Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My posts, my views.

Via the BBC,

“Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.”

The report in question was drafted by the coalition Rights and Resources Initiative focused on global forest policy. They advocate sustainable management of forestry as well as respects for the people living in and from the forests in their rights not to be forcibly displaced by logging companies who deprive them of their livelihood. As stated in the BBC,

““Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab,” said RRI’s Andy White, co-author of the major report, Seeing People through the Trees.

“It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone.”

Rising demand for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry means that 515 million hectares of extra land will be needed for growing crops and trees by 2030, RRI calculates.

But only 200 million hectares will be available without dipping into tropical forests.”

Well, for logging companies and well as the biofuel and ranging sector, there is no problem: let’s just tap into these tropical forests. But this would make climate change worse since deforestation already accounts for 20% of carbon emissions. But the need for both fuel and food has triggered land speculation and whatever the global financial markets want, they usually get. It is a very unequal battle between Big Money and the rights of indigenous people to land.

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Here is the Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 edition of interesting reads and events making news around the world.

Socialist International Meeting in Greece
With the backdrop of the meeting of the Socialist International, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli prime minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak met and spoke briefly. More from Xinhua China News.

Hercules or Sisyphus?
Der Spiegel looks at French President Nicolas Sarkozy as France assumes the European Union Presidency.

Argentina’s Rural Sector Continues Its Revolt
The New York Times provides an update on the rural sector revolt against the Peronist government of President Christina Fernández de Kitchner.

Turkey’s Summer of Discontent
Turkey’s chief prosecutor argued Tuesday to ban the Islamist-rooted ruling party for anti-secular activity as police detained a group, including two retired generals, for a suspected coup plot against the government. More from Deutsche Welle and the UK Guardian.

Experts Who Know Nothing
Japan needs to raise its birthrate in order to remain an economic power and survive increasingly fierce global competition as its population is graying rapidly, a government panel of experts said Wednesday. Where does it end? When the planet collapses under the weight of human overpopulation? The story from Japan News.

The Monsoons Bring Mumbai to a Standstill
People wading through flood waters on a road in South Mumbai on Tuesday. Heavy rain lashed the city from Monday night flooding low-lying areas and disrupting traffic. Attendance in offices was thin and many schools did not function. Colaba recorded 200 mm of rainfall and Santacruz 142.9 mm in 24 hours. The full story from The Hindu.

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Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.
– Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, 1988

Are humans smarter than yeast? On one level, yes. We can manipulate our environment to some degree to our advantage. On another level, no. It won’t do us much good when we fall victim to a law of nature called “overshoot and collapse.”

In biological terms, overshoot and collapse is the tendency of any population to grow exponentially, at x per cent a year, until said population overshoots its resources (land, food and water) and then collapses. A few factors can keep a population in check, predation for example. We don’t have any. There’s no one keeping us in check. There aren’t enough great whites, burmese pythons or siberian tigers on the planet to make .001% dent in our numbers. Normal predation rates of say zebras by lions are more in order of 5% per year. That is out of a herd of 100 zebras, 5 will fall prey to lions in any given year. Lions are the primary predators for zebras but zebras have other secondary predators such as hyenas, crocodiles, leopards, wild dogs and cheetahs. Even a pyhton can take a colt now and then. Humans are not on any one’s lunch menu as a regular item. Blue plate special very now and again. So we are prone to overshoot and collapse tendencies. We have done it before and are headed that way again. Talk to any Anastazi lately? How about a Mayan? But those were localized collapses affecting human populations in a very small area. The next one will be global because the problem is now global.

Exponential growth rates tackle doubling of any factor. To determine how fast something will double, 70 divided by the rate of growth will provide the answer. For example, a country growing at 2% a year will double in size in 35 years — 70/2 = 35. A country growing at 7% (70/7 = 10) will double in ten years. I’ll point this out since I do not have any children and I am an evolutionary dead-end but the likelihood of a human overshoot and collapse by 2030 is approaching 100%. The current population growth rate is 1.14%. It doesn’t sound like much does it? Now do the math (70/1.14). 61 years. That means that in 2068, the population of the planet should hit 13 billion. It won’t becuse society should begin to collapse when another biological law kicks in — carrying capacity.

Carrying capacity is the supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem is known as the ecosystem’s carrying capacity for that organism. Most biologists and energy specialists put that number somewhere between eight and nine billion. Exceed carrying capacity and collapse ensues.

So it is important to look at our economic model in these terms. We are a sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My post, my choice of topic, my snark.

High gas prices, home foreclosures may be squeezing people in the United States and Europe (in major parts of the Global South, feeling the big time crunch is a chronic condition), but not everybody is hurting. According to the BBC, there are now more global millionaires:

“The number of people worth more than US$1m (£507,000) rose to 10.1 million in 2007, a wealth survey suggests. Despite the growing credit crisis, there were 600,000 more members of the global millionaires’ club than there were a year earlier. Their combined wealth also rose, by 9.4% to $40.7 trillion, according to Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini. The fast-growing economies of India, China and Brazil saw the biggest rises in the number of wealthy individuals. The number worth more than $30m increased by 8.8%, while their total wealth grew by 14.5%.”

According to Cap Gemini’s World Wealth Report 2008, this is where the wealthiest are:

• North America - $11.7 trillion
• Europe - $10.6 trillion
• Asia Pacific - $9.5 trillion
• Latin America - $6.2 trillion
• Middle East - $1.7 trillion
• Africa - $1 trillion

How do these lucky few spend their money? According to the Guardian,

“They spend 16% of their money on “luxury collectibles” including cars, boats and private jets, another 16% on art-underpinning the booming global art market, 14% of their money on luxury travel and another 14% on jewellery, gems and watches. They spend 5% on sporting investments, buying up teams and race horses.”

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. The views expressed in this post are mine only.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts on reports - most of the time by IRIN - on the deplorable conditions under which women and girls live in many parts of the world. However, the articles have been piling up in my Newsreader, so, it’s time for one. So here we go:

First stop, Liberia with the always painful topic of fistula.

“Of 600 rape victims recently interviewed by a Liberian non-governmental organisation, 90 percent of the women were found to be suffering from fistulas – a vaginal tear which results in loss of bladder control and social stigmatisation.

Aid workers say the statistic, provided by the Women of Liberia Peace Network (WOLPNET) from surveys conducted in April 2008, shows the horrifying prevalence of rape and of a phenomenon which Liberian medical officials say they are ill-equipped to respond to.”

There are two types of fistulas that are prevalent in parts of Africa:

• Obstetric fistula, which is a vaginal tear resulting from prolonged obstructed labor. This form of fistulas is responsible for the appalling numbers of maternal death (deaths while in labor) in this area because of the increased risk of vaginal bleeding right after childbirth. And since a lot of women give birth at home, attended by a midwife, if they are lucky, they just bleed to death. Liberia has a particularly high rate of such deaths and this rate has been going up since the end of the war in 2003 as a result of the poor state of the health care system. With only 300 midwives when the country needs around 1,400, it is not surprising:

Maternal mortality has gone up by about 71 percent with 994 women dying for every 100,000 who give birth, compared to 580 out of every 100,000 women in the previous survey.”

The situation is so bad that the Liberian government has put in place different programs to recruit health workers and re-train the existing ones to include more obstetrics and gynecology in their skills as well as get health workers and midwives to emphasize family planning with their patients.

• The other type of fistula is “traumatic gynaecologic fistula that is a vaginal injury resulting from violent sexual assault or when objects are forcibly inserted into the vagina.” (Just typing that makes my skin crawl)

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released yesterday its figures (full report) regarding the global numbers of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs):

“UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres expressed concern Tuesday about the growing number of refugees worldwide after an annual survey said there were 11.4 million refugees and 26 million others displaced internally by conflict or persecution at the end of 2007. “After a five-year decline in the number of refugees between 2001 and 2005, we have now seen two years of increases, and that’s a concern,” Guterres said in London. (…)

“We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future. They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hotspots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources, and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places.”"

The number of refugees and IDPs increased by 2.5 million this year compared to last year. The UNHCR provides relief for approximately 14 million people.

So who are these millions of people? Unsurprisingly, we found roughly 3 million Afghans in Pakistan and Iran, 2 million Iraqis in Syria and Jordan. Both countries account for almost half of the world’s refugees. They are followed by Colombians (552,000), Sudanese (523,000) and Somalis (457,000). At the same time, the top refugee-hosting countries in 2007 included Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Germany and Jordan.

As for the IDPs, the order may be different but the countries are roughly the same: 3 million people in Colombia; 2.4 million in Iraq; 1.3 million in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; 1.2 million in Uganda; and 1 million in Somalia.

The UNHCR also reported a 5% increase in applications for asylums. Most of that increase comes from Iraqis trying to obtain political asylum in Europe (good luck with that! European countries have gotten less and less generous in the political asylum departments).

There is some good news though:

“Some 731,000 refugees were able to go home under voluntary repatriation programmes in 2007, including to Afghanistan (374,000), Southern Sudan (130,700), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (60,000), Iraq (45,400) and Liberia (44,400). In addition, an estimated 2.1 million internally displaced people went home during the year.”

For those who cannot go home, the UNHCR tries to find long-term resettlements solutions in third countries. There are more applications but not that many successes, only 1% of refugees are resettled in third countries. And as the New York Times notes, the burden of receiving refugees is shouldered by poorer countries rather than rich ones. But it is a problem because a large population of refugees can be a source of instability for the receiving countries, especially when there are ethnic differences and when politicians use refugees for their own purposes (as was the case in the DRC and the Hutus refugees from Rwanda).

June 20th is World Refugee Day.

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Here is the Wednesday, May 28th 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

The Rome Summit, Part II
In advance of next week’s Summit in Rome of world leaders at the headquarters of the FAO, the UK Guardian is exploring the global food crisis. In the second piece of the series, Guardian reporter Jonathan Watts writes from the Philippines, where poor farmers are struggling to feed their families as the cost of rice soars. In steep rice terraces of Banaue of northern Luzon, a world heritage site, Watts finds population growth is taxing the residents. He writes:

The main problem is population growth. The average couple here has five or six children. Tayaban is one of eight siblings as well as being a father of three sons and three daughters. Despite migration to the cities, Banaue’s population is steadily rising. Fifteen years ago it was 18,000. Today it is 21,500.

British PM Gordon Brown on the World Energy Crisis
British Prime Mininster Gordon Brown has an op-ed in today’s UK Guardian addressing the price of oil and the global energy crisis. The by-line reads “The oil crisis is a global problem requiring global solutions. And the OPEC Cartel has to play its part.”

A Turkish Divide: A Secular State or An Islamic One
The religious-secular divide has been thrown into dramatic relief as Turkey’s highest court weighs a case brought against the ruling Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, which has its roots in political Islam. The country’s chief prosecutor is seeking to dissolve the party and ban dozens of senior officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from participating in politics for five years. The prosecutor’s 162-page brief alleges that the governing party is a “hub of anti-secular activities,” promoting an agenda at odds with the republic’s founding principles. The full story from the Los Angeles Times.

Japan To Increase African Aid
Japan unveiled a package of steps to help boost growth in Africa on Wednesday, vowing to double its aid and business investment, as it seeks closer ties with the resource-rich continent. In an opening speech for the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), to which Japan has attracted more than 40 African leaders, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also said Japan would set up a new $2.5 billion facility to help Japanese firms to invest more in Africa. Reuters has full coverage from Tokyo. In a related story, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged assistance Wednesday to help Africa double rice production over the next 10 years to ease the burden of soaring food prices. The full story from Agence France Presse.

Canada’s Bernier Affair
Toronto’s Global & Mail covers the continuing fallout over the resignation of Canada’s Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, over a security breach. Questions about how secret government documents went missing for five weeks without alarms being raised dogged Stephen Harper’s government the day after Maxime Bernier was forced out as foreign affairs minister over the security breach. Prime Minister Harper, in Paris on a European tour essentially declared the affair over – insisting that a Foreign Affairs Department review of the incident is enough, and rejecting an expanded probe. Canadians seem to demanding a full probe.

Electric Vehicles–Poised to Go Mainstream
The Financial Times looks at the market electric cars and finds that the industry is on the cusp of greater importance. If oil prices continue to rise and battery prices fall, electric vehicles could come to account for more than 25% of the European market and 10% globally. The estimate does not include hybrids, which have combustion engines but are powered partly by batteries that recharge from energy released by the car. If so, it would mark one of the biggest technological shifts in a century of automotive history. Hybrids today account for a tiny portion of total automotive sales – less than 10 per cent even for Toyota, which is by far the market leader. Pure electric cars are rarer still, seldom sighted outside California.

Fascism Returns to Italy Under Berlusconi
Fistfulofeuros asks the question what’s going on in Italy. The answers is not very settling. It is time to remind Rome of its European commitments.

Lula da Silva On A State Visit to Haiti
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is coming to Haiti amid mounting pressure for him to serve as a moderating force in the Caribbean nation’s political impasse. Brazil provides the largest contigent of United Nations Peackeeping Forces in Haiti and President Lula da Siilva has been passionate advocate of Haitian democracy. It is also a sign of a more dynamic Brazilian foreign policy. The Miami Herald covers the story.

Here is the Wednesday May 14th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

A German Take on the US Media
Barack Obama may be closer than ever to defeating Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, but the real loser of the election campaign is the American people. They have been betrayed by cynical journalists who have constantly opted for style over substance. Germany’s Der Spiegel looks at the US media and its coverage of the US Presidential election.

Bomb in Jaipur, India Leaves 60 Dead
Jaipur is the Pink City in the western Indian province of Rajasthan. It is a beautiful city. Most people in Jaipur are Hindus but the city has a large Muslim minority. Correspondents say it has no history of religious violence. More on this from the BBC and the Daily Telegraph.

Pyongyang and Seoul on Vision 3000
The Asia Times looks at a growing rift between Pyongyang and Seoul over the future of the Korean Peninsula.

Why Are Food Prices Rising?
London’s Financial Times explores the question in this interactive media story.

European Demographic Trends
France has overtaken Ireland as the fastest growing country population-wise in the European Community. UPI International has the story.

Colombia Extradites 14 Paramilitaries to the US
The surprise move by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to authorize the extradition of 14 notorious paramilitary warlords early Tuesday morning to the United States won applause from the Bush administration and was expected to raise his sky-high popularity in Colombia even higher (Uribe enjoys the world’s highest approval ratings at 85%). The 14 paramilitaries are wanted in the US on drug-smuggling charges. More on this story from the Miami Herald and from the New York Times. While the 14 paramilitaries were all in prison, they were apparently continuing to run their drug smuggling from behind bars. President Uribe announced the decision in a televised address to Colombians.

The European Natural Gas Market Outlook
Natural gas provides 29% of Europe’s fossil fuel consumption. The European ASPO conference took place in Turin on May 3, 2008. This series of presentations is from that conference. The Oil Drum has the details.

Here is Tuesday’s edition of interesting reads from the around the world.

Kuwait: Too Much Democracy?
The Emirate of Kuwait struggles to adjust to democratic goverance in this story from the New York Times.

Japan’s Butter Meltdown
Japan faces a butter shortage and finds that it isn’t immune to the growing worldwide food crisis. The butter crisis is another series of events from a bureaucracy run amok. The butter shortage results from a chain of events. When the country suffered an overproduction of milk in 2006, the government ordered about 1,000 tonnes of raw milk poured down the drain and dairy cows slaughtered to prop up prices and defend local milk farmers. Dairy prices were then managed to retain their advantage to imported milk and butter, whose prices were inflated by tariffs. To protect domestic butter, the tax on imported butter went up twice last year. There is a nearly 30% tariff on butter imports. Denmark and New Zealand can meet Japanese demand if Japanese bureaucrats would allow it. Japan’s food crisis so far is an artificial one, the rest of the world’s a very real one. The full story from Time Magazine.

Japan’s Birthrate Falls for 27th Consecutive Year
The Japanese government said Monday the number of children in Japan has fallen for the 27th straight year to hit a new low. More from Agence France Presse.

New Zealand Considering Contraception Move to Stem Teen Aged Pregancies
Auckland District Health Board (ADHB) is considering a proposal to provide free access to the emergency contraceptive pill, or morning after pill, at local pharmacies to teen-age girls in order to stem pregancies. The story from Stuff New Zealand.

Inside the CPI
The New York Times has a great graphical and interactive slideshow on what is inside the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, and which parts are moving up or down and by how much. Energy prices are up the most with home heating oil up a stunning 48.4% y-o-y and gasoline is up 26.0% y-o-y. If it is any consolation, televisions sets are down -18.3% and computer prices are down -12.0%.

Merkel to Call for Missile Defence Shield
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to unveil a new foreign policy platform this week that would have as its centerpiece the goal of creating a missile shield to protect Europe from a nuclear attack, as well as provisions for extended missions by the German military abroad. More from Germany’s Der Spiegel.

Egypt Raises Fuel Prices
The Egyptian economy remains largely state-run. Yesterday the Egyptian parliament suddenly voted in favour of a package of price hikes and tax surges in order to pay a recently-announced 30% wage raise. More from the Los Angeles Times.

Nicaragua Faces the Global Food Crisis
Again from the Los Angeles Times a report on the global rise in prices for fuel and food is affecting Nicaragua.

Somali Food Riots Leave Two Dead
Troops opened fire and killed at least two people among tens of thousands of people rioting over high food prices in Somalia’s capital Monday. More coverage from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

FAO: Biofuels Responsible for Global Food Crisis
A new report by the United Nations’ FAO (Food & Agricultural Organization) based in Rome finds that rising demand for biofuels is a culprit in the global food crisis. More from the Business Standard.

I was but a lowly freshman at Stanford taking an introductory Economics course. Paul Krugman was the professor. I have had many professors influence my thinking but none perhaps more deeply than Paul Krugman simply because he has kept teaching me twice weekly with his op-ed columns in the New York Times. I can’t say that in his column today entitled “Running Out of Planet to Exploit” is particularly earth-shattering news to me, though ironically he is actually talking about earth-shattering events, since I have held these views for quite some time. However, Paul Krugman has one talent that I don’t possess, he can say things very succinctly and in 800 words or less.

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