Ongoing dangers of cluster bomblets

Richard Norton-Taylor

Of the 440 million devices dropped since 1965, about 22 million-132 million remain unexploded in 20 countries.

MILLIONS OF people will be endangered by up to 132 million cluster bomblets that have not yet exploded, causing lasting economic and social harm to communities in more than 20 countries for decades to come, a leading charity warned on Wednesday.

Handicap International studied data from nine countries most heavily affected by the weapon and found that about 440 million cluster bomblets had been dropped there since 1965. Based on failure rates of 5-30 per cent, the group estimated that 22 million-132 million of the devices remain unexploded.

The vast majority of cluster bomb casualties occur while victims are carrying on their daily lives, says the report, "Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities."

The huge numbers turn "homes and crucial social areas of the people living in affected countries into de facto minefields," says the Brussels-based charity. "As men and boys are the traditional earners and the majority of casualties, the economic loss for both the short term and the distant future cannot be underestimated."

In Afghanistan, boys between five and 14 who are tending animals are most likely to be casualties. In Laos, more than 1,000 people were killed by submunitions while weeding or sowing crops. In many cases people knowingly enter contaminated areas out of economic necessity, the report says.

In southern Lebanon, cluster munitions contaminate approximately 90 per cent of the land used for farming. The contamination of essential land is reflected in the rise of cluster bomb casualties from two a year prior to 2006 to two a day in the months following last summer's conflict with Israel.

In Iraq, the repeated use of cluster bombs has left a devastating legacy that continues to severely restrict the lives of its people, the charity reports.

More than 4,000 civilians have been killed or injured by failed cluster munitions since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Some 60 per cent of the casualties have been children.

Next week governments will meet in the Peruvian capital of Lima to discuss a draft treaty to ban the bombs.

Rae McGrath, of the Handicap International network, said: "It is an offence against all humanitarian norms to continue using these weapons with such evidence of their impact available." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Encounters with uncontacted Amazon tribes

David Hill

Peru's uncontacted Indians are increasingly in danger as oil companies, encouraged by the government, move in.

ONE MINUTE I had been fast asleep, then came the yapping of the dogs, rising to a frenzy. What I didn't know then was what had set them off: people from one of world's last uncontacted Indian tribes had just entered the village on Peru's Curanja river, where I was staying.

On that occasion, before dawn in one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon, the Indians left as mysteriously as they came. But, later that day, they returned, and on our arrival from a hunting trip further up river, one of the villagers, Hipa, was shouting excitedly. "He's saying one of his wives just saw some uncontacted Indians in the village," said Octavio, one of my three Cashinahua Indian guides.

"How many?"

"Three. They were armed with bows and arrows."

"Where were they?"

"At the far end of the village, picking bananas from one of the gardens."

"And what happened?"

"Hipa called out to them and they ran off immediately."

We spent that night barricaded in our huts and, next morning, speculated about what had happened. According to Hipa, they were from one of three uncontacted tribes living deep in that part of the jungle, possibly moving backwards and forwards across the border with Brazil. This wasn't the first time he had seen them, but their presence in that part of the jungle was unusual. Their distinctive hairstyle, shaven around the temples but longer at the back, suggested that they, like Hipa himself, spoke a language related to Cashinahua.

Sent to the Peruvian Amazon by Survival International, my aim was to gather as much information as possible about the uncontacted tribes living there: whereabouts, numbers, names, ways of life, and, most important, the threats that risk sending them to extinction. The tribes Hipa spoke of are just three of an estimated 15 uncontacted tribes in Peru, all of them living in the jungle in the most remote, inaccessible regions. At least two of these tribes live in the northern Peruvian Amazon, near the frontier with Ecuador, but the majority are in Peru's south-east. Although some may never have had contact with outsiders at all, it is believed that many are the descendants of tribes contacted more than 100 years ago during the "rubber boom" and who fled the atrocities committed against them by rubber magnates and their employees: enslavement, massacres, and decimation by new diseases.

"First just one came out, then two, then three, four, five, six, seven, but there were more than that in total," says a Yine Indian man called Jose on the Las Piedras river, where members of an uncontacted tribe known as the Mashco-Piro have been seen on numerous occasions in recent years.

The nature of these encounters has varied — from brief sightings to exchanges of conversation or even gifts such as meat and metal goods.

"We had a dozen machetes, a dozen knives and some axes and pots with us," Jose says. "We gave these to them. Not by hand, but by leaving them on the beach. We said to them: `Come closer.' But they didn't want to. They said to us: `Go further back, further back.' So we did. We went further downstream and, after that, they crossed the river, picked up the goods we left for them, and they started cheering. They were all very happy."

Although the Mashco-Piro are the largest of all the uncontacted tribes, numbering an estimated 600 people, they are under threat from illegal loggers invading their territory to cut down mahogany trees. Mahogany is one of the world's most valuable hardwoods, and south-east Peru is home to some of the last commercially viable stands. More than 80 per cent of the timber is exported to the United States. The loggers' presence there brings them into contact with the uncontacted tribes, often leading to violence, and sometimes deaths.

"The loggers want to kill the Mashco-Piro," says one Yine man, who asked not to be named. "And they have done, although the police come here and say it's the uncontacted Indians who kill the loggers. But that's not the case."

The other major threat is oil. Earlier this year the Peruvian government opened up 70 per cent of its jungle to oil companies for exploration, and the vast majority of areas inhabited by uncontacted Indians now face an invasion of oil workers.

Currently, the most critical area is near the border with Ecuador, where American oil company Barrett Resources has discovered huge oil deposits. Now awaiting the green light from Peru's Ministry of Mines and Energy, the production phase of the project will involve further seismic testing and the construction of platforms, wells, roads, pipelines and a processing facility.

But Barrett's find is in the middle of at least two uncontacted tribes' territories. The company recognises this, declaring in its environmental impact assessment that "during seismic activities in lot 67, workers will probably meet these uncontacted peoples..."

Government's role

What makes the tribes' situation more vulnerable is that the Peruvian Government almost totally disregards its uncontacted peoples. The chairman of Perupetro, the government body charged with granting oil exploration licences to companies, recently questioned the existence of any uncontacted tribes. "It's absurd to say there are uncontacted peoples when no one has seen them," said Perupetro's chairman, Daniel Saba, speaking on Peruvian television. "This is a tragic little game that we don't want to play."

Mr. Saba was apparently unaware that not only oil companies such as Barrett but even his own government have repeatedly confirmed the existence of these tribes in northern and south-east Peru, to say nothing of the huge amount of evidence collected by Survival International and many other organisations.

"Doubtless, Mr. Saba would much rather there were no uncontacted Indians in the areas where he wants to explore for oil,'' says Survival's director, Stephen Corry. "Declaring they don't exist at all, however, is a shameful self-fulfilling prophecy. If Perupetro allows companies to go in, it's likely to destroy the Indians completely — and then they really won't exist." —

(David Hill is a researcher and campaigner at Survival International. More information about uncontacted tribes, and how to get involved with Survival's campaign, at survival-international.org)

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

CO2 sponge losing ability to soak up extra emissions

James Randerson

Climate change "feedback effect" in the Southern Ocean.

ONE OF the most important of the natural sponges that soak up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is working 30 per cent less efficiently than a quarter of a century ago, researchers say.

The Southern Ocean is responsible for soaking up the annual CO2 contribution of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands combined, but the study shows that the ocean is absorbing the same quantity of the gas as it was 24 years ago. Scientists had expected that the amount of CO2 absorbed would increase in line with rising levels in the atmosphere. The change is due to increased winds over the ocean linked to climate change and the depleted ozone layer.

"This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of `feedback' will continue and intensify during this century," said Corinne Le Quere, part of the team at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, which carried out the study. "This is the first time that we've been able to say that climate change itself is responsible for the saturation of the Southern Ocean sink."

So-called carbon sinks such as the oceans, vegetation, and soils soak up around half of the extra CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere each year — some 9.3 billion tonnes. The Southern Ocean alone is responsible for parcelling up 0.7 billion tonnes a year and storing it in the deep.

"Since the 1980s the Southern Ocean sink for carbon has not changed at all, although CO2 emissions over the same period have increased by 40 per cent," said Professor Le Quere. "We would expect that as the emissions and the CO2 in the atmosphere have increased, the Southern Ocean sink should also increase."

The team looked at measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere from 40 stations around the globe — 11 around the Southern Ocean itself. They calculate that the efficiency of the Southern Ocean as a carbon sink has dropped by 30 per cent compared with the amount it would be putting away if it had kept pace with levels of CO2.

The team used CO2 measurements in water collected during research cruises in the Southern Ocean in 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2002 to check their calculations.

The scientists believe the reason for the change is an increase in average wind speed across the ocean.

"The winds act to mix the oceans. So when you have strong winds you have more water circulation and more mixing," said Professor Le Quere. More mixing brings colder water up from the depths that is saturated with CO2, so that it cannot accept any more from the atmosphere. The increase in wind speed is partly a consequence of climate change itself — one of a handful of "positive feedback" effects that look likely to accelerate global warming. Because the world is warming unevenly, pressure differences between different regions are increasing. One consequence of this is increasing wind speed in the Southern Ocean. The depletion of the ozone layer has also contributed to higher winds.

"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans. The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean — the strongest ocean sink — is weakening is a cause for concern," said Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Time's Up

The action President Bush promised on Darfur last month is overdue.

Washington Post, May 20

ONE MONTH ago President Bush said that he was giving the Sudanese government a "last chance" to comply with United Nations orders to end what Mr. Bush again called "genocide" in Darfur. Strongman Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president said, would have "a short period of time" to agree to the full deployment of an international peacekeeping force, end support for militias that have been slaughtering civilians, and allow aid into the region. "If President Bashir does not meet his obligations," Mr. Bush said in a speech delivered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "the United States will act."

The day after Mr. Bush spoke, Mr. Bashir's government launched a new campaign of bombing raids in northern Darfur. Helicopter gunships and Antonov aircraft attacked villages for the next 10 days, according to the United Nations. In the village of Um Rai, the United Nations said, rockets fired by a government helicopter blasted a school. The government painted some of its planes white so that they would be mistaken for U.N. aircraft operating in the region.

Violence is escalating elsewhere in Darfur, driven not only by the government's war with separatist rebels but by an insurgency in neighboring Chad, rebel splinter groups and local grievances. The United Nations has counted another 250,000 displaced persons during the past six months, adding to the more than 2 million refugees, many of them crammed into undersupplied and insecure camps. Meanwhile, the African Union's peacekeeping force is on the verge of breaking down. Rwanda is among several governments threatening to withdraw troops because of the failure of Western governments to provide funding and equipment.

The U.N. plan to turn the African Union force into a joint mission with more than 20,000 troops, finalized last fall, is stalled. Pressured by his former allies in the Arab League and China, Mr. Bashir grudgingly agreed last month to accept 3,000 U.N. troops. But the half-baked compromise for deploying them is so unwieldy -- the U.N. forces will have to operate in Darfur under African Union command -- that few countries have been willing to pledge soldiers. Even if successfully deployed the shrunken force would be far too small to protect civilians.

All this should make it obvious that "the short period of time" that Mr. Bush allowed has run out. The president reluctantly agreed to the delay because U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pleaded for more time to negotiate with Mr. Bashir. But Mr. Ban's own spokesperson called the renewed bombing "indiscriminate" and a violation of international law. In his April 18 speech Mr. Bush mentioned one clear remedy for such attacks: steps "by the international community" to "deny Sudan's government the ability to fly its military aircraft over Darfur." There is support for that idea in the British government; now is the time for Mr. Bush to actively explore it while implementing the unilateral U.S. financial sanctions he outlined. With the United States holding the chair of the U.N. Security Council, now is also the time to introduce the sanctions resolution that Britain and the United States have been discussing. Mr. Bashir has had his "last chance" -- in fact, he has had far too many of them.

Sudanese Police Attack On Aid Workers Tests U.N. Chief's Diplomacy - He Calls It 'Unacceptable' in Letter to Bashir

Colum Lynch
Washington Post, May 20

UNITED NATIONS -- On Jan. 19, a group of 20 international aid workers and peacekeepers celebrated their day off with an afternoon of dining, drinking and dancing at the guesthouse of the private relief agency, the American Refugee Committee, in the town of Nyala, Darfur.

The outing ended in the early evening when Sudanese police and security agents broke into the house, videotaped the attendees -- which included five U.N. workers, representatives of six U.S. and British aid agencies, and African Union peacekeepers -- and then beat them with batons and rifle butts and sexually assaulted at least one female U.N. worker. Locals cheered from the street, and some joined in the assault.

The diners were jailed, subjected to further beatings and accused of illegally consuming alcohol and engaging in immoral behavior, citing the discovery of a Sudanese woman found alone in a room with a man. Those charges were reduced or dropped, but the hosts and a handful of other aid workers were each fined about $100 and charged with failing to obtain a permit to hold a gathering.

The episode -- drawn from interviews and confidential written accounts from U.N. officials and aid workers -- has become a test of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's efforts to use quiet diplomacy with Sudan. Ban, who has never spoken publicly about the case, called the attack "unacceptable" in a private letter to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and urged him to ensure that police were held accountable. But Ban's attempt to parlay his new relationship with Bashir -- cultivated during a series of talks over U.N.-brokered peacekeeping -- has yielded little progress in this case.

Bashir last month dismissed Ban's appeal, warning in a confidential letter that U.N. staff members would be held accountable for violating Sudanese laws and suggesting that they receive special training in "conduct and discipline" to ensure they obey those laws. "Accordingly, persons working in Sudan, regardless of their status or assignments, are expected to observe and respect the customary laws of the communities in which they serve."

Bashir and other Sudanese officials have said the episode underscores how foreign aid workers trample on Sudan's Islamic traditions, and Sudanese religious leaders have organized demonstrations to protest the outsiders' behavior.

For the United Nations, the incident marked the most flagrant act of violence by government forces against international personnel in Darfur. A U.N. board of inquiry into the incident -- which involved relief workers from Oxfam International, World Vision International and the International Rescue Committee -- recently concluded that Sudan violated provisions of the status of forces agreement governing the U.N. presence in Sudan.

"The humanitarian community feels, rightly, doubly victimized in this incident. Those concerned were not only assaulted, but then themselves charged with a crime," John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told the U.N. Security Council last month. "Those who have come to help the population are now themselves targets."

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when Darfurian rebels took up arms against the Islamic government, claiming that they represented the region's disadvantaged black villagers. In response, Khartoum armed and organized Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, and supported a bloody counterinsurgency that led to the destruction of hundreds of villages, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the flight of more than 2.5 million from their homes.

Conditions improved in 2004 after relief workers flooded into Darfur, establishing a massive aid operation that currently costs $800 million a year. Today, more than 13,000 relief workers, including nearly 900 foreigners, deliver food, medicine and other life-saving services to more than 3 million people.

But security has deteriorated sharply since May 2006, when Khartoum and one of Darfur's chief rebel factions, the Sudan Liberation Army, signed the Darfur Peace Accord -- a pact that was rejected by several rebel factions and most of Darfur's population, and which led to the splintering of Darfurian rebel groups.

The Nyala incident occurred at a time when attacks against foreigner aid workers are soaring in Darfur. Relief workers have suffered nearly daily attacks, including carjackings and assaults that have left more than 13 dead over the past year and made huge swaths of Darfur off limits for aid workers. Last month, armed groups hijacked 16 humanitarian vehicles, attacked eight humanitarian compounds, ambushed and looted seven relief convoys, and shot four aid workers.

The British relief agency Oxfam International, France's Action Against Hunger and the U.N. World Food Program withdrew in December from Darfur's largest camp for displaced persons, in Gereida, after armed groups attacked six humanitarian compounds on Dec. 18, stealing vehicles, cash and communications equipment, subjecting aid workers to beatings and mock executions, and raping one woman. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only international aid organization remaining in the camp, where 130,000 people are settled.

"It is getting to the point now where the humanitarian aid response is at risk of breaking down," said Alun McDonald, a Khartoum-based spokesman for the British aid agency Oxfam International. "We used to know who to do deal with; we used to know who to phone up we were coming through their areas. Now we don't know."

Some aid workers have expressed concern that the U.N. leadership has not confronted the Sudanese government more forcefully. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, made little fuss about Sudan's expulsion in December of former U.N. Special Representative Jan Pronk. A replacement has not been named.

The United Nations has not acknowledged Sudan's expulsion of the three other U.N. officials over the past six months, including the top-ranking security official who was given 48 hours to leave the country after Sudanese officials protested his circulation of a memo warning aid workers of possible al-Qaeda attacks.

U.N. officials say that while Ban has not gone public, he has been uncommonly tough with Bashir in private. In his confidential Feb. 23 letter to Bashir, Ban expressed "deep concern" over the January attack. "I view this incident as serious and unacceptable and I trust that your government will ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable."

Ban urged Bashir to pledge "his own personal support" to ensure cooperation with a U.N. board of inquiry looking into the incident. He also pressed Bashir to order a judicial review of the case in Khartoum to "send the message that your government will not tolerate attacks against relief workers by its own officials or anyone else."

In his reply, Bashir made no mention of the police abuses and told Ban to drop the matter. "I suggest that episodes of similar nature be tackled at the appropriate administrative level so that you and I devote our time and energies to reinvigorate the peace process."

Tribal travail - New Economic Policy And The Matrix Of Poverty

Arun Kumar Ghosh
The Statesman. 18 May

The greatest challenge that the government has faced since independence is to ensure social justice for the Scheduled Tribes. Along with the Scheduled Castes and other de-notified tribes, they constitute the weakest sections of the population, indeed the matrix of India’s poverty. Historically, they have been subjected to the worst form of exploitation. However, the basis of tribal isolation and exclusion is neither caste nor religion but ethnicity. Tribals have been ethnically different from the mainstream Indian society with a distinct culture, language, social organisation, and economy.

The government has been pursuing policies of protective discrimination for the uplift of the ST ever since independence. Reservation in educational institutions and services, introduction of such schemes as the Integrated Tribal Development Projects (ITDPs), the tribal sub-plan under the Modified Area Development Approach (MADA), and the Special Central Assistance for Tribes. But the results have not been satisfactory.

Characteristics

Tribals are predominant in the north-central sub-region that covers Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, the north-western parts of Bengal and North Orissa. The characteristics are at once geo-climatic and demographic. As per the 2001 census, the total population in this sub-region is 49.1 million of whom 11.4 million are tribes constituting about 23 per cent of the tribal population. The major tribal communities are Santhal, Oraon, Munda, Ho, Mahali, Bhumij, Sabar, Khond, Gond and Kawar. Some of the primitive tribes living in this sub-region are the Birhor, Lodha, Mal Paharia, Hill Kharia, Juang Pauri Bhuiya.

The right to life has been enshrined in the Constitution as a fundamental right. And yet the development process, which was initiated more than 55 years ago, has not ensured a livelihood to a considerable section of the society. Though poverty has declined substantially during this period, more than a quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line. Poverty is more grinding among the marginalised sections of the society, especially among the STs. A significant segment of the tribal population is unable to earn a minimum income to meet the basic requirements. The traditional occupations are hunting, food-gathering and shifting cultivation.

The tribals have been the worst sufferers in the wake of the enactment of laws against cultivation in forest areas. To cope with the exploitation of moneylenders they have to sell their assets. The Employment and Unemployment Survey 1999-2000 brought out by NSSO shows that more than 46 per cent of the tribes were either landless or had land up to one acre. During the same period more than 55 per cent of the tribes in the rural areas were unemployed, whereas it was about 48 per cent in the urban areas. The development process in recent years has led to jobless growth.

The general health problems of the tribal communities in this sub-region resemble those of the rural and other underprivileged sections, notably malnutrition, anaemia, parasitic infections, diarrhoea and respiratory infection. Tribals also suffer from deficiency of calcium, vitamin A, and riboflavin and animal protein. The poor nutritional status of tribal women directly influences their reproductive ability and their survival, growth and development.

According to the National Family Health survey, the average Body Mass Index (BMIs) of married tribal women is substantially lower than that of the country’s general female population. Under-nutrition and anaemia among tribal children is considerably higher. In the absence of early diagnosis and treatment, these diseases may lead to infant and child mortality. In fact a large number of deaths have occurred due to acute respiratory infection and diarrhoea.

In view of the privatisation of health services and consequent increase in the price of drugs, one has to think of an alternative system of medicine which would be locally available and cost-effective. Tribals have over the decades developed their own medicine system based on herbs and other items collected from nature and processed locally. They have their own system of diagnosis and cure. However, the wisdom of replacing the traditional health care system with the modern has been questioned by a number of scholars.

Though the National Health Policy, 1983, emphasised the need for priority attention in terms of primary health coverage, it is reported that health services in tribal areas are not adequate in terms of availability of medicine, medical personnel and equipment. The National Health Policy, 2002, didn’t make any separate policy statement for tribals. The gradual withdrawal of the state from the health sector and subsequent globalisation is a matter of concern because it will affect the marginalised groups like STs and other economically weaker sections.

Despite constitutional protection, the process of alienation of tribal land has not been stopped. In most of the cases, the rights over the land and nearby forest accrued to the tribals because they cleared the forest land and made it habitable. They lived there for generations and developed a community-based pattern of ownership. The tribal areas, particularly in the sub-central region are rich in natural resources and have attracted considerable investment in mines, industries, hydel-power and irrigation projects. This has led to both direct and indirect eviction.

Planned development immediately after independence, specially the growth of core sectors, displaced a large number of persons. Conservative estimates put this figure to be between 30 and 50 million. Only about 25 per cent of such displaced persons have been properly resettled. Others became victims of the development process, and the majority of them are STs.

Resettlement

The tragedy is that despite this prior knowledge of the extent of displacement, those in charge of development projects, mostly non-tribals, pay little attention to the processes of resettlement and rehabilitation. Instead, development projects focus on economic efficiency and not on those who stand to lose all that they have ~ their land, means of livelihood and stable patterns of social and cultural life. Those tribals who are displaced by the development projects need to be recognised as stakeholders in the projects. They need to be a part of the development process.

In the era of the new economic policy, liberalisation and globalisation, the entry of the private sector in the arena of development has increased the demand for land. This simply means more displacement, dislocation of lifestyles and loss of livelihood. It has been taken for granted that large-scale displacement will occur as an integral part of liberalisation. And the tribals will suffer. The development process must ensure that there are no losers. The gains should be equitably distributed among all the stakeholders. Only then can the tribals really benefit from the process.

The author is Associate Fellow, Council for Social Development, New Delhi

Can Cities Save the Earth?

NYT, May 19, 2007
Editorial

The mayors of some of the world’s biggest cities have every reason to feel especially anxious about climate change. Their populations are the biggest polluters but also among the most vulnerable to weather-related catastrophes. And they are far ahead of their national governments in giving urgency to global warming. So, for the second time since 2005, the leaders of dozens of cities, representing 400 million people, have stepped up. Meeting in New York this week, they produced a plan that should shame G-8 leaders into at least saying something about the issue at their meeting next month.

Most significantly, 15 cities, including New York, Chicago, Karachi, Toronto and Tokyo, signed on to a $5 billion program to make older buildings more energy efficient. Energy-gluttonous cities account for three-fourths of greenhouse gas emissions the world over, and buildings are responsible for 40 percent of emissions and much more in older cities. The project could reduce global carbon emissions by 10 percent.

It may be that the mayors, aware their powers end at the city limits, are more willing than holders of higher offices to take to innovation. When Mayor Clover Moore of Sydney asks residents to turn off lights for an hour, the city goes dark. Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago is distributing rooftop rain barrels, and already pipes 55 million gallons of rainwater into Lake Michigan every year. Toronto discounts electricity for citizens who conserve.

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London and organizer of the group, bucked public opinion when he imposed a hefty fee (now about $16) to drive on London’s busiest streets. The result was increased productivity for businesses, enhanced public transportation — paid for with fee revenues — and streets that flow so freely, buses sometimes pull over lest they run too far ahead of schedule. The congestion fee proposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York — $8 for most cars in much of Manhattan — deserves swift approval from state lawmakers.

Sadly, the mayors’ project on energy-efficient buildings would represent the single most significant government response to date on climate change. If it were enough, we would thank the mayors and ride our bicycles into the sunset, but, of course, it isn’t. The job of containing climate-changing human actions — from individual to industrial — cannot occur in a vacuum. The heavy lifting still must be done by the governments of the industrial powers and their emerging counterparts in India, China and Brazil.

Wolfowitz Resigns, Ending Long Fight at World Bank

NYT, May 18, 2007
STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 17 — Paul D. Wolfowitz, ending a furor over favoritism that blew up into a global fight over American leadership, announced his resignation as president of the World Bank Thursday evening after the bank’s board accepted his claim that his mistakes at the bank were made in good faith.

The decision came four days after a special investigative committee of the bank concluded that he had violated his contract by breaking ethical and governing rules in arranging the generous pay and promotion package for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005.

The resignation, effective June 30, brought a dramatic conclusion to two days of negotiations between Mr. Wolfowitz and the bank board after weeks of turmoil.

“He assured us that he acted ethically and in good faith in what he believed were the best interests of the institution, and we accept that,” said the board’s directors in a statement issued Thursday night. “We also accept that others involved acted ethically and in good faith.”

In the carefully negotiated statement, the bank board praised Mr. Wolfowitz for his two years of service, particularly for his work in arranging debt relief and pressing for more assistance to poor countries, especially in Africa. They also cited Mr. Wolfowitz’s work in combating corruption, his signature issue.

Mr. Wolfowitz said he was grateful for the directors’ decision and, referring to the bank’s mission of helping the world’s poor, added: “Now it is necessary to find a way to move forward. To do that I have concluded that it is in the best interests of those whom this institution serves for that mission to be carried forward under new leadership.”

Mr. Wolfowitz’s negotiated departure averted what threatened to become a bitter rupture between the United States and its economic partners at an institution established after World War II. The World Bank channels $22 billion in loans and grants a year to poor countries.

But he left behind a place that must heal its divisions and overhaul a flawed, cumbersome structure that had allowed the controversy over Mr. Wolfowitz to spread out of control.

People close to the negotiations said that Mr. Wolfowitz had agreed not to make major personnel or policy decisions between now and June 30. Some bank officials said he might go on an administrative leave and cede day-to-day functions to an acting leader, but that might not be decided until Friday.

President Bush earlier in the day praised Mr. Wolfowitz at a news conference but signaled that the end was near by saying he regretted “that it’s come to this.” A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said, “We would have preferred that he stay at the bank, but the president reluctantly accepts his decision.”

More important for the bank’s future, Mr. Fratto said, President Bush will soon announce a candidate to succeed Mr. Wolfowitz, quashing speculation that the United States would end the custom, in effect since the 1940s, of the American president picking the bank president.

Many European officials previously indicated that they would go along with the United States’ picking a successor if Mr. Wolfowitz would resign voluntarily, as he now has.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said Thursday that he would “consult my colleagues around the world” before recommending a choice to Mr. Bush, in what seemed to be an effort to assure allies that the United States would not repeat what happened in 2005 when Mr. Bush surprised them by selecting Mr. Wolfowitz, then a deputy secretary of defense and an architect of the Iraq war.

Leaders of Germany and France objected but decided not to make a fight over the choice and risk reopening wounds from their opposition to the war two years earlier. Some also argued that Mr. Wolfowitz, as a conservative seeking to write a new chapter in a career that had been focused on national security, might bring new support to aiding the world’s poor.

Soon after Mr. Wolfowitz took office, however, he engaged in fights in various quarters at the bank over issues including his campaign against corruption, in which he suspended aid to several countries without consulting board members, and his reliance on a small group of aides.

Mr. Wolfowitz’s resignation, while ending the turmoil that erupted in early April over the disclosure of his role in arranging Ms. Riza’s pay and promotion package, will not by itself repair the divisions at the bank over his leadership, bank officials said Thursday evening.

By all accounts, the terms of Mr. Wolfowitz’s exoneration left a bitter taste with most of the 24 board members, who represent major donor countries, as well as clusters of smaller donor and recipient countries. Most had wanted to adopt the findings of the special board committee that determined he had acted unethically on the matter of Ms. Riza.

But the closest the board came to criticizing Mr. Wolfowitz was saying in that “a number of mistakes were made by a number of individuals in handling the matter under consideration and that the bank’s systems did not prove robust to the strain under which they were placed.”

Also angered was the bank’s staff association, which had called for Mr. Wolfowitz’s resignation in early April. The bank’s internal blogs were filled with denunciations of the action on Thursday evening.

Late in the evening, the association issued a statement saying, “Welcome though it is, the president’s resignation is not acceptable under the present arrangement,” and that it “completely undermines the principles of good governance and the principles that the staff fight to uphold.”

The association represents most of the 7,000 full-time employees at the bank in Washington. Their unhappiness could be a crucial factor in the bank board’s ability to heal the wounds left by the fight over Mr. Wolfowitz. It appeared likely that after Mr. Wolfowitz’s departure there would be a departure of several top aides, including Robin Cleveland, who officials said was involved in the negotiations over the statements accompanying his departure.

During the day, as word spread throughout the institution that Mr. Wolfowitz was close to a deal, some officials said that one of the obstacles was his compensation package. But there was no information Thursday night on whether he would receive any sort of severance package or pension, or be reimbursed for legal fees from his long battle.

Mr. Wolfowitz’s pay package was $302,470 in salary as of 2004 — the bank pays any of the taxes on that sum — and $141,290 in expenses. His contract calls for him to be paid a year’s salary if he is terminated, but it was unclear whether his resignation would be considered a termination as defined by the contract.

Mr. Wolfowitz’s fight for vindication was led by his lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, and negotiated at the bank by the British director, Thomas Scholar, a close associate of Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer who is to become prime minister this summer.

Learn more about Wolfowitz

NYT, March 17, 2005

Man in the News - The World Is His Stage: Paul Dundes Wolfowitz

ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, March 16 - After surveying the tsunami-pummeled coast of Indonesia from a Navy helicopter in January, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz appeared shaken at the devastation.

"When you fly over in a helicopter you just begin to get a sense of how enormous this tragedy has been, and when people don't just lose a parent or a brother, but they lose their entire family, it gives a new horrible meaning to what it means to be a survivor," he told reporters in Banda Aceh.

"It's also clear," Mr. Wolfowitz added, "that beyond the immediate needs, there are going to be a great deal of work to rebuild, reconstruct."

In that three-day trip to South Asia to assess tsunami damage and the Pentagon's role in relief efforts, his friends and associates say, the seeds for President Bush's selection of Mr. Wolfowitz to be the next president of the World Bank were planted. Freed, however briefly, from his Pentagon office, the daily drumbeat of violence and American casualty reports from Iraq, and a war of which he was a principal architect, friends say, Mr. Wolfowitz was energized both to be back in Asia - he was the United States ambassador to Indonesia in the late 1980's - and to be seen as the harbinger of help, not conflict.

"It did have a huge impact on him," said Sean O'Keefe, an old friend and former NASA administrator who is now chancellor at Louisiana State University. "He was stunned by the human consequences there."

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Wolfowitz said the World Bank, which sets development policy for much of the third world, was a logical extension of his longtime goal to spread human rights and political freedoms around the globe. "Economic development supports political development, and it really came home to me with the Asian tsunami," he said.

Caricatured as a hawk among hawks in the Bush administration and a lightning rod for its Iraq policy, Mr. Wolfowitz is tougher to pigeonhole under closer examination. As a teenager, he attended the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, and in 2003 he said he remained a civil libertarian and a "bleeding heart" on social issues. His soft-spoken personal style belies any fire-breathing image. And his activist vision has defined his career inside and outside government. Besides calling for the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein years before American troops invaded Iraq in 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz advocated arming the Bosnian Muslims in their war against the Serbs and criticized the Clinton administration over its Kosovo policy, contending it waited too long to intervene militarily.

His humanitarian impulses have taken him to desolate places. In July 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz sat crossed-legged inside a sweltering reed hut in a tiny dust-choked Iraqi village near the Iranian border listening to tribal elders seeking his help to restore their way of life as marsh Arabs, which Mr. Hussein had taken away by draining the marshes.

But Mr. Wolfowitz's critics say his optimism on America's ability to build a better world has often blinded him to the motivations of people like Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader whose intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons, used as the primary basis for going to war, turned out to be wrong.

These critics also say that he failed to prepare a thorough postwar strategy in Iraq and should not be put in charge of a major development agency. "Paul Wolfowitz has a serious credibility problem," said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization. "He understated the cost of the Iraq war, while promoting vast distortions about Baghdad's weapons capabilities as a way to sell the conflict to the American public."

A former aspiring mathematician turned policy maker, Mr. Wolfowitz has world views forged by family history and in the halls of academia rather than in the jungles of Vietnam or the corridors of Congress.

Brooklyn-born and raised in Ithaca, N.Y., Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, 61, is the son of a Cornell University mathematician who left Poland after World War I. The rest of his father's family perished in the Holocaust.

At Cornell, Mr. Wolfowitz majored in mathematics and chemistry, but was profoundly moved by John Hersey's "Hiroshima," and shifted his focus toward politics. "One of the things that ultimately led me to leave mathematics and go into political science was thinking I could prevent nuclear war," he said.

He has held major posts at the Defense and State Departments, including senior foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary. After the administration of the first President Bush, he was dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In Mr. Bush's first presidential campaign, Mr. Wolfowitz became one of his earliest advisers on foreign and national security policies.

After a meeting at the Treasury Department on Wednesday, he acknowledged the new challenge of reporting to an international board at the World Bank. "I'm leaving one very big job and going to another even bigger job," he said.

Paul D. Wolfowitz - Learn about this person!

NYT

Paul D. Wolfowitz has been a lightning rod in two major Washington institutions since President Bush took office. As deputy defense secretary, he was a leading voice within the Bush administration pushing for the invasion of Iraq, and was known as well for a hard line on issues like missile-defense systems. At the World Bank, whose presidency he assumed after being nominated by President Bush in 2005, conflict with the bank staff quickly became a staple of his tenure. Then in April 2007, those tensions boiled over after revelations that Mr. Wolfowitz had played a direct role in giving his companion an unusually large raise.

As outlined by Mr. Wolfowitz, military action in the Mideast was not to be a means to domination of the area, but rather the necessary first step toward breaking up ossified government and social systems that had made Arab countries fertile ground for terrorism. It would lead to the spread of democracy throughout the region. To his critics, the loftiness of his stated goals was less important than how unrealistic his plans were, and than what was seen as his arrogance in stamping out dissent within the Pentagon over the plan.

At the World Bank, Mr. Wolfowitz saw corruption as the entrenched obstacle that had to be overcome before the development aid provided by the bank could be effective in reducing poverty. But he alienated the bank's board, made up of representatives of donor nations, by taking actions against countries without consulting the board. Many top staff members were also unhappy over what they saw as Mr. Wolfowitz & apos;s tendency to rely on a small group of advisers he had brought in with him.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
2005: Becomes head of World Bank
2001-05: Deputy Secretary of Defence
1989-93: Under-secretary for defence policy
1986-89: US ambassador to Indonesia
1983-86: Assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs
1981-82: Head of state department policy planning staff