Daily Archives: March 29, 2021

Alfonso Garcia Mora is IFC Vice President for Asia and Pacific. Victoria Kwakwa is World Bank Vice President for East Asia and Pacific.

The use of plastics is deeply embedded in our daily lives, in everything from grocery bags and cutlery to water bottles and sandwich wrap. But the quest for convenience has gone too far and we are failing to use plastics efficiently, wasting valuable resources and harming the environment.

Plastic overconsumption and mismanagement of plastic waste is a growing menace, causing landfills to overflow, choking rivers, and threatening marine ecosystems. This has a negative impact on sectors that are critical to many economies, including tourism, shipping and fisheries.

Southeast Asia has emerged as a hot spot for plastic pollution because of rapid urbanization and a rising middle class, whose consumption of plastic products and packaging is growing due to their convenience and versatility. But local waste management infrastructure has not kept pace, resulting in large quantities of mismanaged waste. COVID-19 has exacerbated the situation due to increased consumption of masks, sanitizer bottles and online delivery packaging.

In Thailand, the Philippinesand Malaysia, more than 75% of the material value of recyclable plastic is lost -- the equivalent of $6 billion a year when single-use plastic is discarded rather than recovered and recycled, according to a series of landmark studies by the World Bank Group.

With only 18 to 28% of recyclable plastic recovered and recycled in these countries, most plastic packaging waste is not only left to pollute the environment, littering beaches and roadsides, but its value to these economies is also lost. This needs to change. Transforming how we use and manage plastic is imperative and we must help countries shift to a circular economy that seeks to design products that create no waste, or are reused and recycled.

Momentum is building to combat this issue. Countries, corporations, and communities are developing strategies and taking actions to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics. Governments in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia have prepared circular economy road maps to prioritize plastics-related policies and investments in target sectors and locations. Leading global brands and retailers have made voluntary commitments to make their plastic packaging 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.

The public and private sector are joining hands to realign priorities, rethink approaches and change mindsets toward seeing plastic as a valuable resource and business opportunity rather than waste. These include public-private platforms such as the Thailand Public-Private Partnership for Plastic and Waste Management, the Malaysia Sustainable Plastic Alliance and the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability.

But more needs to be done. The World Bank Group studies show models such as reuse and refill are at a nascent stage in these three countries and currently aren't scalable enough to match the magnitude of the growing plastic waste problem. Alternate materials based on renewables rather than fossil fuel-based feedstocks are still a niche market not yet supported by local standards or infrastructure.

Despite the opportunity to make money from plastic recycling, several market failures constrain private sector investment. Moreover, the economics of recycling continues to be challenged by cheaper virgin plastics. Local, small and medium-sized enterprises hard hit by COVID-19 are unable to capitalize on the growing demand for recycled content from global brands.

There is an urgent need to invest in local collection and recycling infrastructure to divert plastic waste away from landfills, open burning, and the marine environment. Often, countries import plastic waste scrap because of its better quality, while exporting recycled plastic to meet overseas demand. Emerging markets like the Philippines are net exporters of plastic waste scrap because they lack the capacity for domestic recycling and better economics for exports. This is where the public and private sectors can step in.

Governments can play a crucial role in developing standards and policies to strengthen demand for recycled plastic, level the playing field for global and domestic companies and help drive a circular economy for plastics. Toward this end, the World Bank Group is promoting "plastic-smart investments" by developing innovative economic instruments, creating incentive mechanisms and identifying investments across major economic sectors that could reduce plastic waste.

Policy options include holding producers and importers of plastic goods responsible for the disposal of plastic waste, and economic instruments, including taxes, to help phase out nonessential plastic items. Policies, standards and guidelines must be harmonized through specific regional actions aligned to national agendas.

To create an enabling environment, it is particularly important to develop and implement recycled plastic content standards for major consumer products. This can help decouple recycled and virgin plastic prices and create local market demand for recycled and upcycled plastic products.

The private sector must be a critical partner in driving solutions to the plastics challenge -- leading material, technology and financing innovations, contributing to education and engagement, and intensifying cleanup efforts. For its part, the International Finance Corporation is developing a framework to help create a new "asset class" of blue loans and bonds to mobilize capital for the nascent market to tackle marine plastic pollution.

To catalyze the transition to a circular economy, the private sector needs to advance eco-friendly alternatives to plastic and innovative business models to support its reuse and recycling. This will help investors align with government interests and create value from used plastic, and most importantly, pave the way for a more sustainable future.

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Plastic waste is a growing menace, and a wasted opportunity - Nikkei Asia

The Tongass National Forest is the largest temperate rainforest in the country. With exceptions, the Clinton-era Roadless Rule restricted road building and industrial activity in around 55% of the national forest. Advocates for its repeal said it posed unnecessary hurdles to development projects, like logging, mining, and renewable energy (Erin McKinstry/KCAW)

The state of Alaska, a former governor, and a host of municipalities, trade groups and businesses have filed to defend the Tongass National Forests exemption from a Clinton-era rule that limits development on federal land.

The Trump administration decided to get rid of the Roadless Rule for the Tongass last year. Shortly afterward, a group of tribes, conservation groups, fishermen and tourism companies sued the federal government, seeking to overturn the decision. They said the decision to lift the rule barring development on more than 9 million acres of the Tongass is based on a flawed environmental analysis and ignores the input of Alaska Native tribes and the public.

But the state and the rest of the coalition looking to defend the exemption for the Tongass said the rulemaking process was proper and the exemption is critical to the states economy.

The Tongass holds great economic opportunity for not only Southeast Alaska, but the state as a whole, Gov. Mike Dunleavy was quoted as saying in a news release. From resuming our timber industry to attracting tourism, this region has the potential to create good-paying jobs and it is my administrations intent to defend our states rights and improve access to public lands.

Robert Venables is executive director of Southeast Conference, an economic development group. He said projects in the Tongass are already held to high standards under state and federal laws and regulations.

What really is the issue, in my mind, is having a conversation of, how does Alaska really access and control and have more of a conversation about how the forest is managed? Because this is very unique, where you have almost 96% of the region in direct federal control, Venables told Alaskas Energy Desk in a phone interview.

He said the Roadless Rule places unnecessary hurdles in front of development, pointing specifically to renewable energy projects. While developers can apply for exemptions to the Roadless Rule and most are granted he said the rule adds to the cost and time required to complete projects. This is not about extraction of resources. This is about every single economic sector meeting having unique needs for the forest. We need a management plan that can reflect that, Venables said.

Roadless Rule supporters disagree. They see increased resource extraction and development as an inevitable consequence of the rule going away in Alaska.

President Joel Jackson from the Organized Village of Kake said hes concerned development could hurt the regions other economic drivers.

Our region, before COVID, was heavily reliant on tourism, and sport fishing, and commercial fishing and subsistence fishing. And it still is. And those areas provide way more jobs and more economic value to Southeast Alaska, Jackson said in a phone interview.

Jackson said its also a threat to Alaska Native tribes way of life, since they harvest food and medicine from the forest and nearby waters.

Ketchikans city and borough have joined the state in defending the exemption. City Mayor Bob Sivertsen said development doesnt have to harm the environment.

Well, there are mitigations for everything we do, Sivertsen said via phone. We have the technology these days to do construction and other things that would lessen the impact on environmental issues, whether weve got to put in fish culverts, silt fences, the design and placement of the roads, all those types of things.

Roadless Rule advocates say logging and other development could accelerate climate change because the Tongass stores vast amounts of carbon.

Other parties defending the exemption include the city of Craig, statewide and Southeast chambers of commerce, electric utilities, shipping companies and resource development advocacy groups.

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State of Alaska, cities, business groups file to defend exemption of Tongass from Roadless Rule - Alaska Public Media News

Three leading climate and human rights nonprofits have asked the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague to pursue rampant land grabbing by the government of Cambodia and its commerce partners as a crime against humanity under the courts jurisdiction.

In an open letter to Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Tuesday, Global Witness, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Climate Counsel said that, since 2002, at least 830,000 Cambodians have been affected, many illegally forced off their land, by the government and various corporations involved in timber and other resource extraction activities.

The Cambodia situation offers a unique opportunity for the ICC to engage with the single greatest threat facing humankindthe climate and environmental emergency, the letter said. In many countries around the world, land grabbing is the harbinger for illegal resource exploitation, persecution of indigenous people, and environmental destruction.

The letter was endorsed by the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries and by over 50 lawyers and civil society organizations.

Fatou promised a decision last month in a speech before the Institute of International and European Affairs. If she takes the case, it would be the first time that the court investigates alleged crimes against humanity that are so directly linked to environmental destruction.The ICC has 123 member nations, but not the United States, and jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

The Cambodian government did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment, but previously denied the allegations in other news reports, saying they are politically motivated.

Land grabs have led to large-scale deforestation and pollution across Cambodia, said Richard J. Rogers, the attorney who first filed the complaint with the ICC in 2014. The case has sat dormant ever since. But Fatou said in a February speech that she would issue a decision on whether to open a formal investigation into the allegations before June.

Advocates see the matter as a test case for whether the court will link instances of environmental destruction, illegal land takings and the illegal exploitation of natural resources to crimes against humanity.

I think this will be a very important case for the ICC prosecution because it would show they are addressing the most pressing issue thats facing mankind, which is the environmental destruction crisis, Rogers said.

Cambodias lush rainforests are home to rare and threatened species like the pangolin, Asian elephants and clouded leopards, and play an important role in the livelihoods and spiritual practices of the more than 20 indigenous groups that live there.

From 2001 to 2018, the Southeast Asian country lost nearly a quarter of its tree cover, an area nearly the size of New Jersey, according to a report by Global Forest Watch that used satellite data from the University of Maryland.

The data shows that deforestation in the country has accelerated significantly since 2002, when senior members of the Cambodian government, its security forces and government-connected business leaders allegedly began a campaign of illegal land grabs from both public and privately owned properties.

After seizing land, the government often granted long-term leases, called economic land concessions, to companies from a variety of countries for agriculture, mining and other development projects. The government has defended the concessions as part of the countrys plan to develop its economy, but the benefits have accrued mainly to the countrys ruling class, according to the complaint.

Although the countrys economy grew at an average rate of 8 percent between 1998 and 2018, its GDP per capita was about $1,600, and access to education and other public services is lacking, the World Bank said.

Theyre treating the country like a personal bank account, said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness, a London-based watchdog organization that has issued reports linking government corruption to deforestation.

Alley said concessions granted in forests are particularly lucrative because grantees make money from selling hardwoods as well as from the subsequent development of the land.

Biodiversity is affected, there are carbon emissions from deforestation itself, and then there are impacts like the usage of large amounts of industrial fertilizers, pesticides and dumping into rivers, he said.

Land grabs have also led to significant human suffering, particularly for the countrys poor and indigenous populations who have been uprooted from their homes with little to no notice and placed in dismal relocation sites.

The complaint highlights over 100 allegations of forced evictions, murders, violence and illegal imprisonment of land activists. Despite making up less than 1.5 percent of Cambodias population, indigenous groups are about 10 times more likely to be victims of land grabbing compared to other Cambodians, it said.

Alex Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spanish activist, has documented the violence and environmental devastation through his organization Mother Nature Cambodia.

He was arrested and deported in 2015 in connection with his advocacy work but continues to operate from outside the country. Last fall, three other Mother Nature Cambodia activists were arrested and charged with incitement. Their crime: reporting on government plans to fill in a portion of Boeung Tamok Lake to build a military base, he said.

Gonzalez-Davidson, who first came to Cambodia as an English teacher in 2001, said he felt compelled to document the toll deforestation and other forms of environmental destruction have taken on local populations after a 2010 visit to the countrys eastern highlands, which is known for its beautiful waterfalls, wildlife and thickly forested hills.

There, he said he met a Pnong woman whose entire community had been forced off their ancestral lands because the forested area where they lived was part of a government land concession. The woman had refused to leave, her hut the only remaining structure left standing, he said. The entire area around her home had been cleared of trees, he said. That isnt just forest, that is where your father, your grandparents, your ancestors are buried.

Much of Cambodias poor population, including subsistence farmers, depend on the countrys natural resources for their subsistence. Forced evictions move them away from their source of income and relocation sites are typically far from areas of economic activity, leaving them few job opportunities, according to the complaint.

The evictees of the An Dong relocation site, according to one observer cited in the complaint, had become ghost people, with no right to vote, no health care, and who suffer from malnutrition and are more prone to illnesses such as dengue fever.

Peoples livelihood has just been decimated. Its not just in the destruction of the environment, which causes so much pain to the local community, so much economic loss, but also so much cultural loss, Gonzalez-Davidson said. Cambodia is a country that has an incredible attachment to nature.

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The countrys prime minister, Hun Sen, and his ruling Cambodian Peoples Party have dominated Cambodias political system for decades, with international observers criticizing national elections as neither free nor fair.

For Alley, of Global Witness, that disqualifies government officials from any claim that exploitation of the countrys natural resources is their sovereign right. This is an argument we meet all over the place, he said. But when those activities are themselves illegal according to the countrys legislation and commitments to various international treaties, theyre on very shaky ground.

Land conflict in Cambodia stretches back to 1975 when the Khmer Rouge regime destroyed all property records in the country during its quest to establish a communist state. As the country has transitioned to a market-based economy, corruption has plagued all branches of government, making it impossible for victims to obtain justice, according to reports by multiple non-government organizations, as well as the U.S. government.

Corruption is the bedrock of the problem. If the government does a corrupt deal with a business person, then the governments loyalty is no longer to its citizens. Its to the people that are paying them, Alley said.

Cambodia voluntarily joined the ICC in 2002. The court, established by treaty that year, exists to prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community, when its member nations are unwilling or unable to pursue them.

Despite the limitation of its jurisdiction to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression, the courts prosecutor said in a 2016 policy paper that it would give particular consideration to prosecuting crimes that are committed by means of, or result in, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land.

As of this month, the court has not acted on its policy declaration, but Rogers says hes hopeful the Cambodia situation will be the first.

This is the best opportunity for the ICC to get involved and to play its role in the climate emergency, he said, calling the case groundbreaking and noting that it could open the door for international criminal law to address environmental destruction.

Legal experts say the case could have major implications for businesses that are knowingly and unknowingly complicit in land grabs, signaling that they have to be much more careful about where they invest and what due diligence checks they do.

The case would also have a profound impact on the victims. It would create massive upheaval, especially in peoples minds in Cambodia, said Gonzalez-Davidson. When Cambodians hear the United Nations or ICC, they think, Finally somebody is helping, somebody is paying attention to our suffering.

Katie Surma is a Roy W. Howard fellow at Inside Climate News focusing on environmental justice. Before joining ICN, she worked at the Chicago Tribune, the Arizona Republic and practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation and international rule of law. Katie has a masters degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State Universitys Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM from ASUs Sandra Day OConnor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband, Jim Crowell.

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Lands Grabs and Other Destructive Environmental Practices in Cambodia Test the International Criminal Court - InsideClimate News

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Over the last year, the Covid-19 pandemic has not only revealed the true depth and scale of structural global inequalities but has also exacerbated a dire need for liquidity across most of the Global South. Countries face stalled economic activity, sharp drops in revenue and increased costs of shoring up domestic economies amidst a rise in unemployment and business closures, while they must also respond to the public health emergency. Fiscal needs are urgent. In response, a wide range of civil society organisations (CSOs), academics and governments started calling for a new issuance of the IMFs Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in March last year. SDRs are an international reserve currency maintained by the IMF that can be exchanged by governments for cash, based on a basket of five currencies (the US dollar, the Euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen and the British pound) (see Background, Special Drawing Rights). Unlike other IMF instruments, SDRs are a non-conditional, non-debt creating resource. It is, in effect, a liquidity booster. Yet, no new allocation was made in 2020 because US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, blocked the initiative, reportedly over geopolitical concerns (see Dispatch Spring 2020).

After a new US administration was voted into office in November, calls for an SDR allocation regained strength. In January at the World Economic Forum, UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres called for SDRs to form part of a worldwide fiscal relief campaign, so that no one is forced to choose between providing basic services for their people or servicing their debts.

Ahead of a Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers meeting in February, more than 200 civil society organisations from around the world called for a $3 trillion allocation of SDRs in an open letter. Because SDRs are allocated across countries according to the IMFs quota formula, which is mostly based on the size and openness of economies, around 60-70 per cent of a new allocation would go to rich countries and large emerging market economies, who largely do not need them. In order for a new allocation to meet the needs of the worlds most vulnerable countries in this period of health, social and economic crises, the overall allocation needs to be significant. A $3 trillion allocation would enable the countries that need it most to boost reserves and stabilise economies, helping to minimise other economic and social losses. The CSO letter stressed that developing countries need liquidity in order to free up funds urgently required for the pandemic response, including gender-responsive public health systems, universal social protection and comprehensive vaccine rollouts (see Observer Spring 2021). The letter also pointed out that SDRs would provide much-needed foreign exchange resources to countries whose capacity to earn them continues to be severely constrained in the short-to-medium term. SDRs do not add to countries debt burdens, promote debt sustainability and do not represent a loss for anyone only a gain. Importantly, they would provide a liquidity injection with economic stimulus benefits worldwide.

After their February meeting, the G20 issued a statement expressing their support for the IMF to formulate a proposal for a new SDR allocation. That means the ball is now in the court of IMF staff, who are expected to propose a figure for a potential SDR allocation during the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in April. While it seems the political reality of the moment dictates that any new allocation made is lower than $680 billion, because anything above that requires the approval of the US Congress which is considered unlikely to materialise, it is essential that the economic analysis underpinning the IMFs proposal be unbiased by such political considerations and be based solely on the needs of the worlds most vulnerable countries.

While this potential new allocation, its size, and how rich countries unused SDRs might be reallocated are crucial discussions perhaps the most consequential in terms of the international financial response to the pandemic it is also critical this opportunity is used to revisit deeper, systemic questions about how our international monetary architecture operates, how it is failing us, and how we got here.

When the SDR was created in 1969, one of its main purposes was to allow rich countries other than the US to reduce their dependence on running a balance-of-payments surplus with the US, which they had to do to accumulate US dollars for foreign exchange reserves under the Bretton Woods System. In part to prevent that system from collapsing, the US agreed to introduce SDRs, but when it collapsed anyway in 1971, the SDR stuck around.

In negotiations that then took place between 1972 and 1974, IMF member states were unable to agree on a new international monetary system in a dedicated committee, known at the time as the Committee of Twenty. As a result, the system that evolved in an ad-hoc fashion instead has been termed to effectively be a non-system, in that it is still based on the US dollar but is open in principle to competition from other reserve currencies. In other words, nation states are free to choose their exchange rate regime, as long as they avoid manipulating their exchange rates a term that has never been clearly defined.

This non-system poses three central challenges and has long been critiqued for lacking an effective multilateral arrangement that averts the distortions created by the global reliance on the US dollar as the reigning reserve currency.

First, the asymmetric adjustment problem was highlighted by Keynes early on. It relates to the strong pressure that deficit countries face to reduce their balance of payment imbalances versus the weak pressure hat surplus countries experience to do so.

This generates a global recessionary effect during crises when global financing circuits dry up. Deficit countries are expected to adjust their ledgers while enduring the fallout of economic crises, while surplus countries are off the hook. This results in a spectre where surplus countries have the opportunity to recover from crises at a much faster pace and in more equitable ways than deficit countries can, as we see in the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Second, an inequity bias is generated by the need for developing countries to self-insure against the volatility in external financing flows through the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. This generates an inequity because reserves are invested in safe industrial countries assets, which creates a perverse reality where developing countries are actually systematically lending to rich countries at low- or zero-interest rates. Developing country reserves, on average, have increased from 5 per cent of GDP in 1990 to almost 30 per cent in 2018.

As developing countries accumulate reserves, global imbalances between surplus and deficit countries are worsened and a deflationary bias is created, in that dormant reserve holdings have a contractionary effect on the world economy. The large sums of financial resources frozen in reserves are essentially foregone development resources, which, if invested in social and economic development needs, could yield higher long-term returns and allow countries to escape their export-led growth dependence.

This precautionary move to self-insure by developing countries contributes to the generation of global imbalances, i.e. the third central problem of the current system: the instability link. Together with the inequity bias, this results in a dangerous combination of inequity and instability baked into the post-war design of the world reserve system.

Meanwhile, reserve accumulation is not a systemic or sustainable solution to prevent financial vulnerability and instability, or the threat of conditional loans from the IMF. Capital outflows, and in particular sudden and volatile exits, could be prevented by capital controls, but the IMF continues to maintain an overly restrictive approach to their use, as confirmed by the Funds Independent Evaluation Office in September last year (see Observer Spring 2021). In the absence of both a normative acceptance of capital controls by international capital and financial markets, and in particular credit rating agencies, as well as the lacuna of a fully adequate global safety net, developing countries are left with little option but to accumulate reserves as a form of self-insurance.

The more general problem with a global reserve system that relies on a national currency, also known as the Triffin dilemma, is that the provision of international liquidity requires that the country supplying the reserve currency run balance-of-payments deficits, which could eventually erode the confidence in that currency. It also implies that the stability of the global reserve system may be inconsistent with the monetary policy objectives of the reserve-issuing country, i.e. that the world economy is effectively hostage to the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve and US Treasury Department.

Over the years, proposals to reform the global reserve system have stressed the need to address the systemic inequalities that characterise the international monetary system. In 2010, after a new issuance of SDRs was made in response to the global financial crisis (GFC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development called for abandoning the dollar as the single major reserve currency and moving to a system that permits the disbursement of international liquidity that could underpin the financing of investment in long-term sustainable development. Such annual, or regular, counter-cyclical issuances of a global reserve currency could serve to create a more stable, equitable and resilient global financial safety net, without an attendant risk of inflation, particularly if they are equivalent to the estimated additional demand for foreign reserves in times of economic crisis and recession. Another salient advantage of using a global reserve currency in such a counter-cyclical manner is that it would, in principle, facilitate the task of preventing excessive currency depreciations for countries in crisis. Over time, different proposals have been made for what the principal global reserve asset itself could look like, from Keynes original Bancor concept to the more recently proposed International Currency Certificates. While originally proposed by some with the intent of becoming the principal global reserve asset, SDRs have in practice been designed as a residual reserve asset instead, with severe limitations to their use. A 2018 IMF report on SDRs revealed that using SDRs for such larger, pro-cyclical issuances was avoided in the 1970s because their unconditional nature began to raise concerns that it could be used by members to avoid necessary policy adjustment.

In addition to those debates on currency, a broad range of proposals have been made on what type of international architecture would be required to govern such a global reserve asset. In his 2009 report to the UN General Assembly in the aftermath of the GFC, former vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, recommended such a new reserve currency system could be established by broadening out existing SDR arrangements and therefore be maintained by the IMF. Critically however, Stiglitz pointed out that this could only work if the long-standing deficiencies in governance of non-representative institutions like the IMF are addressed, which had impaired the ability of these institutions to take adequate actions to prevent and respond to the crisis. The report specifically recommended restoration of the weight of basic votes, which are equally distributed among all countries, and the introduction of double or multiple majority voting at the IMF and electing IMF and Bank leaders under an open, democratic process (see Inside the Institutions, IMF and World Bank decision-making and governance).

Eleven years on, the clock has run out. These critical reforms have not been implemented and the typically slow pace of IMF governance reforms even came to a complete halt in December 2019, as the US blocked the 15th regular review of IMF quotas (see Observer Winter 2019). Just a few months later, this failure in governance reform that continues to provide the US with an effective veto on major decisions on the IMF board, allowed a particularly insular US administration to hold the entire world hostage and block an SDR allocation in the midst of a global pandemic painfully demonstrating the human costs of the failures of our international monetary architecture.

It is therefore high time to consider alternatives. One counterproposal is that of creating a new global reserve currency and a new institution to manage this, such as a Global Reserve Bank. Under such a new agency, an SDR-like allocation methodology could be carried out more equitably, based on a combination of economic needs, size and consideration of global economic trends. Such an arrangement, according to Stiglitz, should be designed to regulate the creation of global liquidity and maintain global macroeconomic stability and make problems related to the creation of excess liquidity by the reserve currency country less likely to occur. On a systemic level, a new global reserve system should put pressure on surplus countries to reduce their contribution to the insufficiency of global aggregate demand and productive financing.

Another method of implementing a reformed reserve system would be to assign regional economic formations (e.g. BRICS, ASEAN, SADC, Mercosur, etc.) to lead the process. Regional mechanisms can be based either on swap arrangements between central banks to exchange an agreed reserve currency or on a pooling of foreign reserves. While governments may hesitate to collectivise their reserves, establishing reserve pools allows for a counter-cyclical use of the funds as well as the issuance of a currency or reserve asset that could be used at the regional or global level.

While the specific contours of the institutional architecture, methodology and governance of a Global Reserve Bank or regional formations may vary in detail, scope and ambition, the point is that reforming the current reserve architecture through counter-cyclical and regular allocations of some type of global reserve currency would create a more equitable and efficient reserve architecture by mitigating the three central challenges described above. By embodying characteristics such as being unconditional, predictable and needs-based, regular global reserve allocations would be akin to a global public good. Deficit countries could concentrate on better financing domestic development priorities rather than protecting themselves through reserves or balancing their payments, while the entire world could benefit from greater autonomy from US monetary policy. Dethroning the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency ultimately represents a decolonial approach, one which creates a more stable, equitable and just international monetary system.

The pandemic has revealed the true depths of structural inequalities between Global North and South, as the North hoards vaccines and enacts generous fiscal stimulus, while many countries in the South spend more public resources repaying private creditors than they do on domestic health and economic resuscitation. The urgency of democratising multilateral economic and financial governance has never been clearer.

by Bhumika Muchhala. Bhumika Muchhala is an advocate, activist, public speaker, researcher and writer on international financial architecture, feminist economics and global economic governance. She has 20 years of experience in global justice policy advocacy organisations. Since 2009, she has been the senior policy researcher on global economic governance at Third World Network where she is engaged with UN processes, as well as G20, IMF and World Bank policies. She is a PhD candidate in political economy and decolonial theory at The New School in New York, and has a Masters of Science in Development Economics from the London School of Economics.

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Tip of the iceberg: How the call for SDRs reveals the urgency for deeper reforms of the global reserve system to address systemic inequalities -...

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following eight years extensive research, Nextek Ltd has launched a global multi-participant project (NEXTLOOPP) to address a missing link in the plastics recycling stream - Polypropylene (PP).

PP accounts for around 20 percent of the worlds plastic.1 Mostly used in pots, tubs, trays and films for food packaging, it is also prevalent in non-food household and personal care products, which complicates recycling the 700,000 tonnes/annum used in the UK alone.2

Currently PP packaging is either going to waste-to-energy, landfill or being down-cycled into low-performance applications, wasting precious resources. Furthermore, the absence of food-grade recycled PP (FGrPP) means that all PP food packaging is currently made from virgin plastics.

Looming plastic packaging taxes have sharpened a focus on including at least 30 percent recycled content in packaging and transforming the way we manage our short-lived materials to minimise and reduce current waste levels.

NEXTLOOPP uses commercially-proven technologies to separate food-grade PP using marker technologies. These include cutting-edge decontamination stages to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the EU and the USA. Now we can finally close the loop on FGrPP.

Major organisations including brand-owners, suppliers, universities and industry associations, through to end-users in the PP supply chain, have joined NEXTLOOPP to produce a world-first; high-quality FGrPP that will be available in the UK by 2022.

Professor Edward Kosior, founder and CEO of Nextek Ltd, explains that creating a circular economy for food-grade PP packaging waste fills the enormous gap in the packaging recycling sector and helps reach Net Zero Carbon targets. It will allow brand owners to meet their recycling targets and significantly reduce the use of virgin plastics from petrochemicals. It will also greatly reduce CO2 emissions and divert waste from landfill and waste-to-energy.

UK-based WRAP has confirmed that The UK Plastics Pact is pleased to support the NEXTLOOPP project in delivering a technology that will achieve food-grade polypropylene. WRAPs Acting Director Insights and Innovation, Claire Shrewsbury, says that finding a way to successfully recycle food-contact polypropylene is a key challenge. Achieving this will enable UK Plastics Pact members to reach the target of an average of 30 percent recycled content across all packaging by 2025. WRAP believes that NEXTLOOPP offers a potential solution to this and we will work closely with the other stakeholders to develop the project further.

Viridors Director of Business Development (Polymers), Luke Burgess, says the companys participation in the food-grade trial is in line with Viridors ongoing commitment to the UK circular economy. Viridor believes that extending its polymers expertise and recycling experience to cross-sector collaboration and innovation is key to ensuring more waste is valued as a resource and returns to the circular economy where it belongs. Reducing our reliance on virgin plastic not only empowers greater circularity, but the continued use of recycled material also offers significant energy savings, contributing to considerable wider environmental benefits for the UK.

Lubna Edwards, Group Sustainability and Marketing Director at Robinson Packaging says: NEXTLOOPP is absolutely aligned with Robinsons goals and those of our customers for closed-loop solutions, as well as governmental circular economy targets. Demand for this high-value recycled material will continue to rise as we shift away from using virgin material. Much of our UK business depends upon PP and this ground-breaking project gives us the opportunity to tap into cutting-edge technology, learn from industry partners and trial the material for sustainable use in our packaging.

Andrew Fisher, Managing Director of leading plastic packaging manufacturer Sharpak Yate, says: As part of the Guillin Group, Sharpak has recyclability in its DNA. NEXTLOOPP is an industry-leading initiative and we are proud to be collaborating with this multi-participant project.

Adam Elman, Group Sustainability Director at Klckner Pentaplast says: Capturing the value of plastics by keeping them within the economy and out of our natural environment is key to meeting the Plastics Pact targets and very much part of our business strategy. Swapping the traditional take-make-waste linear model for a circular system is also one of the many important steps towards significantly reducing our carbon emissions. We are proud to be working in collaboration with NEXTLOOPP on this important project.

As of 23 March 2021, 29 organisations across the PP supply chain have joined NEXTLOOPP. Other multinational companies are soon to join.

About Nextek Ltd

Nextek is a global sustainability consultancy that offers strategic advice to regional and multi-national organisations and recycling companies. Launched in 2004, Nextek researches and develops innovative strategies and processes within the recycling ecosystem from designing recycling plants to developing ground-breaking projects for governments and major organisations. Nextek launched NEXTLOOPP, a two-year multi-participant project, to close the loop on food-grade rPP. This project incorporates unique technological breakthroughs that include innovative sorting and cutting-edge decontamination technology.

http://www.nextek.org

http://www.nextloopp.com

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Nextek Reveals Global Participants in Ground-breaking Project to Tackle Post-consumer Polypropylene Packaging - Business Wire

Although it should go without saying that women have long played an invaluable role in conservation, were going to say it anyway. From those who work in companies, nongovernmental organizations, or government to individuals stepping up on local issues, women have helped to safeguard lands and waters that are vital to the health of our planet, and to the economies and well-being of communities. To mark Women's History Month, The Pew Charitable Trusts celebrates five women who are leading efforts across the U.S. to ensure that our rivers remain clean and free-flowing for future generations.

Courtesy of Julie Nania

Julie Nania is the water program director at High Country Conservation Advocates in Crested Butte, Colorado, where she works to protect the states rivers. One approach is to identify and advocate for rivers that qualify for designation as outstanding natural resource waters, and another is to recommend rivers for protections as part of the forest planning process for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison national forests. She also leads stewardship projects to enhance watershed health and restore riparian habitats and works with municipalities to improve water efficiency and landscape conservation. One can find Nania building community support for river protections, advising local decision-makers, or collecting water quality data in the field with partners. Relationships with rivers are both a personal affair and essential to the survival of our ecosystems, she says. Spending time on rivers offers us an opportunity to grow. Few things can match the experience of a rowdy whitewater run with friends, helping to pick up the pieces if things go awry. And while these experiences are irreplaceable, our landscapes would simply not exist were it not for the life force that rivers provide. Nania has also served on the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District board of directors for the past four years.

Faith Briggs Tracy Nguyen-Chung

Riversare such a part of my understanding of this country, says Faith Briggs, a documentary filmmaker and storyteller who grew up near the Hudson River in New Yorkwhich she notes is the first place I jumped off cliffs and learned to skip rocks. While working on the series Drought at Discovery Communications, she learned about water rights controversies along the Colorado River. It hit home to me then that rivers are our lifeblood. I think the more we understand that, the more we'll know how important it is to keep them clean and support river health. Briggs lives in Portland, Oregon, and works with nonprofits, institutions, and outdoor businesses to increase diversity and create media that represent the world in which we live. Since I've fallen in love with fly fishing, I've experienced rivers from Kamchatka, Russia, to Alaska to eastern Oregon. I've had the joy of working at nonprofits like Soul River that connect people to rivers and help young people from [communities of color] learn about entomology. Briggs is also an ambassador for Brown Folks Fishing, which works to expand access for people of color in fishing and its industry. I've always felt a kinship with rivers based on the place they occupy in the African American literary tradition, she says. I think about 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' by Langston Hughes, which begins, I've known rivers. The more that I have the joy and opportunity to experience rivers, the closer I feel to that part of my heritage."

Courtesy of Liz Hamilton

As executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, an Oregon-based association of businesses , Liz Hamilton has spent the past three decades working to ensure that healthy rivers and the fisheries they sustain will be around for future generations. Recovering salmon and steelhead is about so much more than saving a fish, Hamilton says. Our entire ecosystem, culture, andNorthwest economy is built on the backsof salmon and steelhead, she told the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper in December.If we have any hope of safeguarding our fishing jobs and sustaining them into the future, we need to actand we need to do it now. Hamilton is backing legislation introduced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to safeguard thousands of miles of Oregon rivers as wild and scenic, and she speaks to the need for river protection in an upcoming segment of This American Land, which will air on PBS stations nationwide. Rivers not only provide recreation and food for our table through fishing; they provide nourishment for our souls and unparalleled bonding with close ones, she says. I love teaching my grandchildren to fish, but a close second is helping someone catch their first salmon!

Courtesy of Ashley Nichole Lewis

Born and raised on Washington states Olympic Peninsula, Quinault Indian Nation member Ashley Nichole Lewis spent much of her childhood outdoors, exploring the areas lush rainforests, remote landscapes, and clear, clean rivers such as the Quinault and Queets. Now the owner of Bad Ash Fishing and host of a new show for aspiring anglers, Break Out With Bad Ash, which will air on NBC Sports, she guides clients on those waterways in the pursuit of salmon and steelhead. As she explains on her company website, When you take people outside and they experience how great that time spent is, they become more curious and invested in what happens to our environment. Lewis has been a local leader in the coalition backing legislation by Representative Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) to protect about 126,000 acres of wilderness and hundreds of miles of rivers on the Olympic Peninsula. When that bill cleared the House of Representatives in February, Lewis told the Aberdeen, Washington, newspaper The Daily World: Conservation for me on the Olympic Peninsula means that generations to come can come out here and experience it the way that I experience it and the way my grandpa experienced it when he fished out here, and that forever we always have this."

Courtesy of Axie Navas

AxieNavasis the first director of New Mexicos newly formed Economic Development Departments Outdoor Recreation Division. She comes by this work naturally as a former journalist withOutside magazine and an outdoor recreation enthusiast. Her office is petitioning for an outstanding national resource waters designation for 150 miles of New Mexico rivers, which would protect their water quality in perpetuity. The division is leading this effort for the upper Rio Grande, Rio Hondo, headwaters of the Jemez River, and Rio Guadalupe.Navas office also supports federal efforts to win a wild and scenic designation for the states Gila and San Francisco rivers,citingdata showing that protecting these important waterways will boost the local economy. Rivers are the ecological, cultural, social, and recreational centers of New Mexico, Navas says. We gather on their banks and in their waters to fish, raft, feel wonder, and come together as communities. Their waters flow through our acequias and our biologically rich riparian areas. Sheadds that her love of nature came from spending her childhood outside, skiing, biking, and exploring the Rockies. I am fortunate enough to live within walking distance of the Rio Hondo. My favorite activity isnt a high-adrenaline one: Its listening to the murmur of the water in the early mornings when the birds and the valley are just waking up.

Nicole Cordan oversees river corridor work for The Pew Charitable Trusts U.S. public lands and rivers conservation project.

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Five Women Work to Keep U.S. Rivers Clean and Free-Flowing - The Pew Charitable Trusts

Government has approved the implementation of the Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP).

ETSSP is the Ministrys roadmap for transforming education and supporting Botswanas ambition to graduate from a resource based to a Knowledge Based Economy.

This was said by the Minister of Basic Education, Fidelis Molao in parliament when delivering his speech during the Committee of Supply sitting.

Molao said that With the Covid-19 pandemic depleting resources, these reforms will be more relevant now than ever as Botswana needs to rely on its own knowledge and skills to drive innovation and other sectors of the economy such as manufacturing.

Molao said that through the implementation of the ETSSP, curriculum is being overhauled and other flagship programmes undertaken which include the rollout of Early Childhood Care, School Leadership Training, the development of an Outcome Based Education (OBE) curriculum for senior secondary schools, and the introduction of multiple education pathways for learners to access higher education as well as the introduction of e-learning at all levels.

The senior secondary school curriculum has been reviewed. To date, all the planned 38 subjects for senior secondary level have been developed, checked and quality assured for implementation. The Ministry will implement the new subjects in a phased approach where three phases of implementation are planned with Phase-1 starting in 2021, said Molao.

The Minister further noted that the new subjects to be introduced are; Animal Production; Field Crop Production and Horticulture for Moeng College and Hospitality and Tourism Studies for Maun Senior Secondary School.

Some of the learning facilities have been altered and new facilities are being constructed within the two schools to make a provision for teaching of the new subjects to Form 4 learners, explained the minister.

He added that the Ministry is also developing a new Junior Certificate outcome based curriculum aligned to the new Senior Secondary School Curriculum.

He said that the implementation of outcomebased education curriculum requires the modernizing and digitalising of schools to create an environment that is conducive to learning.

Going forward, the Ministry needs to be facilitated and fully supported by Honourable Members to fast-track expanding access as well as attending to the aged school infrastructure across the country,said Molao

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Govt approves Ministry of Educations transformation Roadmap - The Voice Newspaper Botswana