TPPA affecting health policies?

Martin Khor

Are big companies making use of trade and investment agreements to challenge health policies?  Evidence is building up that they do so, with medicine prices going up and tobacco control measures being suppressed.

This issue came up in Parliament last week when International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapha Mohamed said the government would not allow the Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) to cause the prices of generic medicines to go up.

He added he would defend existing policies on patents and medicines, and if we don’t agree with some of the terms, we can choose not to sign.

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TPPA affecting health policies?

Martin Khor

Are big companies making use of trade and investment agreements to challenge health policies?  Evidence is building up that they do so, with medicine prices going up and tobacco control measures being suppressed.

This issue came up in Parliament last week when International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapha Mohamed said the government would not allow the Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) to cause the prices of generic medicines to go up.

He added he would defend existing policies on patents and medicines, and if we don’t agree with some of the terms, we can choose not to sign.

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Himalayan Blunders

Sunita Narain

The floods in the Himalayas have been ferocious and deadly. Fears are that the final body count could run into several thousands. There is no clear estimate of the number of villages wiped out, property destroyed, roads washed away and hydropower projects damaged in the mountain state of Uttarakhand. The mountains are bleeding and its people have been left battered, bruised and dead.

We know that the Himalayas are the world’s youngest mountain range, prone to landslide and flash floods. But what we do not easily comprehend is that two factors have made the already vulnerable region more hazardous. One, climate change-related extreme weather events; Indian monsoon has become more intense. Studies show extreme rain events are becoming more frequent as compared to moderate rain events. Rainfall is also becoming variable and unseasonal. This is what happened in Uttarakhand on that fateful June 16. It rained without a break; some 200 mm came down within hours at a few places like Kedarnath. It brought down the mighty Himalayas. Rain was also unseasonal. June is still not considered the beginning of the monsoon season, so pilgrims and tourists thronging the region were caught unawares.

What really compounded the disaster—made it truly man-made—is the scale of development intervention in the past decade or so. This Himalayan region has seen unchecked construction activity, illegal and legal mining, unscientific road building and, of course, hydropower projects built next to each other. In Kedarnath large-scale construction has been done on the land evacuated by glacier in the past few years. It is small wonder that the water, moraine and stones came crashing down and took all with it. Many human lives were lost that morning and families shattered. This is the deadly and painful cost of environmental mismanagement.

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Lessons From Brazil

Alejandro Nadal

Managing neoliberalism is an uncomfortable proposition, especially when you are a centre left government. The rhetoric from the government palace insists in painting a pretty picture of social progress in a context of economic development. But the truth is somewhat different: the constraints of the neoliberal policy package conspire to cancel the successes that may be attained in the realm of equity or growth. The fact is that neoliberalism is not made for development.

During the past decade a new myth was born concerning Brazil’s economic performance. Its growth rate was above Latin America’s mean rate (2.2 per cent) and its exports allowed for a significant surplus. Besides, the increase in social expenditures resulted in a significant reduction in poverty and hunger. What possibly could go wrong?

The angry demonstrations that spread throughout Brazil’s cities a few days ago were triggered by several factors. They range from the bad quality of public services in transportation, health and education, to widespread corruption and the lavish expenditures in preparation for the World Cup. Violent repression fuelled the vigorous protests against a political elite more preoccupied with preserving their well-paid jobs than anything else. Some analysts have advanced the hypothesis that various conservative forces in Brazil were behind the wave of discontent with an eye on the 2014 elections. That may very well be true and the drop in popularity of Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, is a bad sign in this context. She has tried to recover the initiative by announcing a plan for “political reform” that would lead to greater democracy, transparency and better public services. It is too soon to conclude whether this move will be successful or not. In any case, events in Brazil force a more rigorous analysis of the structure and performance of the economy.

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Bringing the Struggle for Water to its Source

Robin Broad

Asunción Mita, Jutiapa, Guatemala: I am here as part of an international delegation — representing 22 organizations plus individuals such as myself, from 12 countries – that has come to support El Salvador’s right to stop environmentally-destructive gold mining. Half of the delegation has traveled over the border into Guatemala because the giant Lempa River that supplies most of El Salvador’s fresh water begins in the Guatemala hills where one of Canada’s largest mining firms is trying to mine gold.  Environmental destruction from this mine would therefore hurt not only Guatemalans, but also millions of Salvadorans who depend on the river’s water as it winds into the Pacific Ocean a nation away.

Our delegation is the result of an almost decade-long struggle of Salvadorans to protect their communities from the ravages of commercial gold mining.  That we are in Guatemala is a reminder that environmental havoc does not respect national boundaries — and that the rights of Salvadorans are interconnected with the rights of Guatemalans.

As gold and other mineral prices skyrocketed over the past decade, Canadian, US and Australian gold-mining firms have sought out veins of gold that were unprofitable when prices were low. Quite attractive is a gold deposit belt, first discovered about a century ago, which traverses the middle of Central America, including El Salvador’s northern provinces and this particular part of Guatemala.

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Limits to Growth – of What?

James K. Boyce

Average national income is a notoriously imperfect measure of the average person’s well-being. The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – with clean-up and damage costs of $90 billion – added about $300 to the average American’s “income.” But it added nothing to our well-being. The world’s most expensive prison system, costing almost $40 billion per year, adds another $125 per person. This doesn’t make us better-off than people living in countries that don’t incarcerate one in every 100 adults.

Of course, national income includes many good things, too. Growing food and building homes add to national income. So does public spending on education and health care. Unlike oil spills and jails, these really do add to our well-being.

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Solar energy not war

Sunita Narain

If you know that a sector has arrived when it makes for trade wars between countries, then solar energy clearly has. Last year, the US imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese imports of solar panels; now the EU has proposed the same. The Chinese have in turn threatened that they will take action against European exports of poly-silicon, the material used for manufacturing solar panels. In February this year, the US filed a case against India at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for “favouring sourcing of panels from domestic manufacturers”. Earlier this month, Canada lost a similar case filed against it at WTO for its support to domestic manufacturers in procurement of solar panels. So, what you thought was all good and nice has suddenly become the biggest bugbear in international trade relations. It tells you that this sector is growing, it is lucrative and it makes for fierce trade politics and competitiveness.

But this is only part of the story. The big issue underlying these “wars” is the role of solar energy—a new source of power to lead the world to a low-carbon future and thus, away from the looming climate crisis. It has big objectives.

First, it has to become cheap so that it can achieve grid parity and compete with the dinosaur in the market: coal and oil. This can only happen when its deployment is greatly scaled up. Secondly, it has to reinvent green growth. This is why solar energy has been “sold” as an alternative industry, which will add to employment. It is the economy of the future. Thirdly, it has to secure needs of the most energy-poor. In other words, this relatively expensive and certainly most modern energy system should reach the poorest millions living in darkness. This would mean cutting the cost of supply, building networks to distribute and doing all that has not been done before.

Solar energy, therefore, has a tall order to deliver. The problem is countries have never considered the competing and often conflicting objectives. As a result, solar energy instead of becoming the messenger of the new cooperative world is getting embroiled in battles.
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Strong Reactions to US Cyber Spying

Martin Khor

The revelations of data collection on a massive scale by the United States’ security agencies of details of telephone calls and internet use of its citizens and foreigners are having reverberations around the world.

Much of the responses have been on the potential invasion of privacy of individuals not only in the US but anywhere in the world who use US-based internet servers.

Also revealed is a US presidential directive to security agencies to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks.

This lays the US open to charges of double standards and hypocrisy:  accusing other countries of engaging in internet snooping or hacking and cyber warfare, when it has itself established the systems to do both on a mega scale.

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