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The New York Times reported last weekend on three documents from the talks between Russia and Ukraine in March and April 2022. It is the latest in a series of analyses that show that the two sides were somewhat close to agreeing on the broad contours of a deal, but that crucial sticking points were never resolved. Today, more than two years after the latest round of talks between Kyiv and Moscow, peace appears as elusive as ever. On June 14 and 15, Kyiv hosted its largest "peace summit" to date, a meeting to which Russia was not invited and whose goal was to build support for President Volodymyr Zelensky's vision of a peace proposal. The joint communique released at the end of the summit declared that "the principles of respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, can and will serve as a basis in achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine," but primarily focused on nuclear safety, food security, and prisoners of war. Seventy-eight countries signed the document, but a number of key middle powers — including India, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia — declined to join. "U.S. and Western actions in the Middle East and elsewhere have done serious harm to the task of holding Moscow to account in what was clearly an illegal invasion of Ukraine," the Quincy Institute's Sarang Shidore wrote in RS this week. "Many in the Global South are keenly aware of the double standards at work, and do not wish to be used instrumentally to settle Western scores with Russia." But Zelensky appears largely unmoved by his inability to win over these nations (China, who Kyiv has previously seen as a key player in winning over Global South countries, declined to attend the meeting.) "Zelensky has pledged to keep fighting, describing his peace plan as one in which Russia withdraws from all of Ukraine's territory, pays reparations and is punished for war crimes," according to the New York Times. "If we don't make progress this year, then we will try again next year," Zelensky privately told a European counterpart recently, according to the Times, "And if we don't make progress next year, we will try again the following year, and the one after that."Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, also hardened his negotiating stance last weekend. Putin has previously gestured at being open to freezing the lines of the conflict and using the 2022 talks as a baseline for future negotiations. But in a statement responding to the summit in Switzerland, Putin said last Friday that Russia would only cease military operations if Ukraine gave up its aspirations to join NATO (which Kyiv had reportedly agreed to in 2022, but whose desire to join the alliance has significantly strengthened since) and ceded four regions that Russia claims to have annexed. The Quincy Institute's Anatol Lieven argued in RS this week that both of these official proposals are "absurd,' and each contain provisions that are unacceptable to the other side. But, Lieven argues, they are not irreconcilable. "Even de facto acceptance of Russian rule over five Ukrainian provinces would be a most bitter pill for Ukraine and the West to swallow. However, this would still be far less than the maximalist goals of Russian hardliners, whether in terms of the subjugation of the whole of Ukraine, or annexation of all the Russian-speaking areas of the country, including Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, and the whole of the Black Sea coast," Lieven writes. "If in the months and years to come, the Ukrainian army can manage to hold roughly its existing lines, then the eventual line of division between Ukraine and Russia (whether drawn in a formal peace settlement or accepted as part of an armistice) will also run along these lines," he said.In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The Kremlin said on Monday that it was in discussions with Washington over a potential prisoner swap involving detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, according to Reuters. "I want to remind you again of the president's conversation with the heads of information agencies in St. Petersburg - he confirmed that there are such contacts," Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said. "They go on but should continue to be conducted in complete silence." — Putin visited North Korea this week for a state visit and said that he and North Korea's Kim Jong Un had agreed to a mutual aid agreement."Putin and Kim didn't make it clear whether the new accord amounts to a pledge to fight for one another in a war or was simply a promise to extend other forms of support," according to The Wall Street Journal. "The two countries are already aiding each other, with everything from oil and food to munitions."—The White House confirmed reporting from The Financial Times on Thursday that Washington was redirecting the delivery of Patriot air defense systems and interceptor missiles from other countries to Ukraine until Kyiv had enough to defend itself from Russian aerial attacks. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called it a "difficult but necessary decision" that "demonstrates our commitment to supporting our partners when they're in existential danger." Which countries will be affected by the decision remains unclear. Kirby said that other countries will receive the defense systems "on a delayed timeline" but that deliveries to Taiwan and Israel would not be affected. U.S. State Department news:In a Monday press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about the countries that abstained from signing onto the joint communique in Switzerland."If you look at the support that Ukraine got, you had over 90 countries that attended this peace summit. You had over 80 countries and international organizations that signed on to the final communique. We think both of those numbers represent a very significant show of support for Ukraine, and for not just peace but a just and lasting peace, something that we have always made clear is important," Miller said. "And we're going to continue to work to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself now, but we are going to continue to work to try to secure a just and lasting peace. And we welcome the support from dozens and dozens of other countries around the world in that regard."

Knowledge and valuation of ecosystem services are important components for reaching the governmental goals for improving the natural environments. Recreational fishing has more than one million practitioners nationwide.Knowledge about the fishers and their catches increases the ability to assess whether the ecosystem services are retained. In addition, it gives means for evaluating the actions for the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of oceans, lakes and rivers. Knowledge of recreational fishing is also needed in order to follow up the details in its environmental objectives relating to outdoor recreation, tourism industry and the governmental goals in the open-air policy. The EU's common fisheries policy, the Swedish environmental policy and Swedish fisheries policy all emphasize that ecosystem-based management should be implemented. Thus, there are needs for knowledge of the ecosystems which are exploited by humans. Fish populations are important components of aquatic ecosystems, and are affected by the surrounding environment, while they themselves affect the structures of the aquatic food-webs. Fishes often have regulatory functions in the ecosystems, and thereby contribute to valuable ecosystem services in addition to the more obvious services as providing food and recreation for humans. Mostly issues regarding the impacts of fishing-related activities on fish populations have been focused on commercial fishing. A widespread and intensive commercial fishing may lead to the depletion of stocks or, at worst, a collapse of the fish populations; the fish population reaching such low levels that recovery may be difficult. In recent years the knowledge of the impact of recreational fishing on aquatic systems has increased, but still the effects of recreational fishing on ecosystem are relatively poorly studied, compared to commercial fisheries. For many, it may be difficult to accept that recreational fishing may affect fish populations; each fisher/angler favour just their own fisheries without bearing in mind that although the small influence from each individual fisherman may be small, it will be significant when many fishermen harvest from the same stock. Recreational fishing and its effects on the aquatic ecosystems are often neglected in fisheries science, mainly due to the lack of data to estimate recreational fishing harvest with a sufficient resolution to calculate the effort and landings of recreational fisheries. In this report, we try to give an overall picture of the fish species needing increased knowledge in order to get an estimate of harvest in recreational fisheries and thereby the effect on fish populations. Furthermore, we also try to give a picture of international studies and finally to give examples of methods concerning how and to what extent one may conduct studies in Sweden. Our proposal is largely based on combining different surveys in specific areas that we believe can be used to scale-up the results. We suggest data collation of recreational fishing is concentrated to areas with public waters, because in other water bodies the land owner has sovereignty under the law. The focus areas we point out are those already having some data collection, both in terms of recreational fishing and environmental monitoring / stock assessment and where there are non-fishing protective areas nearby. Collection of data should not be made in all areas at every year; three areas are suggested to become intensive areas (data collection every year) and the remaining areas data collection will take place every three years - on a rolling schedule. The sampling methods we recommend are national survey (i.e. mail and telephone surveys), recording of catches in fishing tourism, voluntary catch registration of individual anglers, collection of data from fishing competitions, on-site inventory of fishing effort (e.g. count fetter and trailers), inventory of catch per effort (e.g. by creel-surveys) and fish tagging studies. For the west coast we propose one focus area, Älgöfjorden. At the coasts of Bohuslän County and the northern part of Halland County the fishing pressure is high for lobster and crab and therefore a focus area should be established in this area. We suggest that data are collected by on-site visits for inventorying fishing effort (counting numbers of pots / buoys / fishing people), combined with catch registration can return an estimates on catch per effort, and this can then be applied to a larger area. Another potential focus area is the area around Torhamn (Blekinge) which, for example, is popular area recreational fishing for pike. Torhamn is one of three national reference areas for coastal fish monitoring on the East Coast and has been monitored since 2002. It is also desirable to study aspects of fishing mortality in recreational fisheries. To our knowledge, there are no national studies that have explored the effects of catch-and-release in natural environments over long periods of time. The Bråviken Bay is a relatively limited and well-defined area having considered high recreational fishing pressure, but large time series from fish monitoring programmes are lacking. This site will give good opportunities for studying pike, pikeperch and to some extent also sea trout, data collection is suggested to take place every third year. An adjacent area is Kvädöfjärden having fish monitoring time series from 1989. Closely situated to Kvädöfjärden is Licknevarpefjärden where fishing has been prohibited since 1970. Additional areas that are of interest to follow up with some regularity are Asköfjärden, Gålö and / or Lagnö in the Stockholm archipelago. In the future it might be fruitful to shift data collection intensity between Torhamn in Blekinge and an area in Stockholm archipelago. Such decision should be based on factors like where the most practical solutions / contact network can be found. In the Gulf of Bothnia angling with nets, traps and similar gears are relatively widespread. We suggest that Långvind Bay in Gävleborg County, is an area for the study of recreational fishing in a relatively sparsely populated county and is most likely typical for large parts of the Gulf of Bothnia. Data collection is suggested to take place every year. As for the Gulf of Bothnia the recreational fishery in the Bothnian Bay are mainly targeting the whitefish, sea trout and, to some extent also perch. By monitoring the recreational fisheries in Kinnbäcksfjärden near Piteå, we hope to be able to describe the local recreational fishing patterns and then apply these values for catch per effort for most of the coastal strip of the Bothnian Bays. Recreational fishing is widespread in all of the five largest lakes in Sweden, and there is a need for data collection in all five. In Lake Vänern, Lake Vättern and Lake Mälaren there are fish monitoring data of good quality and regularity. However, in the two smallest lakes, Lake Hjälmaren and Lake Storsjön in Jämtland County, few test fishing areas and few studies regarding recreational fishing have been made. For Lake Vättern we suggest that data collection is done every year; especially the archipelago in the northern part of the lake will be an excellent area for the study of recreational fishing for pike. In the other four lakes we propose that data collection is made every third year. By studying recreational fishing - its practitioners, scope, gear-use, and harvest, it will be possible to achieve a more detailed view of how recreational fishing is done and how it varies along the Swedish coast and in the five largest lakes. Such knowledge is important for the managers of common fisheries resources and the monitoring of environmental status and evaluating the recreational goals established by the Swedish governments.

Nowadays, CA countries are facing serious challenges. Their industries are slowly recovering from the disruption of "supplier-producer" ties among former Soviet republics and East European states. The transformation from centrally-planned economies into market oriented ones requires absolute reconsideration of political and economic values. The focus towards industrialization has been implemented. For instance, Uzbekistan is among the very few former USSR countries which have developed motor-car and aircraft industries. The textile industry is another sector which is currently experiencing a boom. Expansion of Turkish and South Korean businesses and inflow of substantial investments from these countries can be observed currently in several CA states. Financial inflows from these countries are directed towards motor-car and textile industries as well as hotel and tourist infrastructure. CA is a potentially good area for foreign investors. Besides the industrial sector, the financial sphere is another field where fruitful collaboration with foreign countries could take place. The financial system in most CA states is still restructuring and developing. Significant human resources and comparatively much lower wage rates and costs of production make CA attractive for investing. In order to attract foreign investments, a number of preconditions have to be met: - Political stability and security must be achieved; - Trade barriers should be removed; - Transportation infrastructure within the region needs to be improved. Achieving these points implies integration! Integrated CA is more likely to be able to cope with challenges of today's insecure world. Moreover, integrated CA has better chances to assert its claims and interests, especially, CSR resources distribution, balancing interests of superpowers, and confronting external shocks and pressures. Adjacent to Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan, integrated CA states will be equipped with additional policy options due to its extremely important strategic location and geopolitical influence. Nowadays, the population of CA exceeds 60 million inhabitants. Abolishment of trade and tariff barriers will simplify labor mobility and free flow of capital. Since it represents vast markets, the region will be an extremely favorable environment for growth. Industries of consumer goods will have a boost. With influx of investments, textile and food industries, which are currently largely underdeveloped, will experience a continuous boom. Furthermore, these sectors also have considerable export potential, since, raw materials necessary for these industries are locally abundant. Over time, the abundance of cheaper labor resources will be a competitive advantage of CA industries compared to foreign producers. This might become the locomotive of integrated CA economy and will have profound effects, economic as well as social. The demographic profile of the CA area is unique with a high proportion of young people. Here, industrial development is crucial for eliminating the unemployment problem. Besides rich energy resources, the CA region also has plentiful ways to transport them, thanks to its strategic location: to China, to the sea (through Iran), to Turkey (through Caucasian states) and to Russia. This will make the region extremely important and powerful. The source of inter-ethnic conflicts is mainly rooted in social and economic hardships. Mostly, ethnic conflicts occur between indigenous populations and minorities. Sometimes, they are fueled by political reasons and inter-state disputes. Integration implies dissolution of such disputes. In fact, even historical evidence supports these ideas. During the Soviet period, all CA republics were part of single country. Back then, ethnic clashes were far less frequent than in the last 20 years. Between CA states, competition for the leadership in the region can be observed at present. This is a destabilizing factor, since outside powers frequently take advantage of such inter-state disagreements. Integration will prevent these trends and lead to one single powerful actor instead of several competing states. Some might argue that it is very unlikely for countries with different ethnic composition to integrate and actually the integration will intensify inter-ethnic tensions. But, there are examples of multi-ethnic states, such as Switzerland and Canada, which are quite successful and where various ethnic groups peacefully coexist and form single multi-ethnic society. One of the biggest fears among nations of CA is that they could lose their sovereignty through integration. They are afraid that one nation will dominate or even suppress the others. Nevertheless, the experience of European nations clearly demonstrated that such a situation can be avoided. Structure and system can be achieved if the principles of equality decision-making and benefits distribution are followed. The uniqueness of the European integration is characterized by the fact that smaller states are enabled to impose significant influence in decision-making and, subsequently, to enjoy significant benefits (Seidelmann 2004, p 3). Another good example would be the USA, where there is no "discrimination" among the states. The experience of European Union, which clearly demonstrated evident advantages of integration, might serve as an example and stimulus for the unification processes in the CA region in future.

Multinational companies whose importance has increased or improved depending on global capitalisation and travelling around the world without knowing borders have activities in developing countries due to suitable conditions (e.g. cheap workers costs, flexible legal arrangements). In this study, the precautions set forth to prevent environmental troubles, to obliterate or to minimise it, are the activities undertaken by the multinational companies which are considered. In the study, Turkey as a case country in which this subject was studied. Globalisation is the last step of economical sovereignty set up by means of multinational companies all over the world by capitalism which affects our age deeply. Unlimited capital stocks of capitalism and its economical development aim "whatever the result is" fastens the problems internationally as a result of not recognizing the social developments and justice, inequality, poverty and unsocializing people in developing countries. As a result of this, we're having environmental problems, the speed of nature's being consumed has been increased and there have been troubles almost every field of the social lives. However there is no one else who accepts the responsibilities of cost and social policies in the global economies in which international capital and global corporations decide on the rules; there is also no one else who accepts the responsibilities of environmental pollution and natural possessions' destruction as the result of the activities of international capital and global companies. The reason for this is that it is assumed that the government must take the responsibility "to protect and to development the environment". According to this idea, protecting and developing the environment has been supplying public use and public service. Thus public service is the duty of the state. Environmental rights subject, known as third generation rights or corporation rights, is to protect the environment and to development it. People who have the environmental rights are those actors who will make use of these rights and who will have the responsibilities of these rights. The people who will make use of these rights and who will have the responsibilities are generally the same actors. These are not only the people but also public and special institutions including communities; states and public; and the next generation. In this case, all the right owners who have the rights to live in a healthy and well balanced environment are obliged to protect and to development the environment at the same time, including the multinational companies. Every economic activity has an effect on the environment. Multinational companies have activities in the fields like gold mining, petrol, chemicals and food industry which have high potential effects on the environment in developing countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Nigeria. On this point the question why multinational companies choose these countries should be answered. The answer doesn't only help to explain the issue's political sides but also it could show that the most dirtying foreign capital activities take place in developing countries. Why multinational companies have chosen these developing countries was studied under two titles. (1) Dirtying industries are choosing the countries which don't have severe legal arrangements, (2) The public opinion in developing countries is unconscious of the harms that economical activities give to the environment. If the first finding hadn't been true, the activities in most polluting sectors wouldn't have been directed to the countries where environmental laws are flexible/flexibly practised. Besides, the public opinion in these low educational level countries doesn't have enough knowledge about the environmental problems and importance of environment. This information also gives assurance to the multinational companies that they don't face with the opposing activities of the public there. Nevertheless, foreign capital is wanted by these countries to supply new technologies, to supply the political and economical support of the countries which export development and capital, to open their economy to other countries and to protect the environment of the country. But, in practice, these countries which are under pressure to pay their debts don't pay attention to the ecological defects of the activities let the multinational companies to settle in the country, import the wastes which supply currency entrance, to be stored in the national borders and to be reused without evaluation. Foreign capital entrance in gold mining fields is a small example about being served and defended as a gold opportunity to pay Turkey's foreign debts. As a result, multinational companies are unsuccessful in sharing environmental responsibilities in the developing countries. Multinational companies have been making use of the opportunities that the environment presents but they don't do their duties to environmental rights. The efforts by multinational companies have been improving as prevention of increasing the environmental standards. Related to this, in the countries mentioned and also in Turkey, where economical activity fields like ecological sensitivity isn't assured enough by law and isn't protected wholly is a kind of great danger for Turkey.

La presente tesis tiene por objetivo generar un sistema de indicador de sustentabilidad a fin de evaluar la sostenibilidad económica, social y ambiental de la producción, organización y de comercialización desde una triple perspectiva: Agroecológica, Economía Social Solidaria y Economía de los Bienes Comunes. Además, también de formular una alternativa al Sistema Agroalimentario (SAG) actual, que tenga como base la agroecología, la ESS y la EBC. Para eso, como punto de partida, se ha hecho una breve introducción y justificación, del contexto en el que se desarrolla la investigación. Para abordar los objetivos propuestos, el presente trabajo se centra en la utilización de una perspectiva metodológica participativa, en la que se combina enfoque cualitativo (Taylor y Bogdan, 1987; Cuenya & Ruetti, 2010) con cuantitativo (Galeano, 2004:24), para adecuarse a la investigación y a fin de llegar a los objetivos planteados. El uso simultáneo de estas metodologías se llevó a cabo a través de un proceso continuado de construcción del objeto de estudio. Para el enfoque cualitativo se eligió el método de estudio de caso (Yin, 2015), a través de técnicas de investigación social, desde un enfoque cualitativo, inductivo y descriptivo. Para eso fueron realizadas las investigaciones en las cooperativas de la Asociación de los Agricultores Ecologistas de Ipê y Antonio Prado (AECIA), Grupo de Agroecología ECONORTE, Cooperativa de Irituia y en la Cooperativa Mista de la Agricultura Familiar de Marabá (COOMFAMA) por su representatividad. En el enfoque cuantitativo fue utilizada una integración entre distintos métodos de análisis multicriterio y herramientas, a fin de obtener un sistema de indicadores de sustentabilidad basados en la triple perspectiva. Para obtener esos indicadores, en primer lugar, se elaboró una selección de los datos obtenidos en la primera parte de la investigación, junto a los agricultores participantes en la investigación, con la que se formó un conjunto preliminar de varios PCI, a través del previo análisis de grupos ya existentes, creados en su momento para evaluar la sostenibilidad. Se consideraron los siguientes sistemas de indicadores: sistema de indicadores para una política de distribución sostenible de frutas y verduras ecológicas (Begiristain Zubillaga, 2018), el Sistema Finca-Hogar (Lucero, 2016) y MESMI (Masera et al, 1999). Los sistemas citados se agruparon, eliminándose por otra parte los PCI ya que evidentemente no aportaban nada significativo al sistema de indicadores propuesto; así como también fueron eliminados los elementos repetitivos. Asimismo, se adecuó el lenguaje de la redacción, al contexto de la agroecología, la ESS y la EBC. Seguidamente, el conjunto preliminar resultante se sometió a una evaluación, por parte de expertos en el área. Una vez elaboradas las evaluaciones por partes de estos expertos, se abrió un debate sobre los resultados, para la obtención definitiva de los PCI genéricos, que pudieran servir posteriormente para generar una lista específica, aplicable al sistema de indicadores necesario. De este debate se generó un PCI definitivo. Al considerar nuevamente el marco conceptual, y enriquecerlo con referencias a experiencias en PCI y a revisiones de información, se logró definir al menos un verificador recomendado para cada indicador. A partir de ese método de indicadores de sostenibilidad, se obtuvieron 3 principios, 8 criterios y 39 indicadores para evaluar la sustentabilidad, que sirvieron para evaluar a las distintas organizaciones. Así mismo, se utilizó la metodología del caso para el contraste empírico del sistema de indicadores propuesto. Para alcanzar el objetivo de formular una alternativa al SAG actual, primero fue hecho una problematización de SAG Mundial y en Brasil, un análisis de los conceptos existentes, e introduciremos una contextualización histórica; tanto a nivel global, como del ámbito de Brasil; con el objeto de generar herramientas que nos permitan discutir, sobre los problemas económicos, sociales, sanitarios y ambientales, ocasionados por el actual SAG. También, se proponen las posibles alternativas al mismo dentro de un SAG con bases en la Agroecología, ESS y EBC. Para eso fue hecho para cada uno de ellos un análisis de conceptos, histórico y su relación con las dimensiones ecológicas, productivas, sociopolíticas, culturales y socioeconómicas para el cambio del SAG. Para obtener los resultados del objetivo de los sistemas de indicadores, observaremos los datos obtenidos en cada una de las experiencias, tanto en la primera fase de la investigación (donde analizamos sus producciones, certificaciones, formas de comercializaciones adoptadas, ESS y EBC); como también en la segunda parte, en que fue hecha la evaluación de los indicadores de sostenibilidad. Los resultados encontrados en la AECIA en relación con los indicadores de sostenibilidad, la experiencia presenta sus fortalezas en la soberanía alimentaria y en la democratización y una debilidad mayor en la economía de los cuidados. En la ECONORTE, la experiencia presenta fortalezas y debilidades que causan que los indicadores de sostenibilidad de la experiencia necesiten de mejoras para que se obtengan unos mejores resultados a medio y largo plazos. La Cooperativa de Irituia, presenta una sustentabilidad mediana, debido principalmente a los problemas apuntados en algunos criterios, haciendo que sea necesaria la adopción de los cambios sugeridos, para que en una próxima evaluación tengamos mejores resultados. Para la COOMFAM los resultados encontrados muestran pequeñas fortalezas y muchas debilidades con relación a los indicadores de sostenibilidad en esta experiencia. La conclusión encontrada, en primer lugar, es que en el sistema de indicadores ha conseguido evaluarse de forma satisfactoria la experiencia, teniendo capacidad de ser utilizado en otras experiencias. También se concluye que los resultados obtenidos con este sistema de indicadores demuestran que las experiencias están desarrollando distintos grados de sustentabilidad dentro de los principios de la Agroecología, Economía Social Solidaria y Economía de los Bienes Comunes. Basado en estos resultados fue posible formular recomendaciones y sugestiones para la mejora de los indicadores de sostenibilidad de cada una de ellas. Además, esta investigación corrobora con la idea de que es necesaria la construcción de un Sistema Agroalimentario de base agroecológica, ESS y EBC para conseguir cambiar el actual SAG. ; This thesis aims to generate a system of sustainability indicator in order to evaluate the economic, social and environmental sustainability of production, organization and marketing from a triple perspective: Agroecological, Social Solidarity Economy and Economy of Common Goods. In addition, also to formulate an alternative to the current Agrifood System (SAG), which is based on agroecology, ESS and EBC. For this, as a starting point, a brief introduction and justification has been made from the context in which the research is carried out. To address the proposed objectives, this paper focuses on the use of a participatory methodological perspective, in which qualitative approach is combined (Taylor and Bogdan, 1987, Cuenya & Ruetti, 2010) with quantitative (Galeano, 2004: 24), to adapt to the research and in order to reach the proposed objectives. The simultaneous use of these methodologies was carried out through a continuous process of construction of the object of study. For the qualitative approach, the case study method was chosen (Yin, 2015), through social research techniques, from a qualitative, inductive and descriptive approach. For this, research was carried out in the cooperatives of the Association of Ecological Farmers of Ipê and Antonio Prado (AECIA), Agroecology Group ECONORTE, Cooperative de Irituia and Cooperative Mista de la Agricultura Familiar de Marabá (COOMFAMA) for their representativeness. In the quantitative approach, an integration was achieved between the different methods of multicriteria analysis and tools, in order to obtain a system of sustainability indicators in the triple perspective. To obtain these indicators, first, a selection of the data obtained in the first part of the investigation was elaborated, together with the farmers participating in the research, with which a preliminary set of several PCI was formed, through the previous analysis of existing groups, created at the time to evaluate sustainability. The following indicator system was considered: system of indicators for the sustainable distribution of organic fruits and vegetables (Begiristain Zubillaga, 2018), the Farm-House System (Lucero, 2016) and MESMI (Masera et al, 1999). The systems were grouped, on the other hand they eliminated the PCI that evidently did not contribute anything to proposed system of indicators; as well as the repetitive elements were eliminated. Also, the language of the writing, the context of agroecology, the ESS and the EBC were adapted. At once, the previous preliminary set was subjected to an evaluation, by experts in the area. Once the evaluations have been prepared by the experts, a debate on the results was opened, for the definitive procurement of PCI generics, that could be used to generate a specific list, applicable to the system of necessary indicators. From this debate a definitive PCI was generated. By considering the conceptual framework again and enriching with references to experiences in PCI and information reviews, it was possible to define a verifier for each indicator. Based on this method of sustainability indicators, 3 principles, 8 criteria and 39 indicators were obtained to assess sustainability, that served to evaluate the different organizations. Likewise, the case methodology has been used for the empirical contrast of the system of proposed indicators. To achieve the objective of formulating an alternative to the current SAG, first the global problematization was made and in Brazil, the analysis of the existing concepts and the introduction of a historical contextualization; both globally and at the Brazilian level; Generate tools that give us the opportunity to discuss, about the economic, social, health and environmental problems caused by the current SAG. Also, possible alternatives to it are proposed within a SAG with bases in Agroecology, ESS and EBC. For that purpose, an analysis of concepts, historical and its relationship with the ecological, productive, sociopolitical, cultural and socioeconomic dimensions for the change of the SAG was made for each of them. To obtain the results of the indicator system objective, the data obtained in each of the experiences was observed, both in the first phase of the investigation (where we analyze your productions, certifications, commercialization forms, ESS and EBC); as well as in the second part, in which the evaluation of sustainability indicators was made. The results found in the AECIA in relation to sustainability indicators, the experience presents its strengths in food sovereignty and democratization and a greater weakness in the care economy. In the ECONORTE, the experience has strengths and weaknesses that make the sustainability indicators of the experience need improvements to obtain better results in the medium and long term. The Cooperative de Irituia, presents a medium sustainability, due to the problems noted in some criteria, making the adoption of the suggested changes necessary, so that in a future evaluation we have better results. For COOMFAM, the results show small strengths and many weaknesses in relation to sustainability indicators in this experience. The conclusion found first is that in the system of indicators it has managed to satisfactorily evaluate the experience, being able to be used in other experiences. It is also concluded that the results obtained with this system of indicators show that the experiences are developing different degrees of sustainability within the principles of Agroecology, Social Solidarity Economy and Economy of Common Goods. Based on these results, it was possible to formulate recommendations and suggestions for the improvement of the sustainability indicators of each one of them. In addition, this research corroborates with the idea that it is necessary to build an agroecological system based on agroecology, ESS and EBC in order to change the current SAG.

Karen Litfin on Gaia Theory, Global Ecovillages, and Embedding IR in the Earth System




This is the third in a series of Talks dedicated to the technopolitics of International Relations, linked to the forthcoming double volume 'The Global Politics of Science and Technology' edited by Maximilian Mayer, Mariana Carpes, and Ruth Knoblich 






Many debates in International Relations concern struggles regarding what should be the autonomous limits and focus of the discipline itself. However, increasing environmental and climate concerns challenge the self-contained nature of IR on discrete political phenomena, because what IR considers it's exogenous context is threatening to destabilize the premises of the content of international political practice itself. While such concerns often lead to a securitization and politicization of the environment and climate in IR, some scholars argue we should work towards the exact opposite. In this Talk, Karen Litfin—among others—elaborates on the kind of theory in which IR is embedded in, rather than applied to, natural systems; discusses examples of social arrangements that try to translate that theoretical insight into practice; and engages with questions of secularism and mysticism that irrevocably accompany those efforts.






Print version of this Talk (pdf)




What is, according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?



The fact that we can today truly speak of something of a global economy, the central problem now is to formulate the political institutions that are commensurate to these globalized economic institutions. We have far to go on that project. It also means doing so within the carrying capacity of the earth—that is, politically configuring that global economy in such a way that it doesn't exhaust ecological resources. So I would say that the challenge, in terms of actual politics, is to find those institutions.



The challenge for the discipline of International Relations is to do the necessary thinking to facilitate that institutional transition, but few IR scholars even acknowledge that political institutions must attend to the carrying capacity of the earth. In general, the discipline of International Relations, Political Science and even most of social sciences more generally behave as if there are no natural constraints to our behavior. Yet our freedom to even be able to theorize about the international system is completely dependent upon a vast web of life, other people growing our food, and a whole technological infrastructure that we had nothing to do with creating. International Relations talks a lot about interdependence, but do we really take it seriously?





How did you arrive at where you currently are in IR?



I've always been interested in science and technology. As an undergraduate, I studied physics and astronomy, but I didn't finish those majors because I realized, that if I graduated with those degrees I would most likely be working indirectly or directly for the military. I got politicized and I began to see that the political agenda drives the scientific agenda. This was in the 1970s and it was possible at that time that we were going to have an all-out nuclear war. I did not want to be a part of that.



I began to see that there is a dialectical relationship between science and politics. Because science facilitates the technological changes, which make the basic backdrop for politics, it's very important. For instance, the defense department was funding DARPA, which led—without them fathoming that at the time—to the development of the Internet—now a key site where global politics plays out.



Science also provides metaphors through which we understand politics. I did my Masters thesis on the mechanistic worldview and the devitalization of nature in the 17th century—that is, taking living nature out of our systematic theorizing. While others had written on this, I traced it back to the ancient Greek philosophy. A reductionist and mechanistic worldview underpins a lot of IR theory, as well most of our political institutions. We need to really start questioning that. Another way this plays out is that the notion of the global really had a huge jump when we got the image of Earth fromspace. The idea of Earth Day was really closely aligned to the fact that the image of the earth from space just had come out. Gaia Theory came about because James Lovelock was looking for signs of life on Mars. We were interested in extra-planetary life, but weren't looking at our own system or planet. So basically it turned all that science back on the Earth and said 'Oh my Gosh, we do have this kind of atmosphere that has the telltale science of life in it', which tells us that life is hoping to create the atmosphere. Then to have the human mind to conceptualize that is really huge. The idea that we are the Earth becoming conscious of itself is basically what science is telling us. These monitoring systems are one means by which we have the possibility of becoming conscious of that fact.



In terms of personal trajectory, when I started teaching International Relations back in the early 1990s, I started realizing that petroleum holds the whole thing together, the whole global system was held together by petroleum. (You could also say fossil fuels, but coal and natural gas don't power that much transnationally; it's really the petroleum.) Yet hardly anybody in IR talks seriously about petroleum—or energy or biodiversity or soil or the atmosphere. That's what I mean about getting to the material basis. But having said that, I think how we interact with the material basis is a reflection of our consciousness. So I'm not a material reductionist. Rather, I'm looking for a wholeness that understands our approach to material reality as being a reflection of our consciousness.



So this was why I have become interested in biological metaphors. I still think the leaning edge of human thought is understanding human systems as living systems. From this vantage point, we can begin to reshape our institutions in ways that mimic, sustain, and regenerate living systems. There's a long history of natural law and I don't exactly put myself in that camp, but I think there are ways that we need to understand ourselves as thoroughly embedded in natural systems and then move consciously from that place.





What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?



To my mind, these are very different questions because, at least at many universities, becoming an IR specialist often entails ignoring some fundamental global realities. For one, even though most of humanity lives in so-called developing countries, most IR theory pays attention only to the Global North. Likewise, IR is fairly blind to the fact that the lifestyles of the Global North, if globalized, would require between three and six Earths, depending upon whether you are looking at Europeans or North Americans. Again, there is only one Earth! Fortunately, an important subfield has emerged with IR—global environmental politics—that is helping to rectify the situation.



The question I would prefer to answer is: what would a student need to know in order to understand the most pressing challenges facing the world system? To this, I would advise three things. The first would be to dive deeply into a broad and critical reading of the history of modernity, including the interpenetrating scientific, political, commercial, theological and industrial revolutions that characterize the modern era. The second would be to learn about the primary international institutions (the WTO, World Bank, IMF, EU, UN Security Council, etc.), and ask what is working, what isn't, and why? The third would be to do all of this learning while simultaneously learning to think systemically. Take at least one good course on systems theory; one that specifically offers a strong grounding in living systems, and start making connections. Why, for instance, do 'ecology' and 'economics' share the same root (oikos, Greek for household)? What would it mean to consider the international system as a living system and a subset of the Earth system? If we think this world system that we've created of a globalized economy and rudimentary international law is not a part of a living system, we are living in a big delusion. So to actually understand how living systems function, we need the literature on system theory that of course has been used in biology and ecology, but has also been applied a lot in the business world and organizational development. I think it's making its way into IR.





The world is full of technologies and technological systems (and getting more so each day). Could you elaborate on how this is relevant for IR?



I think that's a huge gap: IR doesn't pay nearly enough attention to technological systems—and when they do, it's generally from an uncritical and mechanical perspective. Even though much of the constructivist critique of liberal institutionalism is that the latter is overly materialistic, it actually isn't as if institutionalists talk about economics as if that were a material reality. Economics is a secondary human system overlaid on, but abstracted from, material systems. I think that IR needs to get really serious about understanding the actual material basis for politics. Climate change will probably be the issue that drives that.



So what kinds of technologies and institutions are we going to have to facilitate a global civilization? Now that's a worthwhile question! As I indicated, we now have a more or less globalized economy, but we don't have a global polis; we don't have the institutions that are commensurate to the economy that we have got. So the question is: can we sustain current civilization on the energy budget that is available to us and not wreck the climate?



Technological systems are driven by energy; energy is the master resource. Some energy analysts say that in order to have a global civilization, we need to have an energy return on energy investments of something like 5 to 1—meaning, for instance, that for each barrel of oil we put into getting more oil, we need to get five back. Right now petroleum is getting—depending on where you find it and how it's getting to you—somewhere between 15 and 25 to 1. That's the Middle East. It used to be 100 to 1 at the beginning of the 19th century. And now we are getting, say, 20:1. I've seen analyses of tar sands that put that energy source at somewhere between 3 and 5 to 1. Solar panels, if they work well, they are maybe getting 5:1. So the trend is worsening and we are starting to push that envelope of 5:1 energy return on investment. And if we exploit some of the new unconventional hydrocarbons—like fracking and, worse, methane hydrates—to their maximum potential, we'll fry the planet.



My question is how we can leverage existing technological, economic, financial and political resources to sustain a global civilization. I dearly wish more people were putting their attention on that question. The underlying assumption for most people is that business as usual can continue. Maybe, but not for long.



I'd like to throw in one little term coined by Stephen Quilley, an environmental sociologist: 'low energy cosmopolitanism' (read the paper here). I think this is a huge challenge for us. If it's possible to have a global civilization on the energy budget that we have available, it's going to be some form of a low energy cosmopolitanism, where we make some very conscious choices about what we are going to globalize. For instance, Germany probably wouldn't be importing grapes from Africa and none of us would be going on luxury vacations. We would be making a lot of conscious choices, but if we want to have a global civilization we have to be globalizing something, so what is it that we are globalizing?





How do you see the question of technological determinism when studying technologies?



This is really important to note, because if you just look at human systems as living systems there can be a kind of materialistic reductionism there. People who think like William Connolly, the new materialism understands that we should not be materialistic reductionists and that there is this wildcard of human consciousness. The fact of the matter is, we can assemble all the data we want but we don't know where we are going. But what we do know is that we've created a tremendously complex and complicated world that nobody can actually understand!



I think we need to address that question in a very specific way with respect of specific technologies, but if we stick to one example—satellites—I think the technologies do have certain properties embedded in them. I have written a feminist theoretical critique of earth observing satellites, where I argued that this kind of gaze from space actually does downplay or preclude certain perspectives. But as I thought about it more deeply, I saw very concretely that a lot of people are using those technologies to do what they want—not what the centralized political and scientific institutions that gave rise to the satellites wanted. So I would say the wildcard here is consciousness and human inventiveness, because that's what will shape how people deploy the technologies once there are on the ground.



For example, satellites were devised for spying and are certainly still being used for spying, but they are being used for so much else, such as Google Maps. I think some people might have been able to foresee that kind of development, but most of us didn't have a clue that this sort of thing could come about. Or that you could have indigenous people mapping their traditional lands in order to make land rights claims. So the wildcard really is human consciousness and that's why nothing really is deterministic. The greater the complexity in a living system, the more surprising its emergent properties. Seven billion human brains linked together in global technological and ecological systems are bound to yield surprises!





You indicated that you use biology and living systems as a reservoir for metaphors. Could you elaborate on that?



If I speak about living systems I usually do so through work called Gaia Theory. Looking through the lens of Gaia Theory, we would first understand that we exist within certain spheres such as biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. We have taken geological time and inserted it into human time by digging up fossil fuels. As a consequence, we have kind of checkmated ourselves and are now forced into having to think in geological terms. We have to start thinking in geological time scales, which was never the case before. If we are going to find a way of inhabiting this planet sustainably, particularly if we are going to have anything approaching a global civilization, we have to understand that we live within a living system and then go about the rather daunting but exciting project of developing international law and institutions that reflect that reality.



There is a whole subfield of earth system governance in which Earth system scientists, IR theorists and international legal experts are coming together to think through these questions. The literature on earth system governance starts from the premise that the Earth is a living system and draws heavily on earth system science, which draws heavily from Gaia theory. You cannot separate atmosphere, oceans, lithosphere, and biosphere: they are all intertwined as one big living system—and now humanity is functioning as a geophysical force on a planetary scale. That's the meaning of the Anthropocene, and it will require an entirely new way of going about politics and economics.



So how can we bring the concept of Gaia Theory into practical reality? Besides the emerging field of Earth system governance, we can also do this in a very personal way by beginning to really internalize what it means being a human being at this time. A few years back, I came to the point where I decided that I did not want to theorize about anything I could not live. That turned out to be a huge challenge. After I wrote the 'integral politics' piece (see links below)—and I really do love that piece!—I saw that I couldn't fully live it. It was so big. For me, one of the most important implications of Gaia Theory is that we are the Earth becoming aware of itself. That's a huge implication. If you merely think of it conceptually, it is wonderful mind candy; but if you actually take it to the heart and try to live it, it changes your life. I challenged myself to do this and, at some point, it occurred to me that there must be other people who have traveled farther down that road than I had—in other words, people who had radically changed their lives to reflect their growing awareness that human beings are the Earth becoming conscious of itself. So I found myself traveling around the world to ecovillages which, for me, helped to tie it all together. Why is somebody who's teaching international environmental law and politics wandering around the world visiting these little tiny micro-communities? Because these people are taking the radical implications of Gaia Theory to heart (even if they've never read about it) and collectively changing their material, economic and social lives. That's why I spent a year on the road living in ecovillages. It's a strange thing to be an IR theorist who doesn't want to theorize about anything that she can't live!





Bringing up the issue of how to live your research, could you elaborate on what kind of outlook is necessary to live in accordance to Gaia Theory?



So this leads to the importance of humility for me. The value of humility is that it comes naturally as a consequence of understanding. You do not have to value it in advance; it comes automatically from understanding ourselves as part of this larger living system. In my experience at least, as soon as you grasp that, you automatically have an enormous sense of humility and gratitude. Those two qualities just spontaneously arise from truly grasping that reality. Going back to ecovillages, I asked myself who is living in ways that can actually work for the long run. The result became the eponymous book. I wanted to see collective efforts and particularly larger communities that were generally at least a hundred people, because you can do a lot more collectively, than you can on your own. Some of these communities are reducing their ecological footprint radically. In some cases, we are talking about per capita reductions in material consumption and waste production of 80-90% as compared to their home country averages.



This is very big news—especially given that these communities are still tied to the larger system. They are not tiny isolated enclaves. For instance, they're still using the mass transit of the larger society; most of them have Wi-Fi and high-speed Internet. They're not living in caves and many of them are very much globally engaged. On a material level, they're much closer to living within the Earth's carrying capacity. So in that way, I was very interested in just seeing what are their physical systems. But I began to see that their physical systems were only made possible because of the degree of trust and reciprocity that they have created.



That entails doing a lot of personal work. Diana Leafe-Christian, who has written a number of books on communities, says that 'community life is the longest and most expensive personal growth workshop you'll ever take'. It's true! If you're willing to do the personal work and hang in there through the difficult times and conflicts, you can develop the kind of self that's willing to do some very deep sharing. I would add, though, that this level of sharing is done best when it is respectful of the individualism that we have developed. I don't think that communities should be running roughshod over individualism. There needs to be some balance of privacy and communal life. The communities that work well have figured out a way to do this. To my mind, the communities that work really well are the ones who are working on developing collective forms of consciousness. Which means actually I think going beyond the separative rational mind: it doesn't mean demeaning those qualities, it means using them, but using them in the service of something larger. As I said earlier, progressive change entails transcending and including. Individualism, for all its negative consequences, is a genuine historical achievement.



And I would say on a very practical level, one of the ways that they reduce their footprint is by withdrawing to some extent from the global economy. Having very low consumption and being fairly energy efficient and self-reliant, reliance on food self-sufficiency, but withdrawing from global society. To me, they are answering the question I raised earlier: What would a low-energy cosmopolitanism look like? And they are doing this not just because they consume less and live more simply but because by and large ecovillagers actually have a cosmopolitan identity. They might be growing their own food and composting their shit, but they're also tied into the global system. They're actively engaged in the Internet, sometimes attending global conferences and many of them are politically active on issues such as genetically modified organisms and nuclear waste disposal and human rights.



They are little nodes of positive examples, but they're very small. In fact, hardly anybody lives in an ecovillage, which is why the last chapter of my book is called 'Scaling it up'. I basically look at the underlying principles of ecovillages and talk about how these principles could be scaled up to the level of cities, regions, national government and international norms. I realize this is a big stretch, but I felt that as an International Relations scholar, I at least need to try it. The important misconception you run into that moment is the idea that sustainability needs to be expensive—the idea that somehow we can consume our way into sustainability. Actually, the most sustainable form of consumption is no consumption! Yet this is not what all ecovillages do. There is one community that I visited in up-state New York, in Ithaca, this is the same city that Cornell University is in, where two thirds of the residents have masters degrees or PhDs and their homes are worth more than the average in the area. They have a pretty middle class lifestyle, yet their average ecological footprint is about half the American norm. So they're not sustainable, but they are definitely moving in the right direction. They hired architects and have nice homes, which is a very different approach than that of most rural ecovillages.



In the Global North, the smallest footprints that I saw tended to be in the rural off-grid ecovillages that were more or less self-sufficient in food, energy, and water. In some of these communities, residents were living on as little as 25% of their average national incomes. This is impressive because it tells us that people in affluent countries can live well on far less money and with far less environmental damage than is considered normal in those countries.



Yet the fact of the matter is that most people today live in cities, so it was important for me to also look at urban ecovillages. Los Angeles Ecovillage, for instance, has a very small footprint because it is high-density and automobile use is discouraged. If you lower your transportation footprint by not driving or sharing vehicles, and if you grow your own food or rely upon locally produced food and have and passive solar construction and renewable energy for your buildings, you can dramatically reduce your energy consumption. You can have a much smaller footprint and still have a very comfortable life. People think that you need money in order to live. It seems that we need money in order to live, but actually what we need is food and shelter and transportation and relationships. So if you figure out ways of getting those things without money, you've made a huge step to getting out of the global economy. In a nutshell, that's what ecovillages are doing.





So are ecovillages all the same across the globe? Is it a new 'social form' emerging?



It is different in the developing countries and in the affluent countries, and I think it's important to clarify that at the outset. I visited a number of ecovillages and ecovillage networks in both developing countries and affluent countries. In the latter, there is a greater possibility for what I consider 'post-individualist' that both transcends and includes individualism. A very simple 'post-individualistic' approach to property rights, for instance, would be co-housing, where the land is owned in common and people own their own homes. But their private homes would be a lot smaller because so many amenities are shared. The common house would have a community kitchen, so that, depending upon how much people are willing to share, private kitchens can be very small. If there's a collectively owned guest space, then you don't need a guest room in your house. And if you do a lot of your socializing together, then you can do that in the common house. So your own house could be quite small but you would still have access to all the comforts of a private existence and more. The more people are willing to share, the more will be collectively owned. And that really does require trust, because it's a big problem if the relationships blow up and you have your finances entangled with those people! This is just one example of how property rights can coexist with the softening of boundaries between individuals.



The flipside of this is occurring in developing countries, where the post-individualistic arrangement that I've been making doesn't really apply. And this is important because that's where most people in the world live. There you have cultures where people already have much more of a collective orientation. So we really need to pay attention to what's happening there. Actually, in many cases, their developmental task is to become more individuals. And the question is: how do they become more highly-individualized rather than being subsumed by traditional moral codes—how do they that without over-consuming. In the west, we had a fossil fuel subsidy that enabled us to become highly individualized, as I said before, the only reason we can be having this interview is because somebody else is growing our food.



In developing countries, the real task is to find a way for people to become more individualistic without over consuming. And so this is why I was impressed by the model I saw in Sarvodaya, a Sri Lankan participatory development network that belongs to the Global Ecovillage Network. There, fifteen thousand villages are trying to apply ecovillage principles to create what they call a "no-poverty/no-affluence society." Their programs in micro-finance and women's literacy, for instance, give villagers—especially women—an incentive to stay in the village because they have a livelihood. And when people stay in their villages, they tend to live a lot more sustainably. As the women becoming literate, they begin making choices for themselves and therefore becoming more individualized. So it's a way of hopefully leap-frogging urbanization in order to sustain rural village life.



I should say that you can apply these principles anywhere you live, in cities as well as rural areas. I visited quite a few ecovillages in cities. One of the most important things that the Global Ecovillage Network is doing is training people, wherever they live, to apply ecovillage principles in their urban neighborhoods or wherever they find themselves. There have been some amazing projects coming up in the Brazilian favelas and in China. GEN has developed a course called 'Gaia Education' that's being offered all over the world and especially in developing countries. There's now a Global Ecovillage Network for Africa. There are basic principles of sustainability that, if you live in an ecovillage, you can apply more intentionally, but they are applicable everywhere.





In a way, 'Gaia theory' sounds very spiritual—and for that reason the Gaia concept was initially very much opposed by many physicists and climate scientists. In a way, Gaia theory entails a critique of modernist secularism and faith in technology; how do you see that in your work?



I have mentioned the critique of mechanization in the early modern era, but in fact the early modern scientists, such as Newton, were all looking for God. Now many of the hard sciences are moving in the direction of mysticism—I would speak of mysticism rather than spirituality—but it's not a mysticism that is simply a projection of the human psyche onto the cosmos; rather, it is empirically derived. I think that's a kind of postmodern development that would have been impossible in the pre-modern era. That's what I was saying about transcending and including, that the ideas that we have of who we are in the cosmos are so different as a consequence of modern science. We can transcend those ideas but also include them. From the Big Bang and the evolution of species, we came out of all of that! And implicit within this fact, if you take it deeper, is that there is a secret oneness to it all. I think that the lessons we have to learn politically and economically now are about interdependence. But if you take interdependence to its depths, it too implies a secret oneness. Most importantly for the current evolutionary crisis: that oneness is embedded in our consciousness and we can access that. That is the reason why I don't want to theorize about anything that I can't live; I'm working at that level as well.



It's interesting, because that also has implications for my teaching. I teach in a fairly direct way when I have living bodies and inquiring minds right in front of me and can engage them at a personal level. I give them my big picture view of politics as a subset of living systems and also being a kind of living system. I get them to inhabit that in themselves through doing contemplative and reflective exercises in the classroom. For instance, I'm teaching a class called political ecology of the world food system and we talked about the globalization of different food commodities and where chocolate comes from for instance, where it originally came from, who processes it, how much do the farmers get from all of that. I brought in raw cacao nibs, which most of the students had never tasted before. We talked about where these came from and how expensive they were even though cacao is not processed, because raw cacao is a something of a delicacy. Then I gave them this very highly processed chocolate without sugar and with alternative sweeteners in it. I invited them to really be present to tasting each of these things as I talked about them and I left some significant gaps of silence, they could actually be present to experience of themselves inhabiting the living system and now being the beneficiary of a world food system. How did we come to have cacao from West Africa and stevia from Paraguay in our mouths? What are sociopolitical and biotic networks that have made this possible? And can we allow ourselves to truly experience what it means to be the beneficiary of these living systems? And what of our own as living system? When I am in the classroom it is actually quite easy to teach what I call person/planet politics. I never teach anything as if it is just 'out there'. Whenever I teach anything, I want the students to inhabit it in their bodies, in their experience. And I try to do that as best as I can by living what I teach as best I can.



It is a little embarrassing, but I don't know how all of this applies to IR; I am just trying to do it as best I can in my own life, as it is presented to me. And I write about it and I publish things—I have a piece coming out on localism that basically makes the case for what I call organic globalism, which is a globalization that is premised upon the earth as a living system and international institutions being designed very consciously on that basis. I don't quite know what it looks like but I have a sense of its rightness. To be honest with you, I am better with that in the classroom that I am at the level of large-scale institutions. Because I am beginning to inhabit this in my own being and I can communicate it to students. Maybe the next challenge is to be able to communicate it at a larger level.





So isn't there a tension between living sustainably and participating in a globalized world that is hard-wired in terms of technology?



Consciousness does not at all preclude technology. For example, I think us having this dialogue is on some level contributing to a certain kind of consciousness and it's completely facilitated by technology. Without Skype we wouldn't be having this conversation. What's helpful to me, about what I call E2C2 (ecology, economics, community and consciousness) is that these are four lenses through which to view any phenomenon—and that includes technology. For instance, we can view our Skype conversation through the lens of ecology in terms of the amount of energy that's used. Economically, we might consider what is being produced and what its value is. It's probably a pretty good economic deal since you and I are virtually paying nothing for it! So economically it's a good deal. In terms of the communitarian lens, we are developing a dialogue that will hopefully be in a relational field with many other people, perhaps thereby also contributing to a certain growth of consciousness.



E2C2 offers four lenses through which we can look at technology; they are not mutually exclusive. For me, the question is: to what extent are our technologies beneficial in terms of each of the lenses. Denis Hayes, the guy who started Earth Day, said the basic principle of sustainability is that you leave your molecules at home and export your photons. This brings us back to the concept of low energy cosmopolitanism. It's a huge question: what are we going to globalize? If we are going to have a global civilization we need to have global communication. The Internet is a tremendous achievement in that regard, and could to function as a kind of global brain, though its roots are in its military applications and today it is primarily dominated by commerce. (And I understand that pornography is a big part of it as well.) Despite its limitations, the Internet provides an infrastructure that could enable us to be in communication globally, which is very important if you want to develop a global consciousness and a global civilization. But we need to understand that our technologies must operate within the limits of the Earth system. In other words, technologies—like all human systems—are also living systems.





Last question. So how can we relate this back to IR?



I think one of the ways this is happening is that some pockets of IR are actually returning to foundational concepts. For instance, Alexander Wendt (Theory Talk #3) has started this Journal International Theory. People are seriously looking at the bigger and deeper questions, so uniting more with political theorists for instance. This idea that we are coming up against real limits is a very frightening idea from the perspective of a certain idea of freedom rooted in liberal politics. We really need to rethink the meaning of freedom in an era of limits. My own feeling is that human beings are kind of hard-wired towards unlimitedness—but the world is now pressing us to interrogate this impulse. We don't do well with limits. But the fact of the matter is, we are not evolutionarily adapted to abundance, we don't even know what to do with abundance. We are squandering resources in the most absurd ways. So we really need to rethink what freedom is in a world of limits.



It's not all together a bad thing that we are facing these limits. Those of us who have at least the privilege of being well fed and reasonably comfortable, can actually turn our attention to this question of consciousness. Because this question of 'what is freedom' is a problem of human consciousness. Rather than turning our desire towards mastery—I think as human beings we have an innate desire towards mastery – rather than turning that desire onto the external world, we've pretty well mastered it; except turns out that we live in it so it's coming back to bite us and we are facing huge climate change most likely. When we shift the focus of this desire for mastery to our own psyches, then lots of things open up. And I don't think only people who live in industrialized countries need to do this or are doing this. One of the things I saw in my ecovillage book is that people living in developing countries are also quite aware of it and are doing it at the places they live as well. There is a global awakening, at least in small pockets, to the fact that we live within a limited Earth system and a serious inquiry into what it means to be a human being at this juncture between modernity and the Anthropocene.





Karen Litfin (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992) is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She specializes in global environmental politics, with core interests in green theory, the science/policy interface, and what she calls "person/planet politics." Her first book, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in International Environmental Cooperation (Columbia University Press, 1994), looks at the discursive framing of science in the ozone treaties. Her second book, The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics (MIT Press, 1998), explores how state sovereignty is being reconfigured as a consequence of global environmental politics. Some of the topics of her recently publications include: the politics of earth remote sensing; the political implications of Gaia Theory; the relationship between scientific and political authority in the climate change negotiations; the politics of sacrifice in an ecologically full world; and holistic thinking in the global ecovillage movement. 





Related links





Faculty profile at the University of Washington
Read Litfin's Thinking like a planet: Gaian politics and the transformation of the world food system (2011 book chapter) here (pdf)  
Read Litfin's Towards an Integral Perspective on World Politics: Secularism, Sovereignty and the Challenge of Global Ecoloy (Millennium, 2003) here (pdf) 
Read Litfin's The Status of the Statistical State: Satellites and the Diffusion of Epistemic Sovereignty (Global Society, 1999) here (pdf) 
Read Litfin's The Gendered Eye in the Sky: Feminist Perspectives on Earth Observation Satellites (Frontiers 1997) here (pdf) 








Print version of this Talk (pdf)

Although economic reform has brought remarkable progress in poverty reduction in Vietnam, the scale and depth of ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam presents one of the major challenges to achieving the targets for poverty reduction set out in the Socio-Economic Development Plan, as well as the millennium development goals. The authors first review a series of monetary and non-monetary indicators which show the living standards of the ethnic minorities are improving but still lag seriously behind those of the majority Kinh-Hoa. The minorities' lower living standards result from the complex interplay of overlapping disadvantages, which start in utero and continue until adult life. Next an analysis of the drivers of the ethnic gap, in terms of both differences in characteristics and differences in returns to those characteristics, is undertaken. Mean and quantile decompositions show that at least a half of the gap in per capita expenditure can be attributed to the lower returns to characteristics that the ethnic minorities receive. The reasons underlying such differences in returns are discussed, drawing on both quantitative analysis and the large number of qualitative studies on ethnic issues in Vietnam. Finally, some of the short and longer term policy measures which the authors believe could help to counter ethnic disadvantages in the nutrition, education, and employment sectors are discussed. The authors also emphasize the importance of promoting growth that is geographically broad and socially inclusive without which, the current disparities between the Kinh-Hoa and the ethnic minorities will continue to grow.

When the BRICS grouping held its annual summit in late August, it was widely covered as a portentous affair that signaled a ripening challenge to the U.S.-led global order. For the first time, the group expanded considerably, reflecting a growing ambition not necessarily shared by each original member. It was reasonable to wonder whether a robust challenge to U.S. hegemony was imminent.For Latin America's largest nation, however, participation in an increasingly assertive BRICS need not conflict with a warm working relationship with Washington. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva demonstrated as much at last week's UN General Assembly. Indeed, Lula's deft diplomacy turned his country into arguably the biggest winner at the annual gathering of global leaders, showing almost single-handedly that the door is not yet shut on a genuinely independent foreign policy in a moment of heightening superpower tensions. He did so by identifying substantive areas of mutual interest with the United States and taking concrete steps to show flexibility and an openness to dialogue, also with respect to the Ukraine war.When Lula, who began an unprecedented third term in January, announced early in his address on Tuesday that "Brazil is back," he was interrupted by applause from members of the General Assembly, which by tradition Brazil opens. Lula's address emphasized many of the same points he made as Brazil assumed the reins of the G20 in India earlier this month: the urgency of combating climate change, the need to find mediated solutions to armed conflicts, and the importance of reversing growing inequality worldwide. Lula's return to the dais 20 years after his first address as president marked a welcome return to form for Brazil, a country long committed to the UN as a meaningful arena of international diplomacy. Indeed, aside from South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, Lula was the only BRICS leader to attend this year's General Assembly.Lula used his address to criticize the UN for its inability to preserve its relevance, describing the impasse as he sees it and calling for reforms that he believes can make the body matter more. "The international community must choose: On the one hand, there is the expansion of conflicts, the deepening of inequalities and the erosion of the Rule of Law," he said." On the other, the renewal of multilateral institutions dedicated to promoting peace." He decried sanctions applied unilaterally and the ongoing embargo against Cuba. He also criticized the ineffective insularity of the UN Security Council, discredited by "the actions of its permanent members, who wage unauthorized wars in search of territorial expansion or regime change. Its paralysis is the most eloquent proof of the need and urgency to reform it, giving it greater representativeness and effectiveness." Lula made clear that his nation wants a greater say in a UN that is actually functional and effective, not withdrawal from a body consigned to irrelevance.Lula's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the next day demonstrated his careful and even-handed diplomacy in pursuit of an early end of the war in Ukraine. Brazil, like most Global South states, has prioritized relations with both warring parties as it realizes well the high economic costs of the conflict's continuation. Even though he has clearly criticized Russia's invasion of its much smaller neighbor, he had before this week not met personally with Zelenskyy. Finally having done so, Lula has bolstered his claim to fairness and balance.For his part, and from a different angle, President Joe Biden argued for the continued importance of the UN. He called the lack of further world wars, the ascension of hundreds of millions out of poverty, and the eradication of several devastating diseases "a profound testament to what we can achieve when we act together when we take on tough challenges." U.S. health assistance in Africa — such as PEPFAR and fighting the Ebola epidemic — have been excellent examples in this regard. Biden urged the UN to re-embrace its founding precepts of collaboration, respect for sovereignty, and human rights and seemed to signal support for a reform of multilateral institutions to reflect shifting international dynamics. He also spoke of strengthening democratic values around the world. In these areas, his message aligned with Lula's.The following day, Lula and Biden held a bilateral meeting to discuss a host of issues, but most importantly to announce a new joint effort related to workers' rights. "Over the last few days," Biden said by way of introducing the initiative, "the nations of the world have talked about climate change, sustainable development, food security, economic resilience." The president noted the centrality of working people to each one of these challenges and concluded that "we have to empower them as well. And that's what this new partnership is all about." Pointing at Lula, he added, "the partnership actually was this man's idea." While both leaders talked about the importance of union protections, living wages, pensions, and other basic rights often denied in the modern economy — Lula's labor minister also took the opportunity to sit down with members of the United Auto Workers to discuss the ongoing strike and working conditions in the United States — it remains to be seen what concretely will come from this new undertaking. Nevertheless, its importance should not be underestimated. More than anything, it marks an identifiable point of convergence between Brasília and Washington, an issue on which both leaders are personally and politically invested. Durable, productive ties between nations require such investment. A willingness to collaborate in this area — or even just to be seen committing to collaboration — is a positive sign. However, the Biden-Lula convergence on global labor standards may not be aligned with many Global South states, especially in Asia, who see the U.S. push for such standards as protectionism in disguise.Labor was not the only area in which members of the Brazilian delegation sought to make clear that it still very much wants to engage with the United States. Climate action was another. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad held multiple meetings with activists, government officials, and investors to pitch them on green investments in Brazil. Before flying to New York, Haddad gave an interview in which he praised Biden's economic agenda and said there was absolutely no reason the United States shouldn't see Brazil as a key trading partner — not least because, as he noted, "China is entering America through the Southern Cone." Minister of the Environment Marina Silva held several meetings as well, emphasizing Brazil's role in mitigating the effects of climate change. Together, these efforts underscored Lula's attempts to show that Brazil's embrace of a multipolar world does not mean it is eager to turn its back on the United States. That Brazil is finding meaningful areas of collaboration with countries of various ideological and political stripes indicates that international relations in Latin America have not yet ossified into the rigid opposing camps that would characterize a new cold war.It might serve as a model, in fact, for countries looking to avoid one.

La actividad turística representa para Costa Rica una fuente importante de divisas y de empleos directos e indirectos. El crecimiento exponencial que ha tenido esta actividad en los últimos treinta años en Costa Rica ha traído consigo impactos positivos y negativos. El Turismo Rural Comunitario (TRC) se presenta como un modelo de turismo apropiado para el desarrollo sostenible de los espacios rurales costarricenses, estando, además, en sintonía con el modelo de turismo "vivencial y de experiencia" por el que se apuesta en este país. El TRC se caracteriza por integrar las riquezas naturales y la vida cotidiana de la comunidad rural, además de promover dentro de la misma oferta turística prácticas productivas sostenibles. De este modo, las experiencias de TRC se integran en la vida de la comunidad local y se convierten en una actividad complementaria a las actividades tradicionales agrarias. El valor de tales experiencias de TRC radica, por tanto, en su capacidad para adaptarse a los ritmos cotidianos de la vida rural y para preservar las dinámicas socio-territoriales de las comunidades. Un elemento importante a resaltar del TRC es su capacidad para promover la participación de la comunidad rural, aprovechando y fortaleciendo las estructuras organizativas y las redes sociales ya existentes a nivel local. Desde el punto de vista económico, al integrar la población local en diferentes encadenamientos productivos, el TRC permite que se dé una distribución más equitativa de los beneficios generados por la actividad turística, siendo así una importante fuente complementaria de los ingresos familiares. Esta tesis doctoral está estructurada en cuatro partes diferentes, agrupadas en doce capítulos, cada uno de ellos con un apartado de conclusiones parciales para facilitar su lectura, además de un capítulo de conclusiones generales. Hemos querido centrar nuestra investigación, a partir de elementos cuantitativos (encuesta) y cualitativos (entrevistas, mapeos de actores), en el análisis en los actores endógenos y sus relaciones con la actividad turística, lo que ha permitido generar un acercamiento a las realidades existentes mitigando posibles impactos de índole social y cultural en las comunidades rurales. Para ello, hemos propuesto la investigación empírica a partir de tres enfoques (capital social, acción colectiva y gobernanza), y que debidamente articulados, nos han permitido analizar las distintas experiencias de TRC en las zonas seleccionadas, mostrando sus rasgos característicos (tanto al nivel del discurso ideológico, como de las estrategias y modelos organizativos), los elementos que las componen, y su contribución al desarrollo y gobernanza de los territorios donde se ubican. La confianza, las normas de reciprocidad y los flujos de información, que son elementos fundamentales del enfoque de capital social, son precisamente los factores que inciden en la formación y sostenibilidad de las experiencias de TRC, ya que contribuyen a facilitar la cooperación y la acción colectiva a nivel local. Asimismo, las interacciones entre, de un lado, los actores que forman parte de la comunidad local, y de otro, el entorno exterior, formado por instituciones públicas y privadas revestidas de poder y situadas en posiciones de superior orden jerárquico, son el resultado de la combinación de las lógicas ascendentes (bottom-up) y de las lógicas descendentes (top-down). Para conocer mejor esa combinación, el enfoque del capital social proporciona herramientas útiles, como es la tipología bonding, bridging y linking, así como permite ordenar las dinámicas del desarrollo en distintas dimensiones, facilitando así su medición. Entre las principales conclusiones están las siguientes: 1. Esta tesis doctoral ha tenido la virtud de articular una propuesta teórica como lo es el estudio del capital social, la acción colectiva y la gobernanza de los espacios rurales a un fenómeno social tan relevante como lo es el turismo en Costa Rica. Esta tesis fue un estudio exploratorio centrado en cuatro casos de estudio, en el que se utilizó instrumentos cualitativos y cuantitativos que lograron ofrecer información directa y valiosa sobre la realidad de los territorios rurales a partir de una combinación de enfoques teóricos. Además, la investigación se centró en poblaciones indígenas y campesinas que han abierto sus familias y comunidades a la atención de visitantes. Logramos aproximarnos a su capacidad de relacionarse en contextos intracomunitarios y extracomunitarios, y más aún, a su capacidad para relacionarse con actores que tienen cierto poder político y económico. 2. La metodología propuesta en esta tesis doctoral es apropiada para utilizarla en los análisis de los territorios rurales y en la definición de estrategias de intervención para el desarrollo rural. Es una manera de conocer las dinámicas territoriales, los niveles de confianza que se dan en las comunidades, las relaciones que se tienen entre comunidades, y las capacidades existentes en el intercambio con organismos políticos y económicos. Al capital social se le asocia ese efecto multiplicador de la productividad, al reducir los costes de relacionarse con el resto de los individuos, donde se combinan e intercambian los factores que cada uno posee. 3. Las normas que comparten las organizaciones de TRC se consolidan con el tiempo, y, al igual que los valores, se transforman en escenarios o espacios más complejos. La presencia de capital social tipo bonding desempeñó un papel clave, contribuyendo a construir un nuevo sujeto colectivo en la comunidad local. En una siguiente etapa, una vez constituidas las organizaciones de TRC, la presencia de capital social tipo bridging se convierte en un elemento fundamental al posibilitar el desarrollo de relaciones de confianza con personas ajenas a la propia comunidad. El paso de un tipo de capital social a otro no es un cambio brusco, sino gradual y no excluyente, puesto que tanto el tipo bonding, como el bridging, se complementan para hacer que las experiencias asociativas sean sostenibles y perduren a lo largo de tiempo. 4. La clave el éxito de las experiencias de TRC es una buena combinación entre los tres tipos de capital social (bonding, bridging y linking), cuya importancia varía a lo largo de las distintas fases de evolución de dichas experiencias. 5. El TRC está revalorizando los territorios rurales a partir de elementos que tienen que ver con el medio ambiente, la cultura y las actividades tradicionales, tales como la ganadería y la agricultura, ésta última importante para la soberanía alimentaria de las comunidades locales. Asimismo, permite la puesta en valor de los atributos o valores presentes en las comunidades rurales a partir de los procesos de acción colectiva emprendidos por sus habitantes. 6. La investigación revela que con el paso de los años, las organizaciones que operan iniciativas de TRC van generando alianzas con diversos actores a nivel intracomunitario y extracomunitario. La creación o pertenencia a nuevas y diferentes redes responde a las necesidades de las organizaciones, ya sea para el fortalecimiento del turismo en las comunidades, la implementación de ideas innovadoras que sirvan como alternativas productivas, o el contacto con grupo que buscan la preservación de bienes comunes en las comunidades, como es el caso de la conservación del medio ambiente y el rescate de la cultura local. Los casos analizados nos permiten comprobar que las organizaciones logran entrelazar sus actividades, de tal forma que van formando organizaciones integrales que velan y trabajan en diferentes ámbitos comunitarios. El modelo de TRC debe formar parte de una política pública de desarrollo rural en Costa Rica. Integrar el TRC como un modelo de desarrollo rural implica mayor investigación, mayor apoyo económico y técnico, mayor capacitación y mayor visibilidad de los diferentes actores que hacen parte de la red TRC. Para incorporar elementos de capital social en las políticas públicas de desarrollo rural, hay que dirigir esfuerzos que apoyen la formación de sus tres tipos (bonding, bridging y linking), lo que implica que se definan herramientas para que las personas se empoderen, así como se fomenten vínculos efectivos entre los funcionarios públicos y las comunidades rurales. Si se logra fortalecer el capital social rural, estaremos frente a comunidades con mayor resiliencia y con mayor capacidad para emprender proyectos colectivos. ; Tourism activity represents an important source of foreign currency and direct and indirect employment for Costa Rica. The exponential growth that this activity has had in the last thirty years in Costa Rica has brought positive and negative impacts. The Rural Community Tourism (TRC) is presented as an appropriate model of tourism for the sustainable development of rural Costa Rican spaces, being, in addition, in tune with the model of "experiential and experiential" tourism that is bet in this country. The TRC is characterized by integrating the natural riches and the daily life of the rural community, as well as promoting sustainable productive practices within the same tourism offer. In this way, the experiences of TRC are integrated into the life of the local community and become a complementary activity to traditional agrarian activities. The value of such experiences of TRC lies, therefore, in their ability to adapt to the daily rhythms of rural life and to preserve the socio-territorial dynamics of the communities. An important element to highlight of the TRC is its capacity to promote the participation of the rural community, taking advantage of and strengthening the existing organizational structures and social networks at the local level. From the economic point of view, by integrating the local population into different productive chains, the TRC allows a more equitable distribution of the benefits generated by the tourist activity, thus being an important complementary source of family income. This doctoral thesis is structured in four different parts, grouped into twelve chapters, each one with a section of partial conclusions to facilitate its reading, as well as a chapter of general conclusions. We wanted to focus our research, from quantitative (survey) and qualitative elements (interviews, stakeholder mapping), in the analysis of endogenous actors and their relations with tourism activity, which has allowed us to generate an approach to the existing realities mitigating possible social and cultural impacts on rural communities. For this, we have proposed empirical research based on three approaches (social capital, collective action and governance), and that, duly articulated, have allowed us to analyze the different TRC experiences in the selected areas, showing their characteristic features (both at the of the ideological discourse, as of the strategies and organizational models), the elements that compose them, and their contribution to the development and governance of the territories where they are located. Trust, rules of reciprocity and information flows, which are fundamental elements of the social capital approach, are precisely the factors that influence the formation and sustainability of TRC experiences, since they contribute to facilitate cooperation and action collective at the local level. Likewise, the interactions between, on the one hand, the actors that are part of the local community, and on the other, the external environment, formed by public and private institutions with power and located in positions of superior hierarchical order, are the result of the combination of ascending (bottom-up) and top-down logic. To better understand this combination, the social capital approach provides useful tools, such as the bonding, bridging and linking typology, as well as ordering the dynamics of development in different dimensions, thus facilitating their measurement. Among the main conclusions are the following: 1. This doctoral thesis has had the virtue of articulating a theoretical proposal such as the study of social capital, collective action and governance of rural spaces to a social phenomenon as relevant as tourism in Costa Rica. This thesis was an exploratory study focused on four case studies, in which qualitative and quantitative instruments were used that managed to offer direct and valuable information on the reality of rural territories from a combination of theoretical approaches. In addition, the research focused on indigenous and peasant populations that have opened their families and communities to the attention of visitors. We are able to approach their ability to relate in intracommunity and non-community contexts, and even more, their ability to relate to actors that have a certain political and economic power. 2. The methodology proposed in this doctoral thesis is appropriate to be used in the analysis of rural territories and in the definition of intervention strategies for rural development. It is a way of knowing the territorial dynamics, the levels of trust that exists in the communities, the relationships that exist between communities, and the existing capacities in the exchange with political and economic organisms. Social capital is associated with the multiplier effect of productivity, by reducing the costs of relating to the rest of individuals, where the factors each one possesses are combined and exchanged. 3. The norms shared by TRC organizations are consolidated over time, and, like values, are transformed into more complex scenarios or spaces. The presence of bonding social capital played a key role, contributing to build a new collective subject in the local community. In a next stage, once the TRC organizations are constituted, the presence of bridging social capital becomes a fundamental element in enabling the development of trusting relationships with people outside the community itself. The transition from one type of social capital to another is not a sudden change, but gradual and not exclusive, since both the bonding type and the bridging complement each other to make the associative experiences sustainable and endure over time. 4. The key to successful TRC experiences is a good combination of the three types of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking), whose importance varies throughout the different phases of evolution of these experiences. 5. The TRC is revaluing rural territories based on elements that have to do with the environment, culture and traditional activities, such as livestock and agriculture, the latter important for the food sovereignty of local communities. It also allows the valorization of the attributes or values present in rural communities from the collective action processes undertaken by their inhabitants. 6. The research reveals that over the years, organizations that operate TRC initiatives are generating alliances with various actors at the intra-community and extra-community levels. The creation or belonging to new and different networks responds to the needs of organizations, whether for the strengthening of tourism in communities, the implementation of innovative ideas that serve as productive alternatives, or contact with groups that seek the preservation of goods common in the communities, as is the case of the conservation of the environment and the rescue of the local culture. The analyzed cases allow us to verify that the organizations manage to intertwine their activities, in such a way that they are forming integral organizations that watch and work in different community environments. This model must be part of a public policy of rural development in Costa Rica. Integrating the TRC as a rural development model implies more research, greater economic and technical support, greater training and greater visibility of the different actors that are part of the TRC network. In order to incorporate elements of social capital into public rural development policies, efforts must be directed to support the formation of its three types (bonding, bridging and linking), which means that tools are defined so that people can become empowered, as well as effective links between public officials and rural communities are encouraged. If it is possible to strengthen rural social capital, we will be facing communities with greater resilience and greater capacity to undertake collective projects.

Community Driven Development (CDD) projects are now a major component of World Bank assistance to many developing countries. While varying greatly in size and form, such projects aim to ensure that communities have substantive control in deciding how project funds should be used. Giving beneficiaries the power to manage project resources is believed by its proponents to lead to more efficient and effective fund use. It is also claimed that project-initiated participatory processes can have wider 'spillover' impacts, building local institutions and leadership, enhancing civic capacity, improving social relations and boosting state legitimacy. This paper briefly reviews the World Bank's experience of using CDD in conflict-affected and post-conflict areas of the East Asia and Pacific region. The region has been at the forefront of developing large-scale CDD programming including high profile 'flagships' such as the Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) in Indonesia and the Kapitbisig Laban Sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) project in the Philippines. As of the end of 2007, CDD constituted fifteen percent of the lending portfolio in East Asia compared with ten percent globally. Many of East Asia's CDD projects have operated consciously or not in areas affected by protracted violent conflict. CDD has also been used as an explicit mechanism for post-conflict recovery in Mindanao in the Philippines and in Timor Leste, and for conflict victim reintegration in Aceh, Indonesia. It then looks at the evidence on whether and how projects have achieved these outcomes, focusing on a range of recent and current projects in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Timor-Leste. The analysis summarizes results, draws on comparative evidence from other projects in the region and elsewhere, and seeks to identify factors that explain variation in outcomes and project performance. The paper concludes with a short summary of what we know, what we don't, and potential future directions for research and programming.

The 2023 EU-China summit on December 7 in Beijing ended without a dramatic clash of views but also without much agreement. The summit did not do any harm, it seems, but it did not lead to any major results either. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Charles Michel, President of the European Council, probably expected as much. In her opening statement von der Leyen asked Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman, Xi Jinping, for a "frank and open exchange" of views and it seems that is what she got, once the doors closed for the two-part meeting. The EU pair, accompanied by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, first met with Xi and then after lunch with the new premier Li Qiang. At both meetings the elephants in the rooms were the United States and Russia. In what has almost become a tradition by now, the Chinese leaders attempted to do their best to drive a wedge between the transatlantic allies by warning the EU leaders against "all kinds of interference" from outside powers, such as the United States and its latest export curbs on high-end artificial intelligence chips and chipmaking tools. In turn, the two EU presidents tried to persuade Xi to drop his support for Russia's war against Ukraine and persuade Putin to withdraw his troops. China's position regarding Russia's aggression would define the EU's relationship with China, von der Leyen told a news conference after the summit but Xi remained unswayed, as far as we know. China buys huge amounts of Russian oil at discounted prices and is providing Moscow with drones, microchips, and other dual-use goods, which may well classify as military aid. Wang Luton, the director-general for European affairs in the Chinese foreign ministry, suggested at a later press conference that the EU countries should talk to Putin themselves, if they wanted to bring about an end to the war.Trade and market access matters were at the core of the first EU-China summit to be held in four years. After all, both Europe and China are in economic difficulties and both sides know that they need each other. Europe is under increasing pressure due to the financial and military demands of the Ukraine war, increasing social policy expenditures and declining industrial creativity. Xi is greatly upset about the difficulties caused by US and European high-tech export controls and grapples with very high youth unemployment (which is still increasing), a looming demographic crisis, and not least the collapse of the property bubble. Just before the summit meeting Xi learned that the government in Rome had pulled out of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a humiliating blow as Italy was the only G7 country which had ever joined the BRI.In their meetings with the Chinese leaders, von der Leyen and Michel bitterly complained about the massive EU trade deficit with China, which ran at almost 400 billion euros in 2022. They told them that this was not sustainable and the very fact that the trade deficit had doubled during the last two years showed that irregularities were at play. Beijing needed to fix this situation as a matter of urgency. Not surprisingly, Xi dismissed this. Many exports to the EU actually originated from European-owned factories in China. Moreover, the trade deficit in 2023 had already declined by some 17 percent compared to the previous year. China's industries were developing rapidly due to their high innovation abilities and there was no overcapacity and no unfair subsidies of EV vehicles in China. These products were needed and would help the green transition in Europe. And in any case the EU was heavily subsidizing the European battery industries. The EU fears, however, that China will soon flood the EU countries with even more low-cost goods such as solar panels, wind turbines, medical devices, and more subsidized electric cars. EU trade experts are convinced that low consumer demand in China, enormous state subsidies for these goods, and the re-direction of massive bank lending from the property sector to EV vehicles as well as a great lack of fair market access for EU companies have led to a significant overcapacity which China now needs to export. The EU estimates that the Chinese state makes a loss of up to $30,000 for each China-made EV vehicle sold in Europe. Last September, von der Leyen initiated an EU investigation into Chinese subsidies for EV cars. The high tariffs imposed by the US and other non-EU countries, makes the EU the only sizable market available for the Chinese low-cost export drive regarding EV cars.While the EU "prefers to have negotiated solutions," von der Leyen indicated that the Europeans had "tools to protect our market." The European Commission President, whose first term in office is ending soon, was clearly referring to the imposition of tariffs. "Politically, European leaders will not be able to tolerate that our industrial base is undermined by unfair competition," she told Xi. She repeated that the EU was not interested in de-coupling from China – but "de-risking" and "diversifying" supply chains was necessary to make the EU economies more resilient. Outgoing European Council President Michel referred to Beijing's export curbs on critical minerals, such as graphite which is essential for the EU defense industries. Upholding European "sovereignty and strategic autonomy" thus made a "de-risking" policy utterly necessary. And incidentally Beijing had started this trend, the two EU leaders pointed out, when China announced its "dual circulation strategy" some three years ago. With this policy, China had tried to rely more on domestic consumption and home-made technology rather than on exports and high-tech goods from abroad.Michel and von der Leyen also presented details of 13 Chinese companies to Xi which sell EU-made dual-use products to Russia and thus avoid the European sanctions put on Moscow. They expect Beijing to take "appropriate action" otherwise these Chinese companies will also be sanctioned as part of the 13th sanctions package on Russia, which is currently being debated in the European Parliament. The meeting was indeed quite "candid" as Beijing later expressed. Von der Leyen and Michel also raised serious human rights issues in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong though they were delighted that the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue had commenced again. The two EU leaders expressed their concern about the rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait but also reiterated the EU's consistent One China policy. The Israel-Hamas War was also discussed.And both sides were also able to agree on a number of issues, such as their mutual interest in the continued cooperation on climate change and the environment, and Beijing's commitment to deal with the rising emission of methane. They also agreed to cooperate on global health issues and working out global rules and standards for AI. Both sides welcomed the establishment of working groups on exports controls, wines and spirits, cosmetics, food safety, intellectual property rights, and financial regulation. China had pressed for the relaunching of High-Level People-to-People Dialogue (HPPD) next year and this was agreed. First initiated in 2012, the HPPD consists of meetings of decision-makers and practitioners in various civil society and cultural fields. Agreement was also reached regarding the controversial issue of the ambiguous Chinese rules for data transfers. Beijing agreed to publish guidelines to provide greater transparency regarding how western companies can transfer their data out of China without running the danger of breaking any laws and rules. Nevertheless, this was a difficult and contentious summit. Regarding the essential topics such as how to deal with the continuing lack of market access for EU companies, the EU's huge trade imbalance with China, and Beijing's dubious support for Russia's war on Ukraine (China has still not condemned Moscow's aggression), no agreement was reached. There was no joint communiqué at the end. Both sides merely held separate press conferences. Yet, among all the tension and distrust of the last few years the summit did take place and both sides engaged and spoke to each other quite openly, and without falling out with each other. It is questionable, however, whether this will be enough to bring about "the foundation of a constructive relationship," which von der Leyen stated to Xi Jinping as the goal with a degree of polite optimism at the outset of the 2023 EU-China summit.

The 2023 EU-China summit on December 7 in Beijing ended without a dramatic clash of views but also without much agreement. The summit did not do any harm, it seems, but it did not lead to any major results either. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Charles Michel, President of the European Council, probably expected as much. In her opening statement von der Leyen asked Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman, Xi Jinping, for a "frank and open exchange" of views and it seems that is what she got, once the doors closed for the two-part meeting. The EU pair, accompanied by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, first met with Xi and then after lunch with the new premier Li Qiang. At both meetings the elephants in the rooms were the United States and Russia. In what has almost become a tradition by now, the Chinese leaders attempted to do their best to drive a wedge between the transatlantic allies by warning the EU leaders against "all kinds of interference" from outside powers, such as the United States and its latest export curbs on high-end artificial intelligence chips and chipmaking tools. In turn, the two EU presidents tried to persuade Xi to drop his support for Russia's war against Ukraine and persuade Putin to withdraw his troops. China's position regarding Russia's aggression would define the EU's relationship with China, von der Leyen told a news conference after the summit but Xi remained unswayed, as far as we know. China buys huge amounts of Russian oil at discounted prices and is providing Moscow with drones, microchips, and other dual-use goods, which may well classify as military aid. Wang Luton, the director-general for European affairs in the Chinese foreign ministry, suggested at a later press conference that the EU countries should talk to Putin themselves, if they wanted to bring about an end to the war.Trade and market access matters were at the core of the first EU-China summit to be held in four years. After all, both Europe and China are in economic difficulties and both sides know that they need each other. Europe is under increasing pressure due to the financial and military demands of the Ukraine war, increasing social policy expenditures and declining industrial creativity. Xi is greatly upset about the difficulties caused by US and European high-tech export controls and grapples with very high youth unemployment (which is still increasing), a looming demographic crisis, and not least the collapse of the property bubble. Just before the summit meeting Xi learned that the government in Rome had pulled out of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a humiliating blow as Italy was the only G7 country which had ever joined the BRI.In their meetings with the Chinese leaders, von der Leyen and Michel bitterly complained about the massive EU trade deficit with China, which ran at almost 400 billion euros in 2022. They told them that this was not sustainable and the very fact that the trade deficit had doubled during the last two years showed that irregularities were at play. Beijing needed to fix this situation as a matter of urgency. Not surprisingly, Xi dismissed this. Many exports to the EU actually originated from European-owned factories in China. Moreover, the trade deficit in 2023 had already declined by some 17 percent compared to the previous year. China's industries were developing rapidly due to their high innovation abilities and there was no overcapacity and no unfair subsidies of EV vehicles in China. These products were needed and would help the green transition in Europe. And in any case the EU was heavily subsidizing the European battery industries. The EU fears, however, that China will soon flood the EU countries with even more low-cost goods such as solar panels, wind turbines, medical devices, and more subsidized electric cars. EU trade experts are convinced that low consumer demand in China, enormous state subsidies for these goods, and the re-direction of massive bank lending from the property sector to EV vehicles as well as a great lack of fair market access for EU companies have led to a significant overcapacity which China now needs to export. The EU estimates that the Chinese state makes a loss of up to $30,000 for each China-made EV vehicle sold in Europe. Last September, von der Leyen initiated an EU investigation into Chinese subsidies for EV cars. The high tariffs imposed by the US and other non-EU countries, makes the EU the only sizable market available for the Chinese low-cost export drive regarding EV cars.While the EU "prefers to have negotiated solutions," von der Leyen indicated that the Europeans had "tools to protect our market." The European Commission President, whose first term in office is ending soon, was clearly referring to the imposition of tariffs. "Politically, European leaders will not be able to tolerate that our industrial base is undermined by unfair competition," she told Xi. She repeated that the EU was not interested in de-coupling from China – but "de-risking" and "diversifying" supply chains was necessary to make the EU economies more resilient. Outgoing European Council President Michel referred to Beijing's export curbs on critical minerals, such as graphite which is essential for the EU defense industries. Upholding European "sovereignty and strategic autonomy" thus made a "de-risking" policy utterly necessary. And incidentally Beijing had started this trend, the two EU leaders pointed out, when China announced its "dual circulation strategy" some three years ago. With this policy, China had tried to rely more on domestic consumption and home-made technology rather than on exports and high-tech goods from abroad.Michel and von der Leyen also presented details of 13 Chinese companies to Xi which sell EU-made dual-use products to Russia and thus avoid the European sanctions put on Moscow. They expect Beijing to take "appropriate action" otherwise these Chinese companies will also be sanctioned as part of the 13th sanctions package on Russia, which is currently being debated in the European Parliament. The meeting was indeed quite "candid" as Beijing later expressed. Von der Leyen and Michel also raised serious human rights issues in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong though they were delighted that the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue had commenced again. The two EU leaders expressed their concern about the rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait but also reiterated the EU's consistent One China policy. The Israel-Hamas War was also discussed.And both sides were also able to agree on a number of issues, such as their mutual interest in the continued cooperation on climate change and the environment, and Beijing's commitment to deal with the rising emission of methane. They also agreed to cooperate on global health issues and working out global rules and standards for AI. Both sides welcomed the establishment of working groups on exports controls, wines and spirits, cosmetics, food safety, intellectual property rights, and financial regulation. China had pressed for the relaunching of High-Level People-to-People Dialogue (HPPD) next year and this was agreed. First initiated in 2012, the HPPD consists of meetings of decision-makers and practitioners in various civil society and cultural fields. Agreement was also reached regarding the controversial issue of the ambiguous Chinese rules for data transfers. Beijing agreed to publish guidelines to provide greater transparency regarding how western companies can transfer their data out of China without running the danger of breaking any laws and rules. Nevertheless, this was a difficult and contentious summit. Regarding the essential topics such as how to deal with the continuing lack of market access for EU companies, the EU's huge trade imbalance with China, and Beijing's dubious support for Russia's war on Ukraine (China has still not condemned Moscow's aggression), no agreement was reached. There was no joint communiqué at the end. Both sides merely held separate press conferences. Yet, among all the tension and distrust of the last few years the summit did take place and both sides engaged and spoke to each other quite openly, and without falling out with each other. It is questionable, however, whether this will be enough to bring about "the foundation of a constructive relationship," which von der Leyen stated to Xi Jinping as the goal with a degree of polite optimism at the outset of the 2023 EU-China summit.

The geopolitical repercussions from the war in Ukraine continue to reverberate across Eurasia.With global attention preoccupied by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been depriving the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenian population in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh access to humanitarian aid in a blockade that has lasted over eight months and has recently intensified. Much to Armenia's consternation, the 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in the enclave since the most recent round of fighting in 2020 have appeared ineffective in the face of increasing Azerbaijani pressure against the besieged Armenian population.As a result, Armenia is openly seeking to diversify its security relationship away from Russia, its longstanding ally, including conducting joint military drills with the United States in Armenia that began Monday and is set to end on September 20.Yerevan, Armenia's capital, has increasingly expressed a sense of betrayal at Moscow's inability, or unwillingness, to lend support to its treaty ally since last September when Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenia's internationally recognized territory and where they still occupy 10 square kilometers, according to Armenian officials.The Backdrop of Current TensionsThe two former Soviet Republics fought the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the early 1990s after the indigenous Armenian majority in the autonomous oblast proclaimed their independence from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a full-scale war broke out between the two newly independent countries, eventually leaving tens of thousands casualties dead and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1992 and 1994. The war ended with a victory by Armenia.A Russian-brokered ceasefire resulted in Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan proper. The United Nations and international community, however, continued to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.After over 25 years of unsuccessful negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the U.S., France, and Russia, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, bolstered by the "brotherly" military support from NATO member Turkey and years of stockpiling Israel-supplied weapons, launched an all-out assault to recapture the disputed territory in September 2020. The 44-day war saw Azerbaijan secure a military victory with further territorial gains guaranteed under a Moscow-brokered ceasefire, leaving a rump self-governing Nagorno-Karabakh Republic alongside a Russian peacekeeping contingent as stipulated by the November 2020 ceasefire agreement. That agreement also guaranteed that a link between the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and Armenia, the Lachin Corridor, would be sustained and controlled by the Russian peacekeeping contingent. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh and its inhabitants remained unresolved. Last December, however, Baku effectively blockaded the Lachin Corridor and, five months later, it established a checkpoint on the road, formalizing the blockade. While the European Union, Russia, the U.S., and even the International Court of Justice have increasingly called for lifting the blockade, Azerbaijan remains defiant. The Azerbaijan foreign ministry insists that claims of a blockade are "completely baseless" and has accused Armenians of transporting arms into the territory, a claim Yerevan denies. Nevertheless, even the International Committee of the Red Cross struggles to continue its vital deliveries into the territory, resulting in what several United Nations Special Rapporteurs describe as a "dire humanitarian crisis." There were hopes the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, would be resolved by negotiations facilitated by a complementary EU and U.S. approach (although a separate track by Moscow also persists). However, the ongoing blockade has dimmed hopes for a viable negotiated settlement. Current TensionsThe war in Ukraine has drained the Kremlin's military resources and room for maneuver, especially in a region like the South Caucasus where Russia vies with Turkey for regional hegemony. Moscow's increased reliance on Ankara over the last 18 months to balance against the West diplomatically has resulted in its inability to fulfill its own obligations in the ceasefire agreement following the 2020 war. Given this new reality, Armenia has started to hedge against Moscow by actively searching for new military partners and security guarantors. The publicity surrounding Eagle Partner 2023, the Armenian-hosted joint military exercise with the U.S., clearly worries the Kremlin, which has said it would "deeply analyze" the latest events. However, these exercises are "narrowly focused on peacekeeping operations" and do not represent a "breakthrough in U.S.-Armenia defense cooperation," according to Benyamin Poghosyan, senior fellow at APRI, a Yerevan-based think tank. Nevertheless, the exercises follow Armenia's refusal in January to host Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization exercises on its territory, citing the organization's unwillingness to support Yerevan during last September's escalation by Azerbaijan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has recently made a distinctly public effort to distance itself from Russian actions in Ukraine and even from Moscow itself. In just the last weeks Yerevan has moved to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and recalled its ambassador to the CSTO. Pashinyan said depending solely on Russia for security was a "strategic mistake." Pashinyan's spouse, Anna Hakobyan, traveled to Kyiv last week and delivered the first package of Armenian humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, the fact remains that only Russia has sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, and that these peacekeepers are all that stands between the local Armenian population and Azerbaijani conquest, almost certainly leading to massacre and expulsion. As Poghosyan sees it, the driving cause behind a potential new attack is "Azerbaijan's desire to establish control over Nagorno Karabakh without providing any status or special rights to Armenians." This aligns with the view of Shujat Ahmadzada, a Baku-based researcher on foreign and security policies of the South Caucasus countries, who believes Azerbaijan is pursuing a "3D policy" with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh. The three D's stand for "De-internationalization, De-territorialization, and De-institutionalization." Such a process is intended to transform the status of the ethnic Armenians living there into a "purely 'internal matter' of Azerbaijan'' while "incorporating the self-governing institutions into the Azerbaijani political system in such a way that there is no single territorially defined unit for the ethnic Armenian community." While the deployment of over 80 U.S. troops on Armenian soil will hopefully guarantee against imminently anticipated Azerbaijani attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia itself, Washington's move in a region Moscow has long viewed as a vital interest does not come without risk. Moscow views Washington's increased involvement as the Biden administration taking advantage of Russia's war in Ukraine in order to weaken or challenge its influence in the South Caucasus region, where Russia has a history of over 200 years of regional military domination. The latest American proposal for unblocking the Lachin Corridor plans to simultaneously open an alternative route to Nagorno-Karabakh through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam. However, Armenians have regarded this proposal as a clear threat. Tigran Grigoryan, a Karabakh-born analyst and head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank, assessed that, even if both the Lachin Corridor and the Aghdam route were to be opened, the potential remained for Baku to again close the corridor and create a "new status quo on the ground." Recent reports show that the first delivery of aid by the Russian Red Cross has entered Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. However, the acute crisis in food, energy, and humanitarian supplies continues as the Lachin Corridor remains shut and Azerbaijan continues its buildup along the border regions.The Biden administration would do better to use its leverage over Azerbaijan to ensure an end to the Lachin Corridor blockade while simultaneously working to achieve a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would both recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty and provide enforceable guarantees for the future rights and security of the Armenian population there. For such an approach to work would likely require coordination with Russia. While such a scenario might be hard to imagine, Washington and Moscow have worked together in the past over Nagorno-Karabakh, even when relations were severely strained elsewhere. Such coordination is particularly compelling given the tens of thousands in the enclave who currently face famine. Rather than taking steps that Moscow views as threatening to its military presence in the South Caucasus (a process which led to disastrous consequences for neighboring Georgia 15 years ago), Washington, and the region itself, would be better off if American involvement instead demonstrated its commitment to ensuring human rights.

Security Council 8236th Meeting (Pm) ; 5/24/2018 Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council | Meetings Coverage and Press Relea… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13302.doc.htm 1/5 SC/13302 17 APRIL 2018 MEETINGS COVERAGE SECURITY COUNCIL > 8236TH MEETING (PM) Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council Casting a spotlight on the pressing needs of civilians in Raqqa and Rukban, the Security Council met this afternoon to hear a brie􀃒􍉮ng on recent developments and discuss ways forward. While people in those cities comprised 1 per cent of those requiring help, their needs were no less important than the remaining 99 per cent, said Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. In Raqqa, where 100,000 people had returned since October when Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) had been forced out, conditions were not conducive for returns because of high levels of unexploded ordinances and improvised explosive device contamination. In addition, there were scant basic services, a lack of electricity and mobile communications and food insecurity. Describing other concerns, he said in Rukban some 50,000 people were in need of sustained humanitarian assistance. Those remaining in the town of Douma and other areas of eastern Ghouta required urgent assistance after years of deprivation, he said, adding that the humanitarian community had not yet been able to provide help. On 25 March, the United Nations had requested permission from the Government of Syria to deploy an interagency surge team to scale up the United Nations operational capacity, he said, adding that he could not overstate the importance of sustaining and scaling up the international response. Council members underscored the need for sustained aid deliveries, with some calling on all Member States to make substantial commitments at the upcoming Brussels pledging conference and to swiftly disburse pledges. Some delegates said mine clearing should be a priority to ensure safe returns of displaced persons, while many members urged parties to return to negotiations to 􀃒􍉮nd a political solution to end the con􀃓􍍩ict. Echoing a common call, China's representative appealed to all parties in Syria to comply with Security Council resolution 2401 (2018) by ceasing hostilities and coordinating with United Nations humanitarian e􀃗􍝯orts. Any unilateral action would violate the basic norms of international law while complicating a settlement of the Syrian issue, he said, urging all sides to refrain from moves that would further escalate the situation. The representative of the Russian Federation, noting that Raqqa's destruction had been due to a United States-led coalition 􀃒􍉧ght against ISIL, criticized coalition members for their lack of reconstruction in that area. Civilians were regularly killed by landmines and no assessment of humanitarian needs had occurred until the Russian Federation had insisted on it. In addition, no practical steps had been taken to provide humanitarian assistance to the population of Rukban, which was located near an American airbase. Urging the Council and the humanitarian community to address the situation of those two cities, he said coalition members should outline how they themselves were implementing resolution 2401 (2018). Meanwhile, the United States delegate said that while the 75 members of the Global Coalition against Da'esh had targeted ISIL and liberated civilians, the Syrian Government had bombarded its own people. United Nations humanitarian convoys were welcome at any time in Raqqa and Rukhban, with any delays being the result of the Syrian Government and its failure to allow deliveries. Condemning the Russian Federation for its "cynical, thinly disguised diversions", she said it was clear that it had requested the Council meeting as a distraction from the atrocities committed by the Bashar Al-Assad regime. Providing another perspective, Syria's representative said three Council members continued to search for microscopic dust while ignoring the enormous "elephant in the room", which was the aggression they had launched against his country. Raqqa was a martyr city that had been destroyed by those very States, he said, adding that the coalition had never sought to combat terrorism. Indeed, the point had been to block the Syrian Government and its allies as they attempted to combat ISIL. Turning to the situation in the Rukban camps, he said coalition forces had prevented the Government from delivering aid. Moreover, he asserted that the situation in Syria did not require draft resolutions or semi-daily meetings. Instead, the Council must stand against the occupation of Syria by the United States, Israel and Turkey and aggressions carried out by the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Drawing attention to the e􀃗􍝥ects of the crisis on the Syrian people, Equatorial Guinea's representative said the situation in Raqqa required the international community's urgent attention. Calling for sustained humanitarian access and the intensi􀃒􍉣cation of e􀃗􍝯orts to reach a political solution, he reminded Council members that "the Syrian people have su􀃗􍝥ered enough." 5/24/2018 Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council | Meetings Coverage and Press Relea… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13302.doc.htm 2/5 Also speaking were the representatives of Kuwait, Sweden, France, United Kingdom, Kazakhstan, Poland, Côte d'Ivoire, Netherlands, Bolivia, Ethiopia and Peru. The meeting began at 4:48 p.m. and ended at 6:38 p.m. Brie􀃒􍉮ng MARK LOWCOCK, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefed the Council on the situation in Syria, including in Raqqa and Rukban. While people in those cities totalled 1 per cent of those requiring help, their needs were no less important than the remaining 99 per cent. After a United Nations assessment mission on 1 April in Raqqa, where 100,000 people had returned since October when Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) had been forced out, reports showed that conditions were not conducive for returns because of high levels of unexploded ordinances and improvised explosive device contamination. Every week, 50 casualties had been reported due to the remnants of war. Also, an estimated 70 to 80 per cent of all buildings had been destroyed or damaged. While public services were slowly resuming, the city lacked electricity and mobile communications while water was being pumped at a very limited capacity to the outskirts. Meanwhile, up to 95 per cent of households that had returned to Raqqa were food insecure and health services were lacking. Some schools had reopened, but lacked supplies. United Nations agencies were planning deliveries of humanitarian assistance and programmatic interventions to support the work of humanitarian agencies already active in those areas. In Rukban, some 50,000 people were in need of sustained humanitarian assistance, he continued, noting that there was a pressing need for better service provision and medical help. Humanitarian agencies were working closely with the United States, Russian Federation and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to facilitate deliveries. At the same time, those remaining in the town of Douma and other areas of eastern Ghouta, under control of the Government of Syria, required urgent assistance after years of deprivation. The humanitarian community had not yet been able to provide that, he said, adding that access to reach the people of eastern Ghouta was critical. Of the 155,000 who had been displaced, he said, approximately 63,000 had moved north to Idlib and Aleppo, resulting in a 25 per cent increase in Idlib's displaced population. That situation placed incredible pressure on host communities and humanitarian actors working to provide assistance and services. Those remaining in Afrin were also in dire need of aid. Despite some positive developments, humanitarian partners were still struggling to gain sustained access to Afrin and freedom of movement for internally displaced persons remained severely limited. On 25 March, the United Nations requested permission from the Government of Syria to deploy an interagency surge team to scale up the United Nations operational capacity. Overall, he could not overstate the importance of sustaining and scaling up the international response. Statements VASSILY A. NEBENZIA (Russian Federation), noting that some delegations were constantly calling on his country to provide updates on its implementation of resolution 2401 (2018), said signi􀃒􍉣cant e􀃗􍝯orts had been undertaken to improve the situation in eastern Ghouta, where armed groups had long held populations hostage. "A bloodbath was prevented," he said, adding that some 60,000 people had also been helped to return to their homes. Joint work was ongoing between the Russian military police and Syrian law enforcement o􀃕􍕣cials, including debris clearance, re-establishment of services and food deliveries. However, the international community's attention was also required, he said, calling for additional support from other Member States. In contrast, he said, Raqqa — which had been destroyed by United States-led coalition air strikes — had seen no reconstruction e􀃗􍝯orts. Civilians were regularly killed by landmines, and no assessment of humanitarian needs had taken place until the Russian Federation had insisted on it. Buildings were in ruins, thousands of corpses remained buried and no school, hospital or basic services remained operational. No practical steps had been taken to provide humanitarian assistance to the population of the similarly damaged city of Rukban, located near an American airbase whose very existence constituted a blatant violation of Syria's sovereignty. Urging the Council and the humanitarian community not to ignore the situation of those two cities, he said members of the coalition should be courageous enough to outline how they themselves were implementing resolution 2401 (2018) in those cases. Events over recent days had revealed the hypocrisy of the "troika" — namely, the United States, United Kingdom and France, he said. By their acts of aggression, those countries and their supporters had taken sides in the Syrian con􀃓􍍩ict. The Russian Federation was instead working with all sides, committing to implementing Council resolutions and supporting the parties in making progress in the Geneva talks, which must resume without preconditions and especially without demands for a regime change. Given current developments, it was hard to imagine that the Government of Syria would want to talk about the situation in its country with any members of the troika, who sought to declare its President a war criminal. Indeed, before any progress could be made, "you 􀃒􍉲rst need to undo the damage that you yourself have created", he said, noting that the opposition must step back from its destructive position while embracing Council resolutions, and their patrons must end their militant rhetoric against the legitimately elected President of Syria. Meanwhile, he said, the establishment of a mechanism to attribute responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syria made no sense, as Washington, D.C., and its allies were already acting like self-appointed executioners on that matter. Attempts to push the Russian Federation to change its position using air strikes and the threat of sanctions had never 5/24/2018 Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council | Meetings Coverage and Press Relea… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13302.doc.htm 3/5 worked in the past nor would they work in the future. The United States and its allies must end its threats to use force against Syria, as such actions 􀃓􍍯outed international law and only drove peace farther away. Warning against attempts to maintain foreign occupation in parts of Syria, loot its resources and stoke divisions between its people, he said military groups must also separate themselves from terrorists and Western parties should stop manipulating the humanitarian situation for political purposes. BADER ABDULLAH N. M. ALMUNAYEKH (Kuwait) said resolution 2401 (2018) had addressed the humanitarian situation across Syria, demanding a pause in hostilities for 30 days to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance and allow for the evacuation of the sick and wounded. Voicing frustration that it had not yet been implemented, he reiterated the call on parties to the con􀃓􍍩ict to allow the entry of weekly convoys and for an immediate end to all attacks against civilians, civilian infrastructure and medical facilities. Urging the Astana guarantors, in particular, to continue to support talks. Welcoming the O􀃕􍕣ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs preparations of plans for providing humanitarian assistance in Raqqa, he underscored the need to maintain sustained aid delivery to internally displaced persons camps in Rukban. OLOF ORRENIUS SKOOG (Sweden) said a greater e􀃗􍝯ort must be made to ensure full and immediate implementation of resolution 2401 (2018) throughout Syria, with the Astana guarantors living up to their commitments. He called on the Syrian authorities to immediately grant facilitation letters for humanitarian convoys to Douma and to facilitate sustained United Nations access to camps housing internally displaced persons. Referring also the situations in Raqqa, Rukban, Idlib and Afrin, he said the humanitarian community was undertaking a Herculean task. However, the acute lack of funding for United Nations humanitarian operations in in Syria was deeply troubling, he said, calling on all Member States to make substantial commitments at the upcoming Brussels conference and to swiftly disburse pledges. KELLEY A. ECKELS-CURRIE (United States) said the 75 members of the Global Coalition against Da'esh that had fought the terrorist group in Iraq had continued its eradication campaign in Syria. While the coalition had targeted ISIL and liberated civilians, the Syrian Government had bombarded its own people. Noting that United Nations humanitarian convoys were welcome at any time in Raqqa and Rukban, the United States stood ready to support deliveries. Any delays stemmed from the Bashar al-Assad regime and its failure to allow convoys to move. The United States had already provided assistance, clearing 3,000 remnants of war and contributing 300,000 pounds of food. Pointing out that the Russian Federation had called the Council meeting as part of a messaging campaign to distract the international community from the atrocities committed by the Assad regime, she reiterated that in addition to a cease􀃒􍉲re, the Council had called for unhindered access for humanitarian assistance. Yet, the regime had only allowed six convoys. Such calls by the Council needed to be implemented on the ground, but that required the Syrian Government's cooperation, she said, condemning the Russian Federation for its "cynical, thinly disguised diversions". FRANÇOIS DELATTRE (France) said the humanitarian situation in Syria screamed for attention, including those 􀃓􍍥eeing safe areas, the bureaucracy preventing access to camps and conditions in Raqqa, where 90,000 people had returned. Humanitarian actors needed access to provide much-needed basic services and e􀃗􍝯orts must continue to remove landmines. For its part, France was helping with landmine clearance and had contributed €10 million for projects easing civilian returns to Raqqa. Concerning Rukban, he reiterated an urgent appeal to guarantee unimpeded humanitarian access. In that context, he supported the draft resolution that his country, United Kingdom and the United States had tabled on 14 April with a view to making progress on the humanitarian front, put a de􀃒􍉮nite end to the Syrian chemical programme and begin conclusive political negotiations. That draft had sought areas of convergence to create conditions of real diplomatic progress in Syria and open the way for true negotiations. KAREN PIERCE (United Kingdom), regretting to note that some members had used the humanitarian situation to score political points, recalled that the United Kingdom had contributed a total of $3.5 billion to date for humanitarian assistance. Her Government continued to provide humanitarian support to Raqqa and surrounding areas and had aided with landmine clearance. Raising several concerns, she drew attention to the plight of displaced persons in Rukban and urged the regime to facilitate access to the United Nations and its partners to deliver aid to Douma and eastern Ghouta. She called on the Council to use recent events to get the political process back on track and was looking forward to the upcoming retreat in Sweden, which the Secretary-General would also attend. KANAT TUMYSH (Kazakhstan), welcoming the O􀃕􍕣ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs assessment mission to Raqqa in April, raised concerns that an estimated 100,000 people had returned to their homes in that city despite the wide presence of unexploded ordnances. Highlighting the signi􀃒􍉣cant destruction of Raqqa and the precarious fate of the Rukban and Hadalat refugee camps, he warned the Council of a dangerous tendency for those camps to become havens for foreign mercenaries. Kazakhstan supported the Russian Federation's proposal to establish humanitarian corridors for withdrawing refugees from El Tanf and the Rukban camp, based on the example provided by Russian and Syrian military troops during the assault on Aleppo. Calling on all parties immediately suspend hostilities, implement resolution 2401 (2018) and report periodically on those e􀃗􍝯orts, he said the questions of boundaries and territories following Syria's prolonged war should be addressed in line with that country's Constitution in order to prevent the re‑emergence of extremist groups. PAWEL RADOMSKI (Poland), raising concerns about new internally displaced persons reaching Idlib, said the military con􀃓􍍩ict in north-west Syria had further complicated the situation on the ground. He called on all parties, especially the Russian Federation and Iran, to take action towards a cessation of hostility and to comply with all their obligations under 5/24/2018 Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council | Meetings Coverage and Press Relea… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13302.doc.htm 4/5 international law. He also urged the Russian Federation, Iran and Turkey to ful􀃒􍉬l their responsibility as guarantors of the Astana process. There could be no military solution to the con􀃓􍍩ict, in Syria, he said, underlining that a political agreement remained the only sustainable solution. ANATOLIO NDONG MBA (Equatorial Guinea) said Council members had recognized the very high number of people 􀃓􍍥eeing Syria when they had adopted resolution 2393 (2017). In the former ISIL stronghold of Raqqa, military o􀃗􍝥ensives had led to signi􀃒􍉣cant destruction. Commending World Health Organization (WHO) e􀃗􍝯orts, he said Raqqa's residents continued to be deprived of aid because there were no nearby o􀃕􍕣ces of humanitarian agencies and local authorities were incapable of providing assistance. The situation required the international community and the Council's urgent attention, he said, calling for the provision of sustained access allowing humanitarian convoys to reach Raqqa. "The Syrian people have su􀃗􍝥ered enough," he said, calling for the intensi􀃒􍉣cation of e􀃗􍝯orts to reach a political solution centred on the needs of the Syrian people and in full respect for Syria's territorial integrity. THÉODORE DAH (Côte d'Ivoire), echoing expressions of regret that resolution 2401 (2018) remained unimplemented, called on all parties to ensure its full implementation across Syria including in Raqqa and Rukban. In the former, signi􀃒􍉣cant destruction, a dearth of basic services and the presence of unexploded ordnance posed serious obstacles for safe returns of civilians. Calling on the international community to address those situations, he said a needs assessment was urgently required to better understand the extremely precarious living conditions in Rukban's internally displaced persons camps. Such work must be part of a global e􀃗􍝯ort to reach a negotiated political solution based on inclusive dialogue and in line with resolution 2254 (2015). LISE GREGOIRE VAN HAAREN (Netherlands) emphasized the urgent need for access to Douma for humanitarian convoys and for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fact-􀃒􍉮nding mission. Calling for a humanitarian surge to address the urgent needs of internally displaced persons, she emphasized the situation of more than 180,000 people displaced by hostilities in Afrin, adding to the strain felt by host communities. Clearing improvised explosive devices was a priority in Raqqa, while in Rukban, both food and medical aid must reach the remaining displaced persons via the fastest and easiest route. Resolution 2401 (2018) must be implemented across Syria and e􀃗􍝯orts must succeed in ensuring humanitarian access and the protection of civilians, in line with international humanitarian law. MA ZHAOXU (China) appealed to all parties in Syria to comply with resolution 2401 (2018), cease hostilities and coordinate with United Nations humanitarian e􀃗􍝯orts. Equal attention must be paid to the humanitarian situation and to helping displaced persons to return to their homes. Emphasizing China's adherence to the peaceful settlement of disputes and its rejection of the use of force in international regulations, he said any action taken must comply with the United Nations Charter. Any unilateral action would violate the basic norms of international law while complicating a settlement of the Syrian issue, he said, urging all sides to refrain from moves that would further escalate the situation. PEDRO LUIS INCHAUSTE JORDÁN (Bolivia) underscored the pressing need to pursue mine clearing and to remove improvised explosive devices and remnants of war. Such work was vital for reconstruction and the return of basic services. Expressing regret that violence had continued unfettered in major cities, he said it was even more repugnant that schools, hospitals and residential areas were being targeted. Bolivia called on all stakeholders to spare no e􀃗􍝯ort to implement resolution 2401 (2018) and for all parties to allow for unconditional humanitarian access. He went on to reiterate that the Syrian people should decide their political future through an inclusive process, free from external meddling. DAWIT YIRGA WOLDEGERIMA (Ethiopia) said the destruction of infrastructure and limited public services remained major challenges in Syrian cities. Demining e􀃗􍝯orts should be strengthened and aid must be delivered to all parts of Syria via safe and unhindered humanitarian access. Underscoring the importance of fully implementing resolution 2401 (2018), he said the Council should restore its unity through genuine and productive dialogue. GUSTAVO MEZA-CUADRA (Peru), Council President for April, speaking in his national capacity, welcomed e􀃗􍝯orts to clear "deadly booby-traps" laid by Da'esh in Raqqa and other areas. Recommendations from the O􀃕􍕣ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs mission to Raqqa would contribute to the safe return of displaced persons. While acknowledging the legitimate right of States to protect their borders, he said there should be unfettered access to Rukban, given the humanitarian situation there. It was vital that needs in Syria be met on a consistent basis, regardless of location, he said, adding that politicizing humanitarian assistance was unacceptable and a contravention of resolution 2401 (2018), which must be applied holistically throughout Syria. BASHAR JA'AFARI (Syria) said three Council members continued to search for microscopic dust while ignoring the enormous "elephant in the room", which was the aggression they had launched against Syria. His counterpart from the United States had declared that her country's forces had rid Raqqa of 3,000 landmines. Yet, the United States had also assisted 4,000 terrorists to safely leave the city without holding them accountable for planting them. While Sweden's representative had called out the Syrian Government many times, he had failed to call for an end to the United States, Turkish and Israeli occupation of Syria and to mention State-sponsored terrorism. Addressing France's delegate, he said Médecins Sans Frontières, like ISIL, had entered Syria without the Syrian Government's approval, behaving instead like "terrorists without borders". 5/24/2018 Humanitarian Response in Syria Must Be Urgently Boosted, Emergency Relief Coordinator Tells Security Council | Meetings Coverage and Press Relea… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13302.doc.htm 5/5  Providing an update on the OPCW fact-􀃒􍉮nding mission in Douma, he said the Syrian Government had facilitated the arrival today of a United Nations security team, which had entered the city around 3 p.m. local time. If the team found the situation to be secure, the OPCW fact-􀃒􍉮nding team would begin its work 18 April. Claims that the mission had been blocked had only intended to distract the international community from reality, he said, expressing regret that countries launched cowardly attacks against Syria still failed to understand the Syrian people's desire to determine their own destiny. "The days of hegemony are gone," he said, adding that no threat of force or support for terrorists would change the fact that the world's people were tired of seeing big Powers continue to disregard international law with impunity. He said Raqqa was a martyr city that had been destroyed by those very States, with the O􀃕􍕣ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian A􀃗􍝡airs declaring the destruction to be "100 per cent complete". Hundreds of thousands of people had 􀃓􍍥ed Raqqa and no basic services or operating hospitals remained, except for Médecins Sans Frontières facilities. The coalition had never sought to combat terrorism, he said, recalling its bloody massacres of civilians in various towns and villages across Syria. Indeed, the point had been to block the Syrian Government and its allies as they attempted to combat ISIL. On 8 February, United States forces had killed dozens of members of a popular force that had been 􀃒􍉧ghting ISIL along the Euphrates River. Meanwhile, terrorists had been spared and even armed so they could wreak further havoc. Turning to the situation in the Rukban camps, he said coalition forces had prevented the Government from delivering aid. The United States was using the area as a place to train terrorist forces, who would then be used to 􀃒􍉧ght other battles in the region. The situation in Syria did not require draft resolutions or semi-daily meetings. Instead, what was needed was for the Council to stand against the occupation of Syria by the United States, Israel and Turkey, aggressions carried out by the United States, France and the United Kingdom and the imposition of coercive measures against the Syrian people. For information media. Not an o􀃕􍕣cial record.

For the Arab Gulf kingdoms, the Horn of Africa is a strategic perimeter. They want to minimize political threats — some are hostile to Islamists, all want to suppress democracy movements. Anticipating a post-carbon and food insecure world, the Gulf States want to possess rich farmlands. Each has its own vision of African client states that will do their bidding. This is a recipe for proxy wars, state fragmentation and autocracy in northeast Africa.For the Horn of Africa, today's crises are existential. War, dictatorship and famine are causing state collapse. The African Union is compromised, its peace and security system unravelling. The United Nations is retreating from peacemaking, increasingly reduced to a bare-bones humanitarian provider.The dangers were illuminated by the surprise New Year's Day deal between Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia, and Muse Bihi, president of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region of northwest Somalia. Ethiopia has been renowned for careful diplomacy, including championing the inviolability of existing boundaries. After fighting wars with Somalia in the 1960s and '70s, Ethiopia had learned to be circumspect and consultative in its dealings with Mogadishu.Last week, Ethiopia upended that tradition. It promised to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, in return for Somaliland leasing it a 12-mile stretch of land, including a seaport, that will allow Ethiopia to establish a naval base. This in turn unleashed strong words from Somalia — which had not been informed ahead of time. The AU called for Ethiopia to treat Somalia with respect. Fears of new conflicts were stirred. Unsaid in public is that the UAE is widely suspected to be the patron of the deal.For the United States, crises in the Horn of Africa are a sidebar to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and the confrontation with Iran. Gunboat diplomacy in the Red Sea — the warships deployed under Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect shipping from attacks from the Houthis in Yemen — is the priority.The narrow strip of water carries 12 percent of world seaborne trade. For sailors, the Red Sea is "a sea on the way to somewhere else," its shores at best an inconvenience, at worst a security threat.There's a global consensus on keeping the shipping lanes open. If the Red Sea shuts down — as happened following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war— the knock-on effects on trade between Europe and Asia would be economically severe. The EU-run Operation Atalanta runs an anti-piracy flotilla involving warships from 13 European nations, (including the UK, which provided the flagship until Brexit), working with ships from Ukraine, India, Korea and Colombia.After a few years the flotilla commanders concluded that the solution to piracy lay onshore, in the form of diplomacy to resolve Somalia's conflicts and economic assistance to provide livelihoods to impoverished fishermen. That was a step in the right direction.Saudi Arabia chairs a Red Sea Forum that includes eight littoral states (all except Israel), to tackle piracy, smuggling and marine resources — not political issues.Six years ago, Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa who chairs the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for the Horn of Africa, introduced the term "Red Sea Arena." The idea was to create a diplomatic forum that would include not just the littoral states, but all the other countries with vital interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or with political and commercial links across the narrow strip of water.The former AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra explained: "The Red Sea has historically been a bridge rather than a divide, with the peoples on the two shores sharing culture, trade, and social relations." Egypt has millennia-old interests in the Nile Valley and both shores of the Red Sea. Ethiopia has a vital interest in access to the sea. The UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey all have historic or current interests.Regional and global power struggles are played out in the Red Sea Arena. Seven nations including the U.S., China, Turkey and the UAE have naval bases there. Others, including Iran and Russia, have warships in the vicinity and are actively seeking bases. The port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba is Israel's strategic back door, as the Houthi attacks on shipping have dramatically shown.The plan for a standing conference of Red Sea Arena states built on proposals contained in the World Peace Foundation report to the AU, "African Politics, African Peace" — for which Mbeki and veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi co-authored the preface. The idea was that Middle Eastern states should sign on to the principles of the AU's peace and security architecture and establish joint mechanisms for cooperation.The AU failed to act on these proposals. Nor were they raised at the UN Security Council.Instead, Arabian Gulf states are increasingly assertive in the Horn, and they're bringing an aggressive form of transactional politics, including funding proxies to fight wars. The U.S. — whose security umbrella sheltered the Red Sea for decades — seems uninterested.Saudi Arabia has long seen the African shore of the Red Sea as part of its security perimeter. Qatar and Turkey sought influence in Sudan and Somalia, especially among the Islamists. Israel has discreetly sought a determining role in the region.But the key actor is the UAE. A small, rich state, it uses proxies to project power, and supports separatists in disregard of international norms. Abu Dhabi's clients include key players in Libya and Chad, and it is positioning itself as kingmaker in the Horn. The UAE supports and arms Ethiopia. It already controls many ports in the region — including, it is suspected, the proposed Ethiopian port and naval base in the land leased from Somaliland. But Abu Dhabi has yet to clarify its strategic goals for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.The UAE has long had a free pass in Washington. Only recently has the U.S. begun to criticize Abu Dhabi's adventurism in Sudan, calling out its arming of the murderous Rapid Support Forces there.The last decade has been a rollercoaster of hope and horror for the peoples of the Red Sea Arena. Popular uprisings in Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan all descended into lethal brews of autocracy, war, atrocity, and famine, with local conflicts escalating into proxy wars. Guided by the short-term imperative of staying in power — and by the ambitions of cash-rich foreign sponsors — today's leaders are too often short-sighted and transactional.Under UN and AU guidance, a raft of peace agreements was crafted to serve as the threshold for democracy. Today a peace pact, such as the threadbare "Permanent Cessation of Hostilities" that ended Ethiopia's war in Tigray, may be no more than a truce. The principle of the primacy of politics — that served Africa's peace agenda well — has come to mean short-term transactionalism rather than a commitment to democracy, good governance, and inclusivity.A key African norm was "sovereignty as responsibility," developed by the Sudanese/South Sudanese lawyer and diplomat Francis Deng. Today we have its antithesis, decried as "neo-sovereigntism" by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.Today's regression means that Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki is being rehabilitated. For 30 years, Isaias has ruled an iron fist, with no constitution let alone political parties or an open media, hoping that the tide of global liberalism would recede. He looks to be proven correct.Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as "Hemedti," commander of the Rapid Support Forces, the insurgent paramilitaries notorious for their human rights abuses, is touring Africa in a Royal Jet airplane (an Emirati airline). He arrived in Addis Ababa last week where he met Prime Minister Abiy. Extending protocol to Emirati-backed disrupters is the new normal in the region.To the extent that it functions at all, the AU is becoming the face of illiberal multilateralism, veering away from its founding principles. The UN's practice of deferring to its regional partners leaves it eviscerated. The InterGovernmental Authority on Development — the eight-member northeast African bloc — is now deeply divided and approaching paralysis.With the Horn of Africa and Yemen slipping far down the priority list in Western foreign ministries, America and Europe are sending mid-ranking diplomats into the snake pit, woefully under-armed for the perils they encounter. Too easily intimidated by swaggering local despots, perhaps swayed by zombie "Pan Africanist" slogans that challenge their right to talk about human rights, they have left their countries irrelevant in the face of ruthless Gulf power-broking.Recent developments could not have been anticipated in detail. But American diplomats saw the broader challenge some years ago. In 2020, a bipartisan "senior study group" on the Red Sea convened by the United States Institute of Peace, prioritized a broad diplomatic strategy for the Red Sea Arena. The USIP report warned that conflicts in the region could threaten U.S. national security and proposed a high-level envoy with a broad mandate.The Biden administration quickly appointed a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, but the Africa Bureau at the State Department soon downgraded the position. The cost of this strategic neglect is becoming clear today.There's still a chance for a diplomatic forum that promotes collective security. Washington has lost its best opportunities to take a lead — any U.S. initiative today will arouse deep suspicions among others. Middle Eastern powers don't, as a rule, propose collective action, and the Gulf states are divided. The Europeans will follow, not lead.The onus of leadership then falls on Africa and on the United Nations. Acting together, they can create a consensus that brings on board America, Europe, China, and Russia in a forum framed by the agenda of a stable and cooperative Red Sea Arena.