In this Worldfocus signature story, we take another look at the drastic consequences of climate change. The Maldives, an island chain off the southwest coast of India, find themselves being consumed by rising sea levels. The Maldives has set the goal of being the world’s first carbon-neutral country by the end of this decade.
World Focus speaks to Mohammed Waheed Hassan, the Vice President of the Islamic Republic of the Maldives, the low-lying Indian Ocean archipelago of coral atolls that has put global climatic change on the forefront of its development strategy out of the stark reality that if seas continue to rise the nation will disappear under the waves.
The International Red Cross has warned that Zimbabwe could be facing a very severe food crisis.
The charity says that more than 2.7 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, are in “dire need” of food aid.
There are already more than two million people who need food aid in the country and that number is going to rise because the harvest has failed, the group says.
They are appealing for donors to contribute more than $20 million USD in funding.
There is also concern about the possible impact of food shortage on the estimated one million children left orphaned after their parents died of AIDS.
The conservative city state of Singapore has opened two casinos in the hopes of attracting tourists. But criticism of the projects remain. 101 East looks at the debate over casinos in Singapore.
One of the casinos is owned by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The other is owned by Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa.
Set in the fantasy world of Pandora, Avatar tells the story of the Na’vi — a clan of blue-hued humanoids whose existence is threatened by a mining corporation which wants to exploit a vast store of mineral deposits which lies beneath a giant sacred tree.
In India’s impoverished but mineral-rich state of Orissa, hundreds of indigenous tribespeople are battling to stop London-listed Vedanta Resources Plc from extracting bauxite from what they say is their sacred mountain.
“The fundamental story of Avatar — if you take away the multi-colored lemurs, the long-trunked horses and warring androids — is being played out today in Niyamgiri mountain in India’s Orissa state,” said Stephen Corry, director of the British charity, Survival International.
“Like the Na’vi of Avatar, the Dongria Kondh tribe are also at risk.”
Vedanta says its mine would not violate the rights of indigenous tribespeople, saying that all its projects are conducted within the law and using international best practices.
“It is a myth that people don’t want development. The tribals want their children to go to school and have enough to eat,” said Mukesh Kumar, CEO of Vedanta’s alumina refinery, located at the foot of the mountain, which will process the bauxite.
“If the mine goes ahead, Vedanta will help them to achieve this.”
NGOs like ActionAid say around 8,000 people will be affected by Vedanta’s mining plans which have been stalled since 2005 due to legal wrangles over environmental and social concerns. Vedanta says it expects approval from authorities in the coming months.
Since 2007, four international investors — including the Church of England — have sold off their stock in the company citing ethical concerns over the project.
Last month, Britain’s Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust sold its 1.9 million pound share, saying Vedanta was “pushing industrialization to the detriment of the lives of local people.”
Industrialization
While the box-office hit’s story to save the Na’vi’s “Tree of Souls” is a battle between good and evil, the fight for Niyamgiri mountain appears more a dilemma of industrialization versus tribal rights.
The tussle in the lush mountain forests of Niyamgiri between the Dongria Kondh people and Vedanta highlights a broader standoff between industry and villagers and tribesmen in India’s mineral belt — made up of the country’s most underdeveloped states of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Steel companies like Arcelor Mittal and POSCO are facing resistance from establishing plants, not only from villagers and tribesmen, but from Maoist insurgents who for decades have been waging a war against industrialization.
Companies and the federal government argue that in a country where around 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, exploiting lucrative deposits of minerals such as iron ore, bauxite, coal and manganese is the only answer.
Last month, the mines minister said India planned to raise the compensation for people displaced by large mining projects in a move that could sooth opposition to leases but will raise costs.
Local Development
Vedanta, which has already built an alumina refinery at the foot of the mountain in Lanjigarh town, in anticipation of gaining clearance to mine, says the planned project will not affect the tribespeople or the environment.
And the multinational has also launched a campaign to win hearts and minds through a range of corporate social responsibility activities, which includes building schools, and health clinics and income-generation projects.
Vedanta’s Kumar says the impoverished town was a mere assortment of tribal villages with little infrastructure and public services before Vedanta arrived.
“The refinery has improved people’s lives,” said Kumar, adding that the number of malaria cases and families living below the poverty line has fallen since the refinery was established.
Signs on everything from roads and bridges to traffic police booths are adorned with the company’s name and logo. Schools, clinics and even electricity poles are labeled “Vedanta” in bold blue.
Many local tribespeople remain skeptical.
At a clearing at the foot of Niyamgiri, hundreds of Kondh tribespeople gather to worship the mountain god, Niyam Rajah — the provider of food, water, shelter and medicine.
Women, wrapped in brightly colored saris with gold rings pierced through their noses, emerge from the dense forests to join tribal men at the annual ceremony to pay homage to the mountain.
A bearded old man, wearing a white loin cloth and waving an axe, dances around an altar as the air fills with incense and the rhythmic beating of drums. His axe eventually falls on a goat — a sacrifice to their god.
“We have lived here for thousands of years and have always worshipped Niyam Rajah in our villages,” said Mukuna Majhi, a bare-chested elderly man, carrying an axe over his shoulder.
Centuries-old trees, hundreds of species of plants with medicinal properties and the scores of perennial streams which flow down the mountain will be lost, say activists.
While both activists and Vedanta claim the support of the local population, the Kondh tribes of Niyamgiri are divided.
“Some of the villages want the mine, but many do not,” said Tudu Majhi, 46, from the village of Khemdipadhar, near the planned site of the mine. “We want development but does it have to be at the expense of our mountain?”
The Mekong, one of the world’s major rivers, starting in Tibet and flowing through south China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, provides sustenance through irrigation and fishing to those living in its basin. But it also provides hydroelectric power through dams, three of which were built in China and with more planned. And it is precisely these dams that are now threatening the water supply, the livelihood of those living downstream, and the relations between China and its southern neighbors.
Thailand’s government is now attempting to deal with record-low water levels in the Mekong, a river which supports the livelihoods of about 60 million people in Southeast Asia. Many along the river blame the problem on China, which has planned eight hydroelectric dams on the upper Mekong, four of which have already been built.
In 1986, China began to build eight hydroelectric dams and two reservoirs on the waterway in Yunnan province, where the Lancang tributary traverses more than 1,000 kilometres.
The first dam at Manwan, was finished in June 1995. The second, at Dachaoshan, began in August 1997 and will be completed in 2003. The 2.7 billion U.S. dollar Xiaowan project, with a total installed generating capacity of 4.2 million kilowatts, is scheduled to be completed in 2012.
Xiaowan should further affect the level of fish stocks in Cambodia and water supply for Vietnam’s rice fields. But China contends controlling the water flow will prevent the adverse effects of erosion caused by the Mekong’s flooding cycle and will supply renewable energy. Winning the debate or coming to a workable compromise is further complicated by China’s refusal to join the Mekong River Commission, an inter-government agency whose members include the four of the downstream countries. And though the global financial crisis has put on hold other dams being planned by the downstream countries, China is moving ahead with its plans.
Perú has long been one of the world’s largest producers of coca, the plant often used to produce cocaine.
It figures alongside Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico in the list of countries where growing plants that can yield narcotics is a multibillion-dollar industry. Although Perú has seen a recent surge in the coca production, a United Nations initiative is helping farmers in the city of Tocache abandon coca and find alternative crops.
Officials think they can replicate the town’s success in other farming areas.
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, was once hailed as the man who made his country’s education system a success.
In spite of political and economic problems in the country, Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa and once boasted some of the finest public schools on the continent.
But Zimbabwe’s education system is now in crisis and its poorly paid teachers are leaving government-run schools in the thousands.
As Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa reports, many parents are now searching for alternative resources to educate their children.
Mexicans abroad are sending less money home to their families as a result of the global financial downturn and rising unemployment levels. These remittances are the country’s second largest source of foreign currency — after oil sales- – and their rapid decline has hit the Mexican economy particularly hard.
More background from CBS News:
Money sent home by Mexicans abroad plunged a record 15.7 percent in 2009 as migrants worldwide struggled to find work during the global economic slowdown, the central bank reported Wednesday.
Remittances – Mexico’s No. 2 source of foreign income after oil exports – totaled $21.2 billion in 2009, compared with $25.1 billion in 2008, the bank said.
Since the bank began tracking remittances in 1996, it has recorded just one other annual decline – a 3.6 percent decrease in 2008, as the world financial crisis exploded.
Central bank president Agustin Carstens attributed the latest drop to the weak economy in the United States and the increased difficulty Mexicans are having securing employment there. More than 11.8 million Mexicans live in the U.S.
Carstens said a 1.3 percent uptick in remittances in December, compared to the previous month, gave some hope for a recovery.
“It is just one figure, but it could indicate the beginning of a relative stabilization in the drop in remittances, and it would be congruent with the fact that economic activity in the United States is about to go from negative to positive,” Carstens said.
An analyst was less optimistic, saying that employment levels in the United States “remain very bad” and remittances to Mexico will probably continue to decline through the first half of 2010 when compared to the same period of 2009.
“It is important to remember that many Mexicans are employed in very volatile sectors that remain depressed, like construction, manufacturing, restaurants,” said Hector Rodriguez, a researcher at the Graduate School of Public Policy and Administration in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey.
Experts blame a crackdown on illegal immigration that has stemmed the flow of those heading north to seek work as well as the U.S. recession, in which many Mexicans, especially construction workers, have been laid off.
Mexico receives the largest amount of remittances in Latin America and the third largest in the world, after India and China. The country was also the hardest hit in Latin America by the U.S. economic slump with a drop of about 7 percent in Mexico’s GDP.
While remittances represent less than 4 percent of GDP, their decline is being felt in towns across Mexico, where lines at Western Union counters have all but disappeared. New businesses financed by migrant money are no longer opening and construction has stopped on homes that have been built in stages as cash arrived from those working abroad.
In the first part of the decade, Mexico’s remittances grew rapidly – from $9 billion in 2001 to $26 billion in 2007 – because of swelling migration and better record-keeping.
Al Jazeera’s Faultlines programme looks at the rebuilding of Haiti’s infrastructure a month after the powerful earthquake that took an estimated 200,000 lives.