temperatures, and other hazards wrought by climate change. This despite the fact that their inhabitants have low carbon footprints and are contributing relatively little to the climate problem.

It is against this backdrop that the U.S. has spent the past year preparing aid projects designed to help a dozen Pacific island countries brace themselves against the growing threats posed by global warming.

From the Australia News Network:

USAID’s mission director for the Pacific Islands, Gloria Steele, said as part of the Climate Change Adaptation Project, USAID will work with coastal communities in a range of areas.

“To help identify mostly small infrastructure that would need assistance to make them more climate resilient, and working in disaster preparation, prevention and response,” she told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat.

“Finally working with the policy-makers, who make sure that policies incorporate measures that will make communities be more climate-resistant.”

Ms Steele said all of the projects will be done in partnership with the communities, NGOs and the private sector.

Is the U.S. doing enough to rescue Pacific islanders from the climate change that it has done so much to cause? Probably not. The best thing would be to stop messing with the climate. Is the U.S. doing something worthwhile? Check out the list of projects and judge for yourself: They include efforts to restore mangroves that can serve as buffers from tidal surges, projects to protect agricultural output, and the development of new sustainable fisheries policies.

By the way, if you do happen run your home and vehicle without using fossil fuels, thank you for not sinking any small nations today.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Original article:

U.S. to help Pacific islands cope with climate change

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. to help Pacific islands cope with climate change