Vattenfall
CEO Says UN Climate Change Post Praises Coal Burning, Sachs Blue Wash
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 18 -- The day after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
named an Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, Inner City
Press asked the UN Secretariat's representative Tarik Banuri on what
basis Lars Josefsson, the CEO of notorious Swedish coal burner
Vattenfall AB, had been included. Vattenfall
has stated that it will actually increase its use of fossil fuels in
the years to come, click here.
Banuri first said that Sweden is a
country to be admired for its environmental record, then added that
Josefsson had been appointed in his personal capacity, not as any
statement on this record of the company he heads. But Josefsson
had
already issued said in a statement that "the invitation is also
a recognition of the significance of Vattenfall’s efforts to
advance the energy and climate issue."
So
polluting companies use the UN to blue wash their records, and the UN
does nothing. In fact, UN
envoy Jeffery D. Sachs recently praised Vattenfall at a
corporate-sponsored event that some environmental activists called
turqoise washing.
Vattenfall has already been awarded the Global
Greenwash Award
in
connection with the World Business Summit on Climate Change in
Copenhagen which Ban Ki-moon attended on May 24, just after his
whirlwind "victory tour" of Sri Lanka. Inner City Press,
returning from Sri Lanka, went to the Bella Center where Ban was
speaking to the Summit, but Ban's spokesperson there insisted there
was no way to get UN accredited media inside.
Also
on Ban's new advisory board are representatives of India's Tata,
Norway's StatOilHydro and the Korea Energy Management Corporation.
Inner City Press asked if member Carlos Slim Helu, monopolist and New York Times titan, had attended
the Group's first meeting. Banuri said he had not.
A Vattenfall coal fired plant in Germany - celebrated by UN?
Meanwhile, a group of former Presidents of the UN General Assembly
met in Seoul, on climate change. Not there was the just-past PGA
Kerim, who Inner City Press spotted Wednesday night going in to the
Ban Ki-moon speech in Manhattan which was protested by Tamils. Inner
City Press asked at Thursday's noon briefing
Inner
City Press: this grouping of former Presidents of the General
Assembly, do you know how many, and like how many of them attended? I
hadn’t heard of that group before and I saw [Srgjan] Kerim only
last night at the Ban Ki-moon award and protest. Not at the protest.
Spokesman
Enrique Yeves: To be honest, I am not sure how many of them they
are. But this is not new. They have met several times, and actually
President d’Escoto attended the meeting last year during the
General Assembly with those former Presidents. And he was invited to
go to Seoul to this meeting, and President d’Escoto wanted to
attend, but then when we changed the dates of the summit, it was
impossible for him to attend. So he sent a video message and I think
the full list of participants is on the website.
Inner
City Press: On the website of…? This body has its own…?
Spokesperson:
No, no, on the website. I think they have released just today a
press
release.
The
chairman of this body, Han Seung-soo, was named a UN climate change
envoy by Ban, until he returned to South Korea as prime minister. Now
Ban has named Srgjan Kerim a climate change envoy. One wag quipped
that regardless of one's views, climate change is the last refuge of
a....
* * *
On
Oceans Day, Illegal Fishing Stumps UN FAO, Climate Refugees
Denied Indonesia Island
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, June 8 -- As World Oceans Day was celebrated at the UN in
New York, there was news, some good but mostly bad, about the failure
to include oceans in the current climate change talks, and lack of
welcome for environmental refugees.
Inner City Press asked Ambassador
Hasjim Djalal, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Marine Affairs and
Fisheries of Indonesia, about reports
his country might lease one or
more islands to refugees from global warming, such as from the
Maldives. Video here,
from Minute 42:48.
Hasjim
Djalal, after bragging the Indonesia devoted one of its islands
"south of Singapore" to Vietnam's boat people, said that
now "Indonesians don't want to lose their islands," and so
don't want to rent them. You never know what the refugees will leave,
he said, to countries of reception. Among these he mentioned
Australia which, he said, passes refugees on in turn to Nauru and
Christmas Island.
Indonesia,
of course, recently sent Rohingya prospective refugees from Myanmar
back to Bangladesh. Indonesia's Ambassador told Inner City Press this
is humane and consistent with the Bali protocol. But what about an
island?
Hasjim
Djalal: no more leasing islands, Rohingya not shown
Inner
City Press asked what is being done to stop illegal fishing, for
example off Somalia and Western Sahara. The FAO, it was said, has a
plan of action. There are moves afoot to make countries control what
companies, flying their national flag or not, do out in the ocean.
But the UN is quiet as Morocco and European fish off Western Sahara,
and little
is done of the pillage off of Somalia. So where is the
FAO?
Also
on the panel was professor David Freestone. Inner City Press asked
him if Ban Ki-moon or Yvo de Boer should be more to try to put oceans
on the UNFCCC agenda in Copenhagen. Freestone said that a special
effort should be made. We'll see.
Somalia
Pirates Include Pakistanis and Iranians, Russia Says an International
Court Needed
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, May 29 -- While the campaign of the Contact Group on Piracy
off the Coast of Somalia is portrayed as example of global unity,
there are disagreements about setting up an international court
mechanism to try piracy suspects. After Friday's meeting of the
Contact Group, Inner City Press asked U.S. Acting Assistant
Secretary, Political and Military Affairs Greg Delawie if the U.S.
favors such an international mechanism. No, Mr. Delawie said. Is this
due to the U.S.'s position against the International Criminal Court?
Ironically,
not only Germany and the Netherlands but also Russia favor an
international court, or "mechanism within a national court,"
as a Russian diplomat put it to Inner City Press. He noted that the
U.S. arguments against this are similar to those Russia made against,
for example, the establishment of the so-called Hariri tribunal for
Lebanon. He said that since Kenya, where most trials for now take
place, has an Anglo Saxon system, the U.S. and UK are fine with it,
Russia less so. He said that recently pirates from Pakistan and Iran
have been caught and asked, why turn them over to Kenya?
Pirates? From where? To where?
Somalia's
foreign minister made a pitch for money for his country's courts, and
to develop an official Somali Coast Guard. Inner City Press had asked
Delawie what the group would do about illegal fishing and the
dumping of toxic waste, two roots or rationales for Somali piracy.
Delawie said that things are so dangerous now, he doubts that illegal
fishing persists. The answer seemed insufficient.
Standing
to the side of the stakeout was the UN's envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou
Ould Abdallah, fresh from a press conference in which after Inner
City Press asked about human rights in Somalia, he said the Press is
an accomplice in what Ugandan President Museveni has called a
genocide in motion. As the UN's Olara Otunu might say, Museveni
should know....
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