View previous stories
	Budgeting for Human Rights: Using the Maximum of Available Resources by Helena Hofbauer Righting Finance   The last few decades have seen two mutually reinforcing trends with regard to government budgets. First, though fiscal policy has long been seen as a key tool for governments to support stable economies and provide public services, the instrumental role of budgets in promoting development, redistributing wealth, and reducing poverty has been increasingly recognized.   Second, this growing recognition of the importance of budgeting in addressing some of the world’s most persistent challenges has been a major factor in transparency and accountability becoming fashionable.   While budgets today have a global profile like never before, the lingo connecting public budgets to people’s lives has a clear precedent in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and ratified by more than 160 countries. Article 2 of the ICESCR states “each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps…especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant …”   The wording of this principle—the maximum of available resources—inevitably lends itself to analysis of government budgets when assessing whether governments are meeting their commitments. But, despite the clear connection between the covenant and public revenues and spending, its implications for fiscal policy and budgeting have so far remained under explored.   To close this gap, the International Budget Partnership and a handful of groups that use budgets to push for the realization of rights have published a new handbook on using budget analysis to hold governments to account for their ICESCR commitments. So, what does using “the maximum of its available resources” mean for how governments should manage public resources?   Governments must mobilize as many resources as possible to realize people’s rights. All revenues and taxes must be levied and collected in a way that maximizes the resources available to spend on rights and recognizes the differences in people’s ability to pay. For example, tax reforms that reduce how much revenue is mobilized to spend on services that contribute to the realization of rights may contravene this provision, unless there is credible evidence that all the rights articulated in the covenant have been fulfilled.   Governments must give “due priority” to the realization of rights. Signatory governments must prioritize allocations and expenditures toward rights-related areas. For example, if a government is failing to use available resources to provide basic education to children, it may be failing to comply with the provision.   Governments should not divert resources that are essential to the realization of rights to other areas. For example, taking money away from social programs to finance infrastructure to host international sporting eventsviolates this obligation.   Expenditures must be efficient. Governments should not pay more than necessary for goods and services. Buying medicines at retail prices due to lack of adequate planning and consolidated purchases, for example, may contravene this. Governments should also not spend on unnecessary items (like workshops in fancy hotels, with five course dinners). Furthermore, finance ministries should transfer funds to implementing agencies in a well-planned way throughout the fiscal year. Impeding the steady provision of essential services by “dumping” of funds near the end of the fiscal year, a recurrent practice in many countries, may violate this obligation.   Expenditures must be effective in the realization of rights. A government must purchase those goods and services that make a real contribution to the right at stake. For example, they should provide services, say heating that materially improve the living conditions in public housing, not simply those that may improve the appearance of that housing.   Funds allocated to rights must be fully spent. This means making an effort to overcome the institutional barriers or bottlenecks that impede the adequate functioning and spending of certain programs. It also means addressing lack of institutional capacity where required.   The connection between international human rights law and budget analysis has the potential to be a powerful tool for holding governments to account for their obligations. The handbook has begun to illustrate this connection. In doing so, it underscores the need for new, innovative approaches for evaluating governments’ compliance with human rights.   But many more cases and campaigns are needed to reach a deeper understanding of the public finance implications of the covenant. We invite you all to produce evidence and share analysis and stories that can help maximize the impact of government budgets on the realization of the rights of the people they should be serving.   * Helena Hofbauer is Director of Partnership Development and Innovation at the International Budget Partnership. Visit the related web page
	Drexel university study reveals funders behind Climate Change Denial Effort by Michael Mann, Robert Brulle Pennsylvania State University, Drexel University, PBS Frontline USA   January 20, 2014   Global Warming a "Clear and Present Danger": Climate scientist warns Senate committee.   "We know the climate is warming. We know that humans are now in the driver’s seat of the climate system. We know that, over the next century, if nothing is done to rein in emissions, temperatures will likely increase enough to profoundly change the planet."   Those were the words of Andrew Dessler, climate scientist from Texas A&M University, as he addressed the U.S. Senate committee on environment and public works in a four-hour hearing on Thursday.   One of the expert witnesses on climate invited to testify, Dessler emphasized that global warming is a "clear and present danger." Dessler"s testimony, which coalesced around four main points, warned:   The climate is warming. By this I mean by this that we are presently in the midst of an overall increase in the temperature of the lower atmosphere and ocean spanning many decades. Most of the recent warming is extremely likely due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by human activities.   As a consequence of our understanding of the climate system, unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions would lead to warming over the 21st century of 4.7 - 8.6°F (for the global average). The impacts of this are profound... The virtually certain impacts include increasing temperatures, more frequent extreme heat events, changes in the distribution of rainfall, rising seas, and the oceans becoming more acidic.   Dessler urged policy makers to heed the call of the scientific community and take immediate action to curb greenhouse gases. "Time is not our friend in this problem," he urged. "By the time everyone agrees we have a problem, it is too late to do much about it."   Jan 2014   If You See Something, Say Something, by Michael Mann.   The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that human-caused climate change is happening. Yet a fringe minority of our populace clings to an irrational rejection of well-established science. This virulent strain of anti-science infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist.   In fact, there is broad agreement among climate scientists not only that climate change is real (a survey and a review of the scientific literature published say about 97 percent agree), but that we must respond to the dangers of a warming planet. If one is looking for real differences among mainstream scientists, they can be found on two fronts: the precise implications of those higher temperatures, and which technologies and policies offer the best solution to reducing, on a global scale, the emission of greenhouse gases.   For example, should we go full-bore on investing in and deploying renewable energy — wind, solar and geothermal — on a huge scale? Price carbon emissions through cap-and-trade legislation or by imposing a carbon tax? Until the public fully understands the danger of our present trajectory, those debates are likely to continue to founder.   This is where scientists come in. In my view, it is no longer acceptable for scientists to remain on the sidelines. I should know. I had no choice but to enter the fray. I was hounded by elected officials, threatened with violence and more — after a single study I co-wrote a decade and a half ago found that the Northern Hemisphere’s average warmth had no precedent in at least the past 1,000 years. Our “hockey stick” graph became a vivid centerpiece of the climate wars, and to this day, it continues to win me the enmity of those who have conflated a problem of science and society with partisan politics.   So what should scientists do? At one end of the spectrum, you have the distinguished former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, who has turned to civil disobedience to underscore the dangers he sees. He was arrested in 2009 protesting mountaintop removal coal mining, then again in 2011 and 2013 in Washington protesting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf. He has warned that the pipeline, which awaits approval by the State Department, would open the floodgates to dirty tar sands oil from Canada, something he says would be “game over for the climate.”   Dr. Hansen recently published an article in the journal PLoS One with the economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and other scientists, making a compelling case that emissions from fossil fuel burning must be reduced rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. They called for the immediate introduction of a price on carbon emissions, arguing that it is our moral obligation to not leave a degraded planet behind for our children and grandchildren.   This activist approach has concerned some scientists, even those who have been outspoken on climate change. One of them, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who has argued that “the only ethical path is to stop using the atmosphere as a waste dump for greenhouse gas pollution,” expressed concern about the “presentation of such a prescriptive and value-laden work” in a paper not labeled opinion.   Are Dr. Hansen and his colleagues going too far? Should we resist commenting on the implications of our science? There was a time when I would, without hesitation, have answered “yes” to this question. In 2003, when asked in a Senate hearing to comment on a matter of policy, I readily responded that “I am not a specialist in public policy” and it would not “be useful for me to testify on that.”   It is not an uncommon view among scientists that we potentially compromise our objectivity if we choose to wade into policy matters or the societal implications of our work. And it would be problematic if our views on policy somehow influenced the way we went about doing our science. But there is nothing inappropriate at all about drawing on our scientific knowledge to speak out about the very real implications of our research.   My colleague Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who died in 2010, used to say that being a scientist-advocate is not an oxymoron. Just because we are scientists does not mean that we should check our citizenship at the door of a public meeting, he would explain. The New Republic once called him a “scientific pugilist” for advocating a forceful approach to global warming. But fighting for scientific truth and an informed debate is nothing to apologize for.   If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest. There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation — if we do not do all we can to ensure that the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks. In fact, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to society if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat.   This is hardly a radical position. Our Department of Homeland Security has urged citizens to report anything dangerous they witness: “If you see something, say something.” We scientists are citizens, too, and, in climate change, we see a clear and present danger. The public is beginning to see the danger, too — Midwestern farmers struggling with drought, more damaging wildfires out West, and withering record summer heat across the country — while wondering about possible linkages between rapid Arctic warming and strange weather patterns, like the recent outbreak of Arctic air across much of the United States.   The urgency for action was underscored this past week by a draft United Nations report warning that another 15 years of failure to cut heat-trapping emissions would make the problem virtually impossible to solve with known technologies and thus impose enormous costs on future generations. It confirmed that the sooner we act, the less it will cost.   How will history judge us if we watch the threat unfold before our eyes, but fail to communicate the urgency of acting to avert potential disaster? How would I explain to the future children of my 8-year-old daughter that their grandfather saw the threat, but didn’t speak up in time? Those are the stakes.   * Michael E. Mann is the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and the author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”   December, 2013   A new study conducted by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.   Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.   The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding countermovement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to countermovement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.   Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The study was published today in Climatic Change, one of the top 10 climate science journals in the world.   The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.   “The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming,” said Brulle. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what’s driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes.”   To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service.   The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010. The data shows that these 91 organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities, Brulle notes.   Key findings include:   Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.   Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.   Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.   Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.   “The real issue here is one of democracy. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible,” said Brulle.   “Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square. Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts.”   * Robert Brulle is Professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University.   http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/December/Climate-Change/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/robert-brulle-inside-the-climate-change-countermovement/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/steve-coll-how-exxon-shaped-the-climate-debate/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/andrew-dessler-science-and-the-politics-of-climate-change/ Visit the related web page
	View more stories