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Posted 7:49 AM by Mary

Breakthrough in fight against malaria
Steve Connor, Science Editor

The fight against malaria has entered a new phase with an insecticide specifically targeted at older mosquitoes, which scientists believe will be more effective than existing pesticides.

Most malaria infections, which kill about one million people a year, result from humans being bitten by older mosquitoes. Yet existing insecticides kill mosquitoes of all ages and, as a result, the chemicals soon become ineffective because the insects develop pesticide resistance. Killing the younger creatures encourages the development of that resistance.

Researchers have begun the development of slow-acting pesticides that kill mosquitoes only after they have reached a certain age in their lifecycle, when they are most likely to transmit the malaria parasite to human hosts.

"If we killed only older mosquitoes we could control malaria and solve the problem of resistant mosquitoes," said Andrew Read, professor of biology and entomology at Penn State University. "It is one of the great ironies of malaria. Most mosquitoes do not live long enough to transmit the disease. To stop malaria, we need to kill only the old mosquitoes."

Female mosquitoes transmit malaria when they feed on blood, which they need to make their eggs. After they pick up a malarial parasite, it takes between 10 and 14 days, or two to six cycles of egg production, for the parasite to migrate to the insect's salivary glands, from where the malarial parasite can be transmitted.

Labels: Malaria, MDGs

Posted 1:24 PM by Mary

ISTANBUL (AFP) - The World Water Forum, a seven-day arena aimed at addressing the planet's deepening crisis of freshwater, was launched here Monday, drawing record-breaking participation by politicians, specialists, corporate executives and activists.

The forum, held only every three years, will address problems of water scarcity, the risk of conflict as countries squabble over rivers, lakes and aquifers, and how to provide clean water and sanitation to billions.

The world's population, currently more than 6.5 billion, is expected to rise to nine billion by mid-century, placing further massive demands on water supplies that are already under strain.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the number of people living under severe water stress is expected to rise to 3.9 billion by 2030, amounting to nearly half the world's population. Most of these will live in China and South Asia.

That tally does not include the impacts of climate change. Global warming may already be affecting weather patterns, changing the time and place where rain and snow fall, say some experts.

Around 2.5 billion people today do not have access to decent sanitation, defying one of the targets of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

Hydrologists say the crisis is rooted in excessive irrigation, leakage of urban water supplies, pollution of river water and unbridled extraction of water from nearly every type of source.

Labels: MDGs, Water, WWF

Posted 6:46 AM by Mary

EU calls for aid to poor nations - BBC

The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has called for a 'human rescue' package to help poor countries. Speaking at the opening of a high-level UN conference on aid, Mr Barroso said it would be 'obscene' to neglect the human cost of the global slowdown.

The UN Conference on Financing for Development is meeting in Doha, Qatar to track progress on development aid. There are fears that rich countries will cut back on development aid as a result of the looming recession.

Mr Barroso said that climate change, energy security and trade would add to the potential problems facing poor countries as result of the financial crisis.

The World Bank has said that developing countries are facing a 'perfect storm', with the convergence of slowing growth, a withdrawal of private capital, and higher interest rates on their debt. The Bank says that growth in developing countries will fall by two percentage points to 4.5% next year, as the volume of global trade contracts for the first time since 1982.

But aid agencies have criticised the fact that neither the head of the World Bank or the IMF, or many other world leaders from rich countries, have come to the talks.
"The fact that so few world leaders have chosen to travel to Doha is a real cause for concern," said Ariane Arpa of Oxfam

Six years ago, rich countries pledged to double their aid efforts to ensure that the poor countries reach their millennium development goals of halving poverty by 2015.

But UN figures show that the developed countries have only committed $20bn of the $50bn they promised at the G8 summit in 2005, leaving them far short of the $130bn that will be needed if the millennium development goals are to be met.

Labels: Doha, Ffd, MDGs

Posted 7:51 PM by Mary

Annan says financial crisis must not undermine action on hunger
16 Oct 2008 Megan Rowling

DUBLIN, Oct 16 (AlertNet) - Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday the global financial crisis threatened to undermine political will to tackle hunger in poor nations but warned it must not be used as "an excuse for inaction".

"The food crisis of recent months is now compounded by the global financial crisis. While national governments and international lenders scramble to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into failing banks, the developing world goes hungry," he said in a speech at an international conference hosted by aid agency Concern Worldwide to mark World Food Day. "This is simply unacceptable. We must do something to reverse the strain," he said.

While Africa was unlikely to be directly hit by the credit crunch, it would be affected by "a serious economic downturn" and the poor would be the first to suffer, he told reporters. "My position is that the financial crisis is a serious one, and deserves urgent attention and focus, but so is the question of hunger, and millions (are) likely to die. Is that any less urgent?" he said.

Last week, the World Bank predicted that high food and fuel prices would increase the number of malnourished people in the world by 44 million this year to reach a total of 967 million.

Annan said wealthy governments would be told by their voters they should deal with problems at home, such as rising unemployment and shaky banks, and that would make it harder for them to keep to their aid commitments. But he urged leaders to stick to their promises of boosting aid to help poor farmers grow more food, questioning how much of the $12 billion promised at a U.N. food summit in June had actually been delivered...

"We should also use this crisis to come up with effective reforms of the world system, and we need to ensure that the poor will not be short-changed," he argued...

Development economist Jeffrey Sachs, who advises the U.N. secretary general, told reporters he was pessimistic about the future, given the lack of progress even when the food crisis had made headlines earlier this year.

"Structurally there has been no breakthrough in response, taking the world scene as a whole, and there are reasons to believe that on the current business-as-usual trajectory things will get worse...because of rises in population, more climate shocks, more environmental degradation, and lack of ability of the very poor places to respond adequately," he warned.

But Rwanda's state minister for agriculture, Agnes Kalibata, said that if African countries did receive enough support to develop agriculture, both from international donors and their own leaders, they could start to export food rather than relying on aid.

"With the response we've seen to the financial crisis, surely a considered effort like that can bail out Africa," she told the conference. "Given the right kind of help, Africa can be a good trading partner, and then we won't need to beg."

Labels: Food prices, hunger, MDGs

Posted 9:24 AM by Mary

Social injustice 'killing on a grand scale': WHO
28/08/2008 12h55 ©AFP/File - Joel Nito

GENEVA (AFP) - A "toxic combination" of poverty and social injustice is killing people on a grand scale, a World Health Organisation report said Thursday, urging states to fund healthcare to cut inequalities.

The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, a report commissioned by the WHO and chaired by Sir Michael Marmot of University College London, said these health inequalities were avoidable but only if concerted efforts were made by governments and civil society.

"Reducing health inequities is an ethical imperative. Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale," the report said.

Marmot told journalists that a girl born in Zambia can expect to live 43 years, while one born in Japan can expect to live twice as long, to 86 years.

"There is no good biological reason why this should be the case," he said, instead pointing the finger at social factors that give rise to such a gaping disparity.

"These health inequalities are preventable. They arise from the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work and age -- the social determinants of health," he said.

"Taking action to deal with preventable causes of illness means taking social action... a toxic combination of poor social policies, unfair economic arrangements and bad politics is responsible," he added.

Health care must remain within the public sphere and universally available regardless of people's ability to pay, he said.

"The Commission considers health care a common good, not a market commodity," the report said.
A girl born in Zambia has a life expectancy of only 43 years
©AFP/File - Alexander Joe

"The Commission advocates financing the health-care system through general taxation and/or mandatory universal insurance ... the evidence is compellingly in favour of a publicly funded health-care system," it added.

Labels: health, MDGs, WHO

Posted 11:24 AM by Mary

Food, Fuel and Water Crises Converging
Thalif Deen

STOCKHOLM, Aug 22 (IPS) - A spectre is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of a World Bank-affiliated organisation.
"It's the spectre of a food, fuel and water crisis," says Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group.

"I believe we are at a tipping point," he said, because the scarcity of water poses a threat to the food supply just when the agricultural sector is stepping up production in response to riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition.

Speaking at the conclusion of the weeklong Stockholm International Water Conference Friday, Thunell said the growing demand for water is outpacing supply.

The world's current population of over 6.0 billion is expected to rise to about 9.0 billion by 2050, with more than 60 percent living in mega cities.

"Since water consumption goes up where there is development and improved lifestyles, we can expect even greater demands on fresh water," Thunell said.

The most water-intensive sector, agriculture, is expanding and industrialisation and energy production are further driving demand, he added.

The conference, which was attended by over 2,400 water experts and government officials, ended with an ominous warning: that water and sanitation are not far behind the food, energy and climate crises.

Summing up the weeklong proceedings, the Stockholm International Water Institute said that slow progress on sanitation will cause the world to badly fail the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the same time, weak policy, poor management, increasing waste and exploding water demands will push the planet towards the tipping point of a global water crisis.

According to U.N. estimates a little less than one billion people worldwide still don't have access to clean drinking water while over 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation.

The MDGs aim at a 50 percent reduction both in the number of people without drinking water and without basic sanitation. The deadline has been set at 2015. But most of the world's poorer nations are likely to miss the deadline.

Colin Chartres, director general of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis.

"There are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate that water supplies are close to exhaustion in some countries," he said.

He pointed out that current estimates indicate the world will not have enough water to feed itself in 40 years time, "by when the current food crisis may turn into a perpetual crisis."

Chartres said he and his water science colleagues have raised a warning flag that significant investments in both research and development and water infrastructure development are needed, "if dire consequences are to be avoided."

IFC's Thunell said providing clean water and sanitation services are not only business opportunities but also opportunities to improve lives. He said investors see an opportunity in the 450-billion-dollar global water sector, where stocks are performing strongly worldwide.

Private firms also regard water supply as a business risk and are tackling it as an integral part of their risk-management strategy.

"I believe the moment is right," Thunell said. "We can avert a crisis -- as partners, working together."

He said IFC will do its part by investing in companies that pursue opportunities in water conservation and quality, and by fostering public-private partnerships in the water sector.

But Patti Lynn, campaigns director of Corporate Accountability International, has a different take on the role of the private sector.

"The crisis stems from a confluence of problems, but perhaps no contributing factor is more insidious and correctable than the privatisation of the resource," she told IPS. "When people's access to clean drinking water is reliant on the profit interests of a handful of transnationals, all of us pay a premium and because of this many of the world's poor go thirsty."

Asked if the international community will meet the MDGs relating to water and sanitation by 2015, she said: "Not if we don't change immediate course."

For one, she said, the World Bank needs to stop making water privatisation a condition for their loans.

"If the Bank is truly interested in alleviating poverty, its conditions should take a longer view," she said.

Keeping water under local, public and democratic control is the most just way to insure the greatest degree of water access for the greatest number of people, Lynn added.

Labels: MDGs, Water

Posted 5:56 AM by Mary

Q&A: Can Save the MDGs Yet
Interview with Glenys Kinnock, Member of the European Parliament

BRUSSELS, May 14 (IPS) - White banners were draped across public buildings in much of Europe during 2005 as an unlikely coalition of celebrities, church groups and trade unionists took part in the Make Poverty History campaign. The Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries and the European Union responded by promising to double their aid to Africa by 2010 at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Three years later, EU governments are not only failing to keep their promises, the amount of development aid many of them give to the poor has shrunk, according to statistics collated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, a grouping of 30 rich nations). This decline comes at a sensitive mid-way point in efforts to attain the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. These eight objectives, agreed in 2000, contain a series of targets for addressing by 2015 the most extreme forms of hardship known to humanity.

Glenys Kinnock has been one of the most outspoken members of the European Parliament on development issues since she was first elected to the assembly in 1994. She spoke to IPS Brussels correspondent David Cronin.

IPS: Recently published data indicates that development aid is declining. Unless things dramatically improve, do you think the Millennium Development Goals are a lost cause?

GK: No, I don't believe the MDGs are a lost cause. What we need to see now is that the member states of the European Union fulfil the promises they made at Gleneagles. What we have seen last year, of course, is that they inflated their aid levels by including debt relief to Iraq and Nigeria. This year they don't have the opportunity to do that so you've seen that there are some countries that are a major concern: Portugal, especially since they hosted the EU-Africa summit (in December); France had made a very strong commitment when (President Jacques) Chirac was there.

I think we need to name and shame those countries who are not fulfilling what was a strong commitment because we are talking about life and death here. The maternal mortality rates are in some countries getting worse.

These objectives are for 2015. What we would need to see is that by 2010 we would have 75 million more people out of extreme poverty and that would put us on track to meet the halving of poverty objective. What we need to have is a really concrete plan in place before the United Nations meets in September: on education, 25 million more children in school by 2010; four million more children's lives saved between now and 2010; on environment, 75 million more people to have access to water. Those are important benchmarks and timescales. And that's what we need.

I'm not pessimistic. The trends are not so bad that you would say you should despair.

IPS: How much does the current food crisis complicate matters?

GK: Massively. (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown has said that it is going to set back the MDGs agenda by as many as seven years. When you think about education and health, the needs are going to be much greater because people are not having enough food and there will be no money for education. So it will have huge implications, and governments will be put under enormous pressure to try and ensure there is food in their countries.

I was in the Seychelles recently doing some work on tuna fishing. And they are really very anxious about how they are going to manage. In the markets, they were saying that the fish, which is what everybody eats there, has doubled in price.

IPS: How much do you think the Western policy on biofuels is responsible for the food crisis? And do you think the EU should drop its target for increasing the proportion of biofuels used in transport?

GK: I think it (the Western policy) is clearly a flawed policy. When you consider how many acres of land in the U.S. and across Europe will be going to producing crops for biofuels, it is just simply unacceptable. It is grotesque.

I think it was (World Bank President) Robert Zoellick who said: 'as we are thinking about what we are going to put in the tanks of our cars, other people are thinking about what they are going to put in their stomachs'.

IPS: You have been very critical of the Economic Partnership Agreements that the European Commission is negotiating with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) governments. Is there a fundamental incoherence between the EU's development policy with its stated commitment to reducing poverty, and the Union's trade policy?

GK: The whole understanding of the ACP was that they would be negotiating tools for development. The sense has clearly been that that was not the outcome envisaged by the Commission.

When I was the rapporteur (drafter of the European Parliament's position) many years ago on the (EU's) trade and development agreement with South Africa, it was negotiated by officials in DG Development (the Commission's department for development). They grasped what the South Africans were talking about when they were discussing the relationship between trade and development.

With the EPAs, I think there has been a very technocratic approach which has not taken into account those things. I have been singled out (by the Commission) as someone who has misled and misinterpreted. But I would point to the fact that ministers, heads of state, parliaments and civil society across the ACP have voiced serious concerns.

IPS: You referred to the fact that negotiations with ACP countries on trade used to be led by development specialists, whereas now trade officials take the lead in them. Do you think that the Commission has moved backwards and that it is less eager to ensure that trade is compatible with development than it used to be?

GK: I think that people who work in development are seen as impediments to a technocratic process of making trade deals. There are a number of bilateral deals that the Commission is negotiating all over the world.

With regards to the 78 ACP countries, they have the vast majority of the world's least developed countries, small island states, vulnerable states, landlocked countries. What we have seen is a contradiction between understanding the problems that they have and the need for economic development. I'm not against EPAs. I think we have no choice but to negotiate a new way of working.

But the pace of the negotiations has been extremely fast and pressured, which has led to the most acrimonious exchanges I have known in my whole relationship with the ACP.

IPS: The key objectives of EU trade policy such as reducing any barriers that European firms face in doing business abroad have been copied and pasted into the Lisbon treaty. Could this make the incoherence between trade and development worse?

GK: That is clearly a possibility. But while that may be the trade set of objectives, in development we have to have our own set of objectives. Post-Lisbon it should be possible for us to strengthen the powers of a development commissioner.

There is far too much splintering of development work currently. For example, when we talk about election observation, the main responsibility is with Commissioner (Benita) Ferrero-Waldner (who holds the external relations portfolio) but most of the elections are taking place in (Development Commissioner) Louis Michel's ACP countries. I would be very much in favour of pulling together all the development work under one umbrella.

Labels: Development, MDGs

Posted 6:59 AM by Mary

Feature: Pulling Heart Strings for Profit: How the Bottled Water Industry is Fighting the Backlash

Richard Girard, The Polaris Institute, March 13, 2008 - World Water Day 2008 will see a flurry of announcements from bottled water companies who claim to be helping solve the globe’s water crisis. The catch is that these altruistic claims are intimately tied to major advertising campaigns designed to convince the public to buy their products.

Numerous media and industry reports are saying that sales of bottled water are slowing as a result of campaigns targeting the product’s environmental and social impact. In a recent article, Brandweek declared that Pepsi and Coke are facing “evaporating sales growth for bottled water and increased concerns about their products’ impact on the environment.”

Another report, from industry publication Beverage Digest, said that sales and growth of the bottled water industry in 2007 was about half of what it was in 2006. Recently reported annual results from the world’s largest bottled water company Nestlé show a slowdown in growth in its bottled water sector from 2006. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, global sales growth has consistently dropped since 2003.

The slowdown in growth of bottled water sales combined with industry reports and widespread media attention on the negative impacts of bottled water highlight how the global anti-bottled water campaign is having a major impact.

While campaigners may raise a crystal glass (of tap water) to this news, it is important to keep in mind that the industry is not rolling over and going away. People are still buying huge amounts of the stuff and the corporations will be trying their best to keep existing customers and attract new markets in new regions. The question is how will bottled water companies continue to convince people to buy its products.

How will the BW giants fight the backlash?

Marketing trade publication Brandweek predicts that Coke and Pepsi will fight the growing backlash against bottled water with intense ‘ethical’ or ‘responsible’ marketing, understood as tying the purchase of a product to charitable activities. A number of ad campaigns for bottled water already include charitable ties. According to Brandweek, the use of A-list celebrity endorsements of these types of campaigns is likely to increase.

PepsiCo has already started down this path through its relationship with Matt Damon. Earlier this year PepsiCo donated $2.5 million to Damon’s H20 Africa clean water initiative. To compliment Pepsi’s donation, the movie star is endorsing Ethos bottled water (Starbucks’ bottled water brand) which will be launched nationally this spring through PepsiCo and Starbucks’ North American Coffee Partnership joint venture.

The Ethos brand is promoted by claiming to donate 5 cents from every bottle sold to help children around the world gain access to clean water. Part of a slogan from the brand’s upcoming North American ad campaign states “if you choose to drink bottled water, please choose to make a difference.” Until now Ethos water has only been available at Starbucks’ 7,000 North American outlets. This will soon change when PepsiCo’s huge national distribution system moves the brand out to 40,000 merchandisers in North America.

Not to be outdone, according to Brandweek, Coca-Cola North America is getting ready to launch its own ‘socially responsible’ water brand. There is speculation that the company will enlist a movie star to co-brand the new beverage. Coke already uses celebrities to shill its various brands, and it is only matter of time until a public figure endorser steps up to push Coke’s green message.

Coke is no stranger to this type of marketing and has recently been in hot water for pushing one of its water brands by convincing people that its product will help reforest Australia. In a recent ad campaign for its Mt Franklin water brand, customers are encouraged to ‘plant a tree’ by registering the bottle’s barcode on the company’s website. Once registered, the company along with its partner Landcare Australia will plant a tree in the registrant’s name.

Under the arrangement Coca Cola Amatil (30% owned by The Coca-Cola Company) will pay one of Australia’s biggest environmental groups, Landcare, $150,000 to plant 250,000 trees. In return, Coca Cola Amatil places the well known Landcare logo on every bottle of Mt. Franklin Water. One Landcare employee who spoke out against the partnership said that the logo is being used “by a corporate giant who is only interested in greenwashing public opinion and tricking people living in the city into thinking they are doing the correct thing by the environment by purchasing their product.”

Selling green to make green

Which ever way you look at it, this technique known in the marketing world as ‘responsible’ or ‘ethical’ marketing, is just that, marketing. In other words, it is a means to convince people to buy a product, thus, ensuring higher profits with a bonus to the company of greenwashing social and environmental impacts. This tactic is a clever trick because it lends brands a social image and injects a charitable dimension into consumer spending.

The technique is not new and the bottled water industry has used this type of marketing in the past to sell its products. In one example, a Danone ad campaign in Germany for the Volvic brand used the ad slogan ‘1 litre for 10 litres’ accompanied by the UNICEF logo. The goal was to tell consumers that for every litre of Volvic water purchased 10 litres of clean drinking water would be provided for communities in Ethiopia. The campaign was structured around a donation of $250,000 euros from Danone to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). German magazine Der Spiegel called the campaign unclear and revealed that when calculated with monthly sales figures the donation amounted to 0.28 cents per liter sold during the three month campaign.

Danone revived this ad campaign in North America in 2008. This time it has pledged $500,000 to UNICEF and will use the tagline “every litre of Volvic you drink will provide ten litres of clean drinking water to children in Ethiopia.” Danone started this marketing campaign in Germany and has extended it to France, Japan and now the US.

‘Charitable Solution’

Brandweek calls this the industry’s ‘charitable solution’ to a drop in sales. This type of marketing preys on the heart of the consumer by capitalizing on guilt and conscience. Companies employing these types of ad campaigns try to convince the public that they are doing the right thing.

Marketing experts point out that marketing strategies, in general, work best when they enjoy the support of society at large. When companies use agencies like UNICEF to promote their products they hope to earn long-run support by making people feel (including noncustomers) served by the ad campaign.
It is stressed by ad experts that major trends point to consumers wanting and expecting brands to make a commitment to social and environmental change. Marketers know that consumers are beginning to choose brands that claim to be giving something back to society.

To verify this tendency one needs only to quickly browse the websites of the big four global bottled water companies (Coke, Pepsi, Nestlé and Danone) where environmental and sustainability initiatives are boldly highlighted. All four of the big bottled water companies are also clamoring to show the world that they are taking the lead on issues such as water sustainability and climate change. One such example is the UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate (all four companies have signed on), a voluntary initiative designed to enlist corporations to address the water challenge faced by the world today. Under the guise of environmental stewardship, it actually provides a roadmap for increasing corporate control over water governance and management.

Paradox and mis-perceptions

These advertising strategies are slick corporate maneuvering and posturing that expose a glaring paradox. Bottled water, along with the overall operations of the corporations involved, remain central players to the very problems the marketing campaigns claim to be trying to solve. Contributions to green house gas emissions, use of fossil fuels and increasing corporate control of water resources are just a few of the numerous ways the industry contributes to the very things they claim to be helping through what can be called mis-perception marketing.

The corporations hope this strategy will construct a positive image of a corporate brand as a solution to the problem of water scarcity or climate change instead of one of the causes. Their goal is to associate the purchase of a bottled of water with a good deed in order to convince people that their products are beneficial to society while ensuring continued sales growth.

Make no mistake the industry is ultimately concerned about the drop in growth of bottle water and is looking for solutions to bolster sales and respond to the growing, well organized and visible global anti-bottled water campaign.

So remember, look closely this World Water Day at who is behind the glossy well produced advertisements claiming to help protect our global common good. Chances are that the stirring and emotional call to arms for the defence of water is tied to a company looking for a way to brighten its sagging water brands, greenwash its destructive operations and gain more control of its main raw material. All of this comes under the guise of helping the 1 billion people around the world without access to clean water, when it is profit for a much smaller number of shareholders that is the real objective.

Labels: Human Rights, MDGs, Water