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	World leaders must stop the destruction of life-supporting ecosystems by IPBES, Convention on Biological Diversity, agencie   Jan. 2020   Humanity will have given up on planet Earth if world leaders cannot reach an agreement this year to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and destruction of life-supporting ecosystems, the United Nation's new biodiversity chief has warned.   Elizabeth Mrema, the acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, has implored governments to ensure 2020 is not just another 'year of conferences' on the ongoing ecological destruction of the planet, calling on all countries to take definitive action on deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis.   The ongoing destruction of life-supporting ecosystems such as coral reefs and rainforests means humans risk living in an 'empty world' with catastrophic consequences for society, according to Mrema, who is responsible for spearheading a Paris-style agreement for nature that will be negotiated this year.   People's lives depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately depends on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food sources. All these are prerequisites for human health and livelihoods.   The world's leading scientists have warned that nature is disappearing at a rate hundreds of times higher than the average for the past 10 million years. Experts have warned that humans are driving the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history.   'Governments, Business, communities, all must take action. We have been talking of action for many years. Really, we need transformative action to make a difference', Mrema said.   Last week, a long-awaited draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on nature was published for the first time, calling for a commitment to protect at least 30% of the planet, controls on invasive species and pollution from plastic waste and excess nutrients to be reduced by 50%.   The commitments in the draft text, which is expected to be adopted by governments in October at a crucial UN summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, have been kept intentionally modest after the failure of the international agreement on biodiversity conservation made for the previous decade.   A number of campaigners have criticised the draft agreement, insisting that governments must do more to protect the planet. Mrema said she had hoped negotiators would create something more ambitious than the current proposal.   When asked what would happen if governments did not take sufficient action, Mrema said: 'The risks will be major. One is that we will not have listened to the science and the evidence provided. Because we will not have listened, it means the global community will have said: let biodiversity loss continue, let people continue to die, let the degradation continue, deforestation continue, pollution continue, and we'll have given up as an international community to save the planet. I hope that's not where any of us would want to be'.   Mrema, recalled growing up in Tanzania, where her home looked out on Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa.   'When I grew up as I child, I could see and hear water flowing in the banana plantations. But now I am an adult, those streams have completely dried. Every time I deal with biodiversity issues, I reflect what I used to see as I grew up. What I see today, I cannot compare the two. More devastation now, the water is no longer there, the bush, the forest, the entire area is now bare', she said.   'Being an adult, I can say that we have failed and are failing our children and the youth.   Our children are asking what climate are they going to inherit from us if the planet is polluted. The ocean is full of plastic, the forests are reduced to bare land. The current consumption patterns are unsustainable, leading to mass extinctions, more pollution and ecosystem collapse'.   'Whatever is negotiated today will affect our children, and their futures. Humanity stands at a crossroads. The pressures driving the unprecedented decline of nature are intensifying. But we can all still choose the legacy we leave our children, to future generations.   There are real examples of transitions to sustainability, including in the use of land and sea and in the way food is produced and consumed. If scaled up, these kinds of actions can bring about the transformative change necessary to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2050 Vision of living in harmony with nature'.   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/un-draft-plan-sets-2030-target-to-avert-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-aoe http://www.foei.org/press_releases/global-biodiversity-plan-cbd-weak http://www.foei.org/features/draft-cbd-global-biodiversity-framework-assessment http://bit.ly/391pbdS http://www.cbd.int/article/2020-01-10-19-02-38 http://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/biodiversity-grave-danger-what-can-be-done-2020   * Summary for Policymakers of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (60pp): http://bit.ly/2RouNYe   http://ipbes.net/news/new-article-science-ipbes-global-assessment-authors http://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6471/eaax3100 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/4/eaaw2869 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320719317823   Jan. 2020   We need profound, system-wide change to prevent the unravelling of the fabric of life, says Prof. Sandra Diaz, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).   Addressing the direct drivers of nature's decline is necessary, but not sufficient to prevent the unravelling of the fabric of life on which all people and future generations depend. This requires urgent transformative change that tackles root causes, as well as the values and behaviors underpinning them.   "Urgent action on land and sea use change, exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and alien invasive species is important but not enough," said Prof. Sandra Diaz, Co-chair of the IPBES Global Assessment Report.   'The challenges posed by biodiversity loss and climate change are deeply interconnected and need to be addressed holistically at all levels. Reversal of recent declines - and a sustainable global future - are only possible with urgent transformative change tackling the interconnected economic, socio-cultural, demographic, political, institutional and technological indirect drivers of nature's deterioration."   IPBES Chair, Ana Maria Hernandez said: "The world is more aware now than ever before of the devastating impacts of human activities on nature but also of the severe declines in nature's ability to support people and our well-being. The power of the Global Assessment Report is the comprehensiveness of its evidence'.   Among the key findings of the IPBES Global Assessment Report, underscored and further confirmed is that a million species of plants and animals risk extinction; that almost three quarters of land and 66% of marine environments have been significantly altered by humanity and that more than 85% of wetland areas have been lost.   The drop in the number of wild species and the reduced extent of ecosystems is accompanied by declines in ecosystem integrity, the distinctiveness of local ecological communities and the number of local domesticated varieties.   Since the 1970s, per-capita consumption has increased by 45%, global economic activity has increased by more than 300% and global trade by around 900%.   Ever expanding global consumption and the costs of declining nature's benefits are unequally distributed. These trends are compromising 80% of the targets under the Sustainable Development Goals.   * Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): Nature's Dangerous Decline Unprecedented; 1,000,000 species threatened with extinction: http://ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment http://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ http://www.ipcc.ch/ Visit the related web page
	The billionaire class represents system failure by Gerhard Bosch, Njoki Njehu, Greta Thunberg   Jan. 2021   World Economic Forum: towards sustainability with neoliberal recipes, by Gerhard Bosch.   The World Economic Forum (WEF), which met last week in Davos, has raised its moral bar ever higher in recent years. The new Davos Manifesto 'states that companies should pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption, uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains, and advocate for a competitive level playing field'. And in the WEF's Global Competiveness Report 2019 growing social inequality is heavily criticised.   At the same time, it is stressed that inequality is not a fateful consequence of globalisation and new technologies but can be combatted politically. The Scandinavian countries are named as models, as they have not only become among the world's most technologically advanced, innovative and dynamic economies in the world, but are also providing better living conditions and better social protection, are more cohesive and more sustainable than their peers.   Of course, one immediately asks oneself how seriously such statements are really intended. After all, the WEF seeks a closing of ranks between politics and the billionaires of the world. It is precisely the large international companies which are shifting their profits to tax havens and show no readiness at all to pay their fair share of taxes. How should one then finance inclusive welfare states, such as those in the Scandinavian countries?   In addition, these companies depress their labour costs through outsourcing many activities to unregulated subcontracting chains at national and international levels. Poor wages and precarious employment are a central pillar of their business models and are responsible for growing social inequality.   The billionaires need not worry however that the WEF is really asserting their responsibilities beyond general declarations. How far the gulf between the Sunday speeches and everyday actions yawns is already clear in the Global Competiveness Report 2019 a few pages after the executive summary, namely in the evaluation of the distinct labour-market institutions in the Scandinavian welfare states.   In the competitiveness indicator 'Flexibility of wage determination', Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are downgraded to places between 118 and 133 out of a total of 141 countries - far behind the United States, the United Kingdom, Qatar or Saudi Arabia. The top positions, representing high competitiveness, are awarded to countries with weak trade unions, fragmented wage negotiations and low commitment to collective agreements.   The competitiveness indicator 'Labour tax rate' looks similar. This indicator, as defined in the report, takes in all mandatory contributions and taxes on labour paid by the business on top of gross wages, including social-insurance contributions. Developing countries without a welfare state achieve the highest values here.   In the developed countries, the USA is to the fore with only a residual welfare state (29th place), whereas the Scandinavian countries again range clearly behind (Sweden 132nd, Finland 104th and Norway 67th). Denmark, in 13th place, is an outlier, but only because its welfare state is largely financed by progressive taxes, not social-security contributions, which for companies could be similarly unpopular.   Finally, let's look at the indicator 'Hiring and firing procedures'. Here one finds the USA (ranked 5th) and the UK (11th) in the top places, whereas Finland, Norway and Sweden, with their good protection against dismissal, are relegated to the lower ranks, between 85 and 97.   The message the WEF intends to convey with this evaluation of central labour-market institutions is clear: good protection against dismissal, high commitment to collective agreements and high social-security contributions, for instance to finance a general sickness-insurance scheme or compulsory old-age insurance are obstacles to competition. If countries want to prosper, they must get rid of such barriers to competition.   The WEF thereby follows argumentatively exactly the line of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, which imposed on debtor countries, such as Greece, deregulation of their labour markets, with a dramatic increase in social inequality.   From the point of view of global companies, such evaluations of course make sense. If, through strong trade unions, wage-floor agreements applying to large and small companies in a sector are pushed through, this makes it difficult to achieve the desired wage differentiation in subcontracting chains. Weak protection against dismissal shifts the risks from entrepreneurs to employees and makes it easier for large investors to quickly withdraw their capital and relocate it to other countries.   High social-security contributions are a cost burden one would rather pass on to the state, which at the same time is however deprived of a financial foundation.   Yet these labour-market institutions, which are so poorly rated, are precisely the prerequisite for the highly praised social cohesion in the Scandinavian countries. Only with the high commitment to collective agreements can one explain, for example, the very low proportion of low-income earners and the especially strong middle class in the Scandinavian countries, by international comparison.   Is it possible to find a scientific basis for the WEF's labour-market indicators or is pure ideology and a one-sided, interest-based politics hidden behind these figures? In neoliberal models with flexible wages, equilibria with full employment can actually be computed. But reality is more complicated.   Strong labour-market institutions can certainly increase costs in the short term but at the same time oblige companies to address the longer term. They invest more in apprenticeships and advanced training and in the quality of their products. Employees are more motivated and have more purchasing power and the economy develops better and more sustainably than in countries with mostly poorly-paid employees.   Even recent research from the IMF demonstrates meantime the beneficial effects of strong institutions. One study for instance made clear that in countries with low income inequality growth was not only higher but also more robust than in countries with higher inequality.   Another attributes growing inequality to the erosion of labour-market institutions and finds positive effects of minimum wages and high trade-union density on employment. These new findings, however, have had no influence at all on IMF policy, which, contrary to the state of research, unwaveringly imposes drastic neoliberal cures on its debtors.   The OECD has also thoroughly revised its position. In its 1994 Jobs Study, it still advocated radical deregulation, but its latest empirical studies prove the opposite. For example, the OECD Employment Outlook of 2018 shows that countries with co-ordinated wage policies have higher levels of employment and lower unemployment than countries with decentralised wage systems, which are so positively rated by the WEF.   The Global Competiveness Report 2019 shows the WEF's dilemma. We know precisely that growing social inequality is the most important basis of social polarisation and currents hostile to globalisation. As well as climate change, these threaten the long-term stability of the capitalist economy and therefore endanger the system.   Essential would then be the construction of strong labour-market institutions. At the same time, one does not want to hurt one's own clientele, which pays a lot of money for participation in the conferences and makes oneself an advocate of their short-term profit interests.   The intellectual contradictions to which this act of doing the splits leads have become apparent from the example of the evaluation of the Scandinavian social models. The WEF is to these contradictions as is the Catholic Church: on Sundays water is preached and during the week wine is drunk.   * Gerhard Bosch is professor at the Institute Work and Skills at the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany.   http://www.socialeurope.eu/world-economic-forum-towards-sustainability-with-neoliberal-recipes   Jan. 2020   My message to the World Economic Forum is abolish Billionaires, by Njoki Njehu. (Fight Inequality Alliance)   Somehow a long-time Kenyan activist with a track record of fighting inequality and injustice got invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.   That would be me. I arrived in Davos for an event I've been criticizing, for 25 of its 50 years, as a gathering of elites looking to put a smiley face on the inequality crisis and the climate emergency. Off-camera, they network and make deals. On camera, they talk about the need to reverse climate change or the long-running rise in global inequality, then finish their champagne and take their limo to their private jet back home. I was there to speak truth to power.   As the Pan Africa Coordinator for the Fight Inequality Alliance, my message to the WEF is Abolish Billionaires. It's rooted in the recognition that the billionaire class represents a catastrophic system failure.   The massive concentration of resources in the hands of a few individuals is warping our societies and democracy itself, and is a betrayal of the principles of human welfare proclaimed by virtually all governments and all belief systems.   The immiserating poverty and climate emergency engulfing our world are a reproach to the global capitalism that breeds billionaires. That betrayal must end now.   At last year's WEF, a Dutch writer named Rutger Bregman went internet-viral when he told an audience gathered to hear about using philanthropy to fight inequality that the forbidden word there seemed to be 'taxes'. His crowning line, 'Taxes, taxes, taxes the rest is bullshit', continues to echo.   As well it should. Wealthy people get rich in a variety of ways, but they get richer still by, to use the best euphemisms, structuring their affairs to minimize asset erosion. That is, they don't pay their taxes. Sure, they pay some tax, but the money they have gives them the option of hiring the specialized lawyers and accountants who have devoted their careers to finding ways around tax laws. And some of them devote big money to lobbying for tax cuts for the richest and low corporate tax rates, ensuring tax laws remain weak and making nonsensical messages like 'low taxes sustain a healthy economy and society' into conventional wisdom.   To fight inequality, we need to bolster, not starve, our governments capacity to provide high quality public services. Only with good education for all, universal healthcare free of the threat of financial ruin, a guarantee of essentials like water and decent housing, and provision of childcare and other measures to lighten women's burden of unpaid care work will we be able to begin reversing the huge disparities of power and wealth in our societies.   All of that takes money, and taxes are the only reliable and fair way of getting it. Entrusting public services to private companies, as institutions like the World Bank now promotes, almost always ends up costing more than direct public provision and runs a much higher risk of excluding the most vulnerable. A fair tax system will also work toward balancing the distortions between the poorest and the richest by ensuring progressivity: those who have more pay more (proportionally).   The tax reforms that would have the biggest impact on inequality include:   Putting an end to the use of 'tax havens' places (like Switzerland, no less!) that charge little or no tax and hide identities; they hold an estimated $32 trillion, over one-third of global GDP.   Ending the practice of corporate 'profit-shifting', where multinationals route their profits to places with lower taxes, using maneuvers like phony loans and inflating or deflating the prices of things exchanged among subsidiaries.   Eliminating harmful incentives that give companies tax holidays and create a race to the bottom as countries compete against each other for investment.   Curtailing another, more recent 'race to the bottom' in corporate tax rates, instead setting a global minimum corporate tax of 25%.   Making tax codes more progressive by reducing reliance on consumption taxes (like VAT and sales taxes) and increasing taxes on wealth - property, inheritance, capital gains, luxury items, and overall assets.   Some corporate initiatives make promises in this regard, and the OECD - the club of rich country governments - has made some efforts with developing countries, but it appears the status quo will prevail there too. People must demand that governments take bold action to rein in these abuses.   People are tired and angry from all of this hypocrisy, of billionaires and CEOs gathering in Davos to fight inequality in their name, when in reality, these same billionaires and CEOs directly cause their misery. At the same time as Davos, a Global Protest to #FightInequality took place in over 30 countries around the world.   Their demands for dignity and justice include: universal education, health and nutrition, social security, redistributive tax policies, dignified jobs, radical action on climate change and more.   The world is rising against inequality and the billionaire class cannot lead this revolution, despite all of their futile talks in Davos. Solutions to this mess are not something we can find Davos, they are elsewhere - in the streets of Delhi and Guadalajara, where people are demanding justice and pounding the alarm for radical change.   Talk like this isn't always welcome in Davos, I know. But I'm serious about fighting inequality, and I headed into the proverbial belly of the beast to do so. I may not get invited back, but they know what they have to do if they want to get serious about fighting inequality. http://bit.ly/38ZClaS   http://www.fightinequality.org/partners http://indepth.oxfam.org.uk/time-to-care/   Jan. 2020   Greta Thunberg addresses the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos:   'One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. I've been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don't worry. It's fine. Trust me, I've done this before and I assure you it doesn't lead to anything.   And for the record, when we children tell you to panic, we're not telling you to go on like before.   We're not telling you to rely on technologies that don't even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will. We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching 'net-zero emissions' or 'carbon neutrality' by cheating and fiddling around with numbers.   We are not telling you to 'offset your emissions' by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate.   Planting trees is good, of course, but it's nowhere near enough of what needs to be done, and it cannot replace real mitigation or rewilding nature.   Let's be clear. We don't need a low-carbon economy. We don't need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop to stay if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5 degrees target. And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus then we must forget about net zero - we need real zero.   Because distant net zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget - which applies for today, not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years, that remaining budget will soon be completely used up.   The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should.   But the fact that we're all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn't seem to bother the people in power even the least.   Any plan or policy of yours that doesn't include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5-degree or well-below-2-degrees commitments of the Paris Agreement.   And again, this is not about right or left. We couldn't care less about your party politics.   From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, as well as the center, have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world. Because that world, in case you haven't noticed, is currently on fire.   You say children shouldn't worry. You say: 'Just leave this to us. We will fix this, we promise we won't let you down. Don't be so pessimistic'.   And then nothing. Silence. Or something worse than silence. Empty words and promises which give the impression that sufficient action is being taken.   All the solutions are obviously not available within today's societies. Nor do we have the time to wait for new technological solutions to become available to start drastically reducing our emissions.   So, of course, the transition isn't going to be easy. It will be hard. And unless we start facing this now together, with all cards on the table, we won't be able to solve this in time.   In the days running up to the World Economic Forum, I joined a group of climate activists who are demanding that you, the world's most powerful and influential business and political leaders, begin to take the action needed.   We demand that at this year's World Economic Forum participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:   Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction. Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies. And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.   We don't want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now.   It may seem like we're asking for a lot. And you will of course say that we are naive. But this is just the very minimum amount of effort that is needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.   So either you do this or you're going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5-degree target. Giving up without even trying.   Well I'm here to tell you that unlike you, my generation will not give up without a fight. The facts are clear, but they're still too uncomfortable for you to address.   You just leave it because you think it's too depressing and people will give up. But people will not give up. You're the ones who are giving up.   Last week I met with coal miners in Poland who lost their jobs because their mine was closed. And even they had not given up. On the contrary, they seem to understand the fact that we need to change more than you do.   I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing the climate chaos you knowingly brought upon them? The 1.5-degree target? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?   Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else'.   http://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ http://www.ipcc.ch/   * Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): Nature's Dangerous Decline Unprecedented; 1,000,000 species threatened with extinction: http://ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment
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