All posts tagged Environment & Climate

Latin America-Caribbean: Illicit Fishing is Environmental Security Challenge

By A.J. Manuzzi*

The Ecuadorian naval vessel, LAE Island San Cristobal / Defense Visual Information Distribution Service / Creative Commons license

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and associated crimes are undermining coastal communities throughout Latin America and the Caribbean – hurting the economic wellbeing of licit fishers and reducing coastal and ocean biodiversity, fish stocks, and food security. The EU and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have made ending IUU fishing a priority because it contributes to overfishing, enables labor abuses, and violates international norms on sovereignty and biodiversity.

IUU fishing comprises a diverse slate of illicit acts, including foreign vessels fishing in another country’s sovereign waters without permission; disregard for international environmental laws; and inadequate catch reporting to state authorities. Illicit actors include large distant-water fleets (DWFs) backed by states like China, Taiwan, and Japan as well as individual locally based artisanal vessels with small crews. 

  • Latin America represents only 2.1 percent of global aquaculture production, but its losses to IUU fishing – losses that experts estimate to be $2.3 billion a year – make it the third-hardest hit continent. According to a 2020 study by the Fisheries Economics Research Unit and the Sea Around Us organization at the University of British Columbia, income losses are as high as $600 million, and tax revenue losses are as high as $300 million dollars, with the other $1.4 billion owing to the general redirection of catches from legitimate to the illicit seafood trade.
  • Costa Rica has seen by-kill of young fish from the use of illegal nets as well as incursions by illegal fishermen in its offshore national parks. Until recently, Ecuador faced a flotilla of as many as 340 Chinese vessels catching and storing marine life around the Galapagos Islands. In Jamaica, depleted seafood stocks have pushed local fishers into deeper waters, where there is a risk of collision with IUU fishers searching for diminishing sources of conch and lobster. In Suriname, IUU fishers have been known to steal the nets of domestic fishers.

IUU fishing often involves forced labor and other crimes, further harming coastal communities and billions of people worldwide whose economies and diets are tied to fish. By undercutting legal market prices, it threatens the livelihood of licit fishers who pay fair wages and don’t have the same technological advantages. 

  • Overfishing reduces supplies for local communities. The FAO estimates that total fish consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean will increase 33 percent by 2030 (more than any other region). Overfishing by IUU actors has already forced the Dominican Republic and Jamaica to increase imports of fish and seafood and impose new catch quotas that, when expanded in other countries, would likely affect the more than 3 million people in the region who work in fishing or aquaculture.
  • Related crimes are committed by artisanal fishers operating in coastal waters, where they illegally harvest seaweed, pursue endangered species, fish in the off-season, or engage in smuggling; domestic industrial fishers who misreport catches; and DWFs that use flags of convenience to trick authorities. 
  • IUU fishers threaten biodiversity because they are heavily skewed toward immediate predation, with little concern for the long-term economic impact and environmental costs. They also complicate states’ fishery sustainability efforts, making implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate IUU fishing fall far behind. In addition, shark finning is prominent in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Chile despite domestic and international laws against it. Nine of the 12 shark species found aboard a Chinese IUU freighter off Ecuador in 2017 were endangered. 

The regulatory frameworks for fighting IUU fishing are weak; enforcement tools are lacking; and most countries lack the resolve to address the problem. The current international framework includes a hodgepodge of international and national agreements and initiatives, without the active engagement of many of the world’s largest fishing nations. 

  • The cornerstone is the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA), which binds signatories to reduce illicit fishing by denying IUU fishing vessels access to port services and to lessen access of illicit catch to international markets. International bodies such as the FAO provide tools for tracking vessels, but regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and advocacy groups like Oceana say that there is only limited sovereign commitment to the rules. Some of the most seriously affected countries are those with the fewest resources to combat the problem.

The combination of IUU fishing and related crimes, such as labor abuses and copy-cat practices by local fishers, pose threats to national economies, food security, and ultimately regional stability. What’s needed is obvious: enhanced monitoring, control, and surveillance capacity; updated legal instruments and increased judicial sanctions; and more resolute multilateral action on fishing subsidies and ocean protection. One question is whether the victims of IUU fishing themselves can muster the national and regional resolve to address the problem – sacrificing the short-term gain of permissiveness for the long-term goal of protecting strategic interests. Without that resolve, Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to be victimized by IUU fishing and the inequality, labor abuses, resource exploitation, and violations of national sovereignty it enables.

July 21, 2022

*A.J. Manuzzi is a Master’s student in International Affairs in the School of International Service. This article draws on research he performed as a Research Assistant for a CLALS project on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.

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by clalsstaff on July 21, 2022  •  Permalink
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South America: Future Global Green Hydrogen Hub?

by Thomas Andrew O’Keefe*

An oil rig off the coast of Brazil / Redacción EFEverde / Creative Commons license

A handful of South American countries have long produced hydrogen using fossil fuels for their domestic hydrocarbon, steel, and petrochemical industries, but early efforts by Brazil, Chile and Uruguay to shift to renewable and carbon-free energy sources, along with the emergence of new lower-cost technologies, could position the continent as a leading global green hydrogen supplier.

  • Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and can be produced from water utilizing the electrolysis process whereby a direct current is applied to separate hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen gas that is produced can be either burned – for heat or to generate electricity – or stored in fuel cells that produce electricity to power transportation.
  • South America has been producing hydrogen for several decades. Many countries on the continent are already important hydrogen producers for the steel and petrochemical industries, including the manufacture of fertilizers, as well as for refining heavy-crude petroleum products. The electricity to facilitate electrolysis in South America currently relies exclusively on fossil fuels. This explains why hydrogen production is today a major source of greenhouse emissions in some South American countries.
  • Countries with substantial hydrocarbon reserves such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru also have the potential to utilize natural gas to produce so-called “blue” hydrogen, which incorporates carbon-capture and storage technology. The technologies to ensure the elimination of all greenhouse house emissions associated with the extraction, transport, and use of natural gas have yet to be developed.

Three South American countries have a jump on producing “green” hydrogen, made exclusively with renewable and carbon-free energy resources such as geothermal, hydro, solar, wind, and even nuclear power for electrolysis.

  • In 2020 the outgoing administration of Sebastián Piñera of Chile launched an ambitious plan to convert the country into a major global exporter of green hydrogen by 2030. An Australian company at the end of 2021 announced plans to invest $8.2 billion to build a major export-oriented green hydrogen complex in the southern Argentine province of Rio Negro. A pilot project in Argentina has been producing small amounts of electrolytic hydrogen from wind power since 2008.
  • Chile and Uruguay are best positioned to attract green hydrogen investment projects, given their long-term national energy plans forged through extensive stakeholder consensus-building efforts as well as stable economic policies and predictable regulatory frameworks. These factors contributed to putting both countries at the forefront of the continent’s transition to a greener energy matrix. The Santiago metro system, for example, is now powered exclusively by renewable energy, while Uruguay is often ranked behind Denmark as a global leader in terms of wind-generated electricity.

Converting South America into a major global green hydrogen exporter will require new and less costly technologies to produce, transport, and consume it. Ideally, South American governments should encourage regional research and development of new technologies to reduce the current high costs to produce green hydrogen, perhaps with funding from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), which is now based in Montevideo, or the Fund for the Structural Convergence of the MERCOSUR (FOCIM). Regional economic integration schemes such as the Andean Community and MERCOSUR can also facilitate the creation of new supply chains for manufacturing competitively priced inputs such as fuel cells and electrolysers to produce hydrogen from water. Another missing piece is a low-cost way to overcome hydrogen’s comparatively low energy density. At present you need about three times more space to store hydrogen to make the equivalent level of energy sourced from natural gas. Retrofitting existing pipeline networks and devising innovative ways to more cheaply transport hydrogen over long distances, is also necessary.

  • South American countries would be wise to decarbonize domestic transport and industry through wide-spread use of green hydrogen before making the leap to global exports. Serving global markets sustainably will also require the deployment of low-carbon transport options to replace the current fleet of long-distance ships that rely on highly polluting diesel. Utilizing liquid hydrogen or ammonia and even methanol produced with green hydrogen to power ocean-going vessels may provide the solution.

June 3, 2022

* Thomas Andrew O’Keefe is President of Mercosur Consulting Group, Ltd. and a lecturer with the International Relations Program at Stanford University.

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by clalsstaff on June 3, 2022  •  Permalink
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Putting “Teeth” in the Requirement for Consultation with Indigenous Peoples

By Thomas Andrew O’Keefe*

Indigenous groups in Bolivia march in defense of the TIPNIS/ Pablo Andrés Rivero/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

In no other region of the world have as many countries ratified International Labor Organization Convention 169 – requiring that governments consult Indigenous communities before approving projects that may detrimentally impact them – as Latin America, but human rights due diligence standards adopted by companies involved in investment projects are proving much more effective in guaranteeing adequate and effective consultations rather than government action. This is true even though ILO 169 requires that governments consult with local communities before giving the green light to investment or development projects that affect Indigenous lands, natural resources, and water supplies. 

  • Neither Canada nor the United States has ratified ILO 169, and they were among only four countries that voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when it came up for a vote in the UN General Assembly in 2007, which endorsed the “free, prior, and informed consent” principle. Colombia was the only Latin American country not to fully embrace the UNDRIP.

Despite widespread ratification of ILO 169 and endorsement of the UNDRIP, Latin America is plagued by social conflicts involving Indigenous peoples who feel they were never adequately consulted. The most infamous example was in 2009 at Bagua in Amazonian Peru, when the administration of President Alan García used lethal force to counter protests by Indigenous peoples opposed to legal changes that facilitated energy, mining, and agricultural concessions on their lands. The violence resulted in the deaths of 34 people (mostly policemen) and hundreds of injured. Many of these social conflicts have delayed the completion of major energy and mining projects throughout Latin America for years, sometimes forcing their abandonment or the revocation by governments of previously granted concessions. The direct financial losses incurred by businesses have been huge, not to mention the damage to corporate branding image.  

  • One reason for persistent conflicts throughout Latin America is that ILO 169 offers no definitive answer as to what happens if an Indigenous community vetoes a proposed project. Presumably that wouldn’t occur if the consultation were effective. But ILO 169 is vague on the precise consultation process a government must follow, leading to wide national variations as to who must be consulted and how. Although the UNDRIP implies that Indigenous peoples have the right to reject a project, its provisions are not considered legally binding by most governments unless specifically incorporated into domestic law. Even in Bolivia, one of the few countries where “free, prior and informed consent” is the law of the land, this did not prevent the administration of President Evo Morales from going ahead with a highway through the TIPNIS reserve in eastern Bolivia over the objections of its Indigenous inhabitants.

The growing importance of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria in corporate decision-making, including the adoption of internal human rights due diligence policies and practices, may finally lead to effective consultation mechanisms that accept the notion that Indigenous peoples have the final say in either approving or rejecting a project that threatens their way of life or will permanently displace them from ancestral lands. For one thing, good faith consultation with Indigenous peoples is now a recognized international human right. More importantly, businesses are not absolved by a government’s failure to fulfill the obligation to consult Indigenous peoples on projects affecting them.

  • Multilateral lending agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank have developed performance standards that include a consent requirement that must be adhered to by any company seeking their financing for investment projects that may impact Indigenous people. In addition, equity investors with investment risk management concerns are emerging as important guarantors of corporate consultation and consent with Indigenous communities, particularly in the natural resource extraction industry.
  • If the ESG criteria weren’t a big enough stick for private sector compliance, there is also an emerging trend in Europe and at the UN to make human rights due diligence principles mandatory for businesses. For example, France passed a law in 2017 that requires companies with a substantial presence in the country to adopt reasonable vigilance measures to allow for risk identification and for the prevention of severe violations of human rights directly or indirectly from the operations of the companies and their subsidiaries.  Businesses that do not meet their vigilance obligations are liable for damages incurred by victims. These emerging legal obligations encompass not only the foreign operations of corporations but increasingly extend to the entire production and supply chain. 

October 28, 2021

* Thomas Andrew O’Keefe is the President of Mercosur Consulting Group, Ltd and author of the chapter “Human Rights Due Diligence Practices for Adequate and Effective Consultation with Indigenous Peoples” in a forthcoming book to be published by the American Bar Association.

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by clalsstaff on October 28, 2021  •  Permalink
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South America: Reality Check on Lithium Fantasies

By Thomas Andrew O’Keefe*

Lithium mine at Salinas Grandes salt desert Jujuy province, Argentina/ EARTHWORKS/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

The urgent need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and transition to an energy matrix centered on renewable energy guarantees a steady demand for lithium, but speculation that South America is on the cusp of a lithium boom is premature. The chemical is critical in the production of rechargeable batteries for mobile devices, electric vehicles, and, increasingly, renewable energy storage systems. The so-called Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile holds just over half the world’s currently known lithium deposits, while Brazil and Peru have large amounts of spodumene hard rock that contains lithium.

  • Lithium in its natural form is part of a chemical compound that requires a complex re-composition process to make, among other things, lithium‑ion battery cells. How it is mined entails significant cost differences. Lithium from the brine below salt flats in Argentina and Chile is currently the most cost-competitive. While Bolivia also has brine deposits, the lithium is less concentrated, contains more impurities, and is found at more difficult-to-access lower depths in the Uyuni salt flats. Accessing lithium in spodumene hard rock pegmatites is even more complicated and hence costlier. The advantage, though, is that this type of lithium synthesizes better with the higher nickel content required to improve electric vehicle performance and range.

The region’s largest producers adopted different approaches to capitalizing on lithium reserves.

  • In 2008, then-President Evo Morales of Bolivia restricted extraction to the state-owned Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL) because past commodity boom and bust cycles profited foreigners and left little wealth but plenty of environmental catastrophes and other social ills in their wake. In 2017, lithium extraction was transferred to the newly created Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB).  Morales also promoted public-private partnerships to jointly produce batteries and even electric vehicles in Bolivia. The latter echoes a failed Andean Pact initiative during the 1970s in which aspects of automobile production were to be distributed among different member states. The scheme failed because, among other reasons, manufacturing anything in isolated Bolivia was cost prohibitive due to poor infrastructure. Several decades later, logistical realities still make exporting a Bolivian-produced electric vehicle, let alone lithium‑ion batteries, economically unfeasible.
  • Chile, which also deems lithium to be a strategic mineral, imposes onerous production quotas on private-sector producers and requires that they sell 25 percent of their output at preferential rates to domestic downstream buyers. The set-aside provision is designed to encourage manufacturing in Chile of lithium‑ion battery components such as cathodes, hydroxide, and electrolytes. While Argentina is more accepting of private investment in its lithium industry, the country is notorious for recurring economic crises and erratic oscillation in economic policy that make investing in the country a high-risk proposition.

Complicating resource extractive activities in South America are heightened environmental sensitivities. Indigenous communities are well versed in the prior consultation obligation of ILO Convention 169 as well the free, prior, and informed consent requirements of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For over a decade now, the continent has seen numerous energy and mining projects blocked and even abandoned because of an actual or perceived failure to adequately consult with detrimentally impacted Indigenous communities. Lithium brine deposits in the Lithium Triangle countries are found in some of the most arid spots on the planet, raising concerns that the water-intensive lithium brine extraction process directly competes with subsistence agricultural activities in nearby communities. This has sparked major road blockades protesting mining projects in Argentina’s Jujuy province and in southwestern Bolivia, as well as court litigation in both Argentina and Chile.

The panorama for the lithium industry in South America is subject to new social and political realities that were not true of past commodity booms. There is little tolerance today for extractive investment projects that are not environmentally sustainable and do not benefit local communities. This trend will accelerate with efforts to turn the voluntary United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into a binding legal treaty. In addition, Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) principles emanating from the UN’s Principles for Responsible Development now make it very difficult for corporate management to push through projects that result in serious environmental damage and human rights abuses.

  • An example of this trend was the announcement last month that Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG, and BASF would join Dutch smartphone manufacturer Fairphone to launch the Responsible Lithium Partnership so that extraction in northern Chile will not negatively affect the sensitive ecosystem or the people who live in the surrounding areas.

July 14, 2021

* Thomas Andrew O’Keefe is President of Mercosur Consulting Group, Ltd. and a lecturer with the International Relations Program at Stanford University.

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by clalsstaff on July 14, 2021  •  Permalink
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Mexico: Setting a “New Social Ethic” of Sustainability?

By Veronica Limeberry*

Maize plot using agro-ecological options in Mexico/ International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s decree phasing out the use of the herbicide glyphosate and genetically modified (GMO) corn has strong support in Mexico – for now – and could conceivably show a way ahead on sustainable development for other countries. Announcing the decree on New Year’s Eve, AMLO framed it as creating a “new social ethic” in food production that puts the wellbeing of the Mexican people before the interests of private companies and profits. The government is moving ahead with implementation of the decree this month despite rapid and harsh pushback from Mexican and U.S. agribusiness. The U.S. Farm Bureau Federation, whose members sell GMO corn to Mexico, appealed to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to oppose Mexico’s move.

  • Advocates of sustainable development have long opposed the use of glyphosate, the world’s most commonly used herbicide. The chemical was declared a probable carcinogen in a 2015 World Health Organization (WHO) report. Concern about glyphosate has surged in Mexico since a 2019 study by the University of Guadalajara found that all 148 children in the study had glyphosate in their urine, and all had chronic health conditions. The herbicide’s producer, Bayer-Monsanto, is in the midst of one of the largest settlements in history ($10.9 billion) involving tens of thousands of suits claiming that it causes cancer and death. Despite these growing concerns, glyphosate sales grew from $3 billion in 2015 to $8.5 billion last year, and industry watchers forecast them to be over $13 billion by 2027.

AMLO’s decree on GMO corn also reflects growing interest in Mexico to reclaim the country’s agricultural biodiversity. Mexico is the center of origin of over 59 food varieties, including corn, beans, squash, and cocoa. Mexican corn has long been part of the country’s national identity. The campaign Sin Maíz No Hay País (Without corn there is no country), launched more than a decade ago, embraces the grain as “the basis of our culture, our identity, adaptability and diversity.” Nonetheless, Mexico imported 18 million tons of GMO corn from the United States in 2020, comprising 40 percent of corn consumption. Seeking to reverse this, progressive deputy agriculture minister Víctor Suárez led the push for the decree and emphasizes “achieving self-sufficiency and food sovereignty.”

The decree includes radical terminology and establishes agroecology as national policy informed by Mexican food identity and traditions. AMLO and Suárez have defended its emphasis on sustainable, ethical, and increased food production “through the use of agroecological practices and inputs that are safe for human health, the country’s biocultural diversity, and the environment, as well as congruent with the agricultural traditions of Mexico.” The measure has the support of rural communities and both houses of Congress.

  • Some of the AMLO Administration’s rhetoric seems intended to provide leadership to other countries seeking alternatives to herbicides like glyphosate as well as GMO foods while trying to decenter the needs of industry. Numerous studies point to agrarian crises in many countries – such as the farmers’ movement in India – for which AMLO’s move conceivably offers a model. The Mexican decree offers language of community, sovereignty, and wellbeing attractive to advocates of agricultural sustainable development for the future. It will take some time, however, to see if Mexico’s approach persuades others that it can be implemented and retain popular support over the long term.

March 31, 2021

* Veronica Limeberry is a doctoral student at American University focusing on agroecology, food sovereignty, and indigenous territorial rights.

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by clalsstaff on March 31, 2021  •  Permalink
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Nicaragua: Triple-Crisis Threatens More Instability, Poverty, and Migration

By William Vigil*

EU solidarity: helping Central America recover after hurricanes ETA and IOTA / European Union (D. Membreño) / Flickr / Creative Commons License

Three years of political unrest, COVID-19, and back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes last November have created a precarious situation in Nicaragua – raising the probability of increased instability, poverty, and migration into Costa Rica and northward toward the United States. Long ranked the second poorest country in the hemisphere (after Haiti), the country has experienced worsening socio-economic conditions since 2018, and shrinking democratic and civic spaces have deepened political polarization.

  • In 2018, the government cracked down on protests triggered by cuts in social security benefits, followed by months of violent suppression of unrest and demands for a democratic opening. The result was more than 325 dead, thousands wounded, mass detentions, and the exodus of more than 100,000 persons.
  • The turmoil drove a steep downturn in the economy. According to the Nicaraguan Central Bank (BCN), Nicaragua’s economy contracted 4.0 percent in 2018 and 3.9 percent in 2019, while inflation increased to 3.9 percent and 6.1 percent respectively. Other sources estimate a 4.0 percent decline in 2020. According to the World Bank, investment and consumption fell sharply, prompting significant unemployment, particularly in construction, commerce, and tourism. A 2019 household survey by Fundación Internacional para el Desafío Económico Global (FIDEG), a Nicaraguan think tank, indicated that poverty rates had increased at the national level, both in terms of general poverty and extreme poverty.
  • Efforts by national and international groups to advance dialogue to reduce political tensions have not been successful. Framework accords in March 2019 on the release of political prisoners and the restoration of civil rights were only partially fruitful. Targeted international sanctions against government individuals and entities have been intermittent and have not changed government behavior. Some measures have led to retribution, moreover, such as the abrupt closure of the UN and OAS human rights missions in the country.

Nicaragua’s policies regarding COVID‑19 have been erratic and haphazard, and recovery from last November’s hurricanes has been slow. Leaders initially argued that the country’s economic challenges made quarantine largely untenable, and Nicaragua attempted Sweden’s policy of “herd immunity” despite the dramatically different national and institutional capacities of the two countries. In addition, Hurricanes Eta and Iota left tens of thousands of people homeless and without drinking water. According to the Nicaraguan Finance Minister, 3 million people in 56 municipalities were affected, with estimated economic damages of $738 million.

  • Nicaragua has experienced a surge in unemployment, but – in contrast to other countries – has not adopted policies favoring a return to pre-crises levels. Some economists estimate that basic necessities and services now cost more than double the average household income. According to a Gallup poll taken in January, six out of every 10 Nicaraguans would migrate to other countries if they had the opportunity.

These crises do not show credible signs of abating. They significantly increase the likelihood of a challenging outlook, particularly for the country’s most vulnerable population groups. Systematic and comprehensive action has been lacking in and outside the country, however. The international community, including donors, multilateral banks, development agencies, and NGOs, has not been in a position to respond to the crises in a coordinated fashion. Their natural desire to seek a prominent role for civil society in any comprehensive strategy – with accountability and transparency – is frustrated by government resistance.

  • Nicaragua’s volatile political situation could eventually evolve into a humanitarian crisis with repercussions for the rest of the region. Tensions will increase as national elections scheduled for November approach, as all indications are that the government will further restrict civil and political rights. The country’s problems, moreover, could easily spill over its borders. Migration has traditionally been an escape valve. A new wave of refugees could be expected in Costa Rica, but that country’s own economic challenges may well instead drive many to head north.
  • International assistance alone won’t be enough. Conditions of strict accountability, transparency, civil society engagement, and close consultation with affected populations are necessary for it to have significant impact. Together, donors, multilateral banks, the UN, and NGOs have a degree of leverage to ensure the correct use of resources, such as by conditioning it on full respect for human rights. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet last month called on the government to “urgently adopt effective electoral reforms and establish a genuine and inclusive dialogue with all sectors of society,” but slowing or stopping the country’s downward spiral will require much more from all sides.

March 23, 2021

* William Vigil is co-director of the South-North Nexus. He is a former Nicaraguan diplomat who served in New York (at the United Nations) and in Washington, D.C. This article is based on a South-North Nexus report entitled Nicaragua’s Converging Crises.

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Mexico: AMLO’s Backwards Move on Fossil Fuels

By Daniela Stevens*

Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) Building/ ThinkGeoEnergy/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposal early last month to overhaul the country’s electricity market – which appears likely to become law – will betray the country’s climate change commitments, curtail private investment, and hurt consumers. Rooted in 1960s left-wing nationalism, AMLO’s vision is for a state-led, fossil fuel-powered electricity system. It is blind to what many experts consider the urgency for the government to coordinate with the private sector, which he prefers to portray as an adversary, on strategies to curb carbon emissions.

  • The lower Chamber approved the proposal “without changing a comma,” as the President asked. The Senate passed it last night, but the law will face obstacles in court. The Supreme Court in February declared that some guidelines that the Secretariat of Energy presented last May were unconstitutional because they hindered free competition and unduly benefitted the state electricity utility, La Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE).
  • AMLO’s plan reverses the principle of “economic dispatch” – a provision of the 2014 Electricity Industry Law (LIE) that requires the most efficient power plants (those with the lowest production cost) to be the first to upload electricity to the grid. Given the inefficiency of the CFE’s aging hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants, the law currently favors renewables like wind and solar, which are generally inexpensive and in the hands of private investors. AMLO wants to give preference to CFE ahead of private generators.
  • Since hydroelectric plants cannot satisfy electricity demand, the main beneficiaries will be the power plants that generate electricity from fossil fuels. The administration has repeatedly argued, without evidence, that renewables should be downsized because they are unreliable and give undue advantage to private capital. In the President’s view, the initiative would end “price simulation” in a market that favors private participants.

The international community, private sector, and civil society organizations immediately rejected the proposal.

  • The country’s largest business organization, El Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE), called it an “indirect expropriation” of private power plants. Further, the private sector warned that the proposal would lead to national and international lawsuits for state compensation.
  • Diplomats representing the European Union, Canada, and the United States in Mexico said the move will damage the investment climate. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce pointed out that the “deeply worrisome” initiative violates the free trade spirit of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), undermining the confidence of foreign investors.
  • Activists and civil society organizations across Mexico said the policy reverses progress toward decarbonization and called it an infringement of international environmental commitments, such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda.

López Obrador’s response to the criticism has been to claim his proposal restores Mexico’s energy sovereignty and self-determination, but it ignores the reality of the country’s dependence on U.S. natural gas – brought home when last month’s snowstorm in Texas paralyzed production and eventually caused blackouts in 26 of Mexico’s 32 states. Indeed, he flipped the narrative in claiming Mexico’s handling of the crisis was a “success of CFE’s workers,” compared to the “failure” of the liberalized electricity sector in Texas.

  • Relying predominantly on the fossil fuel intensive CFE only deepens Mexico’s vulnerability. Natural gas – 80 percent of which comes from the United States – is used to cover around 60 percent of Mexican energy needs. The proposal also fails to address some deeper issues, such as the lack of storage capacity, diversity in power generation sources, and investment in the electric grid to incorporate renewables.

The move is typical of AMLO’s fixation with grandiose national projects, such as El Tren Maya and the Dos Bocas refinery, both of which will harm the ecosystem of the Tehuantepec Isthmus, and to waste money in obsolete and polluting technology that shows disregard for climate change in favor of short-sighted energy nationalism. The reform not only defies climate issues; it challenges the energy sector’s autonomy, chills the investment environment, and marks a return to monopolistic and authoritarian practices.

March 3, 2021

* Daniela Stevens is an Assistant Professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City.

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South American Megacities, Water Scarcity and the Climate Crisis

By Robert Albro*

Drinking water distribution/ MunicipioPinas/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Access to fresh water has become a regular flashpoint throughout Latin America, particularly in its largest cities, and threatens to trigger tensions and even war. Sixteen of the region’s 20 largest cities are experiencing water-related “stress,” and three of its largest – Sao Paulo, Lima, and Mexico City – are in danger of running out of water completely in the near future, according to reliable sources.

  • In 1995 World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin presciently warned that future wars would be fought over water. The 2000 Water War in Cochabamba, Bolivia, kicked off an era of social mobilization around chronic water shortages and control over access to fresh water. Protests against the privatization of water have become common – in Colombia in 2013, Ecuador in 2014, Brazil in 2015, Chile in 2016 and 2019, Peru in 2019, and Mexico in 2020, among others.

Water challenges faced by some of South America’s megacities show that the urban water crisis is a wicked problem with no straightforward solution.

Lima: Peru’s capital is the second largest “desert city” in the world, after Cairo, receiving an average of 0.3 inches of rain annually. The coastal area in which it sits has 62.5 percent of the population but only 1.8 percent of its fresh water. It depends largely on three rivers fed by rapidly shrinking Andean tropical glaciers, reduced by 40 percent since the 1970s. As the glaciers vanish, water stress is expected to become “critical” for the more than 10 million inhabitants of Peru’s capital by 2025. Peripheral barrios are already significantly affected: An estimated 1.5 million of Lima’s residents already lack access to potable water. Shrinking glaciers are expected to dramatically worsen water inequality in many Andean cities, including Quito in Ecuador; Arequipa, Huaraz and Huancayo in Peru; and La Paz-El Alto, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosí and Sucre in Bolivia.

Sao Paulo: In 2014, the worst draught in 250 years left Latin America’s second largest city less than two weeks away from running out of water, with reserves at 3 percent of capacity. Emergency rationing led to protests, and in 2018 it almost happened again. Brazil has more fresh water than any country on earth, but half is in the Amazon, where only 4 percent of its population lives, and deforestation in the Amazon – a giant water pump – reduces rainfall in Sao Paulo. The city’s watershed is also being deforested, ecologically degraded, and contaminated with large amounts of industrial wastewater. Its freshwater infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle these multiple stressors. Other Brazilian cities, including Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, face similar problems.

Santiago de Chile: While Santiago currently has adequate water and infrastructure for storage, treatment and distribution, underground aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished, and climate change has introduced a destructive cycle of floods and droughts. The city’s water availability is expected to decline as much as 40 percent this century, and the urban population continues to grow. Oversight bodies have little influence over how water is delivered, compounded by extreme administrative fragmentation and poorly managed participatory reform efforts. High prices and poor service by the city’s privatized water company were a rallying cry of protesters in 2019. Improved water governance, along the lines of what Medellín, Colombia, has achieved, is possible and can dramatically improve water access and quality. But Santiago has much work to do.

In theory Latin America should not be experiencing a water crisis because it has 30 percent of the world’s fresh water but only 8 percent of its population. But it is highly unevenly distributed and concentrated in places where few people live. Glacial melt, deforestation, and inadequate water governance are all factors in why urban water scarcity has become a wicked problem.

  • Adding to the misery, as agricultural economies throughout much of the region collapse as a result of changing climatic conditions, urban in-migration is a continuing challenge. Combine this with poor and neglected infrastructure, unregulated industrial pollution, high levels of freshwater contamination, increasing social contestation around water access and management– and the problem looks daunting. Where Latin America’s urban water crisis is concerned, climate change is neither straightforward nor a stand-alone proposition, but rather part of a complex set of urgent crises that will require especially creative and imaginative problem-solving in the years to come.

February 9, 2021

* Robert Albro is an anthropologist and Research Associate Professor at CLALS.

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Colombia: Poisoning the Future with Glyphosate?

By Luis Gilberto Murillo, Pablo Palacios Rodríguez, and Michael Julián Córdoba*

Fumigation in Colombia

Fumigation planes spray the Colombian countryside./ KyleEJohnson/ Flickr/ Creative Commons

Colombia is the second most biodiverse country and has the greatest number of unique species in the world, but the government’s approval of the widespread use of glyphosate – by agroindustry as well as in drug-eradication operations – continues to threaten this important resource for humanity. The country undoubtedly has greater awareness than many others of the link between protecting and taking advantage of its environmental richness. Economic and political interests, however, are shoving those values aside. The COVID‑19 pandemic has accelerated deforestation in some parts of the country as the nation prioritizes public health and economic recovery.

  • The use of herbicides such as glyphosate (known commercially as Roundup) in agriculture and, especially in the past, aerial eradication of illicit drug crops poses the greatest threat. The Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) estimates that glyphosate in 2016 represented 17 percent of the 10 million liters (equal to 359 medium-size swimming pools) of herbicides used in the country. Industrial farms use it in fields that produce a vast array of foods, including sugar, rice, citrus, bananas, and fresh vegetables.
  • The ICA and the National Police say that 10 percent of the glyphosate that year was sprayed from airplanes to destroy illicit crops. (In the previous 20 years, some 2 million hectares had been sprayed.) This practice has continued despite growing evidence that aerial fumigation is inefficient and ineffective – most often merely forcing growers to move production elsewhere, expanding deforestation. UN experts estimate that 60 percent of coca producers replant eradicated fields. Spraying glyphosate is also expensive, costing about US$70,000 per hectare.

The administration of Colombian President Iván Duque has been reversing what progress his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, and the courts had made in ending the use of glyphosate.

  • Santos began a process that, if continued, would have led to a total prohibition of the use of glyphosate. The policies were based on the growing body of evidence that the substance could cause cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 designated it as “possibly carcinogenic for humans.” Previously, in 2005, Colombia’s National Health Institute had already demonstrated its genotoxicity (causing mutations) and cytotoxicity (harming cells). The government also argued that more than half of the U.S. states had prohibited the use of glyphosate. The Constitutional Court backed Santos’s push in part to protect the rights of Afro-Colombians and the Indigenous of Chocó, who studies show have been seriously affected.
  • Since taking office two years ago, President Duque’s administration has changed policy back, including on spraying glyphosate to reduce illicit drug production. It has dismissed the validity of existing studies and asserts that the scientific evidence about the herbicide’s effect on the environment and animal and human health is weak. The Colombian government is intensively pushing to resume fumigation of coca fields. The government is also sympathetic to agro-industry’s argument that any substitute herbicide could be worse than glyphosate.

The science is clear even if the politics is not: Glyphosate, especially when aerially sprayed, has serious implications for ecosystems and is already showing toxic effects on many species of plants, many of which are endemic (unique) to Colombia, as well as insects necessary for ecological balance. Trustworthy studies indicate that up to 40 percent of the country’s biodiversity is threatened. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that, in the United States alone, glyphosate threatens 74 species with extinction – a small fraction of what Colombia stands to lose. Agro-industry’s argument that other herbicides could be worse dodges the fundamental issue that continued reliance on glyphosate is dangerous.

  • The pandemic has been a convenient excuse for the government to avoid thoughtful debate and pull back on enforcement of the few existing regulations in place governing the use of herbicides. But now is actually a good time to take up the issue, as environmental protection and the fight against climate change are central to the post-COVID period.

August 24, 2020

* Luis Gilberto Murillo is a former Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development and CLALS Fellow. Pablo Palacios Rodríguez is a professor of biology at the Universidad de los Andes. Michael Julián Córdoba is coordinator for public policy at Fundación Tierra de Reconciliación.

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by clalsstaff on August 24, 2020  •  Permalink
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Lessons Learned from Last Century’s Climate Change Migration

By Elizabeth Keyes*

Then and Now

Left: Migrant Workers in California, 1935/ Dorothea Lange/ U.S. Library of Congress/ Wikimedia Commons (modified)// Right: Central American migrants find quarter in southern Mexico/ Peter Haden/ Wikimedia Commons (modified)

Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States are not the first victims of government policies that discourage migration, send law enforcement to turn them away at a border, ban them from receiving public benefits, and pass laws seeking their immediate repatriation: the Dust Bowl migrants, almost 100 years ago, faced the same fate. Their story is more complex than that of John Steinbeck’s Joad family turning to labor in California’s “factories in the field.”

  • Drought came to Oklahoma and other Dust Bowl states after decades of agricultural practices that prioritized heavy production at the expense of land management and conservation. Corporate farmers favored practices maximizing short-term yield over long-term sustainability. The New Deal bought up farmland, displacing tenant farmers. Relief at the peak of the Dust Bowl in 1934 was mismanaged, and it did not help people stay.
  • Affected residents headed to California, which during a previous economic boom had sought out “migrant” labor from elsewhere in the United States. Many had a relative or friend already in California who could provide a migration pathway, just as happens with migration in 2020. Those with friends or family in the cities fared relatively well, but those who ended up in the labor camps of California’s valleys fared extremely poorly.

As the state’s boom ended in the Great Depression, California made efforts to discourage the migrants, erecting billboards along Route 66 warning would-be migrants that California was no longer an ideal destination. The state criminalized the act of helping indigents migrate, and the Los Angeles Police Department set up “bum blockades” to refuse them entry.

  • California’s responses looked a lot like current efforts to stop migrants seeking to enter along the U.S. border with Mexico: criminalization and walls. Internally displaced persons in the 1930s faced the same kinds of xenophobia that the migrants from outside the United States do today, defining “Okies” as a problematic “other” as if from a foreign country. Although they were, indeed, “fellow Americans” and driven from the land by environmental disaster, it took almost a decade for the U.S. Supreme Court – in Edwards v. California – to clarify that states could not bar migration from other states, and to affirm an ethic of sharing hardships across state lines.
  • The Dust Bowl migrants entered a labor market with strong racial and class inequities. As the United States deported roughly a million Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers between 1929 and 1936 (with an estimated 60 percent of those being U.S. citizens wrongfully deported), the new migrants took over those jobs.

State and international borders differ legally, of course, in critical ways, but the experience of Dust Bowl migrants nonetheless sheds light on the possibilities for Central American and Mexican migrants today. Climate change is again increasing the drivers of environmental displacement, both internal and international, both slow-onset and acute. Just as a focus on environmental justice and sustainable agriculture would have reduced the need for migration out of the Plains in the 1930s, work done now to mitigate and adapt to climate change would help Central American and Mexican farmers stay in place. And in the communities receiving migrants, we see that California adapted and accommodated them once the Supreme Court refused to endorse California’s deterrent strategies. The Court recognized in the strongest terms that California was enduring great upheaval but determined that it could not use its state border to limit that upheaval.

The same Court also routinely upheld the federal government’s right to use the national border to inoculate the country “from difficulties common to all.” International immigration is legally, if not dynamically, morally or philosophically, different from internal migration.

  • Nonetheless, the Edwards decision provides a wonderful exercise in “what if” thinking. Because of the decision, those suffering in Oklahoma and Kansas had a place to go and could build new lives in California, changing the state but not ending it. Indeed, the state has the largest economy of all 50 states and by one measure is the “14th happiest” in the nation. California is an example of state resilience to migration, even dramatic levels of migration.
  • Perhaps the pain of the Dust Bowl – the forces that sent people migrating and the realities they faced in their new homes – offer us important lessons for international migrations caused by climate. There is no international-style Edwards approach, and refugee law offers no good answers. But the full, complicated Dust Bowl history encourages us to move beyond fear and xenophobia to face the challenges forthrightly, knowing that we do have a remarkable capacity for adaptation.

April 15, 2020

* Elizabeth Keyes teaches law and directs the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

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by clalsstaff on April 15, 2020  •  Permalink
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