Aral Sea's Return Revives Withered Villages

“In the cool of one recent evening, after tending to his herd of 19 camels, Puzblay Seytpembetov and four companions pushed his small single-engine boat out onto the placid waters of the Aral Sea to lay fishnets. In the morning, he predicted, he would haul in flapping carp and pikeperch.

It is a daily task that until recently had seemed forever lost to the folly of humankind.The Aral Sea, its sustaining rivers diverted to the irrigation of cotton fields, was for decades on an irrevocable course to death and desert. One of the 20th century's worst ecological disasters consumed more than half the sea's surface area and three-quarters of its volume, creating 13,000 square miles of dried-up wasteland. The shriveling sea bequeathed poisonous sandstorms, chronic health problems, dead fishing grounds and unemployment to this part of southern Kazakhstan.

But now the sea, or at least a rump part of it, is coming back, retracing its destructive retreat and offering villagers such as Seytpembetov nothing less than renewed life. "It's good to be back on the water. I'm happy for that," said the weather-beaten fisherman, who turned to camel herding when the shoreline withdrew. "I'm happy for that. But it's not the sea it used to be. That's the truth."

           
Joop Stoutjesdijk, lead irrigation engineer at the World Bank, offers a similar view: "We have shown that even the worst environmental disaster can be reversed, somewhat. But we need to be realistic. Even if we dream of the whole Aral Sea, it can't come back. There are in fact three seas now. In 1990, the relentless creep of sand cut the Aral into northern and southern parts, the "Lesser" and "Greater" seas. In 2003, with water levels still falling, the southern part split again, into two basins that in satellite photos look like a pair of atrophied lungs.

           
Tastupek and other villages are rejuvenating because an eight mile-long dam now blocks a narrow channel through which water drained freely from the northern sea to the southern. Water that the Syr Darya River delivers into the northern sea is building up, slowly expanding its shores. Completed in 2005, the $86 million Kok-Aral Dam project was financed by the World Bank and the Kazakh government." Washington Post

UN Chief To Open Migration, Development Forum

  “United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon will open an international forum in Brussels Tuesday aimed at improving the way migration and development policies interact.  

           
The forum, with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso as keynote speaker, will involve some 600 officials from more than 140 countries and groups like the African Union and the International Organization for Migration. The informal gathering, to run until Wednesday, will allow policymakers to share ideas regarding migration and development policy, and examine new possibilities for international cooperation and partnerships. …  Discussion Wednesday will focus on temporary labor migration and how it contributes to development, and how to better manage the ‘brain drain’ of highly skilled workers from developing countries.” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

           
In an op-ed published in The Washington Times and The Guardian, Ban writes: “It is commonly said we live in a globalized world. Less well understood is that globalization is taking place in stages. We are in its second stage: the Age of Mobility. … Until now, this flow of people mostly has benefited richer countries and generated worries about brain drain in poorer ones. But our knowledge is growing about how to make the migration equation work for everyone. Yet, rather than looking at the potential developmental gains from migration, governments have been slow to adapt. The result is burgeoning illegal immigration, social tension, discrimination, loss of faith in government and the empowerment of criminal networks. …  

           
Migration can be an enormous force for good. If we follow the evidence and begin a rational, forward-looking conversation about how to better manage our shared interests, we can together help usher in the third stage of globalization - a long-awaited era where more people than ever before begin to share in the world’s prosperity.” [The Washington Times (US) and The Guardian (UK)/Factiva]

           
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that “A senior UN official criticized some European countries on Monday for failing to work together to cope with migration, urging them to tackle it with more spending on aid and education. UN Special Representative for Migration Peter Sutherland also said the US risked undermining global efforts to address migration by snubbing [the] global forum on the issue due to open in Brussels on Tuesday.  

           
Sutherland said countries such as Spain and Malta could not deal alone with the thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa who have headed across the Mediterranean to Europe's southern shores, and that it was a problem for Europe as a whole. …  Europe and the West should spend more on development in poor countries to alleviate the misery that prompts many migrants to leave their homes, while also paying for education and cultural adaptation of migrants taken in by host countries, he said. …” [Reuters/Factiva]     

Introduction Of 'Energy Use Efficiency' Index To Be Proposed

“The Japanese government has decided to propose introducing an ‘energy use efficiency’ index as a new international framework to tackle global warming before next year's Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, government sources said Monday.  

           
Tokyo intends to try to persuade major greenhouse gases emitters such as China, India and the United States to participate in the talks for introducing the index, measuring the proportion of energy consumption to gross domestic product, before the world leaders' meeting next year, the sources said. The sources said the index will be acceptable to China and other emitters, who show strong resistance to setting reduction targets for greenhouse gases emissions, as the more their GDPs grow, the more energy they can consume, such as electricity and fuel, under the new goal.

           
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will present the proposal when he visits India in late August and China in the fall or later. Japanese government officials are also expected to explain it at international conferences on global warming, according to the sources.” [Kyodo News (Japan)/Factiva]

           
Meanwhile, Nikkei Weekly writes that “… If Japan's industrial circles and METI [The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry] are serious about an energy efficiency target, they must present a blueprint on ways to curtail global emissions as well as a new plan to encourage industrialized countries to help developing nations become more environmentally friendly. Japan is advanced in the field of energy saving. The country, however, has not pressed ahead on saving energy with an eye toward mitigating global warming. Instead, it has done so as part of efforts to cut costs given rising energy prices. Therefore, it can boast about high energy efficiency, but it cannot continue to use that as an excuse for not setting an emissions reduction target in the post-Kyoto era.

           
Today, both the Japanese government and the nation's industries are intent on selling the country's energy saving technology overseas. … If Japan wants to benefit financially from the export of such technology, it must set a target tall enough to impress the rest of the world.” [Nikkei Weekly (Japan)/Factiva]

Economy In Gaza Edges Toward Crisis

“In the month since Hamas took over Gaza … the economy of the territory is slipping again toward crisis. With the main commercial crossing into Israel closed since June 12, only essential items of food and medicine are entering Gaza, and what is left of the commercial sector is shutting down.

           
On Monday, the UN agency responsible for caring for the nearly 70 percent of Gazans who are refugees or their descendants announced that it had halted all its building projects in the territory because it had run out of basic construction supplies, like cement. …” [The International Herald Tribune]

           
AFP reports that “… ‘Some $93 million worth of projects are on hold because cement and other building supplies have run out,’ John Ging, the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, said in a statement. The construction projects include schools, community centers, water and sanitation works as well as medical facilities.

           
Some 80 percent of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip rely on UN aid, and 121,000 people are dependent on the income from the construction projects, UNRWA said. ‘The closure of the borders means a loss of over a million days of employment, placing an even larger burden on our humanitarian aid program,’ said Ging. …” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]  

           
AP writes that “… Besides the schools and homes, Ging said, the UN is working on an emergency waste project in northern Gaza - shoring up a huge cesspool complex where a collapse last March killed five people in a stinking wave of sewage. An even larger pool is in danger of collapsing now. That project, Ging said, also has been halted. ‘It's a disaster waiting to happen,’ he said. ‘If that goes the same way as the smaller one, it will be a bigger catastrophe.’ …” [The Associated Press/Factiva]   

           
Reuters adds that “… Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said some concrete was transferred from Israel to Gaza in recent weeks but it was not enough. … Gunness said there was ‘a risk of a public health disaster’ if the facilities UNRWA had been funding were not maintained. …” [Reuters/Factiva]  

EU Finance Ministers Back French Candidate For New IMF Head

“European Union finance ministers backed former French Socialist finance minister Dominique Strauss-Khan on Tuesday as their candidate to run the International Monetary Fund.  

           
‘The Ecofin (council of finance ministers) agrees to support Dominique Strauss-Kahn for IMF director,’ the Portuguese presidency of the EU said. But the ministers also agreed that the job, which customarily goes to a European, should be open to all after Strauss-Kahn's term ends, EU sources said.

           
There is no rule that the head of the IMF must be from Europe. But in practice the role has always gone to a European since the inception of the organization in 1945, while the US nominated the head of the World Bank. …” [Reuters/Factiva]

           
BBC reports that “… Some countries, including Britain, felt that the current round of nominations should be opened to non-Europeans,. …” [The BBC (UK)]

           
FT writes that “… At a board meeting Monday afternoon in Washington, directors from the Middle East and Latin America were set to lead calls for an open global competition for the job. …. …” [The Financial Times (UK)]

           
AP notes that “… Strauss-Kahn, 58, had previously been tipped to challenge unsuccessful French presidential candidate Segolene Royal for the leadership of the Socialist party and turn around the troubled French left. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said the caliber of Strauss-Kahn and his international experience had allowed him swiftly win support from other EU nations. …” [The Associated Press/Factiva]  

Also in this Edition: Commentary: Like Companies, States Must Report; Briefly Noted...

Commentary: Like Companies, States Must Report.  In a commentary published in the FT, founder of the Institute for State Effectiveness, former chief adviser to the Ministry of Finance of Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005 and co-author of the forthcoming book: The Framework: Fixing Failed States, Clare Lockhart writes: “Paul Wolfowitz made fighting corruption the centre-piece of his tenure at the World Bank. Building on James Wolfensohn's famous 1996 speech on the ‘cancer of corruption,’ he made a valiant attempt to tackle collusion and missing funds within World Bank projects. But by failing to look holistically at government financial management systems, he missed a chance. The challenge for his successor Robert Zoellick is to realize the World Bank dream, of a world free of poverty, by making better stewardship of the public purse the norm.

It is an extraordinary and little-discussed fact that in the modern age, the public company is far more accountable to its shareholders than most governments are to their citizens. The demise of WorldCom and Enron shows that auditing standards are fundamental to ensuring that executives are held accountable. … To put publicly owned assets - whether tax revenues, land, licenses or cultural heritage - to work for citizens, they need to be valued and monitored. The World Bank and its partners should turn their focus from corruption within World Bank-funded projects to financial systems as a whole. The mechanism would be simple. States would be required to publish online an annual report setting out their income and expenditure, provide a balance sheet of assets and liabilities and outline which public assets had been sold to whom, at what price and through what process. This would enable global and domestic monitoring by independent auditors and citizens.

To make this a reality, a global agreement should be reached on standards for an accounting system with conventions to include off-budget government expenditure and a range of public assets. Second, an independent international body should be empowered to monitor these accounts. Technology innovations have made tracking these data easier. Last, citizens should be able to monitor the budget. …

This approach would allow the World Bank effectively to tackle corruption in developing countries. It could also reduce countries’ dependency on inefficient, opaque foreign aid. The sooner transparency of governments is demanded by both donors and citizens, the sooner the budget can become the site of policymaking and public discussion. Unless state resources are firmly evaluated and monitored we should not be surprised if, for some time to come, developing countries are subject to Enron-type collapse.” [The Financial Times (UK)]

Briefly Noted… The Sudanese government has missed a key deadline under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to withdraw its troops from the south of the country. Only two-thirds of the northern Sudanese Armed Forces have been redeployed, officials have said. Many fear their continued presence will lead to renewed tensions as the South takes over its own security on Tuesday. [The BBC (UK)]

           
More than a quarter of a million South African metal and engineering workers have downed tools across the country. Trade unions said workers had walked out in a protest over pay and a skills shortage in the country. The indefinite strike is expected to bring production at more than 9,000 companies to a standstill. [The BBC (UK)]

           
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will become the highest-ranking US official to visit the volatile Democratic Republic of Congo in a decade when she travels there next week as part of a Middle East peace and African trade tour. Rice is to meet Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who won the bitterly contested July 2006 election, and other officials on the several-hour visit on her way from a one-day stop in Israel and the Palestinian territories to Ghana for a US-Africa trade forum in Accra. [The Associated Press/Factiva]

           
Brazil has given the initial go-ahead for the construction of two hydro-electric dams to be built on the longest tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira River projects have divided opinion even within government and in recent years have been one of the most environmentally sensitive issues. [The BBC (UK)]

           
The Corporacion Andina de Fomento, an Andean development bank, known as CAF, approved $1.315 billion in funds to support development projects in six Latin American nations. The CAF loans will go to various projects in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Costa Rica, according to a CAF statement. [Dow Jones/Factiva]

           
No sooner was Machu Picchu declared a new wonder of the world on the weekend than did Peruvians worry Monday if its newfound fame could destroy it, writes AFP. The once-lost city of the Inca empire was already a UNESCO World Heritage site, but its inclusion Saturday in a new list of the world's wonder could boost its visitors from 1,800 to as many as 5,000 a day, according to official estimates, prompting archaeologist Luis Lumbreras to publish an article in La Republica daily on Monday. [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

           
Indonesia yesterday filed a $1.54 billion civil lawsuit against Suharto, the former dictator, in a case that could reveal the influence the ailing retired general and his family still wield nine years after his fall. [The Financial Times (UK)]

           
The World Bank has told the Indian government that it expects to maintain lending in fiscal 2008 at similar levels as the previous year.  In 2007, the Bank sanctioned an unprecedented and all-time record high of $3.8 billion for India, a 169 per cent increase over the previous year’s lending of $1.4 billion. The Bank follows a July-June financial year. [Business Standard (India)/Factiva]

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week to discuss security cooperation and humanitarian needs in the Palestinian territories, an Olmert spokeswoman said on Monday. [Reuters/Factiva]

           
Brazil's foreign minister will meet with European negotiators at the end of next week in a last-ditch effort to move stalled global trade talks forward, a presidential spokesman said on Monday. The venue for Foreign Minister Celso Amorim's meeting with European negotiators was not set, and it was not clear whether US officials would participate in the talks, Baumbach said. [Reuters/Factiva]

           
Despite four years of high prices and increasingly dire warnings about climate change, a new report Monday predicted that world oil demand would rise faster than previously expected over the next five years while production slips, threatening a supply crunch. In its report, the International Energy Agency, which advises 26 industrialized countries, said that global oil demand would rise by an average 2.2 percent a year from 2007 to 2012, up from a forecast in February 2007 of 2 percent annually from 2006 to 2011. [The International Herald Tribune]