Martin Luther King’s Message Shook the Powerful: Vital People can Hear it Today

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Opinion

Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. King are greeted by Ralph Bunche on a visit to the United Nations in 1964. Credit: UN Photo

 
Ralph Bunche received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s work as a United Nations mediator in the Palestine conflict. He called himself ‘an incurable optimist’. Bunche was the first African American and person of color to be so honored in the history of the prize.

ROME, Jan 9 2024 (IPS) – All through this week, leading up to January 15th, the world will commemorate Martin Luther King. In a world as wounded as ours is today, the lessons of his life’s work offer a vital opportunity for healing.

But the opportunity to hear his message continues to be obstructed: too many of the soundbites of TV pundits and the tweets of politicians are, once again, not distilling the insights of Dr King, but are serving instead to obscure a library of wisdom behind wall-to-wall repetition of the same few lines, extracted from their context, of one speech.

This is not a mistake, it is a tactic, and we owe it not only to the legacy of Dr King but to the future of our world to ensure that his authentic message is shared.

The true message of Martin Luther King is not a saccharine call for quietude or acceptance, but an insistence on being, as he put it, “maladjusted to injustice.” It represents not an idle optimism that things will get better but a determined commitment to collective action as the only route to progress.

When Dr King said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, he didn’t mean this process is automatic; as he noted, “social progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of people.”

And he was clear that advancement of progress requires the coming together of mass movements, “organizing our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands.”

Children from a dozen countries met with the President of the General Assembly and toured the United Nations on a federal holiday in the United States honouring the late civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King Jr. 17 January 2023. Credit: Paulina Kubiak, United Nations

Justice, Dr King taught, is never given, it is only ever won. This always involves having the courage to confront power. Indeed, he noted, the greatest stumbling block to progress is not the implacable opponent but those who claim to support change but are “more devoted to order than justice.” As he put it, “frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly; this ‘wait!’ has almost always meant ‘never.’”

When the civil rights movement’s 1962 Operation Breadbasket challenged companies to increase the share of profits going to black workers and communities, it was only after the movement showed that they could successfully organize a boycott that those companies, in Dr King’s words, “the next day were talking nice, were very humble, and [later] we signed the agreement.” As he noted when challenged by “moderates” who asked why he needed to organize, “we have not made a single gain without determined pressure…freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Advancing progress, he emphasized, involves challenging public opinion too. Organizers cannot be mere “thermometers” who “record popular opinion” but need to be “thermostats” who work to “transform the mores of society”. In 1966, for example, a Gallup Opinion poll showed that Dr King was viewed unfavourably by 63 per cent of Americans, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to only four per cent.

Often, people read the current consensus view back into history and assume that Dr King was always a mainstream figure, and imagine, falsely, that change comes from people and movements who don’t ever offend anyone.

Dr King’s vision of justice was a full one. It called not only for the scrapping of segregation, but for taking on “the triple prong sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.” He challenged the “economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few” and noted that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring.”

He spoke out against war not only for having “left youth maimed and mutilated” but for having also “impaired the United Nations, exacerbated the hatreds between continents, frustrated development, contributed to the forces of reaction, and strengthened the military-industrial complex.”

He noted how “speaking out against war has not gone without criticisms, there are those who tell me that I should stick with civil rights, and stay in my place.” But he insisted that he would “keep these issues mixed because they are mixed. We must see that justice is indivisible, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

When I went to Dr King’s memorial in Atlanta I did so to pay my respects at his tomb. But arriving at the King Center I found a vibrant hub of practical learning, at which activists and organizers working for justice were revisiting Dr King’s work and writings not as history that is past but as a set of tools to help understand, and act, in the present.

Together, we reflected not only on his profoundly radical philosophy, but also on his strategies and tactics for advancing transformational change. Conversations with Dr King’s inspirational daughter, Bernice, were focused not on her father’s work alone; instead, she asked us what changes we were working for, and how we were working to advance them.

This year, on 10th January, the King Center is hosting a Global Summit, a series of practical conversations accessible to everyone, for free, online. I’m honoured to be panelist. It is open for sign ups here.

“Those who love peace,” noted Dr King, “must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” And he even guided us how.

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality, Communications Director of UNAIDS, and a panelist at the King Center Global Summit on 10th January.

IPS UN Bureau

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Fear as Russian Anti-LGBT Law Comes into Effect

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Human Rights

The Russian Supreme Court ruling making the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization will come into effect on January 9, 2024. Graphic: IPS

The Russian Supreme Court ruling making the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization will come into effect on January 9, 2024. Graphic: IPS

BRATISLAVA, Jan 3 2024 (IPS) – “This is what you get after ten years of state propaganda and brainwashing,” says Anatolii*.

The Moscow-based LGBT rights activist’s ire is directed at a recent ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court declaring the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization.

Details of the ruling, made on November 30 after a closed hearing, have yet to be made public—it will not be enforced until January 9, 2024, and until then, no one is likely to be any the wiser about its practical implementation, says Anatolii.

But its vagueness—critics point out that no “international LGBT movement” exists as an organization—has already fueled fears that it could lead to the arbitrary prosecution of anyone involved in any activities supporting the LGBT community.

And the potential punishments for such support are draconian, with participating in or financing an extremist organization carrying a maximum 12-year prison sentence under Russian law.

In the weeks since the ruling was announced, fear has spread among LGBT people.

“Russian queers are really scared,” Anatolii tells IPS.

But while fearful, many see it as the latest, if potentially the most drastic, act in a decade-long campaign by the Kremlin to marginalise and vilify the LGBT community in the country through legislation and political rhetoric.

The first legislative attack on the community came in 2013, not long after Vladimir Putin had returned to power as President, when a law came into effect banning “the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to anyone under the age of 18.

This was followed by increasingly homophobic political discourse, and Kremlin campaigns—prominently backed by the country’s powerful Orthodox Church—promoting ‘traditional family values’ in society and casting LGBT activism as a product of the degenerate West and a threat to Russian identity.

Then in 2022, the ban on “LGBT propaganda” was extended to cover all public information or activities supporting LGBT rights or displaying non-heterosexual orientation and implicitly linked the LGBT community with paedophilia—the law refers to the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations and/or preferences, paedophilia, and sex change.”

A ban on same sex marriage has also been written into the constitution; authorities have labelled a number of LGBT organizations as “foreign agents,” stigmatizing them and forcing them to adhere to a set of funding and bureaucratic requirements that can be liquidating, and earlier this year a law was passed banning transgender people officially or medically changing their gender.

With each new piece of pernicious legislation, and an accompanying rise in intensity and normalization of homophobic hate speech from politicians, the LGBT community has suffered, its members say.

“The Supreme Court ruling is just a continuation of Russia’s homophobic policies. The amount of physical violence against LGBT people has been growing in Russia for 10 years. After each such law, it intensifies even more noticeably,” Yaroslav Rasputin, editor at the Russian-language LGBT website www.parniplus.com, told IPS.

“We expect homophobes will feel justified in attacking LGBT people [after the ruling], both through cyberbullying and physical assaults,” he added.

Members of the LGBT community and rights campaigners who spoke to IPS said there was a desperate fear among many LGBT people now. While the threat of physical violence was often felt as being very real, there was also a crippling concern over the uncertainty many would now face in their daily activities.

Many do not know what will constitute “support” for the LGBT community. Some are trawling through years of social media records, deleting any possible positive references to LGBT or reposted messages on the topic for fear of the information being used against them by authorities.

And there are worries that simply being openly gay could somehow be interpreted as extremism.

Lawyers who have advised LGBT people and groups in the past say that it will be much easier for security forces to initiate and prosecute cases of extremism than propaganda, as the latter is more difficult to prove.

“Although the government says these ‘repressions’ concern only political activists, in reality this is not the case. We know this from previous homophobic laws. Sometimes people spontaneously get caught for who they are. No one knows when it will be safe to come out and when not,” said Rasputin.

Anatolii said the organisation he works for has been inundated with calls from people “in panic and despair” over the ruling, many of whom are looking for help to leave the country.

LGBT groups outside Russia have also reported a huge uptick in calls from people trying to find safe passage to other countries.

“We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people contacting us, perhaps three or four times more. LGBT people in Russia are really worried about the ruling; they don’t know what might be defined as extremist,” Aleksandr Kochekovskii from the Berlin-based organisation Quarteera e. V, which helps LGBT refugees and migrants to arrive and find their way around Germany, told IPS.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people will leave Russia because of this ruling because they feel in danger. There is a ubiquitous psychological pressure on LGBT people in Russia now,” he added.

Even some openly gay figures in Russia have publicly acknowledged that LGBT people may be forced to flee the country.

“This is real repression. There is panic in Russia’s LGBT community. People are emigrating urgently. The actual word we’re using is evacuation. We’re having to evacuate from our own country. It’s terrible,” Sergei Troshin, a gay municipal deputy in St Petersburg, told the BBC.

But others warn the Kremlin may be looking to use the ruling to crack down on the community as a whole as much as individuals.

“At this point, the state’s main goal is to erase the LGBT community from society and [the country’s] history,” Mikhail*, a Russian LGBT activist who recently left the country and now works for a pan-European NGO campaigning for minority health rights, told IPS. “It is hard to imagine how many organisations defending the rights of LGBT people will be able to exist in Russia any more since such support is [considered to be] advocating terrorism,” he added.

Some such organisations have already decided to close in the wake of the ruling. The Russian LGBT Sports Federation announced it had stopped its activities, and one of the most prominent LGBT groups in the country, Delo, which provided legal assistance to people in the community, also closed following the court decision.

But other mainstays of the LGBT community are also shutting their doors. The owners of one of the oldest gay clubs in Russia, “Central Station” in St Petersburg, said they had been forced to close the club after the site’s owners refused to rent to them. Its closure came as other gay clubs and bars in Moscow were raided by police just 24 hours after the Supreme Court ruling. People’s names taken, and ID documents copied.

Although police said the raids were part of anti-drug operations, LGBT activists said they could see the true purpose behind them.

“The state has made it very clear that it is ready to use the apparatus of force against LGBT people in Russia,” said Mikhail.

But the ruling is also expected to have effects for LGBT people beyond their interactions with other individuals or groups within the community.

Accessing specific healthcare services, for instance, seems likely to become more difficult.  Some practitioners, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, have until now openly indicated their services as LGBT-friendly. But according to some Russian media reports, it is thought many will no longer be able or willing to do so, and that others may simply stop providing their services to LGBT people altogether out of fear of repercussions.

Experts warn that without qualified help, the risks of suicide, PTSD, and the development of other mental disorders will rise, especially among children, something that was seen after the first law banning the promotion of LGBT to minors was passed in 2013.

International rights groups have condemned the court ruling and urged other countries to provide a safe haven for those forced to flee Russia and to support Russian LGBT activists working both inside and outside the country.

Whatever the effects of the law eventually are once it is fully implemented, it looks unlikely there will be any improvement for the LGBT community in the near future.

Activists predict anti-LGBT political rhetoric will probably only intensify as President Putin looks to cement support among voters ahead of elections in March, and as the Kremlin tries to draw the public’s attention away from the country’s problems, not least those connected to the war raging in Ukraine.

“It’s easier to create an artificial enemy than to struggle with the real problems the war has caused. The LGBT+ community in Russia is a kind of collective scapegoat, taking a punch and feeling the people’s wrath,” said Anatolii.

Others say that as the war drags on, repression of the LGBT community may start being repeated among other minority groups.

“Everything the Kremlin does in Russia is an attempt to divert people’s attention from the war. ‘Othering’ is typical for all dictatorial regimes. I am quite sure that soon [the Kremlin] will start targeting other groups like migrants and foreigners,” Nikolay Lunchenkov, LGBT Health Coordinator for the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender, and Sexual Diversity NGO, which works with the LGBT community in Russia, told IPS.

Note: *Names have been changed for safety reasons.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Amidst a Horrendous 2023, Civil Society is Fighting Back Society

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Opinion

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 22 2023 (IPS) – The year 2023 has brought so much tragedy, with incomprehensible loss of lives, whether from wars or devastating ‘natural’ disasters, while our planet has seen yet more records broken as our climate catastrophe worsens.

And so as the clock ticks towards the (mostly western) New Year, readers are traditionally subjected by media outlets like ours to the ‘yearender’ – usually a roundup of main events over the previous 12 months, one horror often overshadowed by the next.

Farhana Haque Rahman

So forgive us if for 2023 IPS takes a somewhat different approach, highlighting how humanity can do better, and how the big depressing picture should not obscure the myriad small but positive steps being taken out there.

COP28, the global climate conference held this month in Dubai, could neatly fit the ‘big depressing’ category. Hosted by a petrostate with nearly 100,000 people registered to attend, many of them lobbyists for fossil fuels and other polluters, it would be natural to address its outcomes with scepticism.

However, while Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations, described COP28 as “imperfect”, she said it also marked “an important and unprecedented step forward in our ‘course correction’ for a just transition towards resilient and greener economies.”

UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged shortcomings in the compromise resolutions on fossil fuels and the level of funding for the Loss and Damages Fund. But the outcome, he said, was also the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era.

Imperfect as it was and still based on old structures, COP28 hinted at the possible: a planetary approach to governance where common interests spanning climate, biodiversity and the whole health of Earth outweigh and supersede the current dominant global system of rule by nation states.

As we have tragically witnessed in 2023, the existing system – as vividly reflected in the repetitive stalemate among the five veto-bearing members of the UN Security Council – is failing to find resolution to the major conflicts of this year, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza. Not to mention older and half-forgotten conflicts in places like Myanmar (18.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid) and in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (seven million displaced).

The unrestrained destruction of Gaza and the disproportionate killings of over 17,000, (now the death toll is “at least 20,000 people” according to Palestinian officials) mostly civilians– in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas and 120 hostages in captivity– have left the Palestinians in a state of deep isolation and weighed down by a feeling of being deserted by the world at large.

The United Nations and the international community have remained helpless– with UN resolutions having no impact– while American pleas for restrained aerial bombings continue to be ignored by the Israelis in an act of defiance, wrote IPS senior journalist Thalif Deen.

The hegemony of the nation-state system is surely not going to disappear soon but – without wanting to sound too idealistic — its foundations are being chipped away by civil society where interdependence prevails over the divide and rule of the existing order. And so for a few examples encountered in our reporting:

CIVICUS Lens, standing for social justice and rooted in the global south, offers analysis of major events from a civil society perspective, such as its report on the security crisis gripping Haiti casting doubt over the viability of an international plan to dispatch a Kenya-led police contingent.

Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, lobbied at COP28 for a $150 million appeal to support school-aged children facing climate shocks, such as the devastating drought in Somalia and Ethiopia, and floods in Pakistan where many of the 26,000 schools hit in 2022 remain closed.

Leprosy, an ancient but curable disease, had been pegged back in terms of new case numbers but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 made it harder for patients to get treatment and for new cases to be reported. Groups such as the Sasakawa Health Foundation are redoubling efforts to promote early detection and treatment.

With 80 percent of the world’s poorest living closer to the epicenters of climate-induced disasters, civil society is hammering at the doors of global institutions to address the challenges of adaptation and mitigation.

Lobbying on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai was activist Joshua Amponsem, co-director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund who questioned why weather-resilient housing was not yet a reality in Mozambique’s coastal regions despite the increasing ferocity of tropical cyclones.

“My key message is really simple. The clock is ticking for food security in Africa,” Dr Simeon Ehui told IPS as the newly appointed Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture which works with partners across sub-Saharan Africa to tackle hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation.

Dr Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which has received record-breaking pledges in support of its largest ever replenishment, warns that under current trends 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030.

“Hunger remains a political issue, mostly caused by poverty, inequality, conflict, corruption and overall lack of access to food and resources. In a world of plenty, which produces enough food to feed everyone, how can there be hundreds of millions going hungry?” he asked.

Empowering communities in a bid to protect and rejuvenate the ecosystems of Pacific communities is the aim of the Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity conservation effort launched at COP28 by Palau’s President Surangel Whipps who noted that the world was not on track to meet any of the 17 sustainable development goals or climate goals by 2030.

A scientist with a life-long career studying coral reefs, David Obura was appointed this year as the new chair of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“We really have reached planetary limits and I think interest in oceans is rising because we have very dramatically reached the limits of land,” says Dr Obura, “What the world needs to understand is how strongly nature and natural systems, even when highly altered such as agricultural systems, support people and economies very tangibly. It’s the same with the ocean.”

An ocean-first approach to the fight against climate change is also the pillar of a Dalhousie University research program, Transforming Climate Action, launched last May and funded by the Canadian government. Traditional knowledges of Indigenous People will be a focus.

As Max Roser, an economist making academic research accessible to all, reminds us: for more people to devote their energy to making progress tackling large global problems, we should ensure that more people know that it is possible.

Focusing on the efforts of civil society and projecting hope amidst all the heartbreak of 2023 might come across as futile and wasted, but in its coverage IPS will continue to highlight efforts and successes, big and small, that deserve to be celebrated.

Farhana Haque Rahman is the Executive Director of IPS Inter Press Service Noram and Senior Vice President of IPS; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015 to 2019. A journalist and communications expert who lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD.

IPS UN Bureau

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‘Imperfect COP28’ Gives Direction For Managed, Equitable Move From Fossil Fuels

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COP28

Celebrating the end COP28 which ended with an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. Credit: UNFCCC

Celebrating the end of COP28, which ended with an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. Credit: UNFCCC

DUBAI, Dec 14 2023 (IPS) – While the outcomes of COP28 are being hotly debated in both the scientific and social justice arenas, the climate conference has taken an unprecedented step forward toward a just transition, says Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at the Open Society Foundations.

Making some preliminary remarks a day after the climate conference ended, she said: “COP28 ends like it started: imperfect, yet an important and unprecedented step forward in our “course correction” for a just transition towards resilient and greener economies.”

The UN decision acknowledged the need for the decline of coal, oil, and gas for the first time in an agreement that talks about transitioning out of fossil fuels. It will also be known for operationalizing the Loss and Damages Fund, even if the funding falls far below the requirements for climate-stressed countries and communities.

UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell acknowledged these contractions in his final speech.

“While we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end,” Stiell said.

He also noted that climate finance, which he said was a great enabler of climate action, fell short of the trillions needed to support developing countries with clean energy transitions and adaptation efforts.

He urged ordinary people everywhere to not relent in their demands for a climate-just world.

“In the crucial years ahead, your voices and determination will be more important than ever. I urge you never to relent. We are still in this race. We will be with you every single step of the way.”

Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations. Credit: TJ Kirkpatrick, Open Society Foundations

Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations. Credit: TJ Kirkpatrick, Open Society Foundations

Dagnet believes that COP28 is the start of a new era in climate justice.

“This is not an end; rather, just the beginning of an implementation journey that we know is hard but can be so positively transformative, and just if we manage to mobilize, in an equitable manner, all hands-on deck. A climate-just journey and outcome require vigilance, creativity, and accountability; stronger solidarity and engagement at all levels; promoting human rights; and shared prosperity for all,” she says.

This COP, Danget says, laid bare the issues with the Paris Agreement, especially with the just transition.

“More specifically, this COP exposed all the contradictions and challenges faced when implementing the promises of the Paris Agreement, especially a managed, equitable transition away from fossil fuels and the sustained mobilization, alignment, and access to financial flows domestically and internationally to decarbonize and build resilience,” Dagnet says. ”

While some signals got clearer with more substantive commitments, challenges remain, however, in how the just and equitable transition is sequenced.

“Inclusive processes matter to foster shared prosperity and benefits throughout the journey, together with adequate safeguards to minimize unintended adverse impacts of climate-related measures and technologies and to protect frontline and marginalized communities.

“Similarly, the just operationalization and continued capitalization of the Loss and Damage Fund will require vigilance, effective guidance, and mechanisms to make sure commensurate funding is actually mobilized and reaches the communities that need it the most in a timely manner. Adequate mobilization of finance for adaptation by the donor community is also essential to tackle losses and damages with dignity. We are happy that a dozen of them committed to join OSF efforts in this regard.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Rich Nations, IMF Deepen World Stagnation

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Opinion

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 13 2023 (IPS) – With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst.

Extreme poverty continues to be high and is now worse than before the pandemic in low-income countries (LICs) and among those affected by fragility, violence and conflict. The promise of eradicating poverty worldwide by 2030 has become unachievable.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings in Marrakech in October were only the second-ever in Africa. But the rich nations-dominated BWIs failed yet again to rise to the challenges of our times, setting Africa and the global South even further back.

Instead of fostering cooperation to address the causes and effects of the contemporary catastrophe, neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank governors could agree on joint communiques due to the greater politicisation of multilateral fora.

Indebtedness immobilises governments
Indebtedness and restrictive creditor rules prevent governments from spending more counter-cyclically to overcome the many contractionary tendencies of recent times, besides preventing them from addressing looming social and environmental crises.

The G20’s largest twenty economies have urged strengthening “multilateral coordination by official bilateral and private creditors … to address the deteriorating debt situation and facilitate coordinated debt treatment for debt-distressed countries”.

But its Common Framework to restructure debt has been roundly criticised by civil society, think tanks and even the World Bank on many grounds, including the paltry concessional credit relief offered to a few of the very poorest countries.

In contrast, the G24 caucus of developing countries at the BWIs has emphasised the need for “durable debt resolution measures while collaborating on resolving the structural issues leading to such vulnerabilities.”

But all those advocating purported solutions are not even trying to ensure fiscal space and public spending capacity for counter-cyclical efforts, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and national development objectives.

Surcharges
The IMF currently imposes additional charges on countries that do not quickly clear their debts to the Fund. Besides the usual fees and interest, borrowing countries paid over $4 billion in such surcharges in 2020-22, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Surcharges will cost debt-distressed countries about $7.9 billion over six years. The G24 has emphasised that surcharges are pro-cyclical and regressive, especially with monetary tightening.

Governments have undertaken contractionary policies and cut imports for lack of foreign exchange. This deepens the problems of heavily indebted poor countries who cannot but count on the Fund for relief and solutions.

At Marrakech, the governing International Monetary and Financial Committee decided to “consider a review of surcharge policies”. The G24 called for “a suspension of surcharges while the review – which we hope will lead to substantial permanent reduction or complete elimination – is being conducted.”

Rich nations have been divided over surcharges. With Ukraine now among the top surcharge payers, following civil society criticisms, the Biden administration’s refusal to review surcharges in 2022 was heavily criticised by the US Congress.

Deepening austerity
IMF fiscal austerity measures of the 1980s returned with a vengeance after the 2008 global financial crisis, and then again during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020. Most Fund loans require cutting the public sector wage bill (PSWB), the budget line to pay employees.

Most wage earners in many LICs, including nurses, teachers and other social service workers, work for the state, directly or indirectly. Although much needed, these employees have been more likely to be targeted by such budget cuts.

PSWB cuts may involve hiring or wage freezes, or limiting, or even cutting wages. These inevitably undermine government capacities and services. Fiscal consolidation has also involved raising more indirect, consumption taxes, and tax exemptions, e.g., for essential goods such as food.

In 38 countries with over a billion people, loan conditionalities during 2020-22, the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, meant regressive tax reforms and public spending cuts. PSWB and fuel or electricity subsidy cuts are also common demands worsening economic contractions.

Austerity bound to fail
But the IMF’s own research suggests such austerity policies are generally ineffective in reducing debt, their ostensible purpose. The April 2023 IMF World Economic Outlook acknowledged austerity programmes and fiscal consolidations “do not reduce debt ratios, on average”. Yet, its Fiscal Monitor still demands “fiscal tightening” of most developing countries.

The new IMF-World Bank debt sustainability framework sets the LICs’ external debt-to-GDP ratio limit at 30% or 40%. It insists debt-distressed economies must have lower ratios than ‘strong’ countries, effectively further penalising the weak and vulnerable.

Instead of enabling consistently counter-cyclical macroeconomic frameworks, the IMF’s current short-termist approach is mainly preoccupied with annual, or worse, quarterly balances, mimicking corporate reporting practices.

Such short-termism further limits fiscal space, effectively preventing or deterring public sector investments requiring longer-term macroeconomic frameworks to realise benefits. This discourages ‘patient’ medium- to long-term investments required for national economic planning and transformation, essential for sustainable development.

Restrictive debt and fiscal targets have meant even less public investment. This is typically required of borrowing countries as a credit conditionality. Annual IMF Article IV consultations cause other countries to also accept similar constraints to avoid Fund disapproval.

While a few better-off economies enjoy full employment, most countries face further economic contraction, not least due to interest rate hikes led by the US Fed and their many effects. Instead of being part of the problem, the IMF should be part of the solution.

IPS UN Bureau

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What Is the Cost of Phasing Out Fossil Fuels in Latin America?

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Climate Change

Colombian President Gustavo Petro presented his environmental plans at COP28 in Dubai and added his country to the small group of nations that support the negotiation of a binding treaty to prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels, despite his country being an oil producer. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Colombian President Gustavo Petro presented his environmental plans at COP28 in Dubai and added his country to the small group of nations that support the negotiation of a binding treaty to prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels, despite his country being an oil producer. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

DUBAI, Dec 12 2023 (IPS) – One of the most heated debates at the annual climate summit coming to a conclusion in this United Arab Emirates city revolved around the phrasing of the final declaration, regarding the “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels within a given time frame.

This is an essential calculation on the decommissioning of refineries, pipelines, power plants and other infrastructure that, in some cases, have been in operation for years, as discussed at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Experts who talked to IPS at the summit agreed on the magnitude of the bill, which for some Latin American nations could be unaffordable.

“Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources.” — Fernanda Carvalho

Fernanda Carvalho of Brazil, global leader for Energy and Climate Policy at the non-governmental World Wildlife Fund (WWF), referred to the amount without specifying a figure.

“Financial support will be needed. There must be a differentiated approach, differentiated timing, and developed countries must come up with the resources,” the expert, who was present at COP28, held at Expo City on the outskirts of Dubai, told IPS.

COP28 engaged in an acrimonious debate between phase-out and phase-down, with a definite date, of oil, gas and coal, which has already anticipated a disappointing end in Dubai, that in line with the tradition at these summits extended its negotiations one more day, to conclude on Wednesday, Dec. 13.

The “phase-down” concept has been in the climate-energy jargon for years, but it really took off at the 2021 COP26 in the Scottish city of Glasgow, whose Climate Pact alludes to the reduction of coal still being produced and the elimination of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Throughout the climate summits since 1995, developing countries have insisted on differentiated measures for them, in accordance with their own situation, the need for financing from developed nations and the transfer of technology, especially energy alternatives.

Enrique Maurtúa of Argentina, senior diplomacy advisor to the Independent Global Stocktake (iGST) – an umbrella data and advocacy initiative – said they hoped for a political signal to determine regulations or market measures regarding a phase-down or phase-out.

“If a target date is not set, there is no signal. If you set a phase-out for 2050, that is a pathway for the transition. With a deadline, the market can react. And then each country must evaluate its specific context,” the expert told IPS in the COP28 Green Zone, which hosted civil society organizations at the summit.

Available scientific knowledge indicates that the majority of proven hydrocarbon reserves must remain unextracted by 2030 to keep the planetary temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the threshold agreed in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to avoid massive disasters.

On Sunday, Dec. 10 the non-governmental Climate Action Network (CAN) delivered at COP28 a dishonorable mention to the United States for its role in Israel's carnage in Gaza, in the traditional Fossil of the Day award for “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of progress on climate change at the summits. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

On Sunday, Dec. 10 the non-governmental Climate Action Network (CAN) delivered at COP28 a dishonorable mention to the United States for its role in Israel’s carnage in Gaza, in the traditional Fossil of the Day award for “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of progress on climate change at the summits. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Failed attempts

In the Latin American region there are unsuccessful precedents of fossil fuel phase-outs.

In 2007, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), launched the Yasuní-Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini initiative, which sought the care of the Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, in exchange for funds from governments, foundations, companies and individuals of about 3.6 billion dollars by 2024 to leave the oil in the ground.

The aim was to leave 846 million barrels of oil untouched underground. But a special fund created by Ecuador and the United Nations Environment Fund only raised 13 million dollars, according to the Ecuadorian government. So Correa decided to cancel the initiative in 2013, at a time when renewable energies had not yet really taken off.

In a referendum held in August, Ecuadorians decided to halt oil extraction in a block in Yasuní that would provide 57,000 barrels per day in 2022 – the same result sought by Correa, but without foreign funds.

The result of the referendum is to be implemented within a year, although the position of the government of the current president, banana tycoon Daniel Noboa, who took office on Nov. 23, is still unclear.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has put the brakes on new oil and coal exploration contracts, a promise from his 2022 election campaign.

In addition, the president announced on Dec. 2 in Dubai that his country was joining nine other nations that are promoting the formal initiation of the negotiation of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Colombia will thus become the first Latin American nation and the largest oil and coal producer to join the initiative that first emerged in 2015 when several Pacific Island leaders and NGOs raised the urgent need for an international mechanism to phase out fossil fuels.

For the undertaking of a just energy transition to cleaner fuels, Petro estimates an initial bill of 14 billion dollars, to come from governments of the developed North, multilateral organizations and international funds.

The latest summit of hope for the climate kicked off on Nov. 30 in this Arab city under the slogan “Unite. Act. Deliver” – the least successful in the history of COPs since the first one, held in Berlin in 1995.

The hopes included commitments and voluntary declarations on renewable energy and energy efficiency; agriculture, food and climate; health and climate; climate finance; refrigeration; and just transitions with a gender focus.

In addition, there were financial pledges of some 86 billion dollars, without specifying whether it is all new money, to be allocated to these issues.

Like many countries, the host of COP28, the United Arab Emirates, has had a pavilion in the so-called Green Zone, which hosts non-governmental organizations, companies and other institutions. The Emirati government bet a lot on the climate summit to deliver results, but without directly targeting the fossil fuels on which its economy depends. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Like many countries, the host of COP28, the United Arab Emirates, has had a pavilion in the so-called Green Zone, which hosts non-governmental organizations, companies and other institutions. The Emirati government bet a lot on the climate summit to deliver results, but without directly targeting the fossil fuels on which its economy depends. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Billions

Given the production and exploration plans of the main hydrocarbon producing countries in the region, the magnitude of the challenge in the medium and long term is enormous.

In October, Brazil, the largest economy in the region and the 11th largest in the world, extracted 3.543 billion barrels of oil and 152 million cubic meters (m3) of gas per day.

This represented approximately two percent of the domestic economy that month.

Mexico, the region’s second largest economy, extracted 1.64 million barrels and 4.971 billion m3 of gas per day in October, equivalent to 52 million dollars in revenues.

Meanwhile, Colombia produced 780,487 barrels of oil in the first eight months of 2023 and 1,568 cubic feet per day of gas, equivalent to 12 percent of public revenues.

“We have to think about decarbonization measures. We want Latin America to be a clean energy powerhouse,” said Carvalho.

As of September, Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras was working on obtaining 9.571 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the Global Oil & Gas Exit List produced by the German non-governmental organization Urgewald.

This represents an excess of 94 percent above the limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex is producing 1.444 billion barrels of oil equivalent, 56 percent above the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.

Finally, the public company Ecopetrol, mostly owned by the Colombian state, is working to obtain 447 million barrels, 98 percent above the Paris Agreement limit, according to Urgewald.

In addition, the cost of action against the climate crisis is far from affordable for any Latin American nation.

For example, Mexico estimated that the implementation of 35 measures, including in the power, gas and oil generation sector, would cost 137 billion dollars in 2030, but the benefits would total 295 billion dollars.

But Maurtúa says the budget question is only relative. “There is a lot of public money with which many things can be done,” complemented by international resources, he argued.