The world's leading industrialised nations have pledged to write off the debts that Haiti owes them, following a devastating earthquake last month.

Canada's finance minister announced at a summit in Iqaluit, northern Canada, that Group of Seven countries planned to cancel Haiti's bilateral debts.

Jim Flaherty said he would encourage international lenders to do the same.

Some $1.2bn (£800m) of Haiti's debts to countries and international lending bodies has already been cancelled.

"We are committed in the G7 to the forgiveness of debt, in fact all bilateral debt has been forgiven by G7 countries vis-a-vis Haiti," Mr Flaherty said at the end of the two day gathering of finance ministers.

"The debt to multilateral institutions should be forgiven, and we will work with these institutions and other partners to make this happen as soon as possible," he added.

“It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt”

Gordon Brown
UK Prime Minister

BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8502567.stm

The IMF last week agreed to issue US $102 million in new loans for 'emergency assistance' to Haiti, which will bring Haiti's debts to an unmanageable US$1.2 billion. In response to international pressure, IMF managing director says cancelling debts would be considered in the future, but Jubilee campaigners are concerned that by that time, with the spotlight off Haiti, the political momentum for debt relief will have been lost.

To make matters worse, the IMF will continue to force undemocratic conditions on Haiti through the new loans, like increasing electricity costs and freezing pay for public-sector officials. These conditions have nothing to do with addressing transparency and lack of accountability, as the IMF would have people believe.

"Haiti heads for debt crisis as emergency loans pile up after earthquake", January 31, guardian.org.uk

LATEST UPDATES:
Guardian UK: Haiti suffering earthquake is a result of calculated impoverishment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/20/haiti-suffering-earthquake-punitive-relationship

**********************************
We express our deepest sympathy for the people of Haiti in this time of tragedy and suffering. Haiti needs the world to mobilise immediate relief and support - and now is also the time for international creditors, including the IMF and InterAmerican Development Bank, to cancel the financial debts still claimed from Haiti.

All of Haiti's limited resources should be directed at recovery, not repayment.

But last Thursday, the IMF announced a new debt package of $100 Million to help Haiti. This is not the type of 'help' Haiti needs, and will only bury the country further into debt: “Haiti desperately needs money delivered quickly, but the last thing Haiti needs right now is more debt. Loans for disaster relief are totally inappropriate. The international community cannot possibly expect Haiti to pay back a loan for emergency relief in the wake of this disaster,” said Neil Watkins, Executive Director Jubilee USA.

While two-thirds of Haiti's debt ($1.2 billion) was cancelled in June 2009 with the support of the international community, the country still has $641 million in debt on its books. This is because debt relief agreements from the IMF and other creditors only covered debts acquired up until 2004. New loans Haiti has received since then have been adding to its debt. Half of this total of $641 million is owed to the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) and the IMF with the other half owed to other countries including Venezuela and Taiwan. In 2010, Haiti is projected to pay around $10 million to the IMF and IDB - and this is money Haiti simply can't pay now that this tragic earthquake has hit. (Source: Jubilee USA)

On Friday the Washington Post Editorial came out in support of this call: 
“There's more the president can do, including pressing the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions and creditor nations to forgive $641 million in debt owed by Haiti. That would be a modest first step toward what should be another goal of U.S. policy in the medium to long term -- helping the Haitian government of President René Préval, whose own palace was destroyed in the temblor, start to regain its footing.” 15 January, 2010.

Read Jubilee USA’s 2009 Policy Update on Haiti’s debt situation


TAKE ACTION - CALL FOR FOR HAITI'S DEBT TO BE DROPPED

Send the message to Haiti's creditors that we want them to act quickly and cancel the remaining debts. To do this, we're encouraging Jubilee Australia supporters to sign the online petition of the ONE International Campaign - Drop the Haitian Debt - which is supported by our friends at Jubilee USA.

 

Many of us care deeply about the levels of poverty in our world. Prospects for progress against poverty are being limited by a global economic system that excludes the poor. Over the long term, our efforts have to influence the broader economic forces if the poor are to do anything more than struggle against the tide.

In 2009, Jubilee continued to dig to the roots of poverty, challenging the policies and practices that hinder sustainable development in our region. Thank you to our supporters who partnered with us. We couldn't do it without you.

 Year in Review: 2009 Summary Report

An estimated 50% of world trade passes through one of the world's 70 tax havens, costing developing countries an estimated US $160 billion each year, more than the total amount of global aid they received in 2008.

This tax evasion by multinational corporations could be curbed if the G20 governments agreed to put in place mandatory regulations.

Ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers' Meeting held in St Andrews in November 2009, the newly formed Tax Justice Network Australia sent the Treasurer the following letter: Read

Visit our partner Action Aid UK and download their latest report "Accounting for Poverty"
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/102073/tax_change_could_end_hunger.html

Zim warned against debt trap

By Victoria Ruzvidzo

ZIMBABWE, weighed down by a $5,7 billion debt, should not rush into adopting the Highly Indebted Countries Initiative but should instead pursue other strategies that could yield better results.

Africa Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) representative Ms Ingrid Naess-Holm yesterday warned that although the HIPC strategy had its merits in some instances, its side-effects could outweigh its benefits.

Presenting a paper at a media sensitisation workshop on Zimbabwe’s debt organised by the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development yesterday, Ms Naess-Holmes said experiences in other countries had shown that the HIPC route would not necessarily rid a country of its debt but could prove more damaging to the economy.

"Zimbabwe should be careful going into the HIPC path. There are problems all the way (if it adopts this strategy.)

"Zimbabwe should find other solutions before adopting HIPC. In fact this country can have a good case to prove that you should not go the HIPC case to try to get creditors to review debts," she said.

Experience had shown that under HIPC creditors did not cancel enough debt, a situation that left intended beneficiaries in worse debt positions.

"Under HIPC debt can actually increase," she said.

Although, by virtue of its high debt to exports ratio of about 150 percent, Zimbabwe could qualify as an HIPC, measures such as mandatory privatisation of state enterprises, adopting an economic adjustment programme and other such pre-requisites could be more harmful to the economy.

Zimcodd director Dakarayi Matanga also expressed this view: "We need to be careful. HIPC in its current form will give problems for Zimbabwe."

Debate has been raging over the strategies Government can employ to get the country out of debt. Finance Minister Tendai Biti has come up with an External Debt Clearance strategy which includes the HIPC as one of the possible routes to take.

Although this he argues out his case, experts say the options needed to be weighed.

In his study launched at the workshop yesterday entitled the Legal Framework of the Public Loan Contraction and Debt Management system in Zimbabwe, Lawyer Zviko Chadambuka also argues that HIPC is not the way to go.

"HIPC has in fact been viewed as having served as a weak bribe-the promise of minimal cancellation after long delay and damaging SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programmes)-so governments would remain in debt system.

"An example justifying this view is that of Tanzania where less than three months after Tanzania received its HIPC debt relief agreement, the World Bank in its CAS was of the view that as long as Tanzania stays on track with its IMF supported adjustment programme, the World Bank intended to lend the government at least US$790 million over the next three years, with a proposal to increase lending in the third year of the CAS by US$200 million . . . this would increase lending over the period to some US$990 million," read the document.

HIPC was launched in 1996 and by 1999 only five countries had made some "progress" under the initiative.

The paper said the World Bank acknowledged that the programme was failing to meet expectations and had to adopt the Enhanced HIPC strategy.

Zimcodd chairperson Rutendo Hadebe also urged caution.

"Let’s think outside HIPC. There are alternatives outside HIPC and we should look at them.

Lets check who we owe, what is legit and what is odious," she said.

Professor Lloyd Sachikonye from the University of Zimbabwe said Zimbabwe could use alternative sources such as migrant remittances to help salvage the economy.

"Zimbabwe’s burden is very heavy. There is need to explore alternative ways of financing to avoid further heavy debts and dependency on foreign aid," he said.

The workshop, which ends today, also stressed the need for a debt audit first before pursuing strategies to get over it.

Zimbabwe owes the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank among other multilateral and bi-lateral institutions.

Its present debt has constrained efforts to finance social services such as education and health, with statistics showing that debt repayments annually are 40 times more than the funds budgeted for social sectors.

By Naomi Klein - November 11th, 2009
Published in Rolling Stone

One last chance to save the world—for months, that's how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for "that old comic-book sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening the Earth," said Todd Stern, President Obama's chief envoy on climate issues. "It's not a meteor or a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community, to our children and their children will be just as great."

That was back in March. Since then, the endless battle over health care reform has robbed much of the president's momentum on climate change. With Copenhagen now likely to begin before Congress has passed even a weak-ass climate bill co-authored by the coal lobby, U.S. politicians have dropped the superhero metaphors and are scrambling to lower expectations for achieving a serious deal at the climate summit. It's just one meeting, says U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, not "the be-all and end-all."

As faith in government action dwindles, however, climate activists are treating Copenhagen as an opportunity of a different kind. On track to be the largest environmental gathering in history, the summit represents a chance to seize the political terrain back from business-friendly half-measures, such as carbon offsets and emissions trading, and introduce some effective, common-sense proposals— ideas that have less to do with creating complex new markets for pollution and more to do with keeping coal and oil in the ground.

Among the smartest and most promising—not to mention controversial—proposals is "climate debt," the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis. In the world of climate-change activism, this marks a dramatic shift in both tone and content. American environmentalism tends to treat global warming as a force that transcends difference: We all share this fragile blue planet, so we all need to work together to save it. But the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world) and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: "About 75 to 80 percent" of the damages caused by global warming "will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of greenhouse gases."

Climate debt is about who will pick up the bill. The grass-roots movement behind the proposal argues that all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. "What we need is not something we should be begging for but something that is owed to us, because we are dealing with a crisis not of our making," says Lidy Nacpil, one of the coordinators of Jubilee South, an international organization that has staged demonstrations to promote climate reparations. "Climate debt is not a matter of charity."

Sharon Looremeta, an advocate for Maasai tribespeople in Kenya who have lost at least 5 million cattle to drought in recent years, puts it in even sharper terms. "The Maasai community does not drive 4x4s or fly off on holidays in airplanes," she says. "We have not caused climate change, yet we are the ones suffering. This is an injustice and should be stopped right now."

The case for climate debt begins like most discussions of climate change: with the science. Before the Industrial Revolution, the density of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the key cause of global warming—was about 280 parts per million. Today, it has reached 387 ppm—far above safe limits—and it's still rising. Developed countries, which represent less than 20 percent of the world's population, have emitted almost 75 percent of all greenhouse-gas pollution that is now destabilizing the climate. (The U.S. alone, which comprises barely five percent of the global population, contributes 25 percent of all carbon emissions.) And while developing countries like China and India have also begun to spew large amounts of carbon dioxide, the reasoning goes, they are not equally responsible for the cost of the cleanup, because they have contributed only a small fraction of the 200 years of cumulative pollution that has caused the crisis.

In Latin America, left-wing economists have long argued that Western powers owe a vaguely defined "ecological debt" to the continent for centuries of colonial land-grabs and resource extraction. But the emerging argument for climate debt is far more concrete, thanks to a relatively new body of research putting precise figures on who emitted what and when. "What is exciting," says Antonio Hill, senior climate adviser at Oxfam, "is you can really put numbers on it. We can measure it in tons of CO2 and come up with a cost."

Equally important, the idea is supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—ratified by 192 countries, including the United States. The framework not only asserts that "the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries," it clearly states that actions taken to fix the problem should be made "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities."

The reparations movement has brought together a diverse coalition of big international organizations, from Friends of the Earth to the World Council of Churches, that have joined up with climate scientists and political economists, many of them linked to the influential Third World Network, which has been leading the call. Until recently, however, there was no government pushing for climate debt to be included in the Copenhagen agreement. That changed in June, when Angelica Navarro, the chief climate negotiator for Bolivia, took the podium at a U.N. climate negotiation in Bonn, Germany. Only 36 and dressed casually in a black sweater, Navarro looked more like the hippies outside than the bureaucrats and civil servants inside the session. Mixing the latest emissions science with accounts of how melting glaciers were threatening the water supply in two major Bolivian cities, Navarro made the case for why developing countries are owed massive compensation for the climate crisis.

"Millions of people—in small islands, least-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world—are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute," Navarro told the packed room. In addition to facing an increasingly hostile climate, she added, countries like Bolivia cannot fuel economic growth with cheap and dirty energy, as the rich countries did, since that would only add to the climate crisis—yet they cannot afford the heavy upfront costs of switching to renewable energies like wind and solar.

The solution, Navarro argued, is three-fold. Rich countries need to pay the costs associated with adapting to a changing climate, make deep cuts to their own emission levels "to make atmospheric space available" for the developing world, and pay Third World countries to leapfrog over fossil fuels and go straight to cleaner alternatives. "We cannot and will not give up our rightful claim to a fair share of atmospheric space on the promise that, at some future stage, technology will be provided to us," she said.

The speech galvanized activists across the world. In recent months, the governments of Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Paraguay and Malaysia have endorsed the concept of climate debt. More than 240 environmental and development organizations have signed a statement calling for wealthy nations to pay their climate debt, and 49 of the world's least-developed countries will take the demand to Copenhagen as a negotiating bloc.

"If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history," Navarro declared at the end of her talk. "We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce emissions while raising people's quality of life. We have only a decade."

A very expensive decade. The World Bank puts the cost that developing countries face from climate change—everything from crops destroyed by drought and floods to malaria spread by mosquito-infested waters—as high as $100 billion a year. And shifting to renewable energy, according to a team of United Nations researchers, will raise the cost far more: to as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade.

Unlike the recent bank bailouts, however, which simply transferred public wealth to the world's richest financial institutions, the money spent on climate debt would fuel a global environmental transformation essential to saving the entire planet. The most exciting example of what could be accomplished is the ongoing effort to protect Ecuador's Yasuní National Park. This extraordinary swath of Amazonian rainforest, which is home to several indigenous tribes and a surreal number of rare and exotic animals, contains nearly as many species of trees in 2.5 acres as exist in all of North America. The catch is that underneath that riot of life sits an estimated 850 million barrels of crude oil, worth about $7 billion. Burning that oil—and logging the rainforest to get it— would add another 547 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Two years ago, Ecuador's center-left president, Rafael Correa, said something very rare for the leader of an oil-exporting nation: He wanted to leave the oil in the ground. But, he argued, wealthy countries should pay Ecuador—where half the population lives in poverty—not to release that carbon into the atmosphere, as "compensation for the damages caused by the out-of-proportion amount of historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases." He didn't ask for the entire amount; just half. And he committed to spending much of the money to move Ecuador to alternative energy sources like solar and geothermal.

Largely because of the beauty of the Yasuní, the plan has generated widespread international support. Germany has already offered $70 million a year for 13 years, and several other European governments have expressed interest in participating. If Yasuní is saved, it will demonstrate that climate debt isn't just a disguised ploy for more aid—it's a far more credible solution to the climate crisis than the ones we have now. "This initiative needs to succeed," says Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. "I think we can set a model for other countries."

Activists point to a huge range of other green initiatives that would become possible if wealthy countries paid their climate debts. In India, mini power plants that run on biomass and solar power could bring low-carbon electricity to many of the 400 million Indians currently living without a light bulb. In cities from Cairo to Manila, financial support could be given to the armies of impoverished "trash pickers" who save as much as 80 percent of municipal waste in some areas from winding up in garbage dumps and trash incinerators that release planet-warming pollution. And on a much larger scale, coal-fired power plants across the developing world could be converted into more efficient facilities using existing technology, cutting their emissions by more than a third.

But to ensure that climate reparations are real, advocates insist, they must be independent of the current system of international aid. Climate money cannot simply be diverted from existing aid programs, such as primary education or HIV prevention. What's more, the funds must be provided as grants, not loans, since the last thing developing countries need is more debt. Furthermore, the money should not be administered by the usual suspects like the World Bank and USAID, which too often push pet projects based on Western agendas, but must be controlled by the United Nations climate convention, where developing countries would have a direct say in how the money is spent.

Without such guarantees, reparations will be meaningless—and without reparations, the climate talks in Copenhagen will likely collapse. As it stands, the U.S. and other Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations like India and China: We refuse to lower our emissions unless they cut theirs and submit to international monitoring, and they refuse to budge unless wealthy nations cut first and cough up serious funding to help them adapt to climate change and switch to clean energy. "No money, no deal," is how one of South Africa's top environmental officials put it. "If need be," says Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, speaking on behalf of the African Union, "we are prepared to walk out."

In the past, President Obama has recognized the principle on which climate debt rests. "Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead," he acknowledged in his September speech at the United Nations. "We have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these [developing] nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development."

Yet as Copenhagen draws near, the U.S. negotiating position appears to be to pretend that 200 years of over-emissions never happened. Todd Stern, the chief U.S. climate negotiator, has scoffed at a Chinese and African proposal that developed countries pay as much as $400 billion a year in climate financing as "wildly unrealistic" and "untethered to reality." Yet he put no alternative number on the table—unlike the European Union, which has offered to kick in up to $22 billion. U.S. negotiators have even suggested that countries could fund climate debt by holding periodic "pledge parties," making it clear that they see covering the costs of climate change as a matter of whimsy, not duty.

But shunning the high price of climate change carries a cost of its own. U.S. military and intelligence agencies now consider global warming a leading threat to national security. As sea levels rise and droughts spread, competition for food and water will only increase in many of the world's poorest nations. These regions will become "breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords," according to a 2007 study for the Center for Naval Analyses led by Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander. To keep out millions of climate refugees fleeing hunger and conflict, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 predicted that the U.S. and other rich nations would likely decide to "build defensive fortresses around their countries."

Setting aside the morality of building high-tech fortresses to protect ourselves from a crisis we inflicted on the world, those enclaves and resource wars won't come cheap. And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage. "Privately, we already hear the simmering resentment of diplomats whose countries bear the costs of our emissions," Sen. John Kerry observed recently. "I can tell you from my own experience: It is real, and it is prevalent. It's not hard to see how this could crystallize into a virulent, dangerous, public anti-Americanism. That's a threat too. Remember: The very places least responsible for climate change—and least equipped to deal with its impacts—will be among the very worst affected."

That, in a nutshell, is the argument for climate debt. The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life—yet we keep doing it.

From outside our borders, the climate crisis doesn't look anything like the meteors or space invaders that Todd Stern imagined hurtling toward Earth. It looks, instead, like a long and silent war waged by the rich against the poor. And for that, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, the poor will continue to demand their rightful reparations. "This is about the rich world taking responsibility for the damage done," says Ilana Solomon, policy analyst for ActionAid USA, one of the groups recently converted to the cause. "This money belongs to poor communities affected by climate change. It is their compensation."

OPEN LETTER TO MINSTER FOR TRADE, SIMON CREAN

Dear Mr Crean,

As you know, investors and Governments are at the point of signing the biggest business investment in the history of the Pacific region, an LNG pipeline from the Southern Highlands and Western Province of PNG to Port Moresby, and related facilities which will cost around US$15 billion.

It seems the best kept secret about this project is that the Australian Government is considering becoming a stakeholder in the deal. The Export Finance Insurance Corporation (EFIC), the statutory authority that insures and finances Australian exporters, has asked you to lend it hundreds of millions of dollars so it can co-finance the project.

No doubt EFIC and the project’s main sponsors, ExxonMobil, Oil Search, and Santos, have told you that you should support this project because it will bring all manner of benefits to the people of PNG. However we suspect that they may not have told you the whole story, so we have prepared some information to help you make up your mind in the coming weeks.

One: Will the project lead to poverty-reducing growth in PNG?

Unlikely. The LNG project may double the size of PNG’s GDP. But as positive as this may sound, the poor are likely to be excluded from the benefits. In the absence of structural reforms towards better governance and transparency in state economic affairs, this growth will deepen the culture of graft from mineral and petroleum revenues.

For years, the PNG economy has been dominated by this kind of large scale extractive development. Those with strong connections to the economy have benefited. Yet the 85% of Papua New Guineans who live in rural areas and are largely excluded from the formal economy have seen no discernable improvement.

Two: Will the project offer much in terms of domestic employment for PNG?

No. Skills and training for locals will be minimal, as is typical of oil and gas sector projects in developing countries. An estimated 1,500 jobs, only a fifth of total employment generated, will go to locals.

Three: Will the project entrench the culture of corruption in PNG?

Yes. PNG is already one of the most corrupt countries in the world (ranked equal 151st out of 182 countries by Transparency International). The PNG government and landowners have a combined stake of 19% in the project, increased by a shrewd deal negotiated by Arthur Somare (son of the Prime Minister Michael Somare) with the Abu Dhabi government, to secure a loan enabling PNG to buy more equity. Conveniently, oversight of the LNG project is also in the hands of Arthur Somare, who by his effective control of the Independent Public Business Corporation (IPBC) has the ability to direct the dispersal of revenues once they start to flow in to the country.

Four: Is there an international accountability mechanism to improve transparency of revenues and ensure that funds are spent for the public good?

Yes. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a well-known set of international standards designed to increase transparency of resource revenues. There is ample evidence to support the positive impact of EITI, particularly in the benefit to providing civil society with the hard figures they need to keep their government accountable for public spending.

The PNG government has steadfastly refused to sign on to the EITI, meaning that there will be no effective way to track the revenues once they begin to flow.

Your government could make its support of this project conditional upon PNG government signing the EITI. Yet you have not done so.

Five: Is there a risk of the project leading to social unrest and even violence?

Yes. The landowner consultation process has not been handled well. At a benefits sharing agreement meeting held earlier this year, Independent Observers such as Transparency International PNG were kicked out of the meeting. In August protests at Hides saw dissatisfied landowners occupy the petroleum production facility. And just last week a group of angry landowners assaulted an ExxonMobil executive in a hotel lobby in Port Moresby.

Unrest and disputes have plagued the landowner consultation process, and the threat of social conflict is very real. The current developments are reminiscent of those that preceded the Bougainville disaster, where disputes over spoils of the Porgera copper mine and the environmental destruction it caused led to a decade long civil war from 1988.

Six: will this project undermine Australia’s aid and development priorities in PNG?

Yes. Australia's Aid priorities in PNG include both 'promoting good governance' and 'fighting HIV'. There is no doubt that Australian support of the LNG project, in its current form,, will undermine both of these objectives.

If you choose to finance this project as it stands, it will show that the stock price of a couple of Australian mining companies and a few thousand Australian work contracts are more important to you than the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in PNG who live in dire poverty. You will be using our tax dollars to underwrite corruption, environmental destruction, potential civil conflict, and to undermine our own aid program.  We think that Australians should expect more from their Government and their money.

Yours Sincerely,

JUBILEE AUSTRALIA
Jubilee Australia - campaigning since 2001 to expose and challenge the economic policies and practices that entrench people, communities and countries in poverty www.jubileeaustralia.org

Published Guardian UK, 29 September 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/26/g20-reform-pittsburgh

By Mark Weisbrot, Centre for Economic and Policy Research, Washington DC, member of The Global Movement

**************
"The old system of international economic cooperation is over," announced Gordon Brown at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. "The new system, as of today, has begun."

The first part of that statement is partly true. The second is a fantasy.

The G20 is not a system of international economic co-operation, or a board of directors, or a governing council for the global economy, to pick some of the terms that have appeared in the media. It is a forum where the heads of state of 20 economies discuss some important economic issues. It has very little ability to directly implement its decisions.

The institutions that do have economic enforcement capability are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO). These first two are directly controlled by the rich countries, mostly by the US Treasury. The third organisation that actually makes decisions that affect hundreds of millions (or billions) of people, the WTO, is not so completely controlled by a few rich countries as the others are, since it was formed half a century later. Developing countries have a formal veto power in decision-making. However, it is still dominated by the rich countries, and most importantly, its rules are heavily stacked against developing countries and in favour of the rich – and especially corporations from hose rich countries. For example, the WTO's Trips (Trade related aspects of intellectual property rights) is unequivocally designed to help corporate patent holders such as the big pharmaceutical companies.

These facts help put the G20 announcement into context. First, the expansion from the Group of Eight (G8) to the G20 is mostly symbolic. Since the rich countries control the institutions with actual power – in addition to their own enormous international economic, military, and diplomatic influence – the G20 is still mainly the G7 with the other 13 countries sitting in. (I am counting the G8 member Russia with the other middle-income countries. The rich countries have still not allowed Russia to join the WTO.)

Furthermore, the G7 is not even as much of a decision-making body as it was a quarter of a century ago. For example, in 1985 five of the G7 countries (the US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan) agreed on the "Plaza accord" to bring down the value of the dollar. This was accomplished through coordinated intervention by central banks. The dollar lost more than a third of its value within the next two years. Today, the dollar is even more overvalued and as a result we have the large global imbalances that the G20, in its final statement yesterday, pledged to rectify. However, do not expect its members to do anything about it.

The US government does not even have a logically coherent position on the dollar's exchange rate. Treasury secretary Tim Geithner says the US wants a "strong dollar." At the same time, the US government complains that China is keeping its currency undervalued. These two statements are logically contradictory, since an undervalued Chinese currency is the same thing as a "strong dollar". And without a fall in the value of the dollar – not only against China's currency but others as well – we cannot expect global trade imbalances to be corrected. (The US trade deficit has fallen by more than half since this recession started, but the effect will be reversed when the economy recovers.).

A solution to this problem would also require the G7 to accept China as an equal partner, something they do not appear willing to do. China's economy is now the third largest in the world – or second largest, depending on how its currency is converted.

The IMF is the most powerful of the institutions controlled by the US and its rich allies, and it currently has about 50 agreements with low-income and middle-income countries. In the majority of these agreements it has prescribed "pro-cyclical" policies such as budget cuts and monetary tightening that worsen the impact of the world recession. For many years developing countries have demanded a greater voting share in the organisation, but the tiny (1.8%) reallocation in 2006 [PDF] was insignificant. At this week's summit the leaders pledged to reallocate five per cent of the voting shares from over-represented to under-represented countries. It is not clear that this will actually happen. The European governments were reportedly upset at giving up some of their influence. But even if five per cent is shifted, this will not change the balance of power at the IMF. The United States, with its 16.9% share, will be able to veto important decisions that require 85% and, together with allies, will have a majority for almost anything it wants to achieve.

Most of the other issues that the G20 includes in its final communiqué are either inadequate or would have to be implemented at the level of the individual countries. This includes badly-needed financial reform – the rich countries just can't seem to say the words "too big to fail is too big" – and economic stimulus. And for the poor countries, where the recession has pushed tens of millions of people closer to the edge of survival, the G7 countries have yet to offer any significant debt relief. Loans are better than nothing, although even these will offer only a small fraction of the capital inflows that poor countries have lost due to the world recession that was caused by the rich countries. But most of the poor countries have too much debt already, and can't afford to take on more.

Reform at the top of the international economic system is still a long way off.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

For further reading on the G20, we recommend these articles written by our international partners:

• G20 remains vague on social impact measures, still fails to tackle fundamental reform http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-565466
• IMF aid conditions risked deepening financial crisis in some countries, says CEPR study
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/6261365/IMF-aid-conditions-risked-deepening-financial-crisis-in-some-countries-says-CEBR-study.html
  

 

Washington, DC — The G-20 reaffirmed its commitment to pressing uncooperative secrecy jurisdictions to adopt more rigorous reporting standards, tackle banking secrecy, and increase overall transparency in global finance in a communiqué released at the conclusion of today’s summit in Pittsburgh.

“Transparency and accountability in global finance are the cornerstones of a strong and robust world economy,” said Global Financial Integrity (GFI) director Raymond Baker. “The critical next step will be defining the rules of play with respect to improving the standards of information exchange and best practices for financial institutions.”

Today’s announcement contained an ambitious range of initiatives including strengthening financial regulation, clamping down on illicit outflows from developing countries, and improving tax transparency and exchange of information in tax law enforcement.

Language in today’s communiqué closely echoed language in a letter submitted to G-20 delegates on Monday by the Task Force on Financial integrity and Economic Development, as well as language in a briefing paper prepared by Task Force members GFI, Christian Aid, Global Witness, and Tax Justice Network.

From the G-20 Communiqué:

As we increase the flow of capital to developing countries, we also need to prevent its illicit outflow… We ask the FATF to help detect and deter the proceeds of corruption by prioritizing work to strengthen standards on customer due diligence, beneficial ownership and transparency. (paragraph 42)

“Combating illicit outflows from developing countries as part of economic development and poverty alleviation efforts may prove to be the game changer as we move ahead,” said Baker. “GFI estimates that developing countries lose as much as $1 trillion every year in illicit financial outflows.”

On the G-20 language on non-cooperative jurisdictions (paragraph 15) GFI noted the inclusion of money laundering, proceeds of corruption, and terrorist financing as problems to be tackled alongside tax evasion.

“What is needed now are automatic tax information exchange agreements and financial institution protocols which will make it more difficult for the proceeds of corruption, tax evasion, money laundering, and other illicit financial practices to be moved across borders and into secrecy jurisdictions,” said Mr. Baker. “The G-20 has made achieving these critical aims far more likely today with their statement of strong support for tax transparency and exchange of information.”

Task Force members GFI, Christian Aid, Global Witness, and Tax Justice network have prepared a brief with recommendations for the G-20 available at www.financialtaskforce.org.