Not many people enjoy the existence of poverty. Some think it’s inevitable, others that tackling it is politically impossible. But for those with ambition, an end to poverty is a worthy enough goal.

Naturally the self-congratulation have been in full flow this weekend, as celebrities and world leaders gathered in New York to launch their latest effort to do just that, in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

But something was missing in between the speeches and performances by the likes of Barack Obama, Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, Bill Gates and Meryl Streep. That thing is power. Because unless you understand that the poverty of some flows from the wealth and power of others, efforts to fight poverty will not truly work.

The SDGs consist of 17 objectives which aim to build a better planet – from eradicating hunger to building more sustainable cities. Each objectives contains a number of targets which cover everything from having better public transport to helping artisanal fisherfolk get better access to markets.

The goals do represent the many dimensions of poverty – it isn’t simply about a certain number of dollars a day. While some targets are limited or problematic (“preventing trade restrictions in agriculture” could cover a multitude of sins) others are very good (“encouraging local involvement in water management” and “improving the incomes of small farmers”).

Rooted in an ignorance of global power dynamics

The real problem is that this wish-list comes with no historical background of how we got here, and no political strategy for how we get out. As such it relies on a mixture of more market and more technically competent governments. There’s no sign that the economic model itself is broken – just that it needs some tuning.

Take one obvious gap: trans-national corporations. They aren’t mentioned in the SDGs, yet the power of corporations is fundamental to the staggering levels of inequality which afflict the world, and are at the centre of an economic model quite prepared to burn the planet in its drive for ever more profit. it is impossible to realise the targets of the SDGs without tackling corporate power.

Nor is there any acknowledgment of colonial history, of slavery, of racism, of desperately unfair terms of trade, of structural adjustment policies which flushed dozens of countries’ economies down the drain only 30 years ago.

Far from critiquing the control of the market, the SDGs exhort world leaders to “remove market distortions” and “ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets”. The SDGs’ answer to ‘hunger’ is growing more food – despite the fact that we have more than enough food in the world to feed everyone.

Technology plays a key role in the targets – for instance in the eradication of epidemics of HIV and malaria – but with no sign of how governments will improve the flow of knowledge around the world without breaking the ever more ferocious intellectual property regime that allows corporate giants to monopolise that knowledge.

More foreign investment is encouraged, but without a framework for controlling that investment, how is it supposed to benefit the majority?

in short, power doesn’t exist in the SDGs. The chapter on inequality nowhere mentions that the problem of poverty is inseparable from the problem of super-wealth; or that exploitation and the monopolisation of resources by the few is the cause of poverty.

Since 1974. we have only moved backwards

Of course this lack of analysis isn’t accidental. In the world of fighting poverty, of ‘development’, corporations and the super-rich are no longer problems, but partners.

How on earth will the SDGs be financed, especially since a global tax body has already been vetoed by rich countries three months ago? By big business of course. With a captured public sector unable to fund the SDG promises, big business will happily come in, with state backing, to run healthcare and education, communications and transport, food and water. The market is the answer.

Perhaps it’s unfeasible to think that the UN could advocate such seemingly radical proposals as democratic control of the world’s resources? Actually that doubt shows how far backwards we’ve gone.

Because in the mid-1970s the UN adopted a policy which, while less detailed (mercifully, it fits on a few pages), laid out a far better analysis of the world’s problems, with a clearer set of solutions for moving forward.

it seems incredible now that the New International Economic Order (NIEO) was really UN policy, but it passed the General Assembly in May 1974 and was regarded as much too moderate by many campaigners of the time. The NIEO declared that

“the remaining vestiges of alien and colonial domination, foreign occupation, racial discrimination, apartheid and neo-colonialism in all its forms continue to be among the greatest obstacles to … full emancipation and progress”.

in an era when few people knew what a TNC was, its recommendations included the “regulation and supervision of the activities of transnational corporations”, as well as radical reform of the global trade regime.

The world has changed and the NIEO is not a blueprint for a perfect planet. But it highlights the poverty of ‘development’ thinking, the pinnacle of which is represented by the SDGs. The answer to world poverty can’t be found among the development professional and celebrities in New York.

Rather it will be found among the many thousands of activists, community organisations and social movements who are really confronting power in the world. Let’s join them.

Nick Dearden is director of the Global Justice Now and former director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign.

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now.

Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is producing many more violations of the Geneva Conventions than any of the other recent wars which Western powers have supported in the Arab world  – like Iraq, Syria, Libya and Gaza.

So what is at stake in Yemen that these systematic and criminal violations are met with resounding silence?

For six months there has been a blockade of food and fuel, and management of aid (even that through the UN) as part of war strategy.

There has been bombing of civilian, historical, educational, religious and medical targets, destruction of infrastructure from roads to electricity and water, and use of prohibited weapons.

All of this occurs in a country of over 20 million persons, which has no effective air defences – a country as open to aerial bombardment as Gaza.

Yet as an Israeli Foreign Ministry official has pointed out, the principles of international humanitarian law systematically violated in Yemen are those invoked by UN bodies, governments, the Western media, and civil organisations when they charge Israel with the commission of war crimes in Gaza.

In other words, by its silence and support for Coalition bombing in Yemen, the international community completes the erasure of legal reference in war. That is a big price to pay for success in a conflict seemingly so minor it receives virtually no press coverage.

The official narrative: legitimacy and stability

How is the conflict explained to us? Spokesmen of Western governments state that a Houti militia movement, Ansarallah, took over the capital forcing out the legitimate government.

Thus, as upholders of ‘legitimacy,’ the UN Security Council (minus Russia) judged it vital to reinstate the earlier government, even though the bulk of the Yemeni national army came over to the side of the Ansarallah, itself with a substantial popular base in Sanaa and the north. This is evident.

But rarely are we reminded that a year ago, under UN auspices a political agreement (‘Peace and National Participation‘) was co-signed by the Ansarallah and other Yemeni parties, only for the UN representative to be fired, another appointed, political discussions with the Ansarallah movement terminated, and a military Coalition assembled to reinstate ‘legitimacy’ inside Yemen.

As the Coalition has gone on to destroy not only Yemen but law itself, surely continuing political negotiation would have been a lower price to pay? Why was it not?

Could it really be that some words just should never be uttered? For example, Ansarallah’s slogans call for ‘death to America and Israel.’ That slogans against America and Israel resound in the streets of a capital city, even of a small, poor, peripheral Arab country, doubled by curses on the Saudi monarch since the bombing began, clearly is unacceptable to the powers concerned.

More gratuitous and offensive to this writer is the puerile call for curses on Jews, who so long formed a component of Yemeni society, and so few of whom remain there. But are America and Israel sacred terms that no one should ever decry?

And, slogans aside, the fact remains that Ansarallah is a religio-political movement which, unlike al-Qa’idah or Da’ish, works with secular political parties, including the Yemeni Socialist Party, and time and again negotiates politically, most recently accepting the basic clauses of the UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which the Coalition gives as the basis for its attack to restore ‘legitimacy.’

So what else is at stake that the Coalition has been left to bomb for six months to the sound of world silence?

Is it just money? Obviously Saudi Arabia (with more British airplanes than the British army) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) can buy a lot of media, weapons, and people. Yet the support of the US, France and the UK to the Coalition goes beyond what money can buy, even today. So what else is at stake?

Tentative answers – geopolitics, target practice …

The French, who are facilitating the naval blockade, still have a base in Djibouti. It allows them to continue as players in a global network (Diego Garcia and 1,400 US overseas bases) expanded from the days of the Cold War.

Today, Djibouti’s major function may be not just above, but under, water: to watch the communication cables, which pass between China, Asia and the West that lie on the sea bed. Although all that visitors to Djibouti may see are French army frogmen diving to check the cables, there must be wider coordination with the Israeli submarines patrolling in the Red Sea.

The Coalition is meant to be the first exercise of a GCC ‘rapid deployment force’ advised discreetly by Israeli and American officers. Such coordination in the attack of an Arab country is novel. How has this been marketed?

The rage provoked by the deaths of the invading GCC forces in Mar’ib suggests that Yemen was dreamt of as a training programme for wars modelled on recent Israeli ones – a war to be determined by aerial bombardment, but without the international outrage at war crimes that Israel suffers.

Yemen as a laboratory for new wars? It seems bizarre since, compared to Gaza, Yemen is far larger, intelligence mapping of the population far poorer, and there is still something of a ground army standing. But if one remembers how Yemen has served as a laboratory for US drones, including targeted assassination of a US citizen, perhaps it was so marketed.

Indeed there is something glossy about the way the war was sold to the GCC leaders (GCC minus Oman which refused to participate) even if we, the general public, haven’t seen the brochures. For the Emiratis it was to lead to ‘the City of Light’ (al-Noor Yemen) of booming commerce on the Indian Ocean and open to East Africa but subject to the management choices of Dubai.

And of course, the oil

To the Saudi very much more was promised:

• unified control of the Arabian peninsula’s inhospitable Rub’ al Khali or ‘Empty Quarter’ and its fabled unexploited quantities of oil and gas which the US guarded in the ground so long as the government was Yemeni;
• practice in making and unmaking societies and governments by precision bombing of a population dependent on food imports;
• and a victory so stunning, the Arabian Peninsula becoming effectively theirs, that peace with Israel could soon be publically celebrated.

In early June at a Council on Foreign Relations event, retired Major General Anwar Eshki of Saudi Arabia laid out the package. He was joined at the event by Ambassador Dore Gold of Israel. What Eshki said is not news in Saudi Arabia. But it is not often spoken out aloud, and certainly not reported with any measure of diligence in the West.

He began by setting out the standard Iran-demonising line: “When Iran wanted to reach the Bab al-Mandeb strait after it had penetrated into Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the Kingdom, along with the forces of the alliance, burst in to stop Iran, which has employed the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president, for this mission.

“Thus, the Kingdom and the countries of the alliance embraced [Yemen’s] constitutional legitimacy as well as international legality in accordance with resolution 2216 issued by the United Nations Security Council – and everyone was surprised by this new Saudi policy.”

Then Eshki went on the present his package:

“In the Arabian Peninsula, there is a promising oil field in the Empty Quarter [Rub’al-Khali] that will obligate the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Yemen to cooperate to protect it and its gains. This unity will be modeled – or rather, must be modeled – on the US constitution that united America and granted it its democracy.

“As for the promising Ogaden [oil] field in Ethiopia, it will unite the Horn of Africa under Ethiopia’s leadership. And a bridge shall be built between the African continent and the Arabian Peninsula: The Al-Noor Bridge that shall connect the city of Al-Noor in Djibouti and the city of Al-Noor in Yemen.”

An aside: this is at the base of the Gulf of Suez, leading up to the Suez canal. At this point the Gulf narrows down to about 15 miles, with the convenient island of Perim over on the Yemeni side. A bridge here would have tremendous economic and strategic importance, linking the African continent to the Arabian peninsula in Yemen.

“All this demands a number of things:

1. Achieving peace between Arabs and Israel.
2. Changing the political system in Iran.
3. Unity of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
4. Achieving peace in Yemen and revitalizing the port of Aden because this will rebalance the demographics of employment in the Gulf.
5. Establishing an Arab force with American and European blessing to protect the countries of the Gulf as well as the Arab countries and to safeguard stability.
6. The speedy establishment of the foundations of democracy with Islamic principles in the Arab world.
7. Working toward the creation of a greater Kurdistan in peaceful ways as this will weaken Iranian, Turkish, and Iraqi ambitions and would split up a third of each of these countries in favor of Kurdistan.”

“I hope for success and peace in the Middle East. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you. (Applause.)”

Why is the West so silent about Yemen? Perhaps these seven points provide the elements of an answer.

Martha Mundy is an anthropologist, who worked in North Yemen from 1973 to 1977. Her book, Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Politics in North Yemen (1995), is a contemporary classic. She is now working on the political economy of food in Yemen.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The Volkswagen emissions investigation looks set to be of one of the biggest corporate scandals in recent history – and we’ve seen quite a few.

While most of the focus will be on VW in the coming days and weeks, the real scandal lies elsewhere: with European governments and regulators who turned a blind eye to rule-bending. In some cases they’ve actually helped carmakers avoid environmental restrictions.

Documents leaked to the Guardian reveal just four months ago the UK, France and Germany all lobbied to maintain loopholes from outdated car emissions tests.

Such behaviour isn’t unusual. For decades European car industry regulation has been weak and inconsistent, while car traffic and the resulting air pollution levels have been allowed to increase manifold.

The UK’s air pollution is getting worse

The UK government quietly launched its consultation on air quality earlier this month. This was in response to a supreme court ruling stating the government must take immediate action to cut nitrogen dioxide pollution, which has reached dangerous levels in many of the UK’s big cities.

The only national measure in the proposed plans are for clean air zones, similar to the one already run in London, but responsibility for their implementation has been passed onto local authorities for which no additional money is available.

The document notes that approximately 80% of the NO_x (nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide) emissions are due to transport, with the largest source being diesel vehicles. Air pollution has been linked to coronary artery disease, heart attacks and strokes.

In the consultation it is estimated that the impact of nitrogen dioxide on mortality is equivalent to 23,500 deaths every year in the UK. This figure has been taken, along with earlier estimates of mortality due to particulate matter (29,000), to give 52,500 premature deaths each year due to air pollution.

We can’t simply add up the mortality statistics from the two pollutants due to double counting, but this huge number should nevertheless be taken very seriously. In fact, it should be treated as a national emergency.

In real world conditions, all new diesel cars break the limits

Despite tightened emission standards for diesel vehicles, air pollution measurements in the UK have failed to show improvements.

As such the gap between on-road and test measurements of emissions is not itself new. A number of studies have indicated that new diesel vehicles breach EU standards when tested under real world conditions.

The recent report from campaign group Transport & Environment found that nine out of every ten new diesel vehicles broke EU limits. On average real world NO_x emissions were about seven times higher than permitted levels. Cars from all the major motor manufacturers were in breach of the limits with the worst car producing 22 times than that permitted.

It is evident that the current practice of allowing motor manufacturers to select the bodies to test and check their compliance with emission limits is not fit for purpose and an independent testing authority should be established.

Yet for many years the European car industry has lobbied against tighter environmental regulation, despite the mounting evidence of car transports’ rising negative impact on the climate (carbon emissions) and urban air pollution (NO_x emissions).

In the UK, for example, successive governments have been very eager to support car manufacturers with operations in the country. Just earlier this year the industry celebrated record sales of cars and vans in the UK.

Time for an encompassing sustainable transport strategy

Yet the dark shadows of this one-sided policy now become visible. While the overwhelming focus of the UK’s transport strategy has been on expanding individual car journeys, public transport has become more expensive and worse in terms of quality and reach.

Hopefully something good will come out of the VW scandal. Perhaps the UK and European public will become more aware of the threats of air pollution, not only by diesel engines, but by all car traffic.

We need a sustainable transport strategy and have a real go at tackling air pollution in our biggest cities. With urban centres getting ever bigger and car ownership steadily rising, the problem is not going to go away.

Steffen Böhm is Professor in Management and Sustainability, and Director, Essex Sustainability Institute, University of Essex

Ian Colbeck is Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Essex.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Data released today shows UK local authorities have invested £14 billion of their pension funds into fossil fuels.

This is the first time that the £231 billion investments of all 418 local councils have been broken down and released publicly.

The data ranks local councils by their fossil fuel exposure and reveals both the financial threat to pensions and the climate risks.

“Public investments in fossil fuels are fuelling dangerous climate change, and present a threat to the pensions of 4.6 million public sector workers”, said Danni Paffard of 350.org, which compiled the data.

“There’s a strong ethical and financial case for local councils to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest into infrastructure fit for the 21st century.”

The data and online map released by 350.org, Platform, Community Reinvest and Friends of the Earth ranks councils by their fossil fuel investments, and allows residents to see what their local council has invested into.

According to 350.org, the data “suggests councils are failing to properly manage the financial risks of investments in fossil fuels nor take responsibility for climate action.” The accompanying briefing analysing the data for Local Authority Pensions shows that:

• UK local councils have invested £218 per resident into risky fossil fuels. Greater Manchester invests £483 per resident.
• The largest investments have been made by Manchester (£1.3 billion), Strathclyde (£750m) and West Yorkshire (£670m).
• Over 6% of local government pensions are invested in fossil fuels. Merton (11%), Worcestershire (10.7%) and Camden (9.5%) have especially high exposure.
• Three quarters of direct fossil fuel shareholdings are in only ten companies, headed by BP and Shell.

Get out of fossil fuels, invest in housing and clean energy!

Reinvesting the £14 billion of fossil fuel shares into local infrastructure including renewable energy could enable UK councils to safeguard pensions and generate sustainable returns, says Mika Minio of Platform:

“Instead of wasting £14 billion of public pensions on multinational climate wreckers, we could reinvest into renewables and housing that serve local residents, create jobs and safeguard pensions.”

The sum is sufficient, he points out, to build over 200,000 new homes for social housing, or to place solar panels on 2 million homes, 10,000 schools and 20,000 public buildings – adding about 9GW (billion watts) of electrical capacity – more than doubling the UK’s current solar base of around 7GW.

Not only would such investments provide real benefits to local communities, they could also prove to be much better investments than fossiul fuels, which have had a shaky ride this year due to the ever collapsing oil price, compounded by investor fears of holding ‘unburnable‘ carbon assets.

A recent analysis found that California’s public pension funds, CalPERS & CalSTRS, incurred a combined loss of over $5 billion in the last year alone from their holdings in the top 200 fossil fuel companies. The California pension fund has now joined the divestment movement.

“There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the financial risks associated with climate change will impact investment portfolios”, said Natalie Smith, a lawyer at Client Earth.

“If pension fund trustees fail to properly manage these risks in their investment decision-making process, and there is a consequential decline in value of the pension pots of members, then trustees and investment managers could be sued for breaching their fiduciary duties.”

New local campaigns launching today across the UK

A dozen local campaigns calling for their council to divest from fossil fuels are also launching today, adding to the 18 existing initiatives.

“Local residents and pension-holders won’t be happy that their money is funding climate change”, said Ali Abbas of Friends of the Earth Manchester, launching a campaign today targeting the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, which holds £1.3 billion in fossil fuel shares – £483 for every resident. “Today we’ll be calling on Greater Manchester to stand on the right side of history and divest from fossil fuels.”

Green Party mayoral candidate for London Sian Berry added: “Pensions are all about the future and fossil fuels are an incredibly short-sighted investment all public pensions should avoid. Investing in new green industries would help get London’s economy ready for the long term, creating jobs that benefit local communities and greater resilience at a time when our city is increasingly vulnerable to the changing climate.”

Oxford and Bristol City Councils have already taken a lead in making fossil free commitments, joining 50 cities internationally and larger institutions like the Norwegian Government Pension Fund. There are 389 institutions globally that have committed to divest.

Individual and instutitional divestment pledges now amount to a massive $2.6 trillion, it was announced this week – a 50-fold increase on a year ago. Recent joiners include Leonardo di Caprio and his Foundation, and the city of Newcastle in Australia – home to the world’s biggest coal port.

Campaigns to divest have been boosted by increased awareness of the financial risks to investors of being left owning ‘stranded’ fossil fuel assets, associated with the need to leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves unburnt to prevent catastrophic climate change. The Bank of England and G20 Financial Stability Board are currently investigating the risk to the economy of the ‘Carbon Bubble’.