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	Five banks made an estimated total of £2.2 billion from speculating on food by World Development Movement & agencies   5 November 2013   Five banks made an estimated total of £2.2 billion from speculating on food including wheat, maize and soy between 2010 and 2012, prompting campaigners to accuse the banks of fuelling a global hunger crisis.   Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley were the top five global investment banks involved in global commodity markets between 2010 and 2012, making an estimated £640 million ($1 billion) from speculating on food in 2012 alone. Financial speculation fuels price spikes, pushing food prices beyond the reach of millions of people.   The figures were released today by anti-poverty campaign group the World Development Movement, which is calling for tough controls to curb food speculation. Proposed new regulation is due to be discussed at the European Union on Wednesday (6 November), but is at risk of being watered down by objections from the UK government and heavy lobbying by the financial sector.   Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, said today:   Our figures show that despite the efforts of some banks to distance themselves from this unethical practice, the big players continue to make vast returns from food speculation. Much-needed regulation to curb food speculation is on the table – but is at risk of being dangerously weakened by opposition from the UK government.   1 November 2013   A leaked document has revealed attempts by the UK government to scupper proposed controls on food speculation ahead of negotiations in Brussels next Wednesday.   New rules to prevent banks driving food prices up through financial speculation are due to be finalised in the European Union. But a memo sent by UK negotiators to their counterparts from other European countries last week reveals the UK government’s push to prevent major loopholes in the proposals being closed in the draft regulation.   The memo states UK negotiators’ opposition to strict limits on the amount that banks and other financial players can speculate in commodity derivative markets – a measure that campaigners see as essential to stop speculation destabilising food markets and fuelling global hunger. Instead UK negotiatiors are pushing for the continuation of a system of self-regulation under which speculators have been able to cause huge spikes in the price of foodstuffs.   The memo is likely to have been written by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK government body tasked with regulating the financial sector, and the FCA would certainly have reviewed it. Yet the changes it is calling for would constrict the FCA’s ability to regulate speculators.   Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, said today:   By trying to weaken crucial regulation to curb food speculation, the government is putting the profits of big banks like Goldman Sachs before the fundamental right of people everywhere to access to food. Yet again, our government is doing the banks’ dirty work for them. The UK should be backing tough controls to stop banks gambling on hunger, instead of throwing a wrecking ball.   http://www.wdm.org.uk/food-and-hunger/leaked-memo-reveals-uk-attempts-scupper-food-speculation-controls http://www.wdm.org.uk/food-speculation   Nov 2013   EU leaders must vote against a biofuels policy that is increasing world hunger and causing environmental devastation, says Jean Ziegler.   Burning hundreds of millions of tonnes of staple foods to produce biofuels is a crime against humanity. Since 2007, the EU and US governments have given lavish support to agribusinesses to fill car fuel tanks with food – compulsory targets, and tax breaks and subsidies worth billions annually. The result? Increased hunger, land grabbing, environmental damage and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of lives lost.   Next month David Cameron and other EU leaders have an opportunity to intervene to put a halt to this idiocy when they vote in Brussels on the future of biofuels policy. With one child under 10 dying from hunger and related diseases every five seconds, they must do so.   It is ironic that biofuels are still promoted by some multinational corporations as an eco-friendly sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. Few, except those who directly profit from biofuels policies like the EU"s 10% target for renewable transport energy, believe there are any environmental or social benefits. The reality is just another form of reckless exploitation of resources. Producing one litre of biofuels, for example, requires 2,500 litres of water.   EU policies promoting biofuels have, since 2008, diverted crops out of food markets at the bidding of powerful agribusinesses, in their pursuit of private profit. This use of large quantities of food and commodity crops for relatively small amounts of transport fuel has had three disastrous consequences.   First is an increase in world hunger. Almost all biofuels used in Europe are made from crops, such as wheat, soy, palm oil, rapeseed and maize, that are essential food sources for a rapidly expanding global population. Europe now burns enough food calories in fuel tanks every year to feed 100 million people.   Moreover, prices of vital foodstuffs such as oilseeds are expected to rise by up to 20% , vegetable oil by up to 36%, and maize by as much as 22% by 2020 because of EU biofuels targets (those that are being reviewed). For slum dwellers across the world, who have very little money with which to buy food, this represents disaster.   Second is a massive new demand for land, destroying smallholder farms as well as habitats. Land speculators, hedge funds, and agro-energy companies have been at the forefront of a global rush for land that has forced hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers off their fields and taken away their livelihoods and water supplies. All too regularly across the world, but particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the monopolisation of land by large biofuel corporations is accompanied by violence: the victims are small farmers and their families.   Third is environmental devastation. The demand for additional land to accommodate EU biofuels plans means expanding cropland, which will result in felled forests, plundered peatlands and ploughed prairies. The evidence is increasingly clear that the climate change benefits of most biofuels are negligible or nil.   Through fertiliser use, land clearance, deforestation and displacing other crops, most EU biofuels are not reducing carbon emissions – as they are subsidised to do – but emitting millions of additional tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The consumption of fossil fuels must be rapidly reduced – but solutions lie with the reduction of energy consumption, public transportation and alternative sources of clean energy, not land using biofuels with so many detrimental consequences.   It is time to stop this biofuels madness – which allows a few transnational corporations to make large profits while causing devastation to the environment and to millions of helpless victims. On 12 December, when EU leaders vote, they must cancel targets and support for biofuels that compete with food.   * Jean Ziegler was UN special rapporteur on the right to food between 2000-08, is on the advisory committee of the UN human rights council. He is author of Betting on Famine: Why the World Still Goes Hungry.   http://www.iied.org/land-grabbing-africa-biofuels-are-not-hook http://www.fao.org/nr/water/docs/wateratfao.pdf Visit the related web page
	The lucky country? Try selfish and deluded by ACFID, Oxfam, World Vision, agencies Australia   The lucky country? Try selfish and deluded, by John Watson.   Cutting $7.5b from our foreign aid budget suggests we"re happy to live in a world of obscene disparities.   We think of ourselves as a generous people and many Australians are. But it"s a form of national psychosis when a rich, secure nation unblinkingly spends more on killing people than helping them.   In Afghanistan, the military spending has outweighed development aid by about seven to one. Now, after a deadly 12-year exercise in military hubris, Australia is withdrawing aid along with our troops. The overall aid budget will fall to 0.33 per cent of gross domestic product and the defence budget will rise to 2 per cent, in an increase 10 times as big as the aid cut.   This is an idea of security that erects defensive walls, Fortress Australia, rather than building bridges that defuse the triggers for conflict and hostility - poverty and extreme inequity. Helping others is not pure altruism if we make friends of people who might otherwise be resentful enemies.   So how do super-fortunate people like us get so mean-spirited that we resent our money going into aid? When did "charity" get a bad name?   It seems we can live with a world of obscene disparities, as long as we imagine our lives, careers and successes are all our own work. If others struggle, that"s their fault, their own mistakes, or lack of skills or work ethic.   We are kidding ourselves. I have never seen prosperous Australians work as long and hard as I have seen Africans toil just to survive. People living in rural Africa struggle for everything we take for granted. Fetching water and firewood can involve a long walk every day. Our essential services - running water, sanitation, power and healthcare - are unattainable luxuries.   Villagers get up before dawn and work until dark even when they are ill, which is often. Millions of Africans have to be resourceful (they make fine floors of polished dung), brave and resilient to survive in mud huts housing families with no visible means of support, save for some meagre crops and livestock if they"re lucky.   It"s truly perverse to blame the world"s poorest and most vulnerable people for their plight. What can impoverished villagers or slum dwellers do about poor national leadership, weak civic institutions and poisonous colonial legacies? Yet that doesn"t stop many Australians from jealously denying the good that development aid does, by giving Third World children the platform of good health and education to make something of their lives.   Australians tend to do a good job playing down their head-start in life.   Wealthier Australians win life"s lottery not just by being born here, but by being born into families that provide an upbringing of good health and education plus valuable social networks. Yet you often hear people deplore lesser beings ability to get good work when they owe their own careers and opportunities to such connections and to having started out with something to their name. How many of us really do it all on our own, without calling on any relatives or social and business contacts? (People who struggle to imagine the disadvantaged alternative would do well to read a New York Times article, "How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment", by Nancy Ditomaso.)   Another eye-opening read is Credit Suisse"s Global Wealth Report 2013, which details inequities that are plain unconscionable. If we were really as clever as we imagine, not to mention caring, we"d see in the statistics a denial of opportunity that is criminal in its stifling of human and economic potential and immoral in its creation of avoidable suffering.   The bottom half of the world"s people survive on barely 1 per cent of the world"s wealth; the top 10 per cent hold 86 per cent of all assets.   Net assets of $US4000 put a person in the better-off half. Just $US10,000 qualifies for the top third. Average Australian wealth per adult is 40 times that amount. Half our adult population is worth more than $US219,500, the highest median wealth in the world.   The benefits of such wealth are intergenerational. The Credit Suisse report finds "across generations, the latest evidence points to more persistence" among the nations and individuals who have it. People who discount inherited advantage need to consider this finding: "Our analysis suggests that 10 generations or more have to lapse before the wealth of an individual in North America is completely independent of the wealth of their ancestors."   This means that for those of us born advantaged, it is our natural environment; we know no other, nor do we realise how unusual it is.   The Abbott government is cutting $7.5 billion from the aid budget over four years because politically it is safe to do so. In a world in which Australians are the most advantaged of all people, that"s a depressing measure of national selfishness.   As the world"s most well-off people, we should gladly devote a tiny bit more of our taxes to helping the worst-off. Surely that was the thinking when the Howard government signed up to the Millennium Development Goal of putting 0.7 per cent of national income into aid. Yet Australia spends barely half of what it promised on aid, 37¢ of every $100 income, and is cutting that to 33¢.   Cutting 4¢ in every $100 is equivalent to a weekly "saving" of 44¢ on the average Australian worker"s income. Can we really not spare that? The aid cut looks even stingier when new Treasurer Joe Hockey can immediately find twice as much money to boost the Reserve Bank"s capital reserves.   Yet our "modest" aid cut is a huge loss for the world"s poor, 3 billion of whom earn less than 1 per cent of average Australian earnings. Even if some is wasted, our loose change makes so much more of a difference to their prospects than it could ever make to ours.   If we still insist we don"t have money to spare, and anything we make is rightly ours to keep, then we are a self-deluded nation. We will never convince anyone but ourselves that good people can live such privileged, selfish lives.   Sep 2013   Oxfam, World Vision hit out at Government"s decision to bring AusAID (the overseas development aid agency) into the Foreign Affairs Department.   Conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced a wide-ranging shake up of the public service, which included moving AusAID into the Foreign Affairs Department.   Mr Abbott, who has planned a $7.5 billion cut to foreign aid, said the shift will more closely align the aid budget with the Government"s trade and diplomatic policies, (a policy being adopted by Conservative Governments, including by Canada, the UK)   But the heads of several prominent aid agencies say their programs will be worse off for the move, and, as a result, so will people in poverty.   World Vision Australia"s chief executive, Tim Costello, says AusAID should remain a stand-alone agency and the move risks confusing what aid is all about.   "Once you mix it up with our trade and diplomatic goals, you lose a focus on what aid is," he said.   "The reason you have free-standing aid agencies that aren"t subsumed under foreign affairs agencies is because you want clarity that aid is actually to deal with absolute poverty."   Dr Helen Szoke from Oxfam wants to ensure there continues to be transparency about how the money is used.   "Voices have to be raised in the interests of the people who go hungry every night," she said.   Archie Law, executive director of charity ActionAid Australia, says the move will have "massive and devastating effects" on Australia"s aid program.   Mr Law said the move from the Abbott Government is "the third strike in the triple whammy", following the $7.5 billion budget cut and Mr Abbott"s decision not to name a minister for international development.   He says the realignment will not result in a more efficient way of delivering aid, and there is a clear clash in objectives.   "There is a conflict because then you get into this ridiculous discussion around how aid is a part of a global relationship to lift people out of poverty but it"s actually all about trade," he said.   "This has been the dominant narrative from conservative politics for the last 20 years.   "I think AusAID has performed very well over the years. It"s been difficult dealing with the scale-up, but there"s a single driving force in there to work with people living in poverty and transform their lives.   "You can"t neatly align that with Australia"s national economic and political interests."   Mr Law says he has received phone calls of disappointment from colleagues worldwide since the announcement.   "Unfortunately, I was with the United Nations in New York when Australia had this sort of policy before, and Australia wasn"t highly regarded on the international stage," he said.   "The last two weeks do nothing but really trash our international reputation."   Politicising overseas aid shows meanness of spirit, by John Brown.   There is massive public support for overseas aid, as demonstrated in research disclosed in 2006, that showed 85 per cent of the community supported it.   The recent decisions on foreign aid have sent shockwaves through the Australian aid community, and board members, staff and supporters of hundreds of Australian NGOs, including church-based organisations, are reeling from dismay, disappointment, anger and even grief.   The reckless disregard for Australia"s reputation is extraordinary, given the decision coincides with Australia holding the chair as president of the UN Security Council. Australia looks foolish saying that it will contribute increased aid "when our own economic house is in order", when it has one of the most successful economies in the world. It is also reckless to cut aid programs mid-way through the financial year, given the complex tasks associated with planning and delivery.   While the public supports aid that alleviates poverty, few are aware of the influence of perceived "national interests" on aid decisions. The flow and distribution of aid has always been subject to balancing altruistic and self-interest objectives, since the idea of aid began with the Marshall Plan in post-WWII Europe. Australia is not exempt from using aid to meet its own interests.   The issue of aid effectiveness is more important than the whims of politicians. Aid professionals have learnt a great deal about aid quality and how to maximise the likelihood that it will contribute to reduced poverty in sustainable ways. These days aid programs assist people most likely to make a positive difference in their countries.   They also support those excluded from the spoils of economic growth, such as children, women, ethnic minorities or people with disability. Governments show commitment through measures such as Millennium Development Goals. At community levels, massive support for the Make Poverty History campaign exemplify shared commitment.   The key to aid quality and effectiveness is the way aid is managed. This is why the decision to axe AusAID as a stand-alone agency is most worrying. Aid effectiveness depends on coherent analysis of the causes and processes of development. Aid programs need to be carefully designed and undertaken over long periods of time. Systemic changes don"t happen overnight and short-term gains are usually quickly lost. Aid programs need to be respectfully and thoughtfully implemented and evaluated. This requires highly skilled aid workers and resources.   It is healthy to maintain a critique of aid to make sure it is doing the best possible to tackle poverty and in efficient ways. But taking out such a big chunk of aid and following New Zealand and Canadian Conservative Governments decisions to shift aid agencies into Foreign Affairs is a step too far.   The $7.5 billion cut to the budget is particularly bitter because funds "saved" will be used to build Australian roads and thus increase our contribution to carbon emissions, already way too high. Our increased use of cars will hit developing countries in the region, such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, disproportionately and tragically. Who is going to tell a subsistence fisherman or community nurse in Kiribati that aid cuts to their country are needed so Australia can increase its carbon emission rates? It will be an aid worker, sickened to the stomach at bearing the news, not the politicians.   Australians are ashamed by the government"s decisions on aid. We have the means to help, so let us pull our weight, partner others who wish to see a better world and play our role as a good global citizen. It is in our national interest to promote leadership in global efforts to address poverty.   (Before the Australian election the coalition parties proposed to cut the overseas aid budget by $4.5 billion, it has subsequently risen to a $10.5 billion cut over 4 years). Visit the related web page
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