ECONOMY-BRAZIL: Crisis Delays Threat of ‘Venezuelan Disease’

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 4 (IPS) - The global financial crisis has corrected the extreme overvaluation of Brazil’s local currency, caused by the policies of its Central Bank, thus temporarily chasing away fears of “Dutch disease”, which in the developing world could well be called “Venezuelan disease”.

The change of name for this particular “economic ailment” in the countries of the developing South is based on the work of the late Celso Furtado (1920-2004), who in 1957 identified the phenomenon of “underdevelopment with abundant foreign exchange” in Venezuela, a unique case in Latin America at a time when the region’s main complaint was the lack of capital for industrial development.

The study by the economist who was the top authority on Brazilian political economy, carried out for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), was just now published by the International Celso Furtado Centre for Development Policies, as part of the first volume of a series based on his personal archives, that includes another essay on Venezuela, written in 1974, and commentaries from other experts.

Furtado’s analysis of the “peculiarities” of the Venezuelan economy identified problems that would only be labeled “Dutch disease” two decades later, said Carlos Aguiar de Medeiros, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who commented on the two studies by the late economist.
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DEVELOPMENT: Harmonious Cities - a Social and Environmental Solution

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 (IPS) - Sao Paulo emits only a tenth of the greenhouse gases that San Diego produces, even though this Brazilian metropolis is four times larger than that city in California, according to a report released today by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).

Based on such comparisons, the State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 — a report published every two years by the UN agency, which in this new edition focuses on ”Harmonious Cities” — concludes that the contribution of cities to global warming has more to do with consumption patterns and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than it does with the level of urbanisation.

The most urbanised region in the developing world is Latin America and the Caribbean, with 77 percent of its population living in cities — a proportion expected to increase to 85 percent within the next two decades, Cecilia Martínez, UN-Habitat’s Latin America regional director, highlighted at a press conference.
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BRAZIL: Hunger Beats a Steady Retreat

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 16, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 16 (IPS) - Brazil is winning its battle against hunger thanks to a comprehensive package of food security legislation, institutions and new concepts, in addition to programmes geared towards stimulating more balanced economic growth.

Chronic malnutrition in children under five years of age fell from 13 percent in 1996 to seven percent in 2006, according to a Health Ministry study released in July. And in the northeast, the country’s poorest region, the rate plunged from 22.1 to 5.9 percent.

As a result, the infant mortality rate also dropped in that same 10-year period, from 39 to 22 deaths per 1,000 live births in this country of more than 185 million people.

The downtrend was confirmed by the International Food Policy Research Institute in its 2008 Global Hunger Index (a tool that tracks the state of global hunger and malnutrition), which was published Tuesday Oct. 14, ahead of World Food Day (Oct. 16) and shows similar indicators for Brazil.
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ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Click Here to Plant a Tree

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog - Global Politics Online - IPS
Sunday, September 07, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava* - Tierramérica

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 7 (IPS) - It has become fashionable in Latin America to pursue initiatives towards ”zero carbon”, neutralising the climate-changing greenhouse gases produced by industry, commercial aviation and even the football World Cup — and along with it, atoning for the environmental sins of polluters.

Zero carbon to fight climate change is the slogan in most such marketing campaigns, intended to attract consumers, users, spectators or tourists. In exchange is a pledge to plant trees that would capture the same amount of greenhouse gases — such as carbon dioxide — as produced in providing the goods or services to the customer.

Frequently the ends are commercial, but they also contribute in some degree towards environmental education and public mobilisation to help curb climate change.

Some projects, like Brazil’s Clickárvore (ClickTree) and Mexico’s Neutralízate (Neutralise yourself), go a step further than a simple attempt to erase some of the ecological footprints made by individuals or companies.

ClickTree dates back to before the current wave of compensating for carbon emissions. The programme of the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, with the support of the non-governmental Vidagua Environmental Institute and the Abril Editorial publishing house, began in 2000 with the goal of recuperating Brazil’s devastated Atlantic Forest.

Along an extensive area of Brazil’s Atlantic coastline, from the Northeast region to the far south, this ecosystem has lost 93 percent of its original coverage, becoming mostly urban and industrial centres, affecting water supplies, creating erosion and devastating the once-rich local biodiversity.

Each click on the www.clickarvore.com.br website means one tree planted in the Atlantic Forest, or ”Mata Atlântica” in Portuguese. More than 16 million trees have been planted so far, donated to 930 reforestation projects in 350 municipalities.

The initial goal was environmental education, ”to involve communities in the conservation” of the ecosystem, Ludmila Pugliese, forest restoration coordinator at SOS Mata Atlântica, told Tierramérica. It was an attempt to get people to feel good about planting trees and contributing to their own wellbeing and to curbing climate change.

Internet users may click on the site just once a day and the click leaders each month win visits to SOS or t-shirts. ”There was one who did it religiously each day and, when he ended up hospitalised, he called us on the phone so he wouldn’t lose his lead,” said Pugliese. Donors can see on the web page the areas that have been reforested with ”their” trees.

The growing participation led to a ”restorative vision, connecting isolated fragments of forests” that helped to recover their lost functions, such as recharging underground water and increasing the native animal populations through biological corridors, said Pugliese, a biologist with a Master’s degree in forest resources.

The environmental objectives have incorporated social objectives as well. The millions of tree seedlings needed, as well as expanded private business sector, helped create five community plant nurseries so that non-governmental groups and communities could obtain their own income and employ more workers.

Coordinated directly by five members of SOS, the programme grew more complex when it started the web page click project, and involving landowners who wanted to reforest their plots, sponsors who offered seedlings, private and community plant nurseries, and companies that offered technical assistance.

True forest restoration requires a diversity that in some states, like Sao Paulo, means a minimum of 80 different species per hectare. And they have to be trees native to the Atlantic Forest, with fruit trees recommended in order to feed the fauna, said the biologist.

Some landowners began by planting 5,000 trees, enough for three hectares, and ”they enjoyed the experience so much that they repeated it several more times,” she said.

The expansion led to another programme, Forest of the Future, in which specialised companies are hired to develop technical projects, because merely owning land does not mean the owners know how to reforest, especially vast areas that require ”investment and effort,” explained Pugliese.

Its sponsors are large companies or banks that are interested in compensating for their own greenhouse gas emissions, as well as television programmes, rock bands, and even couples who are planning their weddings, she said.

In Mexico, the environmental group Pronatura has been promoting its ”Neutralise Yourself” programme since early 2007, creating a voluntary carbon market. Companies, institutions and individuals can compensate for their greenhouse emissions by purchasing vouchers for activities that reduce deforestation and restore ecosystems.

The certifications acquired can be traded on the market. In May, when the initiative was inaugurated, it represented the neutralisation of 15,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide and the payment of 150,000 dollars annually to 10 indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, also helping them to fight poverty.

A portion of the total comes from payment for environmental services, promoted by the government’s National Forestry Commission. The goal is to expand the system, and include interested parties from abroad, to achieve ”self-sufficiency of the market,” and doing away with the government contribution, Pronatura’s assistant director for climate change, José Antonio Ordó?ez, told Tierramérica.

The initial priority was for poor communities to conserve the ”cloud forest” in the mountains, ”a vulnerable and emblematic ecosystem” because of its biodiversity, which needs corridors to connect the forest fragments and is important for the watershed, he explained.

The revenues improve the standard of living in these communities, especially for women, and they prevent emigration to the United States, said Ordó?ez. Furthermore, recovery of the forest fights another problem. In 2007, the communities killed five jaguars that came too close to their settlements because the animals’ habitat was too fragmented to sustain them. This year there have been no cases of residents killings jaguars, he said.

Reforestation initiatives are multiplying in many countries, whether government-led or community based. In Peru, planting began in July of 28 million trees — one for each person in the country — in the Amazonian region of Ucayali. The project combines efforts of two non-governmental organisations from Spain, Iberoquipo and Sotermun, as well as various Peruvian groups.

The environmental Internet search engine Ecoogler, which uses technology from Yahoo.com, promises to donate funds to plant one tree in the Amazon for every 10,000 searches using its site. By Aug. 26, there were 2,241 trees planted.

But while the big reforestation projects like these reach thousands of hectares, deforestation in the Amazon jungle alone totals millions of hectares each year.

(*With reporting by Emilio Godoy in Mexico City and Milagros Salazar in Lima. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

PARAGUAY-BRAZIL: Lugo to Seek New Terms for Itaipú Dam

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog - Global Politics Online - IPS
Friday, September 05, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 5 (IPS) - Paraguay’s new government wants to increase ninefold the revenues the country takes in from the sale of its share of the energy generated by the Itaipú hydroelectric dam, which it runs jointly with Brazil.

But above all, it plans to defend its sovereignty over Paraguay’s main source of energy.

”We want to have the right to make our own free decisions about our energy” — the first of six points that the administration of Fernando Lugo would like to discuss with Brazil, said Roberto Colman, a member of the new commission created in Asunción to negotiate international treaties like the one that established the binational Itaipú power plant.

One of Paraguay’s aims is to be able to sell energy to third countries or increase the portion of energy consumed domestically, Colman said in an interview with IPS during a visit this week to Brazil, where he is seeking support from different institutions and social movements for the Lugo administration’s demands.

Under the bilateral treaty, Brazil and Paraguay are each entitled to half of the output of the plant, which had a potential of 14,000 megawatts in May 2007. But Asunción is only allowed to sell its surplus energy to Brazil, and in order to increase the share of energy that it consumes internally, it must notify its partner five years in advance.

Paraguay currently consumes a mere eight percent of the energy generated by Itaipú, and takes in just 400 million dollars a year from the 46 million megawatt-hours that it exports to Brazil.

If it could sell that surplus energy for 80 dollars per megawatt-hour, the price set for Brazil’s wholesale energy market by the national regulatory agency, the total would climb to 3.5 billion dollars a year — ”a fair price,” said Colman.

He explained that this is the second of the proposals outlined by the Paraguayan negotiating committee.

The increased revenue would help finance the long list of social projects and plans drawn up by the government of Lugo, a former bishop who was sworn in as president on Aug. 15, putting an end to six decades of rule by the notoriously corrupt Colorado Party.

Itaipú is the world’s largest hydroelectric facility, a position it will hold until the Three Gorges dam in China is operating at full capacity.

With a 1,350-sq km reservoir fed by the Paraná river, which forms part of the border between Brazil and Paraguay, Itaipú generates energy that integrates — and divides — the two countries.

The projects that the centre-left Lugo wants to finance with the increased revenues his government is demanding include employment generating initiatives, ”integral” agrarian reform that would provide credits, technical assistance and other measures to promote family farms and agribusiness, infrastructure works and social programmes.

But the basic question, said Colman, is ”recuperating our sovereignty” over the country’s chief source of energy, through the recognition of Paraguay’s right to sell electricity to other neighbouring countries in need of electric power, like Argentina, Uruguay and, on an occasional basis, Chile.

These are the two central — and touchiest — points. But they will be difficult to negotiate, as they would require a modification of the treaty that was signed by the two countries in 1973, which expires in 2023, he acknowledged.

But based on statements made by Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his close associates with respect to the need for generosity towards the smallest partners of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the Paraguayan negotiators hope the Brazilian government will be favourably disposed towards opening up the Itaipú treaty to negotiation, said Colman.

The negotiations could benefit by the desire expressed by the leaders of Mercosur (which is also made up of Argentina and Uruguay) to ”eliminate asymmetries” and promote ”integration based on solidarity,” by means of measures aimed at bolstering development in the trade bloc’s two smaller members, since it is not in Brazil’s best interests to have a neighbour with problems, he added.

A reduction or cancellation of the debt owed by Paraguay for the construction of the Itaipú hydroelectric project, which could balloon to 65 billion dollars by the time the treaty expires in 2023, due to the high interest rates, is the third point that the Paraguayan government is seeking to negotiate, and is also of interest to Brazilians, because the financial costs drive up the price of energy for all of the consumers, argued Colman.

Furthermore, the 4.19 billion dollar debt, he said, is ”spurious,” and accumulated because a Brazilian company did not even pay the price agreed to in the treaty, to which have been added the ”usurious” interest rates of 7.5 percent a year, plus an adjustment for U.S. inflation.

The first step, however, is ”to achieve a consensus in Paraguay” on the proposal for negotiations of the treaty with Brazil, which would undoubtedly not begin until after the October municipal elections in Brazil, said Colman.

An effectively binational administration of Itaipú, rather than the current administration which is ”in the hands of Brazil,” the design of oversight bodies, a thorough audit of the project ”from the very start” and the completion of the complementary works on the Paraguayan side for the distribution of electricity in the country are the rest of the points to be negotiated, he said.

Analysts say it will be a complicated process. The nationalisation of Bolivia’s natural gas resources affected investments by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras in 2006 and triggered an outcry from business sectors and opinion-makers in Brazil, who condemned the move by Bolivia and criticised the Lula administration for giving in to what they described as a ”violation” of the Brazilian oil industry’s contract with Bolivia.

In the case of Itaipú, the backlash could be even stronger because it involves a possible rise in electricity prices, which would affect society as a whole, and not only a few economic sectors, like in the case of Bolivia’s gas.

BRAZIL: Producing Guitars and Luthiers in the Rainforest

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog - IPS
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

MANAUS, Brazil, Aug 26   (IPS)  - Cuban instrument-maker or luthier Raúl Lage came for six months, but has already spent seven and a half years in Manaus, the city in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. ”The project is really fantastic,” he says, explaining why he plans to renew his work contract again in September.

What is keeping him in Brazil is the Oficina Escola de Lutheria da Amazônia (Amazonia String Instrument School Workshop - OELA), where teenagers from poor families learn the complex skills of making musical instruments, which provides them with a possible route out of poverty while helping to preserve the rainforest.

String instrument-making has opened up employment and cultural opportunities for young people all over Brazil, but OELA is ”the only such school in the world that works with certified tropical wood,” which combines environmental and social aims, says a proud Rubens Gomes, executive secretary of the organisation that he founded in 1998.

The guitars and other string instruments produced at OELA are made with the wood from tropical rainforest trees, like the breu branco (Tetragastris panamensis) and the tauari (Couratari guianensis), which have no commercial value but are well-suited for musical instruments.

”This way we add value to species that the market does not recognise as useful timber,” Gomes tells IPS.

The diversification of the sources of wood used from the jungle reduces the pressure on the most coveted species of trees and strengthens the value of the rainforest, helping ”consolidate sustainable forestry management,” he explains. It is one way to help prevent the deforestation of the Amazon jungle, by using limited amounts of wood to produce goods with high added value.

OELA also trains riverbank communities in forestry management, by means of a mobile school on a boat, and in the production of wooden objects and marquetry (decorative inlaid patterns of wood, ivory, etc. used in furniture and instruments).

The project’s main school in Manaus, Unit I, also offers courses in computer science, graphics, music and environmental education, besides providing psycho-pedagogical support. In addition, it has a movie club and an Internet centre for youngsters from the poor neighbourhood where it is located, Zumbi, on the east side of the city. More than 200 people a day pass through Unit I.

But its core activity is basic string instrument-making courses. The 60 students can complete the entire training course in one or two years, and can start at any time of the year.

”Not all of them have a talent or vocation for the profession, of course; only 20 or 25 percent actually become luthiers,” says Gomes. But the rest receive skills training and education that enable them to become fully integrated citizens, he adds.

The best students go on to Unit II, where they learn to make 11 different kinds of instruments, including various models of acoustic and electric guitars, mandolins, banjos and cavaquinhos, a small traditional Brazilian ukulele-like instrument.

Soon the production of two more instruments will be added to the course, including the tres, a six-stringed Cuban guitar-like instrument, says Lage, who is in charge of the workshop where 10 youngsters are currently working, perfecting their skills as luthiers.

Taiene Quinto de Oliveira, 17, has been at Unit II for four months, after standing out in the basic course, which she completed in a year and a half. ”My childhood dream was to go to dental school,” she tells IPS. But day by day she has become more enthusiastic about making instruments, ”and my dream is changing,” she admits.

”The hardest part was to identify by name all of the tools we use in this work, which requires manual skill and patience, especially in the marquetry part, gluing pieces of wood in others,” says the teenager, whose friends dropped out of the course.

This year, she will graduate from high school, another OELA requirement. ”A good luthier needs to know about acoustics, the chemistry of wood, and ecology, and they have to study music theory as well,” says Gomes, a former professor at the Federal University of Amazonas.

Unit II has begun a new phase in which it produces a set number of instruments, between 30 and 40 a month, which has also forced it to step up sales. Prices range between 1,000 and 2,000 reals (625 to 1,250 dollars), and the income is divided between the student workers and OELA, which is trying to become self-sustainable, in order to reduce the need for outside financing.

For six years, Unit II has been developing its own techniques and system, to speed up production, says Gomes. To that end, OELA purchased and adapted machinery and moulds and developed innovative cutting techniques to save wood.

It is a complex process to make a guitar, which consists of six different parts. The wood cannot tolerate more than 50 percent humidity — a real challenge in the Amazon rainforest, where closed workshops with dehumidifiers are needed.

It takes 22 different mechanical procedures and one manual to produce the guitar’s fingerboard alone, says Lage, who hasn’t stopped smoking despite the complaints from Gomes every time he visits Unit II.

Gomes, a brawny man with long hair and a thick salt-and-pepper beard, has lived in different Amazon jungle states, studied classical music on the double bass, and learned to repair and make instruments because he couldn’t afford to buy his own. He eventually became a professor at the Federal University of Manaus, a job he left to join OELA.

He met Lage in 1996 while participating in the Havana International Guitar Festival on one of several visits he has made to Cuba. He says he convinced his Cuban colleague to join him in the project, because he ”didn’t have any experience in getting a guitar factory off the ground,” and he wanted to set up Unit II.

The two men positively glow when they talk about Antonia Souza, an outstanding student who became a master luthier and now teaches at OELA, and about Francimar
Meireles, another former student who, at the invitation of the government of the Amazon state of Acre, set up a similar school there.

Meireles was a poor adolescent whose mother, a seamstress, tried to discourage him from studying instrument-making because she believed he would not be able to make a living at it. However, the boy’s training enabled him, even at a young age, to earn a good salary as a public employee in the state government, recalls Gomes.

One big concern of the founder of OELA is to consolidate and expand the production chain of instrument-making, that starts in the forest communities that provide the wood, which can do the initial processing and thus expand their incomes. Bringing know-how and skills to these communities benefits both the production of instruments and sustainable forest management, he says.

A number of as-yet unfamiliar Amazon tree species could also have good properties that could be identified by scientific studies. Instrument-making is like that, says Gomes, an activity that promotes social inclusion and environmental benefits, and whose final product is music — ”in other words, happiness.”