EU endorses Bali ‘roadmap’ but will it help poor? The European Commission has welcomed the agreement of a ‘roadmap’ for talks on addressing climate change at the international conference in Bali last weekend.
Despite objections from the US, the conference agreed that the roadmap should contain a reference to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40% within the next twelve years.
Such reduction targets were demanded by EU participants, although the eventual deal was less specific on reaching them than they – and most ecological and anti-poverty organisations – had hoped. The targets are designed to prevent the earth’s temperatures from rising by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The Bali ‘roadmap’ is to form the basis of discussions on an international accord replacing the Kyoto protocol. It is intended that such an accord will be finalised in Copenhagen in 2009.
“Now the real work must begin,” said Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner. “It is essential that the agreement to be worked out over the next two years is ambitious enough to prevent global warming from reaching dangerous levels.”
But groups highlighting how the poor are bearing the brunt of climate change were less upbeat. “Without a clear range for the global emissions cuts needed, this deal fails to keep us from the brink of exceeding two degrees Celsius of warming,” said Antonio Hill of Oxfam. “Far from the negotiating halls of Bali, poor people waist-high in floods and children malnourished by failed harvests will demand to know why did world leaders not see what we face and act urgently to stop it?”
EPAs signed ‘under duress’ – South Africa Fourteen Caribbean states have agreed a far-reaching free trade or Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU.
Committing the 14 countries to liberalise both their goods and services market, the deal is wider than other EPAs that the European Commission has reached with countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). In most cases, the agreements so far reached have been described as ‘interim’ and primarily relate to trade in goods only. This one, however, has been labelled as a ‘full’ agreement.
Because of the Caribbean breakthrough, 32 of almost 80 ACP countries have now accepted an EPA by the 31 December deadline set by the Commission. This deadline was designed to comply with a waiver from WTO rules applying to current trading preferences granted to ACP goods entering the EU market. That waiver expires at the beginning of 2008.
South Africa’s Trade Minsiter Rob Davies said that most of the ACP countries that have signed agreements have done so “under duress”. He was referring to a threat made by the EU to impose punitive tariffs on ACP goods destined for the EU market if the deadline is missed.
Chad peace-keeping force behind schedule The deployment of a European Union peacekeeping force in Eastern Chad has fallen behind schedule amid fears that its French-dominated troops could come under attack after setting foot in the troubled African state.
Initially, the EU had signalled its desire to have the 3,000-strong force, known as Eufor, operational by mid-November, when the dry season was expected to begin.
Not only was that deadline missed, there has also been a fresh outbreak of fighting between soldiers loyal to Idriss Déby, the Chadian president, and rebels commanded by Mahamat Nouri. Nouri’s Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UNFDD) declared on 30 November that they were “in a state of belligerence against the French army or any other foreign force on the national territory”.
His rebels accuse France of a bias in favour of Déby.
The deployment of Eufor is not now expected before the middle of January.
Although Pat Nash, an Irish lieutenant-general, has been appointed as commander of the force, it will be dominated by French troops. Raising troop levels has proven difficult because of commitments made by several large EU states to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
New EU scheme for aid to Palestinians The EU is to launch a new mechanism for providing aid to the Palestinians within the next few months.
After the Union decided to freeze direct aid to the Palestinian Authority in response to an election victory by Hamas, a ‘temporary international mechanism’ (TIM) for financial assistance was created in 2006. It was used to fund health and education, fuel deliveries and payments to the vulnerable in the occupied territories.
The TIM is to be phased out in March 2008 and replaced with a new mechanism known by its French acronym PEGASE.
During a donor’s conference in Paris last weekend, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external relations commissioner, said that it is “time to work directly with the Palestinian Authority”.
The PEGASE is intended to support a Palestinian Reform and Development Plan presented to the Paris conference by Salam Fayyad, prime minister with the Palestinian Authority.
Europe asked to cease funding World Bank Anti-poverty campaigners have urged European governments to cease funding the World Bank until it drops the harmful economic conditions it attaches to its loans for poor countries.
Last week 45 governments pledged to give $25 billion to the World Bank’s biggest funding agency for the world’s poorest countries, the International Development Association (IDA).
This money was committed at a ‘replenishment conference’ for the IDA in Berlin.
Alex Wilks from the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) complained that more than two-thirds of all loans and grants from the IDA require that recipients open up their economies to imports or privatise national firms.
“European governments should not be taken in by the Bank’s assurances that conditionality is a problem that has been dealt with,” Wilks added.
Campaigners have also questioned the Bank’s environmental credentials.
Although the Bank has promised to support efforts to tackle climate change, it increased its funding for projects relying on fossil fuels by 90% in 2005 and 2006.
Vaclav Havel Writer and Dramatist; One of the first Spokesmen for Charter 77; Leading Figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989; Last President of Czechoslovakia; and First President of the Czech Republic
"I am convinced that the responsibility which Europe carries is growing and that this must be assumed by the new member states."
