Category: Uncategorized

UN Court orders US to lift Iran sanctions linked to humanitarian goods

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The United Nations’ highest court, located in The Hague, on Wednesday ordered the United States to lift sanctions on Iran that affect imports of humanitarian goods and products and services linked to civil aviation safety.

The ruling by the International Court of Justice is legally binding, but it remains to be seen if the administration of President Donald Trump will comply.

Trump moved to restore tough U.S. sanctions in May after withdrawing from Tehran’s nuclear accord with world powers. Iran challenged the sanctions in a case filed in July at the International Court of Justice.

In a preliminary ruling, the court said that Washington must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the re-imposition of sanctions to the export to Iran of medicine and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.

The court also told both the United States and Iran to “refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute.”

[AP]

Impact Investing

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Three years after Amit Bouri’s birth in Northern California, his parents divorced. His mother returned to school to study accounting. She and her son would be on public assistance for the next six years, until she finished her degree and started her career. Bouri’s social conscience, and his awareness of the value of a social safety net, date back to those days. Now, the former strategic consultant runs the Global Impact Investing Network, an organization of investors seeking to achieve social and environmental impact as well as competitive returns. Some excerpts from our conversation with Bouri, 40, about the landscape for impact investing:

Q: What exactly are impact investments?         A: They’re investments made in funds, companies, or projects with the intention of generating a positive social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. The investments can be in any range of sectors and across asset classes, around the world.

Q: What kinds of returns are we talking about?     A: Over 90% of impact investors are either meeting or exceeding their financial-return expectations. It’s not an act of charity or philanthropy, but rather a strategy that belongs in an individual or a firm’s investment portfolio.

Q: So many big firms have created impact funds lately. Why?     A: Large institutional investors, as well as individual clients, are seeking opportunities to put their capital to work to build a more sustainable world. …The Paris Climate Accord of 2015 was very successful in gathering private-sector interest in managing climate risk and opportunities to invest in a sustainable energy economy. The adoption of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals drove a lot of interest among CIOs and CEOs of major institutional investors and asset managers.

In a generation, impact investing will be widespread, and it will be business as usual to think about impact across your investment portfolio, from the largest institutions to everyday individuals who want to ensure they have the money to retire—but also to invest in the world they want to retire in.

 [Barrons]

Flood-prone cities look to sustainable urban design for solutions

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As nations set ambitious climate goals, many consider urban design as a potential solution to flooding and other natural disasters.

Copenhagen has taken the lead, with a brand-new neighborhood designed to promote green modes of transportation. Since, 2007, architect Rita Justesen has been tasked with transforming the former industrial harbor in Denmark’s capital into a brand-new neighborhood and ensuring its 3.5 million square meters of residential and commercial floor space is financially viable and climate-smart.

Around the world, with rapid urbanization, more than two-thirds of people will live in cities by 2050, the UN projects. And cities use more than two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for about three-quarters of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the UN.

That is why cities are seen as key to meeting the commitment under the 2015 Paris Agreement of reducing emissions to keep the rise in global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. A 1.5-degree Celsius rise would give vulnerable populations a chance of surviving climate shocks like flooding, cyclones, droughts, and higher sea levels, experts say.

Worldwide, sea levels have risen 10 inches since the late 19th century, driven up by melting ice and a natural expansion of water in the oceans as they warm, United Nations data show. A UN panel of climate scientists said in 2014 that sea levels could rise by up to a meter by 2100.

The sea level around Copenhagen’s harbor city is expected to rise by up to one meter over the next century, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. Copenhagen council estimated that if there were no form of protection from flooding due to storm surges, the damage over the next century would cost up to $3.14 billion. By comparison, it would cost up to $627 million to prevent this from happening.

Apart from future-proofing itself from the sea-level rise and flooding – from green roofs and parks that absorb rainwater, to large barriers that can curb flooding – the city is also on a mission to become the first capital to cut climate-changing emissions by 2025.

[Reuters]

China sets new renewables target of 35 percent by 2030

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China is stepping up its push into renewable energy, proposing higher green power consumption targets and penalizing those who fail to meet those goals to help fund government subsidies to producers.

The world’s biggest energy consumer is aiming for renewables to account for at least 35 percent of electricity consumption by 2030, according to a revised draft plan from the National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC) seen by Bloomberg. Previously, the government has only set a goal for “non-fossil fuels” to make up 20 percent of energy use by 2030.

The standard — which sets minimum consumption levels of electricity produced from renewable sources — is among efforts to ease the nation’s reliance on coal and combat pollution that blights the world’s most populous nation.

The NDRC also increased non-hydro power consumption targets for some provinces, including requiring Inner Mongolia to increase its use to 18 percent this year from a previous goal of 13 percent. Targets for regions such as Yunnan and Xinjiang have also been raised.

The latest document also called for non-compliant firms to pay compensation fees to grid companies, which will be used to cover government subsidies for renewable projects.

In recent years, China has pumped more money into renewable energy than any other country, leaving the government with a hefty subsidy bill.

[Bloomberg]

With land to spare, churches turn to farming

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As Baltimore was convulsed by protests in 2015 over the death of a young black man in police custody, thousands of demonstrators forced shops and schools in some neighborhoods to close–creating sudden food deserts, particularly for many people without a vehicle.

“People didn’t have access to food,” said Darriel Harris, a Baptist preacher, noting that many in the impoverished community where the protests hit hardest ate hand to mouth, relying on convenience stores or school lunches. In response, Mr. Harris and two others quickly began to organize, drawing on contacts who had access to farms in nearby states and bringing supplies into affected neighborhoods to distribute via a local church.

Now across the United States, more than 200 faith groups are members of an emerging Christian Food Movement, which promotes more sustainable food systems by growing their own crops, bringing idle land into use, and feeding the poor and hungry. Harris says about nine churches in Baltimore are growing their own food–some selling it at reduced rates, and others giving it away to their congregations.

Many Christian denominations around the world have massive landholdings which can be put to productive use. Kenya’s Catholic Church, for example, made 3,000 acres (1,214 hectares) of land available to commercial farming in 2015 to fight hunger.

“These are people who are interested in activating their land portfolio for good…. For many of these groups, the answer is food charity, and that’s been a longstanding tradition within the church,” Ms. Von Tscharner Fleming said.

[Reuters]

Florence was another 1000-year-event, the new normal?

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Over a massive region of southeast North Carolina and northeast South Carolina, Florence produced an extraordinary rainstorm that statistically has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring each year. Over substantial areas, the deluge had a 0.1 percent chance of happening, what is known as a 1,000-year event.

But these exceptional rainfall events keep happening and appear to be part of a trend toward more extreme tropical rainmakers, probably connected to climate change.

Since August 2017, two other hurricanes besides Florence have set rainfall records for tropical weather systems in four US states:
– First came Harvey, which dumped an unheard-of five feet of rain in Texas last August. No storm in recorded history had produced so much water in the United States.
-Then came Lane in August, which bombarded the Big Island with more than 50 inches, becoming Hawaii’s rainiest tropical storm.
– Florence’s rainfall in North Carolina was the most for any tropical weather system north of Florida along the East Coast on record, and fourth most for any state.

Records like these may only be the beginning as Earth continues to warm. Recently published research has shown hurricanes are slowing down, taking in more water and growing bigger.

[Washington Post]

How Bangladesh digitized education aid for 10 million families

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March 1, 2017, was a milestone in the story of financial inclusion in Bangladesh. On that day, 10 million low-income mothers received their first digital payment from Mayer Hashi (Mother Smile), a long-standing government-run program that offers financial aid to the parents of primary school students.

There are many good reasons for countries to digitize government-to-person (G2P) payments. Digital transactions are more transparent and traceable than cash-based ones, and also faster. But there are just as many challenges. In some countries, too few recipients may be enrolled in a mobile money service to support a switch to digital delivery. In others, a lack of mobile money agents may make it too difficult for recipients to convert digital payments into cash, rendering the payments useless. The government departments involved in a payments program may also be unwilling or lack the skills to support a transition away from cash.

In Bangladesh, several leaders in government and the private sector spearheaded Mayer Hashi’s digitization initiative, which likely gained cooperation from some who may have otherwise not supported the effort. This approach may be applicable in other countries.

Rolling out digital payments also required the support of mobile money agents and teachers. The program needed 400,000 primary school teachers to identify low-income mothers who qualified for financial assistance, help program applicants fill out know-your-customer forms and open linked bank accounts and assist with disbursement paperwork. These teachers mailed hard copies of recipient lists to SureCash, which digitized the data and sent them back to the teachers for verification. This process reduced the error rate to 5 percent. SureCash rewarded teachers with a small fee for each record correctly entered into the database of eligible recipients.

Agents were another crucial partner. SureCash raised commissions and offered agents a subsidy for an initial period to ensure agents’ support even during the ramp-up phase.

SureCash had to handle more than 10 million account application forms in just a few months. It imported 45 high-speed scanners capable of processing 60 pages per minute and set up a form processing center staffed by up to 240 people in peak periods. It also upgraded its character recognition software to a custom solution that not only recognized the text in scanned documents, but also color-coded its level of confidence in the scans to flag problematic areas, speeding up human validation.

[Consultative Group to Assist the Poor]

Gang violence and extortion in Central America

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Born in the aftermath of civil war and boosted by mass deportations from the U.S., Central American gangs (maras) in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are responsible for brutal acts of violence, chronic abuse of women, and more recently, the forced displacement of children and families.

But it is extortion that forms the maras’ criminal lifeblood and their most widespread racket. By plaguing local businesses for protection payments, they reaffirm control over poor urban enclaves to fund misery wages for members. The maras have helped drive Central American murder rates to highs unmatched in the world: When the gangs called a truce in El Salvador, homicides halved overnight!

The maras are both victims of extreme social inequity and the perpetrators of brutal acts of violence. Many of the murders in El Salvador and Honduras can be ascribed to confrontations with the police, rivalries, score-settling or intimidation carried out by the two outstanding mara organizations: the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13); and the Barrio 18, or Eighteenth Street gang (B-18).

While difficult to know the exact number of mara members today, the U.S. military Southern Command’s estimate of 70,000 in Central America continues to be cited, even though it dates from a decade ago. More recent and specialized studies assert there are 70,000 members in El Salvador alone, while the UN Office on Drugs and Crime provides modest estimates of 22,000 in Guatemala, and 12,000 in Honduras. Though imprecise, these figures underline the magnitude of the challenge posed by the gangs.

Violence meted out by the gangs include killings of transport workers, the criminal control exerted over prison systems and the forced displacement of families from their homes. In Guatemala, an estimated 80 per cent of extortions are commanded from prison. El Salvador’s gang-run extortions have been described as a “system of terror that subjects community dwellers to see, hear and remain silent”.

Extortion is the economic engine and represents the largest share of gang income – with an estimated direct cost to businesses of $756 million a year in El Salvador alone. So extreme is extortion in Honduras that the Chamber of Commerce no longer publishes a registry of its members. It is one of the leading causes of forced displacement in gang-controlled communities through the threat it poses to powerless civilians, especially women and children.

[Excerpts from 2017 report by International Crisis Group]

Despite dangers and intimidation, Guatemalans still seek a better life in US

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Despite the Trump administration’s immigration clampdown, newly released data show the number of Central American families and unaccompanied children crossing the Southwest border illegally has risen sharply.

Why? A day’s wage in Guatemala, tending a cornfield or working on a construction crew, is 40 quetzales — equivalent to $5.23. With this income, a family can afford to eat meat maybe once a week. They cannot send their children to school. And there is no savings to buy a motorcycle or small truck to haul their produce to market, much less build a dream house with cement blocks and indoor plumbing.

Alex Cano knows the American dream first-hand. He worked as a roofer in Jacksonville, Fla., making $120 a day, until he was arrested and deported.

A hundred yards away on the main street, Secundino Funes lives in a rough-hewn house with chickens scurrying in and out. He’s 30 years old, with a wife and five kids. He, too, makes 40 quetzales a day tending a corn plot.

Last year, he borrowed 85,000 quetzales, about $11,000 — an astronomical sum for a subsistence farmer — to make the trip north. He paid a smuggler to take him to Florida where his brother said he could get him a farm job. Funes saw it as his only way out of penury. But the Border Patrol caught him, and now he’s in a predicament. “I owe 85,000 quetzales. I have to pay it back. I can’t earn it here,” Funes says. “So I have to go back to the other side again to earn some money to pay my debt.”

Some Guatemalans, like Funes and Cano, flee to the United States to improve their economic status. Others leave in a hurry to escape gang violence and extortion rings which are epidemic in Central America. The challenge of successive U.S. administrations has been how to convince these Central Americans to stay home.

[NPR]

Reflecting back on the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season

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The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season will forever be remembered by the people of the Caribbean. During that season, there were 13 named tropical storms, with two of these catastrophic Category 5 hurricanes – Irma and Maria. When Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall, they caused havoc and devastation in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Sint Maarten, the Bahamas, Saint Barthelemy, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and also impacted the southeastern islands of the Bahamas, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the northern border of Haiti.

Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 hurricane and the most powerful on record, with maximum winds of approximately 185 miles per hour, made a direct hit on the island of Barbuda on September 6. It caused widespread and catastrophic damage throughout its long lifetime, particularly in the northeastern Caribbean and the Florida Keys. It was also the most intense hurricane to strike the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.

Hurricane Maria, also a Category 5 hurricane, is regarded as being the worst natural disaster on record to affect Dominica and Puerto Rico, and the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Jeanne in 2004. At its peak, the hurricane caused catastrophic damage and numerous fatalities across the northeastern Caribbean, compounding recovery efforts in the areas of the Leeward Islands already struck by Hurricane Irma. (Maria was the third consecutive major hurricane to threaten the Leeward Islands in two weeks, after Irma had made landfall in several of the islands two weeks prior and Hurricane Jose passed dangerously close shortly afterward, bringing tropical storm force winds to Barbuda.) As of August 28, 2018, 3,057 people were estimated to have been killed by the hurricane: 2,975 in Puerto Rico, 65 in Dominica, five in the Dominican Republic, four in the contiguous United States, three in Haiti, two in Guadeloupe, and three in the United States Virgin Islands. Total losses from the hurricane are estimated at upwards of $91.61 billion (2017 USD), mostly in Puerto Rico, ranking it as the third-costliest tropical cyclone on record.

[UN Development; Wikipedia]