Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Alternative media fights back in Argentina (January 26 2013)Marcela Valente the Argentinian Inter Press Service correspondent specialising in social and gender issues has published an article titled ‘Alternative Media Fights Back in Argentina’. Valente states “Sustained by editors and readers convinced that another kind of communication is possible, independent magazines are growing and strengthening in Argentina, offering a view different from the mainstream media coverage of political, cultural and advocacy issues. Overshadowed by more than 450 magazines belonging to 40 big publishing houses, some of them multimedia offerings, another 241 publications read in Argentina are devoted to literature, film, philosophy, humour, ideological and partisan discussions, history, music, visual arts, performing arts, design or gender issues. These are not endeavours taken up by editors in their free time, but a thriving industry with an estimated 1.4 million readers monthly, providing employment to small printers across the country. …These publications do not receive subsidies either from the government or businesses, and have little advertising. They live practically by the sale of each copy, something forgotten by commercial magazines, which have practically become advertising catalogues, satisfied with only being displayed or circulated among the public. Since 2011, the large majority of these alternative media have been united in the Association of Independent Cultural Magazines of Argentina (Arecia), demanding a bill that would help to strengthen a non-profit but sustainable sector. …[a] proposed rule democratises television and radio spaces, “but has omitted the graphics and Internet publications, as well as the independent and self-governed (media), without which the law could not have counted on the channels of discussion and dissemination,” independent media practitioners claim. …The text of the proposed law argues that strengthening these magazines is a way to “battle monopolisation, not just of products but of content”, and that it is also a way to “enshrine socially the idea that other types of communication are possible”.”

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Johan Galtung the 82 year old Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Preventing World War III’ in which he states “A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it. The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West – NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea – and the East – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall. …The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground. …Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere. The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.”

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Farmers need to grow Climate Smart (January 5 2013)Busani Bafana the Zimbabwean Journalist and founding member / coordinator of the Network on Environment & Agriculture Reporting, a media network in Zimbabwe that seeks to promote coverage of agriculture and science issues by journalists, has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Farmers Need to Grow Climate Smart’. Bafana states “Farmers cannot wait much longer for negotiators to reach an agreement on including a work programme on agriculture in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And until one is approved, “it will continue to be difficult for farmers to produce the food needed, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” [states] Anette Friis from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council and spokesperson for Farming First, a global coalition calling on world leaders to increase agricultural output in a sustainable and socially responsible manner. “Countries failed to get an agreement on agriculture at this year’s (Conference of the Parties) COP18 in Doha, which means that discussions will not move to the next level and a work programme on agriculture is not foreseen for the near future.” “Progress has been excruciatingly slow,” [states] Bruce Campbell programme director [CCAFS] Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security . “One sentence in Durban in the final agreement. Then a few non-committal sentences at SBSTA in June. This mirrors the UNFCCC negotiations generally. What can one say, but that we are on target for a four-degree warmer world, which is likely to reduce growing seasons over much of sub-Saharan Africa by more than 20 percent.” According to CCAFS, agriculture and land use change, mostly from deforestation, contribute an estimated one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions. However, an improvement to crop yields since 1960 has already reduced agricultural emissions by 34 percent. Arguing that farmers around the world are experiencing the impacts of climate change daily, Farming First says the agriculture sector could play an important role in both climate change adaptation and mitigation. …Climate-smart agriculture includes conservation agriculture, crop rotation, agro-forestry, better weather forecasting and integrated crop-livestock management. It is aimed at environmentally-friendly increases in food production, which thereby reduce the emissions produced from agriculture.”

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Ines Benitez the Spanish Journalist has published an article in the Inter Press Service News titled ‘Salvaging Waste Food for the Hungry in Spain’ Benitez states “A recurring question in crisis-stricken Spain is how to ensure that surplus agricultural products reach those most in need. One response is citizen initiatives to protest the waste of food and to advocate efficient management along the full length of the food chain. …But those responsible for most of the waste in industrialised countries are consumers, who throw out perfectly good food on their plates or get rid of food that has gone bad in their larders through sheer neglect or for lack of a little basic planning before shopping. A European Parliament (EP) report in late 2011 said that Spain wasted 7.7 million tons of food in good condition every year, an average of 163 kgs per person. This squandering is at odds with the fact that over 21 percent of Spain’s 47 million people are living in poverty, according to the Economically Active Population Survey by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The same EP report indicates that 42 percent of the 89 million tons of food wasted in the European Union comes from households, 39 percent from industry, five percent from the distribution system and 14 percent from other sources. …A study in May 2011 commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and carried out by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK) warned that 1.3 billion tons a year of food are spoiled or go to waste worldwide.”

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Tomas Magnusson the 62 year old Swedish co-president of the International Peace Bureau has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘why isn’t the Nobel Peace Prize for the champions of peace? Magnusson states “Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather … to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind. …nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. …Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose… …In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races. Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. …The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ¬ everywhere, every year.”

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Emilio Godoy the Mexican correspondent covering environmental, human rights and sustainable development for the Inter Press Service has published an article titled ‘Mexican Fisherwomen Organise Against Climate Change’, in which he states “The women’s [Mujeres Trabajadoras del Mar] cooperative emerged as a collective effort to adapt to climate change, the effects of which are increasingly being felt on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which bathes the shores of this fishing village at the top of the Yucatan Peninsula in southeast Mexico, 1,700 km from the capital. San Felipe, which has a population of 1,850, is one of the 25 coastal towns in Mexico most exposed to the effects of global warming, in the form of stronger hurricanes, heavier and more frequent flooding and increasing changes in the availability of seafood species, which has caused problems for fishing, the town’s main economic activity. In 2002, Hurricane Isidore devastated 90 percent of the plants along the coast, including the mangroves lining the edges of the huge nearby lagoon. The women in the cooperative, who were trained in “mangrove ecology” a year after the hurricane, have played a key role in restoring the mangroves, which are vital to keeping water temperatures from climbing too high in the lagoon, an important breeding ground for species ranging from lobsters to the longnose spider crab. But here, as in the rest of Mexico, women are absent from government programmes to combat climate change. However, like the fisherwomen of San Felipe, women in communities affected by climate change are slowly starting to organise and get involved in adaptation and mitigation measures.”

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James R. Lobe the 63 year old American journalist and the Washington Bureau Chief for the Inter Press Service, best known for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy and American militarism, has published an article on the IPS News titled ‘US: Pushback Against Growing Islamophobia’. Lobe states “Faced with a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment and a well-funded campaign to promote Islamophobia, a coalition of faith and religious freedom groups said it will circulate a new pamphlet on frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Islam and U.S. Muslims to elected officials across the United States. The initiative, which coincides with the appearance in subway stations in New York City and Washington of pro-Israel ads equating the Jewish state with “civilised man” and “Jihad” with “savages”, is designed to rebut the notion that Muslims pose a threat to U.S. values and way of life. “Nothing gives weight to bigotry more than ignorance,” said Rev. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister who is president of the Interfaith Alliance, a grassroots organisation of leaders representing 75 faith traditions. “The FAQ enables people to be spared of an agenda-driven fear and to be done with a negative movement born of misinformation…” Gaddy was joined by Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Project of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center which co-sponsored the new 13-page pamphlet, entitled “What is the Truth About American Muslims?” “In my view,” Haynes said in reference to the so-called “Stop Islamisation of America” (SIOA) movement that, among other things, has sponsored the subway ads, “this campaign to spread hate and fear is the most significant threat to religious freedom in America today”.”

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Daan Bauwens the Belgian freelance investigative journalist for the international press agency Inter Press Service, and founder of the documentary film collective “Reach”, has published an article on IPS titled ‘EU Cap Only Boosts Biofuels’. In the article Bauwens states “The European Commission has announced it will limit the amount of crop-based biofuels used in transport, but its newly proposed measures are not nearly enough to curb the disastrous impact of the EU’s biofuel policy around the world. Its effects will only worsen, activists say. …Europe’s hunger for biofuels is pushing up global food prices and driving people off their land, resulting in deeper hunger and malnutrition in poor countries. …despite soy and maize prices being at all-time highs in July and prices of cereals and oil remaining at peak levels in August, the Commission and most governments seemed to turn a blind eye to the devastating impacts that EU biofuels mandates have on food prices and land rights. …“I’m happy the EC is finally recognising the fact that the use of food-crops for fuel is problematic,” says Ruth Kelly, Oxfam’s economic policy advisor and writer of Oxfam’s new report, “but putting a cap of 5 percent on biofuel consumption is ridiculous. At this moment the biofuel use in the EU is only at 4.5 percent. So the new cap of 5 percent is actually an increase of what we’re using at the moment. In 2008 biofuels accounted for 3.5 percent of all transport fuels in the EU. That same year, the land that was required to grow crops for those biofuels could have fed 127 million people.”

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Amantha Perera the Sri Lankan journalist and foreign correspondent has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Getting Into the Business of Environment’. Perera states “Regulations that stand in the way of conservation programs lower their likely success, experts warned at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union of Conservation of Nature in South Korea. They say there is mounting evidence to show that with participation of communities, businesses and other groups, conservation efforts have shown better results. “Generally we find that protection efforts are more effective if they involve participation by different stakeholders,” Bastian Bertzky, senior program officer at the UN Environment Programme and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) … “Wherever there are businesses involved, non-governmental organisations involved, the higher their participation, better the management.” Bharrat Jagdeo, the former President of Guyana, while acknowledging the increasingly essential role private companies played, struck a note of caution. He warned that companies may try to gain undue advantage by linking with nature-friendly programs and agencies like the IUCN. Jagdeo proposed that if private sector companies are willing to take part in conservation programs, there needs to be strict criteria that tests and evaluates their willingness to change and sustain that change. “There is a need for a litmus test, to test their willingness to engage and change,” he said. Former South Korean minister for environment Maan-ee Lee suggested that governments should keep a close focus on companies willing to invest in conservation and environment friendly projects. “Governments should look at giving incentives to such companies,” he said. Lee called for a consensus among different governments because “big multi-nationals are going beyond national borders.”

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Julia Marton-Lefèvre the Hungarian American Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest conservation environment membership organization which brings together states, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, scientists and experts in a unique worldwide partnership, has been interviewed by Busani Bafana for the Inter Press Service. In the interview Marton-Lefèvre stated “…through our SOS or Save Our Species initiative, IUCN and partners have already helped conserve close to 100 threatened species in over 30 countries. We know that conservation works, but we need significantly greater resources if we are to reverse the current extinction crisis. …a recent ground-breaking study found that we have overshot three out of nine of the so-called “planetary boundaries” that define a “safe operating space” for humanity, including biodiversity loss. Today we are dangerously close to reaching such “points of no return”, but it is very difficult to predict precisely when a tipping point is reached until it actually happens. For instance, the collapse of the north Atlantic cod fishery happened back in the 1970s but its impacts are felt even today. …Consumer demand for nature-based products – for food, medicine, clothing – has emerged as a major threat for many species that had not been affected by habitat loss or climate change thus far. Nature simply cannot keep up with our insatiable appetite for everything from raw materials to live animals – and we need to change that. …The biggest challenge now is getting everyone to understand what is at stake: that nature is not a luxury but the very foundation of our own wellbeing on this planet.”

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Naresh Newar the Nepalese journalist with special focus on armed conflict, humanitarian and environmental issues has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Droughts Bring Climate Change Home to Nepali Farmers’ in which he describes how farmers in this fertile central district of south Nepal are convinced that an intense drought between May and early July that destroyed their maize crops is the result of climate change. Newar states “Nepal has a history of droughts but the intensity increased this year… Evidence of climate change in Nepal is seen in temperatures rising by about one-tenth of a degree annually, receding glaciers and snow line and volatile monsoonal rains. While scientists are still trying to link these changes to factors such as production of greenhouse gases and deforestation, Nepal’s farmers are coping on their own with dwindling water supply, flash floods and landslides. Chitwan, a major producer of maize, has suffered a 70 percent loss of the crop due to late arrival of the monsoons this year, according to assessments by the government’s Agricultural Services Office (ASO). …the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu. …is currently conducting a study on climate change impacts on food security in the entire Indo Gangetic plains. …There can be two droughts in a year without causing too much damage, but when there is drought intensity that can destroy maize, even in irrigated areas, according to ICIMOD experts. With such unpredictability of weather patterns growing in the country, there is need now for planned adaptation.”

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