The Politics Of Climate Change And Economic Partnership With Europe

BY NAIWU OSAHON

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) environmental plans begins with the observation that “Africa is characterized by two interrelated features: rising poverty levels and deepening environmental degradation.” NEPAD’s programme on climate change stresses the region’s contribution to slowing the rise of global temperatures through its forests, which absorb and trap the carbon dioxide gas that is a principal contributor to warming. Africa contains 17 per cent of the earth’s remaining forestland and 25 per cent of its dense rain forests, which clean the atmosphere of emissions caused by polluters thousands of miles away from Africa.

The forests also support an astonishing diversity of plants and animal life, an estimated 1.5mn different species, which in turn provide sustenance for millions of people. Despite African initiatives like the Kenya’s Green Belt movement, a grassroots women’s campaign that has panted 10mn trees since 1977, the rate of deforestation is increasing. Between 1980 and 1995, some 66 mn hectares of forests were destroyed. Climate change impacts severely on agriculture.

Africa does not have enough money to make the expensive investments required as a result of climate change on irrigation, fertilizers, improved technology, and special seeds. According to Ogunlade Davidson, a Sierra Leonean climate expert, “Africa never enjoyed the financial benefits generated by putting greenhouse gasses up there in the first place so it never accumulated the wealth to be able to bear the shocks of climate change.” Because they now have to cope with the effects of a situation they did not create, with resources they do not have, global warming is a double tragedy for Africa.

Uganda’s President, Yoweri Moseveni, early in 2007, described climate change as “an act of aggression’ by the polluting industrial North against the developing South. At a day-long first time ever session on climate change at the UN Security Council on April 17, 2007, an initiative of the UK government, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon said that the economic, political and social consequences of climate change could threaten world peace unless the world acts to prevent it. He added: “Throughout human history, people have fought over natural resources, ….changing weather patterns such as floods and droughts and related economic costs could risk polarizing society and marginalizing communities thereby increasing the risk of conflict and violence.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funds initiated through the UN to reduce cost of cutting emissions in the North by financing clean energy projects in the South, spent only 2.34% of its 2007 expenditure in Africa. The UK government threatened to convert some of its contributions to the CDM funds, to loans instead of grants. In other words, the polluting North wants to be taxing poor South to be polluted. Mr. L. Summers, a World Bank Chief Economist, in a memo on ‘Toxic Waste Dumping’ to colleagues at the World Bank in February/March 1992, suggested that “dirty industries should be encouraged to move to the developing world because:

1. If life-expectancy in the developing world is already short, health risks will be considered less important because few people will live long enough to develop pollution-related diseases.
2. Many of the world’s most populated places have the worst air pollution and it would be more efficient to move dirty industries to such developing places as Africa which has fewer people to be affected by it.
3. Health-damaging pollution would be less of a problem in the poorest countries, which have the least impact on world economy.

Patrick Low, his colleague, described the memo as “entirely sardonic.”

The Australian government’s panic response in October, 2007, to global environmental concerns and their social, economic and political consequences, was to promptly put a ban specifically on its in-take of “African refugees.” Denmark’s voters gave their anti-immigration Danish People’s party, its fourth successive rise in voting share. Norway’s second largest party is anti-foreigners, and Belgium’s far right Vlaams Belang, is backed by a fifth of the Flemish voters. The Swiss gave 29% of their votes to the xenophobic Swiss People’s Party (SVP) to give it the biggest share of parliamentary seats involving the Socialist and the Centre-right Radicals, in Switzerland’s seven party strong federal government. Apart from consistently blaming immigrants for all of the country’s ills, SVP went further by producing a poster for their October 2007 election, depicting three white sheep kicking a Blacksheep off the Swiss flag. Xenophobia is spreading all over Europe.

Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidency in May 2007 with anti-immigration rhetoric, and after winning, began to preach inculcating French values in migrants. His new ministry of national identity and immigration proposed the introduction of quotas on immigration from some regions of the world, a ploy to keep Africans out, and in late 2007, proposed slamming DNA test as a requirement for the procurement of French visa on family members of African immigrants already in France. Sarkozy threatened to promote these ideas in Europe on becoming the president of the EU in 2008, and on October 16, 2008, he got the EU to adopt his racist immigration pact deliberately skewed to exclude African refugees from Europe. Sarkozy who is his country’s modern day racist Voltaire, should equally be banned from entering Africa for life.

An estimated 55,000,000 Europeans left their native lands in the 100 years after 1820 to Africa and the New World as a result of economic difficulties at home, pull of land and jobs, search for religious freedom, escape from tyrannical governments, avoidance of military conscription and the desire for greater upward social and economic mobility. These same reasons plus the debilitating effects of centuries of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, caused by Nicolas Sarzoky and his ancestors, are forcing African migrants out of their home lands today into Europe and the USA.

And talking about the DNA, the co-discoverer and Nobel laureate, James Watson, an American, at a lecture as a special guest at the British Museum on October 17, 2007, claimed that “Blacks are less intelligent than Whites.” His incontrovertible proof was that some White employers of labour he knew, had told him that their Black employees were less intelligent than the White staff. The BBC 6 am, and 7 am, news programme of October 18, 2007, broadcast the incidence and confirmed mercifully, that the racist Nobel laureate was thrown out of the lecture.

In the late 1990s, a group of White egg-heads came together at the Swiss seaside resort of Lugano to answer the question, “how can global capitalism be preserved in the 21st century?’ After 12 months of lavish pampering and brainstorming sessions, their conclusions, summarized as the Lugano Report, authored by Susan George, published by Pluto Press, London, 1999, claimed that capitalism and the free-market were as perfect as if ordained by God for mankind. They were, however, unhappy with the way production is being pursued by the transnational corporations which is endangering not only capitalism but the planet earth too.

They recommended that mechanisms should be established to discipline means and processes of production to save the environment and encourage coming to terms with the inevitability that the earth has exceeded her optimum population size by 40%. To check and reverse population growth, they recommended that attention should be concentrated on the global South where the world’s excess population come from and that economic assistance from the North to the South should be tied to population reduction measures.

As a result of these positions, Northern promises to boast development assistance to Africa to ease poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) have been no more than promises, aid has been decreasing yearly and in 2006, it went down by over 5 per cent. The little aid they grudgingly give with one hand they take back with the other. Speaking on October 23, 2007, at the UN high level summit on Financing Development, Nigerian representative at the summit, Alhaji Tijani Yahaya Kaura, faulted the practice whereby a substantial part of financial aid through grants to developing countries end up as payments for consultants from the donor agencies. Many developing countries today are indebted to such financial agencies like the IMF, the World Bank and others, for funds which were largely expended on foreign consultants attached to projects for which they provided financing in the developing countries. Nigeria made it clear that such a practice would no longer be acceptable as more African countries are beginning to insist that foreign assistance can no longer be at the whims and caprices of the donors, while emphasizing the need for more trade than aid.

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiations between 79 former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU) make the ACP countries more dependent on trade with Europe than with each other and further severely retard their development prospects to ensure more deaths from hunger. The discussions centered on the ACP countries systematically liberalizing 80 – 90 per cent of their trade with the EU in other to gain duty free access to European markets. The ACP countries would thus only be able to use tariffs to protect about 10% of their products from competition with European goods.

When Cote d’ Ivoire gambled with trade liberalization in 1986 by cutting tariffs by 40 per cent, massive lay off followed the measures in the chemical, textile, footwear, and automobile assembly industries. Senegal too, lost one-third of her manufacturing jobs between 1985 and 1990, after reducing tariffs from 165% to 90%. Studies carried out in East and Southern Africa regions show that if EU imports are allowed to enter the regions duty free, the governments would loose at least 25% of their trade taxes and 6% of total tax revenue. In West Africa, Guinea Bissau would loose US$2.2mn while Nigeria would loose US$487.8mn. Cape Verde would loose about 80% of import resources and suffer 4.1% budget deficit, and three quarters of Ghana’s industry could collapse, as it would in most other African countries,

EPA talks began at a time when talks to further liberalize global trade under the so-called Doha round of the World Trade organization (WTO) became stalled due principally to the reluctance of richer countries to liberalize their agricultural sectors, while at the same time insisting that developing nations open their own economies to products from the North. The EPA negotiations are, therefore, attempts by the more powerful EU to impose unfavourably on its weaker ACP trading partners through a different forum, agreements that it could not obtain at the WTO. The 27 EU countries have a combined gross domestic product of US$14bn, while 39 of the 79 ACP nations are among the world’s least developed countries (LDGs.)

Peter Maudelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, argued in 2007, that EPA would shift Africa’s dependency on tariff preferences, to one that promotes business competitiveness. “After 30 years of preferential market access, African countries still export a limited range of basic commodities, “he said, adding, “most of these are sold at lower prices than they were 20 years ago. This is not sustainable. It certainly isn’t sustainable development.” The Nigerian Commerce Minister at the time, Aliyu Modibo Uma, countered: “If 30 years of non-reciprocal free market access into the EU did not improve the economic situation of the ACP, how can a reciprocal trading arrangement achieve anything better? Liberalizing trade will further widen the gap between the two (blocks) and probably destroy the little development that some ACP countries have managed to achieve over the past years.”

Mr. Ibrahim Akalbila, the national coordinator of the Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition, comprising civil society and farmers’ groups, cites the high domestic subsidies that many European governments continue to provide their producers, allowing European products to undersell producers in poor developing countries. “Whether it is tomatoes and rice, textiles or iron rods, cheap imports, illegally dumped into our markets, are destroying whole areas of economic activities, and with that, the lives of millions.’ The Zimbabwean Trade Minister, Obert Mpofu said, “any new trade agreement with EU should reinforce, not undermine the development of our economies, employment generation, wealth creation for our people and ultimately poverty reduction.” Some civil society organizations rallying to stop EPA during a global stop EPA campaign in late 2006, demanded that ACP governments must not sign the agreements unless significant changes are made. Jules Zongo, national president of Burkina Faso’s regional chambers of agriculture, declared at a protest march and rally of 2000 farmers in Ouagadougou, in December 2006 that, “If the EPAs are signed as they are, it will be suicide and death for African farmers.”

When West African heads of state converged on Ouagadougou for a summit meeting in January 2007, Burkina’s President, Blaise Campaore, affirmed that the “legitimate concerns,” of farmers and other producers must be considered in any trade talks with the European Union (EU.) At the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007, tens of thousands of civil society representatives chanted and carried signs declaring: “Fight poverty…..say no to EPAs.” In April 2007, the African Youth Coalition Against Hunger, mobilized to the Gambia, more than 1000 activists from 20 countries to launch a “big noise campaign,” to stimulate public debate against the EPA proposed agreements. The West African Economic and Monetary Union in April 2007, at a meeting in Dakar, Senegal, under the auspices of the eight member regional chamber of commerce, affirmed their readiness to become more competitive in global market, but not to enter into competition, “with unequal arms.” Mr. Iddi Ango, president of the regional chamber, said that, “If we open up our countries, given the current state of our enterprises, it will not be an opportunity, but a disaster, a field of ruins.”

A panel of three University dons, and a company chief, at a roundtable workshop as part of activities to mark the 5th anniversary of the Covenant University in Nigeria, in late October, 2007, warned the ACP nations not to further enslave their nationals by signing the EPA without first strengthening the real sector of their economies. They cited past initiatives like the Lome Convention and the Cotonou Agreements, which were tilted in favour of Europe. ACP countries, they argued, generally have weak economic base and, therefore, need to increase their production capacity before they enter into any meaningful talks with Europe. They said that while Europe consistently puts in place measures to protect its economy, ACP countries are being forced to open up their economies for foreign goods and services. They stressed that although the EU is mounting pressure for the negotiations to be signed by December 31, 2007, there are still opportunities for the ACPs to develop real alternatives to the EPA. They insisted that while ACP nations cannot afford to pursue a policy of isolationism, there was need for them to strengthen efforts at regional integration.

West African countries called EU bluff by rejecting the EPA terms at the end of October, 2007, to assert their independence from pressures from their colonial overlords for the first time since their paper independence. The EU was angry, of course. They accused Nigeria and South Africa of blocking their way. And what is their way? To continue to flood our markets with their manufactured goods since ours cannot compete with theirs. Not satisfied with that, they massively subsidized their farmers to prevent the only advantage we have, our agricultural products, from competing in their markets. They do not know that we now know that every time they are desperate and in a hurry to make deals with us, it is to satisfy their selfish interest in our continued marginalization. They have moved us from slavery to colonialism to neo-colonialism and now to death from unequal economic partnership and environmental pollution, and we say, sorry sirs, we are not ready to die yet.

 

NAIWU OSAHON Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader, World Pan-African Movement); Ameer Spiritual (Spiritual Prince) of the African race;  MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S; G.I.P.M; Dip.I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M; G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M. Poet, Author of the magnum opus: The end of knowledge.  One of the worlds leading authors of childrens books; Awarded; key to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship, Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship, Countyof Shelby; Honourary Commissionership, County of Shelby, Tennessee; and a silver shield trophy by Morehouse College, USA, for activities to unite and uplift the  African race.

Naiwu Osahon, renowned author, philosopher of science, mystique, leader of the world Pan-African Movement.