A couple of days ago, I met with Martin at British Council’s offices in London. Whilst sitting with him, I asked if it’d be ok to ask him a few questions ‘on the record’.
Here are the questions we discussed:
- The Commonwealth Secretary General indicated in our virtual events last week that climate change will be a major issue for leaders at CHOGM this month…. What is British Council doing on this issue?
- British Council’s acting chair indicated last week (again in our virtual events) that there’s been a growth in the number of young people acquiring english language learning from British Council in the light of the economic downturn? Why do you think this is?
- The internet has brought about a shift in global communities, namely an increase in those of interest more than geography. Where are the challenges and opportunities for British Council?
- What value do you think that the British Council and other cultural relations organisations can add to international institutions such as the Commonwealth / United Nations etc?
Development is not synonymous with economic growth alone. It is a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence. As such, development is inseparable from culture. (UNESCO)
Increasingly, the development monster is altering the cultural landscape of Trinidad and Tobago. High rise buildings and expansion of heavy industry is not only destroying the natural environment and traditional lifestyles, but also creating a sense of alienation and dislocation; a metal beast barrelling ahead like a tornado, crushing the soul of a people in its wake.
In the last several years there has been an on-going battle in the south-west region of Trinidad. Economic development initiatives such as the planned construction of an Aluminium Smelter, a Steel Mill, a port for the Mill and the now completed Water-Taxi service are not only threatening the health and well being of communities in these areas but are also decimating the natural landscape, destroying ecosystems and fishing grounds and eliminating traditional lifestyles and livelihoods particularly in the artisanal fishing and subsistence agriculture sector.
Climate change is a very serious situation. Since global warming and cooling is a universal and natural phenomenon, cooling or warming can be referred as a changing situation. So the Ice house and the Greenhouse are the alternating cycles in the history and the present and also of the future. The only evidence why we call it serious and alarming since the rate of warming the global atmosphere is due to increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
“First, a successful deal must involve all countries. Second, a successful deal must provide comprehensive support to the most vulnerable. Third, a deal needs to be backed by money and the means to deliver it, and fourth, a deal must include an equitable global governance structure that addresses the needs of developing countries.”
While he talks about all nations, we hope it includes the U.S. Also, all the countries and people on the surface of the Earth. The U.S being the greatest polluter cannot be kept outside of these issues and responsibilities. United Nations Organisations should take serious steps to include U.S participation for climate change issues and its responsibilities. The second suggestion regarding support to the most vulnerable, should include widespread environmental education to third world people about waste management, recycling of waste, reduction of carbon emission, etc. The third and fourth points, money and as well as the need for a global governance structure, has a long way to improve, starting form man’s ethical way of thinking.
Money is like sweets, people. Once they get it, they grab it!
International funding on poverty eradication never reaches the poor of the world! Otherwise the poor in the world would have been rich by now!
When we talk, we should do it! First do and then talk could be our motto!
Climate change is a serious issue for the serious and then the US is not serious. While dealing with life threatening situations whether we will divide our earnings in terms of money or fame or responsibilities or we sacrifice all our things to mitigate the same?
The world’s most educated and the noble should answer this question! Discard the ego, suspicion and jealousy and come out from the narrow holes and fight against this dangerous situation. Use only minimum resources from the environment and use them to service our necessary needs. Not by fuelling four cars in four person family, a common situation in U.S!
What they have to say about reduction of carbon emissions?!
The National Consultation on the 2009 CPF has gotten off with a fiery pace. The consultation which took place on Saturday 10th, October was well attended and indeed according to the National Secretariat representative, the forum has been oversubscribed, there being more registered participants than ever before. The forum was pleased to know that the theme “Partnering for a more equitable and sustainable future” was common to both the CHOGM and the CPF. Present at the meeting was Mr. Vijay Krishnarayan, Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Foundation.
If one examines the excerpts of the last CHOGM held in Kampala, Uganda in 2007, one reads about the commitment that Commonwealth Heads of Government have taken to forge a greater participation of civil societies in the decision making process.
Posed with the question - “Can you give an example of the success that civil organisations have had as a result of recommendations to Heads of Government?”
Civil societies across the globe surely welcome participation on issues that govern people’s lives. It is possibly the only platform that exists for common folks to air their views. The Commonwealth Foundation is doing a marvellous job.
One major issue that came from the consultation held last Saturday was the need for greater transparency and effective communication, so that the CPF could follow up on steps taken on recommendations made at previous CHOGMs.
The Caribbean Sea Ecosystem Assessment (CARSEA) is one of the projects emanating from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment launched in 2001. The aim of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is "to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of those systems and their contribution to human well-being."
Ecosystem assessment has come to the fore in conservation practice given the realisation that often the vegetation, animal life, landscape and seascape of a particular region all work together as a ‘whole’ system; each depending on the other for the health and preservation of its particular quality and outputs.
And so it was that CARSEA was undertaken. From the looks of it, all the scientists and economists and various contributors to the Assessment did a really good job of identifying the causes, effects, threats and predictions for the Caribbean ecosystem and its all nicely put together with pretty pictures. No, I’m not being sarcastic. It just that the writers of the document have admitted that all the evidence in the world would change nothing unless you could convince the decision makers to collaborate and agree to policy that would protect the Caribbean Sea Ecosystem. And that’s no small order. The Caribbean Sea Ecosystem is a marine environment that is shared by 116 million people and divided among 22 independent states, of which nine are continental countries of South and Central America with four colonial/imperial powers – the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands - still exercising political control over eleven island territories in the region.
Right! Good luck with that.
The thing is that we so often think of governance in terms of governments - men in boring suits, using big words and embarrassing their citizens publicly. But governance really begins with the man on the ground. There is power in numbers folks, and a people that demands that its government get its act together and negotiate with the other big heads does indeed have a part to play. What all the fish-huggers and scientists and scholars need to do is to educate the populace, show them how their actions and the actions of their governments are destroying their livelihoods and well being.
What role can civil society organisations play in influencing a large enough constituency of concern for the Caribbean Sea Ecosystem throughout the region and beyond?
If wasn’t for a report carried by the BBC some months ago, I would never have heard of this incredible venture. So thanks BBC. What’s the story? Dr. Mohammed Yunus’s ‘Grameen Energy’.
On stream in Bangladesh is a woman led company that is producing photovoltaic cells or solar panels to trap solar energy. If all continues to go well, more than 100,000 women from the rural and urban poor will be employed fulltime within five years. Recently anointed by US President Obama, (Yunus received a President’s medal for outstanding achievements) Mohammed Yunus has thousands of youths recruited on this program also and is one which will form a major part of Kenya’s Microcredit Summit in April 2010.
This is the future of capitalism, one that is led by the poor. Economic pundits predict that oil will reach $400US per barrel within ten years. It is this fact that will bolster solar energy more so than the mania over climate change.
So, who wants to be a slum millionaire when you can be a slum billionaire?
It seems that climate change will take centre stage at this year’s CHOGM in Trinidad and Tobago. Local environmental groups are already gearing up for the show. Too much talk and too little action, I say. So, let’s follow Bangladesh’s lead in this business of global warming and take charge.
My question is: Do you think this project can be cloned in other parts of the world?
A new report, out today, states that the Commonwealth of Nations can be a crucial instrument in turning round the world-wide crisis in marine fish stocks.
The product of a two year Commonwealth Fisheries Programme, it calls on Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad in November to set up a Ministerial Task Force to harness the resources of 53 member states - only six of which are landlocked - and take initiatives to conserve a key source of food and income.
Twenty six expert authors, in "From Hook to Plate: the State of Marine Fisheries - A Commonwealth Perspective" provide a state-of-the-art analysis of capture fisheries, both deep sea and near-shore, and their related institutional, governance and human issues. With catches declining in many seas since the mid ’90s, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75 per cent of all fisheries are now being exploited at or beyond their maximum sustainable yield. Two authors, Sumaila and Cheung, have produced a graph which shows a fall of around a quarter in the total fish take between 1970 and 2005 for the exclusive economic zones of Commonwealth states.
The report’s editors, Richard Bourne and Mark Collins, argue that the situation is serious, but not irreversible.
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I managed to catch up with Mark during the book launch and collared him with a few questions about the book. If you can’t see the audio player below, just open this link to hear it.
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They call for:
Application of proven management solutions, such as lower catch quotas, and rights-based community management
Replacement of legal, institutional and subsidy mechanisms that create incentives to over-fish
Enhancement and enforcement of international controls on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
Restoration of habitats on which coastal fisheries depend
Support for consumer-led sustainability programmes
Greater support for subsistence fishing communities impacted by industrial fisheries.
This report will go to governments ahead of the Commonwealth summit, in Trinidad and Tobago, at the end of November. The proposed Ministerial Task Force can examine and recommend practical policies to restore fisheries in member states’ waters, using the formidable expertise available from governments, scientists, fishers and environmentalists. It would link to a special fisheries conference, and the establishment of a Fisheries Fund to promote capacity.
Whew! It’s hot these days in Trinidad, a lot hotter than ever before. One can’t help but give more serious thought to this whole business of Climate Change.
Glaciers, we are told, and massive ice sheets like the Greenland
Ice Sheet are melting at a fast rate while Pacific islands like Tuvalu and the Maldives have started to go under from sea level rise.
David Taylor reporting for World Watch talks about the challenges to be faced by Caribbean countries in the future. It is estimated that sea levels will rise by approximately 50 centimetres in the next hundred years, an occurrence which will wipe out much of the land in small islands like Antigua as well as erode coastal towns in Cuba.
Scientists talk now about ‘carbon sinks’ when referring to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Sinks include forests and oceans. According to the World Resources Institute eighty percent of the world’s forested areas are already gone. This has contributed thirty percent of excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and hence, global warming.
Are governments listening to any of this? It doesn’t seem so. Last year 800 hectares of prime forested land were cleared in rural Trinidad to make way for an aluminium smelter plant. Large areas of coastal mangrove are also carded for removal to build a port facility for the smelter plant export operations. It was enormous and concerted pressure by civil society groups that brought the smelter plant project to an abrupt halt. Hats off to them!
Civil society groups are doing a marvellous job in the environmental sphere in Trinidad. Many have teamed up with the Ministry of Forestry and are responsible for replanting large areas of denuded forests and protecting the island’s fragile biodiversity.
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This post comes from the Commonwealth Conversation website, which is the largest public consultation ever undertaken about the future of the Commonwealth.
President Nasheed of the Maldives thinks the Commonwealth should be proactively encouraging democracy and redefining international relations in respect to climate change.
Q: What are the Commonwealth’s core strengths?
Nasheed:Its members, its people, its vision, its beliefs, and especially the wealth of experience it has from a number of cultures and traditions. The Commonwealth understands how the international community may be able to deal with a certain set of problems or an issue in the international arena more than any other institution. Now I don’t want to mention other institutions, but some of the other institutions have done very silly things in trying to settle issues and coming up with solutions for problems. So its people.
Q: What key issues do you think the Commonwealth should be focusing on?
Nasheed:Democracy and climate change. Now I think both of these things are very interrelated and linked. Democracy, human rights and climate change are all linked. Without good governance we can not have the kinds of adaptation programmes, neither can we have the kinds of mitigation programmes, that we want. So it is very important to have a structure that delivers consultation: and multiparty democracy seems to be the only thing around. And it works – it is working in the Maldives.
So the Commonwealth should focus very much on proactively encouraging democracy. They could do more in that, not just simply after the fall of a regime or when a regime is toppled. After having said this, I do understand and I do realise how sophisticatedly the Commonwealth has been dealing with a number of issues, especially in the case of the Maldives. Their engagement was, at times when we were in the opposition, frustrating. At times we thought they were not doing much, but I think their methods of engagement have yielded good results, they should keep at it.
Q: 2009 is the 60th anniversary year of the Commonwealth. How would you like to see the Commonwealth evolve in the coming years?
Nasheed:Well, I think CMAG (Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group) should become more of a body that encourages good governance, and that countries should be brought to CMAG if they don’t behave well. They should also encourage development of the judiciary and development of institutions that enhance democracy.
In climate change I think it would be good if the Commonwealth would encourage more carbon neutral policies, and encourage governments to become carbon neutral. We see climate change as a security issue, as a human rights issue, as a justice issue, more than an environmental issue. So we should really redefine international relations, and I think the Commonwealth can be at the forefront of redefining international relations in respect to climate change.
Do you agree with the President? Should the Commonwealth be focusing its efforts on democracy and climate change? Let us know what you think by commenting below.
in London. Whilst sitting with him, I asked if it’d be ok to ask him a few questions ‘on the record’.
and cooling is a universal and natural phenomenon, cooling or warming can be referred as a changing situation. So the Ice house and the Greenhouse are the alternating cycles in the history and the present and also of the future. The only evidence why we call it serious and alarming since the rate of warming the global atmosphere is due to increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
fiery pace. The consultation which took place on Saturday 10th, October was well attended and indeed according to the National Secretariat representative, the forum has been oversubscribed, there being more registered participants than ever before. The forum was pleased to know that the theme “Partnering for a more equitable and sustainable future” was common to both the 
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Energy’.
