Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta TTIP. Mostrar todas as mensagens
Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta TTIP. Mostrar todas as mensagens

quarta-feira, 13 de maio de 2026

Estudo científico revela que as cidades europeias podem produzir quase 30% das hortícolas que necessitam


O estudo recentemente publicado na revista Sustainable Cities and Society analisou 840 cidades europeias e concluiu que os espaços urbanos poderão produzir milhões de toneladas de hortícolas por ano.

Coberturas planas, quintais, terrenos abandonados, faixas verdes pouco utilizadas e outros espaços urbanos poderiam contribuir para alimentar cerca de 190 milhões de pessoas, chegando em alguns cenários a cobrir perto de 30% das necessidades de hortícolas frescos dessas cidades.

O mais interessante é que os investigadores não basearam as suas conclusões em tecnologias futuristas, agricultura vertical muito dispendiosa ou sistemas altamente industrializados.

Pelo contrário, o estudo focou-se sobretudo em soluções relativamente simples, acessíveis e de baixa tecnologia, baseadas em hortas no solo ao ar livre, em telhados planos e em terrenos baldios, muito próximas daquilo que muitos agricultores urbanos já fazem há décadas.

Na verdade, as cidades sempre produziram alimento. Durante séculos, Lisboa, Porto, Coimbra, Braga ou Évora viveram rodeadas de hortas, vinhas, olivais, pomares e pequenos campos agrícolas integrados no tecido urbano e periurbano.

O século XX alterou profundamente essa relação. Impermeabilizámos solos férteis, enterrámos linhas de água, destruímos quintas históricas e afastámos progressivamente a produção alimentar dos centros urbanos. Hoje começamos finalmente a compreender a fragilidade estrutural deste modelo.

As alterações climáticas, os eventos extremos, as crises energéticas e a inflação alimentar estão a obrigar cidades e governos a repensar a segurança alimentar. A agricultura urbana deixa assim de ser apenas uma ferramenta educativa ou recreativa. Passa a ser uma estratégia de resiliência territorial.

Depois de mais de vinte anos ligado à agricultura regenerativa urbana, continuo profundamente convencido de que uma cidade capaz de produzir parte do que come é uma cidade mais saudável, mais justa e mais resiliente.

Este estudo vem apenas confirmar aquilo que muitos agricultores urbanos conhecem há décadas. Por baixo do betão continua a existir território fértil, e dentro das cidades continua a existir uma profunda necessidade humana de cultivar alimento.

Já em 2013, um relatório da UNCTAD afirmava que o modelo de agricultura industrial era insustentável e que os modelos agroecológicos locais/ regionais diminuiriam a desigualdade entre Norte Global e Sul Global, entregando às populações de países ditos menos desenvolvidos ferramentas e educação para poderem obter os seus próprios alimentos.

Mais info:

quinta-feira, 22 de dezembro de 2022

Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World



Some years ago — I think it was 2015 — I got a quick lesson in how easy it is to become a horrible person. I was a featured speaker at a conference in São Paulo, Brazil, and my arrival flight was badly delayed. The organizers, worried that I would miss my slot thanks to the city’s notorious traffic, arranged to have me met at the airport and flown directly to the hotel’s roof by helicopter.

Then, when the conference was over, there was a car waiting to take me back to the airport. And just for a minute I found myself thinking, “What? I have to take a car?”

By the way, in real life I mostly get around on the subway.

Anyway, the lesson I took from my moment of pettiness was that privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement. And surely, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous privilege corrupts enormously, in part because the very privileged are normally surrounded by people who would never dare tell them that they’re behaving badly.

That’s why I’m not shocked by the spectacle of Elon Musk’s reputational self-immolation. Fascinated, yes; who isn’t? But when an immensely rich man, accustomed not just to getting whatever he wants but also to being a much-admired icon, finds himself not just losing his aura but becoming a subject of widespread ridicule, of course he lashes out erratically, and in so doing makes his problems even worse.

The more interesting question is why we’re now ruled by such people. For we’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch.

As The Times’s Kevin Roose recently pointed out, Musk still has many admirers in the technology world. They see him not as a whiny brat but as someone who understands how the world should be run — an ideology the writer John Ganz calls bossism, a belief that the big people shouldn’t have to answer to, or even face criticism from, the little people. And adherents of that ideology clearly have a lot of power, even if that power doesn’t yet extend to protecting the likes of Musk from getting booed in public.

But how is this possible?

It’s not really a surprise that technological progress and rising gross domestic product haven’t created a happy, equitable society; downbeat visions of the future have been staples of both serious analysis and popular culture for as long as I can remember. But both social critics like John Kenneth Galbraith and speculative writers like William Gibson generally imagined corporatist dystopias that suppressed individuality — not societies dominated by thin-skinned egomaniac plutocrats acting out their insecurities in public view.

So what happened?

Part of the answer, surely, is the sheer scale of wealth concentration at the top. Even before the Twitter fiasco, many people were comparing Elon Musk to Howard Hughes in his declining years. But Hughes’s wealth, even measured in today’s dollars, was trivial compared with Musk’s, even after the recent plunge in Tesla stock. More generally, the best available estimates say that the top 0.00001 percent’s share of total wealth today is almost 10 times what it was four decades ago. And the immense wealth of the modern super-elite has surely brought a lot of power, including the power to act childishly.

Beyond that, many of the superrich, who as a class used to be mostly secretive, have become celebrities instead. The archetype of the innovator who gets rich while changing the world isn’t new; it goes back at least as far as Thomas Edison. But the big fortunes made in information technology turned this narrative into a full-blown cult, with wannabe or seem-to-be Steve Jobs types everywhere you look.

Indeed, the cult of the genius entrepreneur has played a large role in the rolling debacle that is crypto. Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX wasn’t selling a real product nor, as far as anyone can tell, are those of his former competitors who haven’t yet gone bankrupt: After all this time, nobody has come up with significant real-world uses for cryptocurrency other than money-laundering. What Bankman-Fried was selling, instead, was an image, that of the mussy-haired, scruffily dressed visionary who grasps the future in a way normies can’t.

Elon Musk isn’t in quite the same category. His companies produce cars that actually drive and rockets that actually fly. But the sales and especially the market value of his companies surely depend at least in part on the strength of his personal brand, which he can’t seem to help himself from trashing ever more with each passing day.

In the end, Musk and Bankman-Fried may end up doing a public service, by tarnishing the legend of the genius entrepreneur, which has done a great deal of harm. For now, however, Musk’s Twitter antics are degrading what had become a useful resource, a place some of us went for information from people who actually knew what they were talking about. And a happy ending to this story seems increasingly unlikely.

Oh, and if this column gets me banned from Twitter — or if the site simply dies from mistreatment — you can follow some of what I’m thinking, along with the thoughts of a growing number of Twitter refugees, at Mastodon.

quinta-feira, 1 de dezembro de 2022

The EU-US Trade and Technology Council Reaches a Crossroads



The next meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) that begins on December 5 in Washington, DC, may well turn out to be the most consequential in the TTC’s short history. Since its establishment in the early months of the Biden administration, the TTC process has been hailed as a productive effort in transatlantic trust-building. Yet pressures are mounting, and the Washington meeting will be a significant test of the TTC’s capacity to steer through growing tensions over subsidies, trade issues, and distinct geopolitical postures on China.

Do the US and EU Want the Same Thing from the TTC?
The initial push to establish the TTC came from the European side, who viewed it is an opportunity to reset frayed transatlantic relations. In December 2020, the European Commission pitched to the incoming Biden administration the establishment of a forum to reduce trade barriers, coordinate on technical standards development and tech regulation, improve critical supply chain security, and deepen research cooperation in critical emerging technologies. After initial worries that the TTC would become a talking shop producing few deliverables, the Biden administration eventually warmed to the idea and the TTC was officially launched at the June 2021 US-EU Summit.

In contrast to the European vision of the TTC as a platform for transatlantic trust-building, geopolitical concerns are at the center of American hopes for the TTC. Policymakers have framed it as one critical piece of the Biden administration’s China policy based on the “invest, align, compete” approach outlined by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May 2022. The US aims to align with its “like-minded partners” in Europe as well as the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.

The place of China in the TTC has become a bone of contention as Europe has steadfastly resisted the framing of TTC as an anti-China alliance. European officials strongly object to efforts to position the TTC as a means of countering and containing China in the growing global tech conflict.
Aiming for Agreement

The TTC’s loose design allows officials to steer around traditional sources of discord in the transatlantic relationship and focus on areas ripe for cooperation. The TTC is overseen by high-ranking economic and trade officials in the US and EU who meet at occasional summits, while much of the day-to-day work takes place within 10 working groups on topics ranging from cooperation on technical standardization to export controls. Unlike the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) initiative a decade earlier, which aimed for a high bar of US-EU regulatory alignment across a range of issues, “regulatory autonomy” based on “respect” for “different legal systems in both jurisdictions” is a founding principle of the TTC.

Additionally, irritants that could derail cooperation are deliberately kept off the table, including agriculture, procurement, and investment dispute settlement issues. Instead, the focus is on so-called “virgin” issues where both the US and EU are developing rule systems for emerging technologies and there is a potential to move in the same direction, for example on efforts to develop “trustworthy” Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital standards.

While China remains the implicit focus in the work of several TTC working groups, the TTC’s priorities shifted considerably after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Ahead of the TTC’s second meeting in Paris-Saclay in May 2022, coordination on export controls rose to the top of the agenda. The TTC’s working group on this topic provided a platform for an “unprecedented level of cooperation” on joint export prohibitions to Russia and Belarus on dual-use items and other sensitive technologies with a potential military application.

Barriers to Transatlantic Cooperation on Tech Standards
Russian aggression was a shot in the arm for the cause of transatlantic unity in the TTC’s infancy, but, in the longer term, divisions over how to deal with China are likely to impede meaningful cooperation on key issues. The TTC’s Working Group 1 on technology standards illustrates the challenges.

To date, this working group has actually been one of the TTC’s most active and successful. Its major deliverable was the establishment of a Strategic Standardization Information (SSI) mechanism to facilitate information-sharing among government officials and Standard Development Organization (SDOs) in Europe and the US over developments in standard-setting on sensitive technologies and materials. This initiative drew momentum from China’s 2020 bid to set up and chair a committee at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on lithium, which flew under officials’ radar until the European Commission was alerted by the Australian government. Enhanced information-sharing measures will assist stakeholders in anticipating and quickly reacting to China’s future efforts to lay claim to sensitive standardization topics.

Yet, insiders question whether the TTC will be able to reach the higher-hanging fruit in this area. The standardization working group aims, in the longer term, to establish a platform for the coordination of transatlantic development of standards in areas such as AI. A standard-setter at the European level dismissed the TTC as largely a “political statement” with little potential to deliver on its more ambitious aims. In addition to barriers imposed by the stark differences in the European and American standardization systems, skeptics point out that it is not self-evident that US and EU firms are really “like-minded partners” on standardization. For European companies with investments in China, the question of who their like-minded partners are in the first place is not straightforward.

On the Agenda in Washington
While transatlantic ties via the TTC have been bolstered by geopolitical developments such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some level of concern about China, over the past two months unilateral US moves have complicated the dynamic. The most notable major new friction dogging the TTC is the US Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) provisions that incentivize Americans to buy electric vehicles made in North America. Brussels argues that these “Buy American” provisions discriminate against European producers and violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. EU leaders are keen to see some progress on addressing these concerns.

Both sides appear eager to separate this and other related issues from the TTC process, though it is likely to be challenging to fully insulate the TTC, as it was for the negotiations that led to the Privacy Shield agreement earlier this year. The US and EU recently launched a Task Force on the IRA to address Europe’s concerns. Similarly, the US has also expressed concerns about several legislative proposals making their way through EU institutions. For instance, Washington has recently sought to narrow the definition of AI and broaden the exemption for general-purpose AI in the EU’s forthcoming Artificial Intelligence Act—expected to enter trilateral negotiations between the European Commission, Parliament, and Council to finalize the act sometime early next year.

Since the last TTC meeting earlier this year, the US has been pushing the EU to take a harder line on China across a broader front, including in areas where EU officials are reluctant to take a harsher line. For US officials, including some that are involved with the TTC process, Beijing remains a top national security concern, especially in the technology sector—statements over the past several months from senior US officials have placed advanced technologies such as semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing at the center of US concerns, in ways that some EU officials are likely to object to. This was demonstrated by the set of new unilateral and unprecedented set of restrictions Washington released in October targeting Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductor technologies. One part of the controls touches on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, potentially drawing in EU technology leaders in the Netherlands and Germany.

While the EU has implemented export control rules for some dual-use items and various investment screening mechanisms, it has not treated China with the same level of national security concern. US officials in November embarked on what is likely to be a months-long process to convince the Dutch government, in particular, to align with the new controls, but strong industry pushback from Dutch and German companies that would be most impacted by the new controls has increased and led the Dutch government to signal it could push back on transposing the measures into Dutch law outside normal multilateral channels such as the Wassenaar Agreement.

This friction has added some tension to the TTC process, but officials will also attempt to keep this issue in separate channels. However, a growing sense that the US is willing to take unilateral measures in part designed to force compliance in other jurisdictions, including Europe, without sufficient consultation, has added to the complexities facing further progress within the TTC on issues such as export controls.

Rough Sailing Ahead
After an encouraging start, the TTC has now entered deep water. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine initially drew Europe and US officials together over export controls and sanctions, the economic toll of the war now threatens to undermine transatlantic unity. At the same time, divisions over the China challenge are resurfacing.

The Washington meetings will be a test of the two sides’ initial commitment to pushing forward on areas with a high potential for cooperation and steering around the rocky shoals.

quarta-feira, 8 de junho de 2022

How treaties protecting fossil fuel investors could jeopardize global efforts to save the climate – and cost countries billions

K. Franklin/Science based on K. Tienhaara et al.


Fossil fuel companies have access to an obscure legal tool that could jeopardize worldwide efforts to protect the climate, and they’re starting to use it. The result could cost countries that press ahead with those efforts billions of dollars.

Over the past 50 years, countries have signed thousands of treaties that protect foreign investors from government actions. These treaties are like contracts between national governments, meant to entice investors to bring in projects with the promise of local jobs and access to new technologies.

But now, as countries try to phase out fossil fuels to slow climate change, these agreements could leave the public facing overwhelming legal and financial risks.

The treaties allow investors to sue governments for compensation in a process called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. In short, investors could use ISDS clauses to demand compensation in response to government actions to limit fossil fuels, such as canceling pipelines and denying drilling permits. For example, TC Energy, a Canadian company, is currently seeking more than US$15 billion over U.S. President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In a study published May 5, 2022, in the journal Science, we estimate that countries would face up to $340 billion in legal and financial risks for canceling fossil fuel projects that are subject to treaties with ISDS clauses.

That’s more than countries worldwide put into climate adaptation and mitigation measures combined in fiscal year 2019, and it doesn’t include the risks of phasing out coal investments or canceling fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. It means that money countries might otherwise spend to build a low-carbon future could instead go to the very industries that have knowingly been fueling climate change, severely jeopardizing countries’ capacity to propel the green energy transition forward.

Massive potential payouts

Of the world’s 55,206 upstream oil and gas projects that are in the early stages of development, we identified 10,506 projects – 19% of the total – that were protected by 334 treaties providing access to ISDS.

That number could be much higher. We could only identify the headquarters of project owners, not the overall corporate structures of the investments, due to limited data. We also know that law firms are advising clients in the industry to structure investments to ensure access to ISDS, through processes such as using subsidiaries in countries with treaty protections.

Depending upon future oil and gas prices, we found that the total net present value of those projects is expected to reach $60 billion to $234 billion. If countries cancel these protected projects, foreign investors could sue for financial compensation in line with these valuations.

Doing so would put several low- and middle-income countries at severe risk. Mozambique, Guyana and Venezuela could each face over $20 billion in potential losses from ISDS claims.

If countries also cancel oil and gas projects that are further along in development but are not yet producing, they face more risk. We found that 12% of those projects worldwide are protected by investment treaties, and their investors could sue for $32 billion to $106 billion.

Canceling approved projects could prove exceptionally risky for countries like Kazakhstan, which could lose $6 billion to $18 billion, and Indonesia, with $3 billion to $4 billion at risk.

Canceling coal investments or fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, could lead to even more claims.

Countries already feel regulatory chill

There have been at least 231 ISDS cases involving fossil fuels so far. Just the threat of massive payouts to investors could cause many countries to delay climate mitigation policies, causing a so-called “regulatory chill.”

Both Denmark and New Zealand, for example, seem to have designed their fossil fuel phaseout plans specifically to minimize their exposure to ISDS. Some climate policy experts have suggested that Denmark may have chosen 2050 as the end date for oil and gas extraction to avoid disputes with existing exploration license holders.

New Zealand banned all new offshore oil exploration in 2018 but did not cancel any existing contracts. The climate minister acknowledged that a more aggressive plan “would have run afoul of investor-state settlements.” France revised a draft law banning fossil fuel extraction by 2040 and allowing the renewal of oil exploitation permits after the Canadian company Vermilion threatened to launch an ISDS case.

Securing the green energy transition

While these findings are alarming, countries have options to avoid onerous legal and financial risks.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is currently discussing proposals on the future of investment treaties.

A straightforward approach would be for countries to terminate or withdraw from these treaties. Some officials have expressed concern about unforeseen impacts of unilaterally terminating investment treaties, but other countries have already done so, with few or no real economic consequences.

For more complex trade agreements, countries can negotiate to remove ISDS provisions, as the United States and Canada did when they replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Additional challenges stem from “sunset clauses” that bind countries for a decade or more after they have withdrawn from some treaties. Such is the case for Italy, which withdrew from the Energy Charter Treaty in 2016. It is currently stuck in an ongoing ISDS case initiated by the U.K. company Rockhopper over a ban on coastal oil drilling.

The Energy Charter Treaty, a special investment agreement covering the energy sector, emerged as the greatest single contributor to global ISDS risks in our dataset. Many European countries are currently considering whether to leave the treaty and how to avoid the same fate as Italy. If all country parties to a treaty can agree together to withdraw, they could collectively sidestep the sunset clause through mutual agreement.

The global transition

Combating climate change is not cheap. Actions by governments and the private sector are both needed to slow global warming and keep it from fueling increasingly devastating disasters.

In the end, the question is who will pay – and be paid – in the global energy transition. We believe that, at the very least, it would be counterproductive to divert critical public finance from essential mitigation and adaptation efforts to the pockets of fossil fuel industry investors whose products caused the problem in the first place.

Learn more about ISDS

domingo, 24 de abril de 2022

Stop Tratado da Carta da Energia, Stop TCE-Rex


Este é o nome da digressão europeia de um gigantesco dinossauro – 10 metros de comprimento, 6 metros de largura e 7 metros de altura – que começa a sua viagem em Lisboa no dia 24 de Abril, seguindo depois para Madrid (26 de Abril), Barcelona (28 de Abril), Viena (2 de Maio), Berlim (4 de Maio), Praga (10 de Maio), Bruxelas (17 de Maio) e Luxemburgo (18 de Maio).

Porquê um dinossauro?

→ O TCE-Rex representa o Tratado da Carta da Energia (TCE), um tratado que, tal como os dinossauros, pertence ao passado: entre outras razões, porque protege os combustíveis fósseis apesar de ser mais do que conhecida a urgência da transição ecológica para a neutralidade carbónica.

→ O TCE é um acordo multilateral de comércio e investimento envolvido em secretismo e opacidade que, quando “entra em acção”, causa danos avultados, atacando os contribuintes. Isto porque permite que investidores e empresas (incluindo os ligados aos combustíveis fósseis) reivindiquem milhões de euros em indemnizações quando os Estados tomam decisões que afectam negativamente os seus lucros presentes ou futuros.

Ainda há tempo para combater as alterações climáticas, mas o TCE é um obstáculo, tal como refere o mais recente relatório do IPCC.

Guerra na Ucrânia: A suspensão da certificação do gasoducto Nord Stream 2 pode levar a um caso ISDS ao abrigo do TCE. É inegável que precisamos de acabar com as protecções que o TCE garante aos investidores estrangeiros.

A Mobilização europeia aumenta a sensibilização para os perigos do TCE
Recursos úteis para saber mais:

segunda-feira, 17 de janeiro de 2022

Os direitos das mulheres na legislação ambiental, de 1972 até hoje


A Conferência de Estocolmo de 1972 lançou as sementes para o desenvolvimento da legislação ambiental transnacional, com Estados nacionais negociando compromissos para um ambiente saudável e introduzindo novos conceitos como o "ecocídio". A Declaração de Estocolmo é frequentemente referida como uma Carta Magna para a proteção ambiental, mas embora possa ter sido progressista e inovadora na época, não fez nenhuma menção explícita a mulheres, meninas ou gênero. Ao invés disso, mulheres e meninas foram incluídas na categoria de "homem", como mostrado no Princípio 1 da Declaração de Estocolmo:
O homem tem o direito fundamental à liberdade, à igualdade e ao desfrute de condições de vida adequadas, em um meio ambiente de qualidade tal que lhe permita uma vida digna, gozar de bem-estar, e é portador solene de obrigação de proteger e melhorar o ambiente, para as gerações presentes e futuras (ênfase da autora).

As mulheres certamente tiveram um papel importante na elaboração da declaração: a única chefe de governo presente na Conferência de Estocolmo, além do primeiro-ministro sueco Olof Palme, foi Indira Gandhi. Ela proferiu um poderoso discurso em nome dos países em desenvolvimento.

Além disso, a conferência preparou o caminho para a Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre o Meio Ambiente e o Desenvolvimento, também conhecida como Rio-92, e para a Declaração do Rio, que foi o primeiro instrumento ambiental internacional a reconhecer explicitamente a dupla realidade das mulheres como especialmente vulneráveis à degradação ambiental e como agentes de mudança, como fica explícito no Princípio 20 da declaração: "As mulheres desempenham um papel fundamental na proteção do meio ambiente e no desenvolvimento. É imprescindível contar com sua plena participação para conseguir o desenvolvimento sustentável".

Das três convenções das Nações Unidas adotadas na Rio-92, duas delas — a Convenção sobre Diversidade Biológica (CDB) e a Convenção das Nações Unidas de Combate à Desertificação (UNCCD) — fazem referência explícita à necessidade da plena participação das mulheres.

As mulheres do Sul Global desempenharam um papel importante nessa agenda. A Convenção sobre a Eliminação de Todas as Formas de Discriminação contra a Mulher, adotada em 1979, foi encabeçada inicialmente pela senadora filipina Letitia Ramos-Shahani e foi o resultado de mais de 30 anos de trabalho da Comissão da ONU sobre a Situação das Mulheres. Esta convenção reconhece o papel significativo que as mulheres do meio rural desempenham na sobrevivência econômica de suas famílias (Artigo 14) e que estas atividades se baseiam, em grande parte, em ecossistemas. Seis anos depois, a Conferência Mundial sobre a Mulher realizada em em Nairóbi em 1985 foi um dos primeiros fóruns internacionais a enfatizar a importância da igualdade de gênero e da participação da mulher para o desenvolvimento sustentável.

Alguns anos depois, em 1992, a China organizou um workshop inter-regional da ONU sobre o papel da mulher no desenvolvimento ambientalmente correto e sustentável. O relatório desse evento diz:
A fim de tornar o planeta Terra verde, pacífico e próspero, as mulheres da China estão preparadas para trabalhar em conjunto com as mulheres do mundo, independentemente de qual sistema social elas sejam, de suas origens étnicas, religião e credo, para o interesse comum da humanidade e seu futuro.

As integrantes do workshop foram encorajadas a participar da IV Conferência Mundial sobre a Mulher realizada em Beijing em 1995, que recebeu mais de 17.000 representantes de 189 governos e mais 30.000 participantes em um fórum de discussão paralelo. O resultado da conferência, conhecido como a Plataforma de Ação de Beijing, fez menção específica à necessidade de participação ativa das mulheres na tomada de decisões em assuntos relacionados ao meio ambiente em todos os níveis, e incorporação das questões de gênero nas políticas e programas para o desenvolvimento sustentável.

Semelhante aos efeitos da Conferência de Estocolmo no direito ambiental transnacional, o legado da Conferência Mundial sobre a Mulher de Beijing foi mantido com novas revisões e compromissos adicionais. A Declaração Beijing+25 de 2020 expressa o compromisso dos Estados de intensificar os esforços para integrar uma perspectiva de gênero nas políticas ambientais, de mudança climática e de redução de riscos de desastres, considerando não apenas a vulnerabilidade experimentada por mulheres e meninas, mas também a importância da liderança das mulheres na tomada de decisões ambientais.

As negociações para o Marco Global para a Biodiversidade Pós-2020 da CDB e seu plano de ação de género, que começou na primeira fase da COP15 em Kunming, China, e deve continuar na segunda fase a ser realizada em abril de 2022, pode oferecer mais uma oportunidade para promover os direitos da mulheres. A CDB refere-se ao papel vital que as mulheres desempenham na conservação e no uso sustentável da diversidade biológica, e à necessidade de sua plena participação em todos os níveis da formulação e implementação de políticas de biodiversidade.

O primeiro plano de ação de gênero sob uma convenção ambiental foi o Plano de Ação sobre Género 2015-2020 da CDB, que aconselhou que os compromissos de cada país — conhecidos como Estratégia e Plano de Ação Nacionais para a Biodiversidade (NBSAP, em inglês) — deveriam incluir atividades específicas para combater as desigualdades de gênero e a alocação de financiamento adequado para os esforços de integração das questões de gênero.

O grau em que as mulheres podem exercer a participação pública e realizar seu direito a um ambiente saudável e outros direitos relacionados dependerá fortemente de como a participação pública é interpretada e aplicada. A Convenção de Aarhus e o Acordo de Escazú, por exemplo, geram obrigações legais para suas partes e fornecem orientação estratégica.

Em outubro de 2021, o Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU reconheceu pela primeira vez o direito a um meio ambiente saudável. Muitas mulheres estavam entre as defensoras desta resolução, incluindo a embaixadora da Costa Rica, Catalina Devandas — parte do grupo central de países que a propõem. A resolução também reconhece que a participação pública é vital para a proteção de um ambiente limpo, saudável e sustentável.

Embora ainda haja um longo caminho a percorrer para alcançar a igualdade de gênero na prática, passos importantes foram dados para reconhecer o papel fundamental da participação das mulheres na legislação ambiental transnacional efetiva — uma questão ausente da Conferência de Estocolmo de 1972.

Colher efetivamente as sementes plantadas em Estocolmo e colocar os direitos das mulheres no centro do direito ambiental transnacional será vital para enfrentar de frente a tripla crise de mudança climática, perda de biodiversidade e poluição. Isso associado à igualdade de género, ao reconhecimento universal do direito a um ambiente saudável e à inclusão do ecocídio como um crime contra a humanidade pode gerar ações transformadoras. Estocolmo+50 oferece uma oportunidade histórica para dizer que essas ideias chegaram para ficar.

quinta-feira, 9 de dezembro de 2021

Conseguimos derrotar o TTIP. O que aconteceu desde então?



Em 2015, milhões de pessoas em toda a Europa protestaram contra a assinatura do tratado transatlântico entre a União Europeia e os Estados Unidos (o conhecido TTIP ), que se tornou o símbolo do poder das grandes corporações e do mercado sobre nossas sociedades. O poder coletivo conseguiu derrotar o TTIP sob o lema “as pessoas e o planeta em primeiro lugar”.

Uma das partes mais controversas do tratado foi o Mecanismo de Resolução de Controvérsias Investidor-Estado (também conhecido como ISDS ), um sistema exclusivo de tribunais arbitrais presente em mais de 3.000 tratados bilaterais de investimento, utilizado por corporações transnacionais para processar países que tomam decisões contra seus interesses económicos.


O TTIP não só expôs o ISDS aos cidadãos europeus, como também foi útil para facilitar a compreensão dos danos causados ​​pelo atual regime global de comércio e investimento: a perda de direitos sociais e ambientais, a transferência de soberania para empresas transnacionais e a degradação de democracia. Esse sistema já estava causando sérios efeitos negativos em outros países, especialmente na América Latina , Ásia ou África .

Um exemplo claro é o da Argentina, que teve que desviar biliões de euros dos cofres públicos após receber uma avalanche de ações de investidores estrangeiros pelas medidas adotadas para mitigar a pior crise económica, social e política de sua história, em 2003. Esse dinheiro poderia ter sido usado para a recuperação do país.

Como mudar algo para que nada mude

Sabemos que a Comissão Europeia aprendeu algumas lições com o fracasso da TTIP, mas, infelizmente, as erradas. A UE faz parte do bloco de países interessados ​​em manter esse sistema seguro. Eles introduzem reformas marginais que buscam “modernizar” antigos acordos comerciais, mas na verdade expandem os direitos corporativos. Essa tendência vem ganhando importância em alguns espaços decisórios liderados pela UE, Canadá, Estados Unidos e China.

Mas vamos ficar na Europa. Desde o fracasso do TTIP e graças a essas reformas marginais, a UE assinou o acordo comercial com o Japão , que ameaça facilitar a destruição de florestas ou aumentar a caça ilegal de baleias; o acordo comercial com Singapura , que abre as portas para um novo ISDS adoçado ; ou o acordo com o Vietnam, criticado pela violação dos direitos humanos . Por outro lado, o acordo entre a UE e o Mercosul (Brasil, Argentina, Uruguai e Paraguai) dividiu a Europa em dois campos e sua ratificação está em um impasse: a redução de tarifas e o aumento do comércio de matérias-primas podem aprofundar ainda mais a destruição de a Amazónia e a violação dos direitos dos povos indígenas.

Além disso, há três grandes acordos que estão em processo de "modernização": o acordo com o México , que em vez de garantir os direitos humanos dá mais proteção às empresas transnacionais; o acordo com o Chile ; e o Tratado da Carta da Energia , que ainda não inclui duas das reformas mais necessárias: a exclusão dos investimentos em combustíveis fósseis e a do ISDS.

Resistência à hegemonia comercial

Há também mudanças positivas. Há cada vez mais respostas dos países que mais sofreram com esse sistema: questionam se a única maneira de atrair capital estrangeiro é garantir a segurança jurídica por meio da assinatura de tratados de investimento.

Nem todos os estados estão seguindo o mesmo caminho. Venezuela e Bolívia encerraram grande parte de seus tratados. O Equador realizou sua própria auditoria cidadã abrangente. Outros países, como África do Sul, Indonésia, Austrália ou Brasil, optaram por rever algumas das cláusulas. Mesmo as organizações internacionais que foram promotoras do sistema agora questionam os supostos benefícios do regime global de comércio e investimento. Por exemplo, em 2018, a Organização para Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Económico (OCDE) concluiu que não há correlação positiva entre a assinatura de tratados e o aumento do investimento.

Resta definir como será o futuro do regime de investimentos e da economia mundial. Mas o papel da sociedade civil será fundamental para promover o debate e a mobilização e possibilitar que a mudança de paradigma seja, efetivamente, para que as pessoas e o planeta estejam acima dos interesses corporativos.

Fonte: O Salto

sexta-feira, 15 de outubro de 2021

Petição- Travar o Tratado que bloqueia o Acordo de Paris


O Tratado da Carta da Energia (TCE) constitui uma perigosa ameaça para o clima, por outorgar às empresas petrolíferas, de gás e de carvão o direito de processarem estados num sistema de justiça privada, quando estes tomam medidas em prol do clima, que possam afectar os seus lucros esperados.

O TCE protege excessivamente o investimento directo estrangeiro das empresas de combustíveis fósseis, através de um sistema de justiça privada (ISDS) que se sobrepõe aos estados e às leis nacionais, e tem feito os governos pagarem milhares de milhões de dólares em indemnizações quando tentam proteger o ambiente ou defender os seus cidadãos da pobreza energética.

O mais recente exemplo em que o TCE é usado contra legislação em favor do clima, é o processo arbitral apresentado pela gigante de energia alemã RWE, devido à decisão do governo holandês em Dezembro de 2019, de proibir até 2030 a produção de energia a partir do carvão. Por essa mesma razão, a empresa Uniper Benelux ameaçou interpor um processo judicial contra o governo holandês, exigindo uma indemnização de mais de mil milhões de euros.

O TCE tem potencial para bloquear a acção climática dos governos, pois basta a ameaça de recurso ao mecanismo ISDS associado a este tratado, para intimidar os governos na tomada de medidas de redução da utilização de combustíveis fósseis (o conhecido chilling effect). Esse foi o caso da Lei francesa para pôr fim à exploração de combustíveis fósseis.

Com este tratado, não são as empresas poluidoras quem têm de pagar à sociedade pelos danos ambientais provocados: ao invés, são elas que exigem indemnizações pagas pelos contribuintes se os governos ousarem agir para proteger o ambiente.

Além disso, o TCE é incompatível com o Acordo de Paris, porque actualmente protege muitíssimo mais emissões do que as possíveis para a UE cumprir o seu orçamento para alcançar o alvo de 1,5ºC. No TCE, estão já protegidas, no período de 2018 até 2050, 148 Gigatoneladas de CO2 ou equivalente. Ora, para evitar uma subida de 1,5ºC, o volume total de emissões associado à UE é de 30 Gigatoneladas – ou seja, a União Europeia apenas poderia emitir 20% das emissões actualmente protegidas pelo TCE.

Por tudo isto,
- a Comissão Europeia, que apresentou uma proposta de reforma no início de 2020, considera agora o tratado ultrapassado e incompatível com o Acordo de Paris - nomeadamente no que toca às cláusulas de protecção dos investidores, alterações climáticas e transição para energias renováveis - e já pôs publicamente a hipótese de abandonar o TCE.
- o Parlamento Europeu aprovou uma histórica alteração à Lei do Clima, incluindo a cláusula: "pôr fim à protecção dos investimentos em combustíveis fósseis no contexto da modernização do Tratado da Carta da Energia" (Emenda 143/Artigo 8º-A).
- 428 cientistas e líderes climáticos apelaram em carta aberta aos estados signatários do Tratado da Carta da Energia que se retirem do TCE, por se tratar de um importante obstáculo a uma transição energética que evite a dependência dos combustíveis fósseis.
- 30 milhões de Jovens europeus enviaram aos ministros do Conselho uma carta pedindo-lhes que se retirem do TCE.
- a Federação Europeia para as Energias Renováveis aderiu ao pedido de retirada da UE do TCE, declarando que o TCE protege os investimentos em combustíveis fósseis e impede os objectivos do Pacto Ecológico Europeu e as metas do Acordo de Paris.
- o Grupo de Investidores Institucionais sobre Alterações Climáticas apelou aos membros do Conselho da UE para apoiarem o fim da protecção dos investimentos fósseis.

O processo de modernização em curso revelou-se um fracasso e a urgência da acção climática não se compadece com o prolongamento desse processo, já que a unanimidade exigida é inatingível quando grandes produtores de combustíveis fósseis dele fazem parte.

Por tudo isto, os peticionários apelam a que:
- seja realizado um debate no Plenário da Assembleia da República sobre as barreiras do TCE para a concretização dos objectivos de Portugal em termos de neutralidade carbónica;
- o Governo de Portugal se una publicamente ao Governo de França no pedido que este fez à Comissão Europeia para que trabalhe no sentido de uma saída coordenada dos Estados-Membros da UE do Tratado da Carta da Energia e que deixe de ser cúmplice das empresas de carvão, petróleo e gás que bloqueiam a transição para um sistema de energia limpa.

Saiba mais: https://energy-charter-dirty-secrets.org/pt/

domingo, 16 de maio de 2021

The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude



E-Livros

Politics of Obedience
Discurso de la servidumbre voluntaria

States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an instant—when consent is withdrawn.

This is the thesis of this thrilling book. Murray Rothbard writes a classic introduction to one of the great political essays in the history of ideas.

In times when dictators the world over are falling from pressure from their own people, this book, written nearly 500 years ago, is truly the prophetic tract of our times.

Étienne de La Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Périgord region of southwest France, in 1530, to an aristocratic family, and became a dear friend of Michel de Montaigne. But he ought to be remembered for this astonishingly important essay, one of the greatest in the history of political thought. It will shake the way you think of the state. His thesis and argument amount to the best answer to Machiavelli ever penned as well as one of the seminal essays in defense of liberty.

La Boétie's task is to investigate the nature of the state and its strange status as a tiny minority of the population that adheres to different rules from everyone else and claims the authority to rule everyone else, maintaining a monopoly on law. It strikes him as obviously implausible that such an institution has any staying power. It can be overthrown in an instant if people withdraw their consent.

He then investigates the mystery as to why people do not withdraw, given what is obvious to him that everyone would be better off without the state. This sends him on a speculative journey to investigate the power of propaganda, fear, and ideology in causing people to acquiesce in their own subjection. Is it cowardice? Perhaps. Habit and tradition. Perhaps. Perhaps it is ideological illusion and intellectual confusion.

La Boétie goes on to make a case as to why people ought to withdraw their consent immediately. He urges all people to rise up and cast off tyranny simply by refusing to concede that the state is in charge.

The tyrant has "nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?"

Then these inspiring words: "Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."

In all these areas, the author has anticipated Jefferson and Arendt, Gandhi and Spooner, and those who overthrew Soviet tyranny. The essay has profound relevance for understanding history and all our times.

As Rothbard writes in his spectacular introduction, "La Boetie's Discourse has a vital importance for the modern reader—an importance that goes beyond the sheer pleasure of reading a great and seminal work on political philosophy, or, for the libertarian, of reading the first libertarian political philosopher in the Western world. For La Boétie speaks most sharply to the problem which all libertarians—indeed, all opponents of despotism—find particularly difficult: the problem of strategy. Facing the devastating and seemingly overwhelming power of the modern State, how can a free and very different world be brought about? How in the world can we get from here to there, from a world of tyranny to a world of freedom? Precisely because of his abstract and timeless methodology, La Boétie offers vital insights into this eternal problem."

Author:

Étienne de la Boétie (Mises profile)


Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563) is one of the seminal political philosophers, not only as a founder of modern political philosophy in France but also for the timeless relevance of many of his theoretical insights.

sexta-feira, 18 de dezembro de 2020

How Globalists Plan To Use Technology And Poverty To Enslave The Masses



(Brandon Smith) Tyranny is often seen as a sudden and inexplicable development in a society; the product of a singular despot that rockets to power for a limited window of time due to public fear or stupidity. This is one of the great lies of the modern era.



by Brandon Smith, 

The truth is that for at least the past century almost every historically despised “tyrant” was merely a puppet of a larger managerial cabal, and the construction of each totalitarian state was accomplished slowly and quietly over the course of decades by those same financial elitists. From the Bolsheviks, to Hitler and the Third Reich, to Mao Zedong, to most tin-pot dictators across the Middle East and Africa, there has always been an organized group of money men and think tanks fueling the careers of the worst politicians and military juntas of the epoch.

The rise of a tyrannical system takes extensive time, planning and staging. Human beings do not simply jump right into the arms of a dystopian nightmare regime impulsively at a moment’s notice. We have been told by popular media that this is how it works; that during hard economic or social conditions men with charismatic personalities and evil intentions suddenly rise to the surface and take power by promising a better world in exchange for public fealty. But where did those economic and social crises come from to begin with? Were they a natural consequence of the era, or were they deliberately engineered?

The reality is that people must be psychologically conditioned to trade freedom for the illusion of safety. Sometimes this takes generations. Every attempt at a totalitarian framework inevitably elicits a rebellion. Therefore, the most successful tyranny would be one that the public DEMANDS. They have to think it is their idea, otherwise they will eventually fight it.

Globalist financiers and power addicts need something more than mere military might or bureaucratic force to obtain their ideal slave society. They need 4th Generation warfare tactics. They need to con the masses into accepting their own servitude.

There are two tools that make this outcome possible: The first is controlled economic decline, the second is the integration of a technological gulag into every aspect of public life.

Economic Weapons Of Mass Distraction

It is no coincidence that dictatorial governments gain prominence as the global economy suffers; it is extremely difficult for people to remain vigilant to tyranny when they are completely distracted by their own survival. This is why my focus as an analyst has always been primarily on economics and solutions to fiscal disaster; it all begins and ends with the economy. If the public can be prepped to develop their own alternative economic systems before a crisis occurs, then they will be less distracted by the chaos and more apt to notice when the globalists offer tyranny as a fix-all.

Without alternative markets at the local level there is no redundancy, no protection from a crash. With most people dependent on the existing system for their livelihoods, the economy becomes a very useful weapon for the globalists.

Holding the economy hostage creates numerous advantages. Through deflationary pressure wages can be kept low while higher paying jobs disappear. Manufacturing can be phased out or outsourced overseas, as in the U.S. Small business ownership becomes difficult as taxes generally rise while financial conditions decline.

Through inflationary or stagflationary pressures, low wages and the inadequate job market are combined with exploding prices. This makes survival for many people untenable without government aid.

In this environment, the working public becomes reliant on the service sector, which provides no useful skill sets. Soon, you have entire generations of people with no production abilities whatsoever. They become drones working in meaningless office and retail jobs squandering away their days knowing that they are accomplishing nothing beyond a meager paycheck.

The lack of a greater purpose or mission in life and the nagging realization that the average person has no productive capacity creates a palpable atmosphere of desperation. They do not own their own work, and they have nothing much to show for their labor; nothing to point at and say, “I built that.” The public gets to the point that they may even welcome an economic collapse simply to escape the drudgery.


This is where movements to support totalitarianism come from — the subset of citizens that are fed up with fighting against the economy and have no sense of independence. These people do not know how to solve their own problems, they are always looking for someone else to do it for them. The globalists are happy to suggest their own predetermined solutions to the public once the financial structure hits a point of maximum pain.

However, after the economy is repaired in exchange for the submission of the citizenry, people might still decide one day that the trade was unfair. Thus, a deterrent is needed to keep them in line.

The Technological Fish Tank

It is important to understand that there is no major country in the western OR eastern world that is not building a digital control grid, and this helps to support my position that eastern nations are just as subservient to globalist demands as western nations. All the geopolitical drama surrounding events like the trade war, the Syrian war or various elections, etc.; none of this matters in the end. When determining if the strings of a particular government are being pulled by the globalist cabal, all you have to do is look at how quickly they are implementing oppressive systems that serve globalist interests.

For example, India’s government has been hitting the news feeds lately as their supreme court recently ruled that the controversial Aadhaar biometric program is legal. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, around 1 billion have already been biometrically profiled in a national database. This data can include fingerprints, iris scans and face scans.

I have heard it argued that India is a rather odd place to experiment with such a database, considering 60% of the population is under the poverty line and most people barely have basic amenities. But I would point out that this is why it is a PERFECT place for the globalists to start cataloging the world population on larger scale.

Again, financial desperation and a lack of productions skills tends to produce subservience. Hundreds of millions of poverty stricken people in India’s sprawling urban sewers are voluntarily giving up their biometric data in exchange for government aid programs.

For the people not anchored down by the poor economy India has instituted other measures, including requiring anyone accessing government services, opening a bank account or signing up for a mobile phone service also give up their biometrics to the government. In nations not yet impoverished at India’s level, more subversive measures have been instituted for surveillance of the population. Data is simply taken rather than traded.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin has put the Yarovaya laws he signed in 2016 into effect. All digital data from phone conversations to emails is now recorded and stored by telecoms for government access for a minimum of six months, this includes Facebook and Twitter posts. The 2014 bloggers law also requires any blogger with over 3,000 followers be put on government file and they cannot remain anonymous. Any business operating a public Wi-Fi network is required by law to identify users by ID, which is also stored for at least six months.

Russia’s FISA-style surveillance grid is vast, yet, many people in the liberty movement seem to ignore this reality with misplaced Putin-worship. As I have noted in numerous articles, Russia is heavily influenced by international financiers.

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are the largest investment banks in the country. Their central bank works closely with the IMF and the BIS. The Kremlin has in the past called for a global currency controlled by the IMF. And Putin even admits in his own biography First Person that he has been friends with New World Order salesman Henry Kissinger since before he became president of Russia. In a latest show of how globalist Russia really is, the Russian Foreign Minister recently criticized the U.S. in a speech to the U.N. general assembly over its “attacks” on the “international order,” including undermining the World Trade Organization and global climate change agreements.

With the above in mind, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Russia is playing right along with globalist efforts to identify and track every single living person. It should also come as no surprise that Donald Trump, surrounded by globalists within his own cabinet, is continuing and expanding FISA surveillance under his administration.

At the beginning of 2018 Trump signed a bill renewing the National Security Agency’s warrantless FISA mass surveillance of the American population. Leading Democrats happily supported the action. Despite all of Trump’s rhetoric against FISA recently, it was Trump that made FISA’s continuation possible.

Major social media companies are cooperating wholeheartedly with mass surveillance efforts as they share personal data with governments around the world regularly. Facebook alone saw an increase in government requests for data of over 33% in 2017, and the nature of most of this data sharing is not open to public scrutiny.

This is one reason why I’m rather bewildered by the recent conservative fury over social media discrimination – it’s as if personal liberty activists are being tricked with reverse psychology to DEMAND unhindered participation in media sites that spy on them. Why does anyone still want to sign up for these websites?

But where is this all going? How does the combination of poverty and digital surveillance translate to tyranny? I believe China’s “social credit” program is the answer. The system is based on the idea of “maintaining trust”, but whose trust? Well, the government’s trust, of course. Trust is measured using a social credit score that is tracked over a citizen’s life. Punished behaviors include anything from smoking in a no smoking area to publishing internet content that the powers-that-be disapprove of.

China is representative of the end game for the globalist ideal for civilization. With mass economic struggle leading to dependency on government welfare programs and employment opportunities, few citizens can afford to be “blacklisted.” China’s social credit system creates an environment in which any and every action on the part of citizens is tracked and then “rated” for acceptance or consequence. This includes how people express attitudes toward the government itself. Obviously, this is the ultimate control mechanism, very similar to the Cheka established by Lenin and Stalin in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but on a massive digital scale.

This is why mass surveillance is evil, regardless of whether someone is breaking the laws or not. It gives government the power to dictate and mold behavior by inspiring self-censorship rather than holding people directly at gun point. It is tyranny enforced in a less obvious way; a prison in which the prisoners maintain the locks and the chains and the bars. Individuals do not dare do anything outside of collective norms for fear that it could be interpreted as socially negative. Punishment might include loss of access to the economy itself, and when most people are living from paycheck to paycheck, this could mean death.

Source: