The New Nation - Internet Edition

Ramsey Clark, the former United States Attorney General, played an important role in the history of the American Civil Rights movement and is affiliated with "VoteToImpeach" , an organisation advocating the impeachment of President George W Bush, and joined in 2004, a panel of lawyers which volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Excerpts from an interview with The Hindu during Mr. Clark's recent visit to Kolkata, India:

If one were to argue that the much-bandied phrase in today's political discourse "the international community" is little more than a euphemism for the United States furthering its interests in the new global order, how would you respond?

I think that if those who work towards greater globalisation and domination want the world psychologically to think of itself as a community, it makes their operations easier

The sweep of globalisation, strongly associated with accepting U.S.-style capitalism, has spawned fresh inequities across the world. How do you perceive the phenomena?

It's a terrible threat to civilisation, to humanity: not only a political threat, an obviously economic one, but at the most fundamental human level a threat to distinct cultures - the same technology, the same entertainment, the same fast foods so to speak. Based on economic power, it is pushing itself into different parts of the world. Consumerism and materialism have a power of their own and perhaps the greatest victim is culture that in a way represents the accumulative imagination, the pains, suffering, and history of the people

But there has been the emergence of alternative strategies for development in different parts of the world to counter the one under whose cover the U.S. is alleged to be establishing its hegemony.

I see an enormous increase in awareness to the problems thrown up by the globalisation process. As an optimist I think we can see a slowing down in the rate of globalisation and more importantly an awareness of its true meaning, what it is doing to individual societies.

Globalisation is often perceived to be a mirror image of neo-colonialism. Would you agree?

The difference between the old imperialism and the new globalisation process is illustrated well in India. The country suffered the brutalities of foreign domination, the impoverishment that resulted from it. But until globalisation, if you look at the Indian movie industry for instance, its facial aspects remained Indian. Now, with the intensity of globalisation reaching into every little corner of life, even the comedians, the jokes, the rhythm of the music has started changing.

This really makes consumerism and materialism deadlier than armed occupation.

In the old colonialism you at least knew who your enemy was, you felt the knife on the back. You knew what had to be done if you wanted a better life. In the new consumerism you are captive and unaware. When the prisoner is unaware of his chains then it's hopeless. If you look at globalisation you are completely captive in imagination and desires and this is where the greatest danger lies.

Even as we talk a political debates rages in our country over the signing of the civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the U.S. with the Left pointing out that it will be naïve if the deal were seen in isolation and not part of a greater strategic alliance being forged between the two countries. Would you like to comment?

The Indian people are keenly intelligent and they know what they are doing. And though their motives and those of the U.S. may be entirely different, they may come together for various reasons and globalisation certainly fits into this. If you are a strong ally of the U.S. in the nuclear arms level then you are probably completely open to globalisation and erosion of cultures.

Here we are talking not of a nuclear arms pact but an agreement meant entirely for civilian nuclear cooperation.

The cleverness with which technology can change things can, and will, spread the capacity to develop what we call weapons of mass destruction.

If we talk of opposing any other country to develop nuclear weapons for the sake of peace, whose peace are we referring to - their [the peace of the more powerful countries] or world peace? What I am saying is that if I'm the only one to have nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver than anywhere than I have the peace and none else does. 'I'll wipe you out, you can't play with me.' This is an impermissible defence; a defence too destructive for humanity to be used.

You are widely associated with various campaigns against the U.S. "war of aggression" in Iraq, and had even joined a panel of prominent lawyers in 2004 that volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein in November 2005. Has there been any change in the American position in Iraq over the past few months?

Had the war of aggression prevailed cost free, so to speak; had the resistance within Iraq not been so great and so costly to the U.S. not only in terms of human lives but in world respect and reputation, then perhaps it would be more devastating to world peace. But it has slowed the U.S. down radically. The tragedy is that the U.S. war of aggression was a supreme international crime, a supreme crime against humanity - it is important to recognise the threat of the war of aggression is legally equal to the aggression itself.

The U.S. is freely threatening other countries and this is pretty intimidating - these threats. If you look at the human condition in Iraq it breaks your heart. The devastation at every level of life there is unbearable. The humanitarian crisis is unprecedented. Nearly 2.5 million people are out of their country, one million plus have been killed, 75 per cent are without electricity and drinking water.

And then there is the fear cost. We have never had a situation with such a fear cost - the fear of being killed any moment. That is something the world will have to look at and be united to prevent.

Is the terrorist the U.S. claims to be fighting a Frankenstein of its own creation?

The war on terrorism is really a war on Islam. Most of the politicians are putting it as Islamic terrorists but what they really mean is the threat of Islam. So the idea of the war on Islam is the idea of extermination of a proportion never seen in history at any time.

Why this fear of Islam? The U.S. government, its critics argue, is seized by paranoia. During the Cold War it was the threat of Communism. Now you say it is Islam.

As for Islam it is a faith that has served people well at a time when there seems to be no values, no principles, when economic power, greed and force prevail.

In the U.S. it has touched the lives of African-Americans who have had lives caught in street violence and are fighting for their lives. Suddenly Islam comes to them and they find peace, dignity and a faith they can believe in.

The fear is very real. The underlying value of globalisation is material. In this proliferation of unnecessary necessities, as Mark Twain said, you want to create more things, build more things, sell more things, accumulate more money. And the effect, the deadliest thing that can happen, is the enrichment of the rich and the greater impoverishment of the poor, in every country. Globally, the numbers of the poor are increasing fast, the concentration of wealth is greater. That is an unlivable position.

The U.S. government's need for an enemy, its search for new enemies is really a way of uniting the country, covering its real motives and appealing for patriotism that is called the last refuge of the scoundrel. Patriotism is not the real motive. The real motive is domination and exploitation, and to get away with it you have to have a rallying ground, an enemy. That is where the military comes in. The U.S. spends more on arms than all other countries combined. While it is threatening countries with obliteration if they try to develop a nuclear weapon, it is developing a new generation of its own nuclear weapons, its own new rocketry that can hit any place in minutes.

Yet you have countries in different parts of the world that are closing ranks against the U.S. designs of world dominance.

Domination in itself is hard work. You dominate to exploit. That is how you get your wealth. You hold others down and get your wealth. But you also distract them so that they cannot see the changes, see what you're doing to them. If you look at the new independence in Latin America, it is startling. You have the old Cuban revolution whose survival is a miracle; the country has the highest reading scores, the [highest] maths score in the hemisphere in their grammar schools though under powerful sanctions for decades. Then you look at Venezuela, what is happening in Argentina. You look at Brazil and Chile where a woman who was imprisoned by Pinochet and whose father was murdered by him in 1974 is President. These countries have broken their chains and they are coming up.

I think India too sees the enemy in ways it never has never before. So does China. There is power in this region, given the sizes of these two countries - which the U.S. cannot manipulate and handle very easily. So what we have to do is to spread an understanding of the problem. The imbalances in military power can mean us going in for an awfully bloody time if we do not see it.

But above all we have to come up back to values that are better than simply consumerism - that which means 'I want things, I want better food, a better house, a bigger car'; that which means 'I want to buy my kid every toy in the world.'

(Ramsay Clark, for US Attorney General, speaks on globalisation, Iraq War, Indo-US nuclear deal among others in an interview with the Indian daily Hindu)

Laura García

An international research team will study the climate system of the southeastern Pacific ocean from next month (January).

The programme, VOCALS, aims to better understand El Niño - the complex climate phenomenon that impacts Latin America and other continents in the Southern Hemisphere - and whether it will be affected by climate change.

The periodic reversal of currents in the Pacific Ocean, known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is characterised by variations in the surface temperature of waters in the eastern Pacific, causing floods and droughts in western Latin America.

The research team for the 3-5 year, US$16 million programme includes 150 scientists from nine countries. The major groups are from universities of Chile, Ecuador, France, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Roberto Mechoso, professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California Los Angeles, and chair of the programme, says that obtaining new information is crucial to solve errors in current climate models.

"Is El Niño going to be stronger or weaker if the climate warms up? Our confidence in model predictions of that impact will increase if the models produce a more realistic portrayal of the current climate," says Mechoso.

Groups from the Latin American region contribute their unique knowledge of the local meteorology and oceanography, says Mechoso.

"Other groups provide the expertise and instrumentation to set the problem in a more global domain; all groups win in the exchange of scientific knowledge," he told SciDev.Net.

Rene Garreaud, professor in the department of geophysics at the University of Chile and VOCALS team member, told SciDev.Net that ENSO's effects on annual modifications of temperature and precipitations vary significantly in different areas of Latin America.

The research programme will also try to understand the dynamics of cloud formation and the effects of aerosols, and use that information to improve climate prediction models.

Meanwhile, T. V. Padma writes from New Delhi (India), Scientists have solved the riddle of why some El Niño events cause the Indian monsoon to fail while others do not, which may lead to more accurate forecasts of drought.

The extremes of weather associated with El Niño are caused by the periodic warming of the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Severe droughts in India have always occurred in El Niño years, yet every El Niño does not cause monsoon failure and drought - a mystery that researchers have been struggling to crack.

Accurate monsoon prediction is crucial to India's economy: nearly one-fifth of the country's gross domestic product comes from agriculture. Even moderate crop failures have severe economic and societal impacts.

Research published online by Science today (7 September) shows that it depends on whether the surface of the equatorial Pacific Ocean is warmest in the east, along Latin America, or closer to the centre.

Martin Hoerling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, United States, and his colleagues say India is more prone to drought when the warm Pacific temperatures typical of El Niño extend westwards into the central Pacific Ocean.

The team analysed 23 strong El Niño years and their links to 13 droughts and 10 drought-free years in India, using satellite observations of sea surface temperatures and historical data of rainfall over central India.

Having found that drought was associated with warm water in the central Pacific, they used computer models to mimic the patterns, which confirmed their findings.

The researchers suggest that the "two flavours of El Niño" might affect the Indian monsoon differently through the tropical Walker circulation - an east-west wind over the Pacific.

The scientists say their research does not rule out the possibility that other factors, such as Indian ocean temperatures, also play a role.

And changes in ocean temperatures brought about by human-induced climate change could also affect the intensity of the Indian monsoon, they add.

The ability to predict monsoon rainfall over Asia, and the impact of global warming on this rainfall, is poor.

There has been no improvement in five-day forecasting in India in many years; the India Meteorological Department still uses a method devised in the early twentieth century.

Modern forecasts should be based on measurements of sea surface temperature, soil moisture and snow cover, but there are currently no adequate climate models to do this accurately.

For the sake of farmers and water managers, the research community must develop models that can predict fluctuations in rainfall over different regions of India within seasons, not just between seasons, and also in a changing climate, writes Jagadish Shukla in this Science article.

Such models will influence climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies for all countries affected by the Asian summer monsoon.

Another report says, Andean glaciers are "ultra-sensitive" indicators of climate change, capable of recording variations that occur even within a decade, says a team of Ecuadorian and French researchers.

Bernard Francou, of the French Institute of Research for Development, and colleagues spent eight years documenting the relationship between the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - a periodic warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean and associated changes in air pressure - and the erosion of glaciers in Ecuador.

Their results, published this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research, indicate that there is a tight and quantifiable link between ENSO events and the accelerated melting of the Andean glaciers.

Neil Glasser, of the University of Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, says the findings themselves are unsurprising and confirm a previous 'hunch' held by glaciologists.

More importantly, he says, the researchers' "huge effort" in maintaining an eight-year monitoring programme in a difficult environment suggests that past El Niño events could be precisely read in Andean ice cores.

Since understanding past climate change is essential to predicting future events, this could be an invaluable tool. Currently, data on past El Niño events has come from meteorological measurements and records of sea-surface temperatures. But data recorded this way covers only the past few decades.

The sort of data that could be extracted from ice cores, however, would provide information on events that happened from a century ago up to the present day.

Francou agrees with Glasser on this point, but cautions that this will require more research, as 'reading' the indicators in high-altitude ice cores can be very complex.

In the short term, says Glasser, the melting of the glaciers could be seen as good news for the communities living on the slopes beneath them who rely of melting ice for water supplies. In the long term, however, it means that their water supply will gradually dry up as the glaciers are melting faster than the ice is reforming.

Commenting on the value of Francou's team's measurements, Glasser said they would help predict the future rate of run-off from the glaciers. This could in turn help communities plan their water usage.

(Source: SciDev.Net)

Imelda V. Abano

Countries have agreed a two-year 'roadmap' leading to a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

After two weeks of negotiations at the UN Framework on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) last week (14 December), 187 countries agreed to the strategy for future climate talks. These will culminate with a final agreed protocol at the UNFCCC to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.

"We now have a roadmap, we have an agenda and we have a deadline. But we also have a huge task ahead of us and time to reach agreement is extremely short, so we need to move quickly," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, at the conference.

The roadmap outlines key issues to be negotiated.

Nations agreed that action is necessary to adapt to the negative consequences of climate change, such as droughts and floods.

A sticking point was whether or not the roadmap should call for developed nations to cut carbon emissions to 25-40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The United States had opposed the mention of such a target, on the grounds that they did not want the roadmap to predetermine the outcome of the negotiations on a post-Kyoto framework - a position shared by other countries such as Canada and Japan.

However, they compromised after specific figures were dropped from the final text - it now says developed countries should reduce emissions by at least half by 2050.

"The roadmap that has been agreed is a step toward an agreement that can address climate change risks to our planet," UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon told SciDev.Net.

All nations should begin to address key challenges particularly on adaptation measures, transfer of technology and combating deforestation, Ban said.

Approval for the UN Adaptation Fund (see UN approves climate change adaptation fund) was a key part of the agreement.

Governments also agreed to kick-start a strategic programme to scale up investment for the transfer of both adaptation and mitigation technologies to developing countries.

The programme aims to create a better environment for investment in the sector, such as providing incentives to the private sector for technology transfer. The Global Environment Facility will look to establish this programme with help from the private sector.

The mandate of the Expert Group on Technology Transfer will be extended for a further five years. The Group was asked to pay particular attention to the assessment of gaps and barriers to the use and access of financial resources.

They will also begin working on performance indicators that can be used to regularly monitor and evaluate progress on the development, deployment and transfer of environmentally sound technologies.

Elsewhere in the roadmap parties agreed to develop a work programme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The programme will look into assessments of changes in forest cover and associated greenhouse gas emissions, and methods to estimate, and demonstrate, reductions of emissions from deforestation.

The size limit for small-scale reforestation projects will be doubled to 16 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide per year, to enable more projects to qualify for the UN clean development mechanism (CDM) and allow many more countries to take part.

The possible inclusion of carbon capture and storage as a CDM activity was also discussed for the first time. Parties agreed to formulate a workplan for this - to be taken further in 2008.

They also agreed to extend the mandate of the Least Developed Countries Expert Group, which provides critical advice on the adaptation needs of developing countries.

(Source: SciDev.Net)