Fiji’s Maritime Safety Authority has launched an investigation into Goundar Shipping Limited following two incidents involving its vessels.

Late last month, one vessel ran aground on the reef of Ono-i-Lau, and villagers had to step in to ferry stranded passengers to nearby islands using small boats.

On Monday, the Lomaiviti Princess II was sent to assist with salvage operations of the grounded boat in Ono-i-Lau.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji shipping reports

But the rescue boat never made it as it capsized in Suva Harbour, where it remains on its side.

The company’s managing director George Goundar told local media “the mishap at Suva Harbour regarding the Lomaiviti Princess II was not the works of the company”.

He directed all questions to the Fiji Ports Cooperation.

Maritime Safety declines comment
FBC News has asked the ports cooperation for comment, but the outlet reported the Maritime Safety Authority had refused to comment further.

Minister Ro Filipe Tuisawau said the matter was under investigation and a release would be issued after he received an update on the matter.

On May 29, the company posted on social media about the first incident, saying “GSL Management would like to sincerely thank the people of Ono-i-Lau for your tremendous support following the mishap”.

“We acknowledge and appreciate your assistance in ensuring the passengers were safely brought ashore.

“The vessel is now en route to Suva.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Driving down those emissions is complicated. Unlike, say, electricity generation, which happens within a nation’s borders, shipping is by definition global, so it takes international cooperation to decarbonize. The International Maritime Organization, part of the United Nations, has largely taken up this mantle. 

Last week, the agency took a big step in the right direction with the introduction of the world’s first sector-wide carbon tax. More than 60 member states approved a complex system that requires shipping companies to meet certain greenhouse gas standards or pay for their shortfall. (The United States walked out of the discussions.)

The plan has yet to be formally adopted — that’s expected to happen in October — and it doesn’t include the most ambitious proposals sought by island nations and environmental nonprofits, including a flat tax on all shipping emissions. But policy experts are calling it a “historic” development for global climate action.

“It doesn’t meet the IMO’s climate targets, but it’s generally still a very welcome outcome for us,” said Nishatabbas Rehmatulla, a principal research fellow at the University College London Energy Institute.

Created by a U.N. conference in 1948, the IMO has a broad remit to regulate the “safety, security, and environmental performance of international shipping.” With participation from its 176 member states, the agency writes treaties, conventions, and other legal instruments that are then incorporated into countries’ laws. Perhaps the best known of these is the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, called MARPOL (a portmanteau of “marine pollution”). 

Some of the earliest regulations implemented by MARPOL sought to prevent oil-related pollution from routine operations and spills. Subsequent amendments to the convention have aimed to limit pollution from sewage and litter, and in 2005 a new annex restricted emissions of ozone-depleting gases like sulphur and nitrogen oxides. The IMO began to address climate change in 2011, when it added a chapter to the ozone regulation requiring ships to improve their energy efficiency.

In 2018, the IMO set an intention to halve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, using 2008 levels as a baseline. It updated that goal in 2023, shooting for net-zero “by or around, i.e., close to, 2050,” while also setting an interim target of cutting emissions by 20 to 30 percent by 2030. Last week’s meeting was part of the IMO’s work to develop a “basket of measures” to achieve those benchmarks and more forcefully transition the sector away from heavy fuel oil, a particularly carbon-intensive fuel that makes up the bulk of large ships’ energy source.

Many environmental groups and island countries — which are more vulnerable to climate-driven sea level rise — had hoped that the IMO would implement a straightforward tax on all shipping emissions, with revenue directed broadly toward climate mitigation and adaptation projects in their regions. 

That’s not quite what happened. Instead, the agreed-upon policy creates a complex mechanism to charge shipping companies for a portion of their vessels’ climate pollution, on the basis of their emissions intensity: the amount of climate pollution they emit per unit of energy used. The mechanism includes two intensity targets, which become more stringent over time. One is a “base target,” a minimum threshold that all ships are supposed to meet. The other is more ambitious and is confusingly dubbed a “direct compliance target.” 

Ships that meet the more stringent target are the most fuel efficient. Based on how much cleaner they are than the target, their operators are awarded a credit they can sell to companies with less efficient boats. They can also bank these credits for use within the following two years, in case their performance dips and they need to make up for it.

Vessels that don’t quite meet the stricter standard but are more efficient than the base target don’t get a reward. They must pay for their deficit below the direct compliance target with “remedial units” at a price of $100 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent. 

Those that are below both targets have to buy remedial units to make up for the full amount of space between them. On top of that, they also have to buy a number of even more expensive units ($380 per ton of CO2 equivalent), based on how much less efficient than the base target they are. They can cover their shortfall with any credits they’ve banked, or by buying them from carriers with more efficient ships.

Revenue raised from this system will go into a “net-zero fund,” which is intended to help pay for further decarbonization of the shipping sector, including the development of low- and zero-emissions fuels. A portion of this fund is explicitly intended to help poor countries and island states with fewer resources to make this transition.

The strategy was approved by a vote — an uncommon occurrence in intergovernmental fora where decisions are usually made by consensus. Rehmatulla said the IMO has only held a vote like this once before, 15 years ago. 

Sixty-three countries voted in favor of the measures, and 16 opposed. Another two dozen, including many small island states like Fiji and Tuvalu, chose to abstain. Tuvalu’s transport minister, Simon Kofe, told Climate Home News that the agreement “lacks the necessary incentives for industry to make the necessary shift to cleaner technologies.” Modeling by University College London suggests that the new pricing mechanism will only lead to an 8 to 10 percent reduction in shipping’s climate pollution by 2030, a far cry from the agency’s own goal of 20 to 30 percent.

Leaders from other island nations, as well as climate advocates, also objected to restrictions on the net-zero fund that suggest it will only be used to finance shipping decarbonization; they wanted the fund to be available for climate mitigation and adaptation projects in any sector. In order to transition away from fossil fuels and safeguard themselves from climate disasters, developing countries need trillions of dollars more than what’s currently coming to them from the world’s biggest historical emitters of greenhouse gases.

A climate minister from Vanuatu, Ralph Regenvanu, said in a statement the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and other oil-producing countries had “blocked progress” at the IMO talks, and that they had “turned away a proposal for a reliable source of revenue for those of us in dire need of finance to help with climate impacts.”

University College London research also suggests that, while the system will make it too expensive to build new boats reliant on liquefied natural gas — a fossil fuel that drives climate change — it will not raise enough revenue to finance the development of zero- and near-zero-carbon shipping technologies like green ammonia. (Lower shipping speeds and wind propulsion — also known as sails — can also reduce shipping emissions).

The United States did not participate in the negotiations. Its delegation left on day two, calling the proposed regulations “blatantly unfair” and threatening to retaliate with “reciprocal measures” if the IMO approved measures to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

The International Chamber of Shipping welcomed the agreement, saying it would level the playing field and give companies more confidence to decarbonize their fleets. “We are pleased that governments have understood the need to catalyse and support investment in zero-emission fuels, and it will be fundamental to the ultimate success of this IMO agreement that it will quickly deliver at the scale required,” said a statement from Guy Platten, the group’s secretary general.

Antonio Santos, federal climate policy director for the nonprofit Pacific Environment, said the agreement was “momentous,” although he shared the disappointment of many small island states over its lack of ambition. “What was agreed to today is the floor,” he told Grist. “It’s lower than we would have wanted, but at least it sets us in a positive direction.”

Revisions to the strategy are expected every five years, potentially leading to higher carbon prices and other measures to quicken decarbonization. But Santos said significant additional investment from governments and the private sector will still be needed. 

IMO member states will reconvene in October to formally adopt the new regulations. Over the following 16 months, delegates will figure out how to implement the rules before they are finally entered into force in 2027. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the shipping industry’s new carbon tax is a big deal — and still not enough on Apr 16, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The Trump administration has vowed to continue its military strikes against the Houthi movement that controls much of Yemen, and says it will hold Iran responsible for any retaliation from its ally. Since Saturday, U.S. warplanes have launched dozens of large-scale attacks on multiple towns across Yemen, killing dozens of people. The strikes came after the Houthis threatened to resume attacks on Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip. For more on Yemen and the regional dynamics, we speak with Saudi journalist and filmmaker Safa Al Ahmad, who has been reporting on Yemen since 2010. “Supporting the Palestinians … has incredibly increased Houthi popularity,” says Al Ahmad.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

But the claim is false. The photo was taken from a press conference by EVA Air regarding an incident when an overweight passenger asked a flight attendant to help him use the toilet in January 2019.

The photo was shared on Weibo on Dec. 31, 2024.

“On Dec. 27, Evergreen Group came out to apologize!” the claim reads. “We do not accept their apology because Evergreen Group has provoked mainland China numerous times, and the nature of this provocation is extremely bad … Its transportation of tanks sold by the United States to Taiwan has already trampled on the red line set by mainland China.”

Evergreen Group is a Taiwanese conglomerate known for its diverse business operations, including shipping, aviation and logistics.

(Weibo)

The claim began to circulate online after Taiwan confirmed in December that it had received 38 M1A2T tanks from the United States, the American U.S. tanks for the island in 23 years, and the first batch of an expected 122 due to arrive over the next two years.

The EVER MILD, Evergreen’s Singapore-flagged cargo ship, reportedly shipped the tanks to Taiwan in mid-December 2024.

At that time, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reaffirmed its opposition to U.S.-Taiwan military ties, saying the Taiwan authorities’ attempts to achieve independence through military reliance on external forces are doomed to fail.

Beijing regards Taiwan as its territory and has never ruled out the use of force to take it, although the democratic island has been self-governing since it split from mainland China in 1949 amid civil war.

However, the claim about the photo is false.

A reverse image search found the same photo published in media reports by different Taiwanese news outlets in 2019.

The image was taken from a press conference by EVA Air – a subsidiary of the Evergreen Group conglomerate – in response to an incident when an overweight passenger requested a flight attendant to help him use the toilet in January 2019, including undressing him and cleaning him up.

After the flight attendant spoke out about it, generating a public outcry, company officials apologized to the flight attendant at the conference, rising to give a symbolic bow of apology to the humiliated employee and public at one point in the proceedings.

The EVER MILD

Separately, some Chinese social media users claimed that the EVER MILD was denied port entry at China’s Tianjin port in December, with media reports suggesting that it was because of “improper documentation” required by Chinese authorities and the ship refusing to fly China’s national flag.

However, the claim lacks evidence.

Searches for the ship’s course from late December 2024 using the online ship tracking services Marine Traffic and Vessel Finder show that the ship did not dock at Tianjin.

(Marine Traffic and Vessel Finder)

After brief stays at the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung and the Chinese city of Shenzhen near the end of December 2024, the freighter began sailing to the U.S. west coast on Jan. 2.

The route log of the ship provided by Evergreen also doesn’t show any stop at Tianjin.

Keyword searches found no credible reports or announcements that the entry of the EVER MILD was denied at Tianjin.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zhuang Jing and Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab.

As CHOGM came to a close, Samoa rightfully basked in the resounding success for the country and people as hosts of the Commonwealth leaders’ meeting.

Footage of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa swaying along to the siva dance as she sat beside Britain’s King Charles III encapsulated a palpable national pride, well deserved on delivering such a high-profile gathering.

Getting down to the business of dissecting the meeting outcomes — in the leaders’ statement and Samoa communiqué — there are several issues that are significant for the Pacific island members of this post-colonial club.

• READ MORE: Other CHOGM 2024 reports

As expected, climate change features prominently in the text, with more than 30 mentions including three that refer to the “climate crisis”. This will resonate highly for Pacific members, as will the support for COP 31 in 2026 to be jointly hosted by Australia and the Pacific.

Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa opening CHOGM 2024. Video: Talamua Media

One of the glaring contradictions of this joint COP bid is illustrated by the lack of any call to end fossil fuel extraction in the final outcomes.

Tuvalu, Fiji and Vanuatu used the CHOGM to launch the latest Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report, with a focus on Australia’s coal and gas mining. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth membership, which includes some states whose economies remain reliant on fossil fuel extractive industries.

As highlighted ahead of CHOGM, this multilateral gave the 56 members a chance to consider positions to take to COP 29 next month in Baku, Azerbaijan. The communiqué from the leaders highlights the importance of increased ambition when it comes to climate finance at COP 29, and particularly to address the needs of developing countries.

Another drawcard
That speaks to all the Pacific island nations and gives the region’s negotiators another drawcard on the international stage.

Then came the unexpected, Papua New Guinea made a surprise announcement that it will not attend the global conference in Baku next month. Speaking at the Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on Small States, PNG’s Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko framed this decision as a stand on behalf of small island nations as a protest against “empty promises and inaction.”

As promised, a major output of this meeting was the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future. This is the first oceans-focused declaration by the Commonwealth of Nations, and is somewhat belated given 49 of its 56 member states have ocean borders.

The declaration has positions familiar to Pacific policymakers and activists, including the recognition of national maritime boundaries despite the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions from global shipping. A noticeable omission is any reference to deep-sea mining, which is also a faultline within the Pacific collective.

The text relating to reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery required extensive negotiation among the leaders, Australia’s ABC reported. While this issue has been driven by African and Caribbean states, it is one that touches the Pacific as well.

‘Blackbirding’ reparative justice
South Sea Islander “blackbirding” is one of the colonial practices that will be considered within the context of reparative justice. During the period many tens-of-thousands of Pacific Islanders were indentured to Australia’s cane fields, Fiji’s coconut plantations and elsewhere.

The trade to Queensland and New South Wales lasted from 1847 to 1904, while those destinations were British colonies until 1901. Indeed, the so-called “sugar slaves” were a way of getting cheap labour once Britain officially abolished slavery in 1834.

The next secretary-general of the Commonwealth will be Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey. Questions have been raised about the quality of her predecessor Patricia Scotland’s leadership for some time and the change will hopefully go some way in alleviating concerns.

Notably, the CHOGM has selected another woman to lead its secretariat. This is an important endorsement of female leadership among member countries where women are often dramatically underrepresented at national levels.

While it received little or no fanfare, the Commonwealth has also released its revised Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance. This is a welcome contribution, given the threats to media freedom in the Pacific and elsewhere. It reflects a longstanding commitment by the Commonwealth to supporting democratic resilience among its members.

These principles do not come with any enforcement mechanism behind them, and the most that can be done is to encourage or exhort adherence. However, they provide another potential buffer against attempts to curtail their remit for publishers, journalists, and bloggers in Commonwealth countries.

The outcomes reveal both progress and persistent challenges for Pacific island nations. While Apia’s Commonwealth Ocean Declaration emphasises oceanic issues, its lack of provisions on deep-sea mining exposes intra-Commonwealth tensions. The change in leadership offers a pivotal opportunity to prioritise equity and actionable commitments.

Ultimately, the success of this gathering will depend on translating discussions into concrete actions that address the urgent needs of Pacific communities facing an uncertain future.

But as the guests waved farewell, the question of what the Commonwealth really means for its Pacific members remains until leaders meet in two years time in Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state in the Caribbean.

Tess Newton Cain is a principal consultant at Sustineo P/L and adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has more than 25 years of experience working in the Pacific Islands region. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Nonetheless, just three years after the international maritime community slashed sulfur emissions in 2020, the cloud physicist with Florida State University published an award-winning paper studying clouds along a shipping lane in the southeast Atlantic. By analyzing satellite data from before and after the regulation took effect, Diamond demonstrated that the clouds had dimmed. In other words, even as it cleaned its emissions, the global shipping sector made marine clouds a little less bright.

This change carries important implications for the planet. It means less sunlight is reflected back into space — which means more warming. 

That effect extends well beyond the isolated shipping lane Diamond studied. Others have detected it worldwide in the years since the International Maritime Organization adopted the rule. The regulation, shorthanded to IMO 2020, cut the maximum level of sulfur in shipping fuels for all vessels, container ships and cruise ships alike, from 3.5 percent to 0.5 percent with the goal of cleaning the air in ports and the communities around them, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year.

It worked. Measurably lower levels of ammonia and sulfur dioxide dirty the air around many ports, and the majority of shipping fuel tested by the organization comply with the limits. Yet, it’s had the unintended consequence of ramping up near-term global warming. 

How much hotter things are going to get remains an open debate.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of papers on the shipping emission reductions,” said Robert Allen, a climate scientist from University of California Riverside with expertise in aerosols. “I don’t think they’re all necessarily going to be arguing the same thing.”

Aerosols, which are short lived pollutants suspended in the atmosphere, introduce more uncertainty into climate models than any other variable. One of the most common comes from sulfur. Unlike its carbon cousin, sulfur dioxide tends to cool the planet by creating aerosols that reflect sunlight while also making clouds brighter. When industries around the world emit fewer of these pollutants, clouds darken. The planet absorbs more sunlight, and land, air, and water heat even faster than before.

At the end of May, Tianle Yuan, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, published one of the first papers to use observational data and climate models to determine what this means for Earth. The results were stark and startling.

Until now, temperatures have typically climbed almost a fifth of a degree Celsius, on average, per decade since 1981 — just over a third of a degree Fahrenheit. Yuan’s results suggest that, over the next decade, the sharp decrease in ocean aerosols will cause temperatures to rise an additional quarter of a degree Celsius. “This decade, we expect the warming rate to be more than double,” Yuan said, “if our calculation is right.”

But, as happens in science, not everyone agrees that he and his collaborators got it right.

Robert Allen, for one, believes that Yuan and company went astray. He and his colleagues conducted a study of their own (it is awaiting peer review), and though they agree with Yuan on how the regulation affected the amount of light the Earth receives, they came “to some different conclusions.”

“We get less than 0.05 degrees,” Allen said, “over the next 20 years.” In fact, as he and his coauthors noted, their range of results is consistent with “no discernible” impact on global temperatures. The discrepancy between the two results, Allen indicated, comes down to how they simulated the impact.

At their core, the differences between Allen’s results and Yuan’s boils down to a difference in modeling. Yuan relies on an energy balance model, which makes simplifying assumptions about the planet to calculate the temperature change associated with a given force on the climate. Allen, on the other hand, used an earth system model, which attempts to include more realistic representations of Earth’s climate as it seeks to predict how changing the composition of the atmosphere will affect temperature, among other things.

A third study by a pair of Cornell researchers also leveraged an earth system model and came away with results that largely align with Yuan’s. The difference here can be explained, at least in part, by the number of “ensemble members” used. Simply put, each member of the ensemble represents the same model run using slightly different initial conditions, an approach that allows scientists to explore the myriad ways that even small factors might push the climate in different directions. Think of it as a way of attempting to account for the butterfly effect. A large ensemble, then, allows researchers to separate the signal from the noise and discern the actual impact that something like IMO 2020 produces.

Modeling differences aside, a more modest impact seems more reasonable. As both Allen and Diamond pointed out, if all the aerosols in the world suddenly vanished, the planet would warm by at least half a degree Celsius and, at most, just over one degree. And though IMO 2020 cut maritime sulfur emissions by almost 80 percent, shipping was responsible for less than 10 percent of global emissions of the pollutant even before the regulation was adopted. That means even deep cuts in that sector should produce a limited response. 

Ultimately, though — with some suggesting that warming will double this decade as others point toward only a minor increase — Allen said, “the science isn’t closed.” As a result, the current debate tells us less about the specific effects of cleaning up shipping pollution and more about the potential dangers of eliminating aerosols without also addressing greenhouse gases.

No one doubts that cutting sulfur emissions benefits public health. One study published in 2016 found that instituting the cap on sulfur emissions in 2020 would prevent at least 570,000 premature deaths over the following five years. But given that sulfur also cools the planet, failing to rein in, at the very least, short-lived greenhouse gases like methane while reducing sulfur pollution simply ratchets up the rate at which the world warms.

Cutting carbon dioxide is, of course, critical. But it can linger in the atmosphere for a millennium. Aerosols, on the other hand, fall from the sky within weeks, which means the incidental cooling effect they produce doesn’t stick around long after emissions of them end — even as airborne carbon continues to capture heat. Luckily, when combined, the greenhouse gases methane and ground-level ozone warm the planet as much as aerosols cool it. And they don’t last nearly as long as CO2 does. Low-lying ozone persists for a few weeks at most, and methane disappears within a decade.

So, eliminating those pollutants alongside aerosols could negate any abrupt warming that might otherwise occur. “But that’s opposite what’s happened,” Allen said. Not only has ship-emitted sulfur all but vanished, China has gone to great lengths to clean its air at a pace faster than any expected. Meanwhile, carbon emissions have continued to swell around the world. Yuan and many others argue that this has created a “termination shock,” leading to an abrupt rise in global temperatures with additional effects that reach beyond heat. Eliminating aerosols without an associated decline in greenhouse gases has the potential to worsen wildfire activity in boreal forests, slow an essential ocean current, and affect regional weather patterns in ways not yet understood.

All of this has led seven climate advocates and researchers to pen an open letter to the International Maritime Organization. They urge it to consider allowing vessels to burn dirtier fuel on the high seas, far from population centers, to “increase the global cooling benefits of sulfur or similar aerosols without causing harm to humans or natural systems.” They also ask the organization to support research and testing of technologies that would enable ships to, for instance, create salt aerosols from sea water and spray them into the air to get the benefits of brighter clouds without the side effects of sulfur.

Although a spokesperson for the International Maritime Organization said it welcomes reports and research from most anyone, it only considers regulations when they are raised by member states. So whether the open letter will have any impact remains to be seen.  The dispatch nevertheless represents an early rumble of what many scientists fear may become a clamor to engineer the planet in increasingly dramatic and deliberate ways as the climate crisis intensifies.

Such calls aside, the inadvertent impact of IMO 2020 — to say nothing of climate change itself — makes it clear that humanity has long manipulated the atmosphere. But the debate between Allen, Yuan, and their colleagues poses the fundamental question of how any technologist can hope to engineer a precise degree of purposeful cooling when scientists can’t even agree on the exact impact of our accidental experiment.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How cleaning up shipping cut pollution — and warmed the planet on Jul 18, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Syris Valentine.

The 3,000-ton De Yi, owned by HK Yilin Shipping, took coal from a North Korean vessel, Tok Song, in March off the North’s coast in a ship-to-ship transfer in violation of two Security Council resolutions imposed over Pyongyang’s illegal weapons programs, the ministry said.

Maritime transshipment with North Korean vessels and the export of North Korean coal are prohibited under U.N. Security Council sanctions.

Financial transactions with sanctioned individuals and institutions require the approval of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission or the Governor of the Bank of Korea, respectively, and unauthorized transactions may be punishable under applicable laws.

Sanctioned vessels may enter South Korea only with the permission of the relevant authorities.

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The ministry said its sanctions demonstrated the government’s “strong will to end North Korea’s illegal nuclear and missile development by blocking its illegal maritime activities.”

“Going forward, the government will continue to take strong and consistent law enforcement action against vessels and operators engaged in the transportation of contraband and violations of Security Council sanctions, and will work closely with our allies in this process,” the ministry added. 

RFA was not immediately able to contact HK Yilin Shipping for comment.

In March, the South Korean government detained the De Yi en route to Vladivostok, Russia, at the request of the United States, off the South Korean city of Yeosu, to investigate its alleged involvement in violating Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

At that time, South Korea also imposed sanctions on the Russian ships Angara and Lady R, which have been implicated in suspected arms transfers between North Korea and Russia, as well as Russian individuals and companies.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

Papua New Guinea will face a grim reality of a ban on its shipping of oil and hydrocarbons in international waters if it continues to ignore the implementation of a domestic waste oil policy that is 28 years overdue.

The Conservation and Environment Protection Authority’s Director for Renewable Brendan Trawen made this stark revelation in response to queries posed by Post-Courier Online.

In the backdrop of investment projects proposed in the resource space, the issue of waste oil and its disposal has incurred hefty fines and reputational damage to the nation, and could seriously impact the shipments of one of the country’s lucrative exports in oil and LNG.

• READ MORE: Waste oil – a timebomb for Papua New Guinea – Matthew Vari

“International partners are most protective of their waterways. Therefore, PNG has already been issued with a warning on implementation of a ban of oil and hydrocarbon shipments, including LNG from PNG through Indonesian water,” he said.

In addition, the issuing of a complete ban on all hydrocarbon exports from Singapore through Indonesian waters to PNG.

“In light of growing international concern about the need for stringent control of transboundary movement of hazardous waste oil, and of the need as far as possible to reduce such movement to a minimum, and the concern about the problem of illegal transboundary traffic in hazardous wastes oil, CEPA is compelled to take immediate steps in accordance with Article 10 of the Basel Convention Framework,” Trawen said.

He indicated CEPA had limited capabilities of PNG State through to manage hazardous wastes and other wastes.

Safeguarding PNG’s international standing
The government of PNG had been “rightfully seeking cooperation with Singaporean authorities since 2020” to safeguard PNG’s international standing with the aim to improve and achieve environmentally sound management of hazardous waste oil.

“Through the NEC Decision No. 12/2021, respective authorities from PNG and Singapore deliberated and facilitated the alternative arrangement to reach an agreement with Hachiko Efficiency Services (HES) towards the establishment of a transit and treatment centre in PNG.

“In due process, HES have the required permits to allow transit of the waste oils in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea for recycling.”

Minister of Environment, Conservation and Climate Change Simon Kilepa acknowledged that major repercussions were expected to take effect with the potential implementation ban of all hydrocarbons and oil shipments through Indonesian waters.

Political, economic and security risks emerged without doubt owing to GoPNG through CEPA’s negligence in the past resolving Basel Convention’s outstanding matters.

“It is in fact that the framework and policy for the Waste Oil Project exists under the International Basel Convention inclusive of the approved methods of handling and shipping waste oils. What PNG has been lacking is the regulation and this program provides that through,” he said.

“CEPA will progress its waste oil programme by engaging Hachiko Efficiency Services to develop and manage the domestic transit facility.

“This will include the export of waste oil operating under the Basel and Waigani agreements dependent upon the final destination.”

CEPA will proceed with the Hazardous Waste Oil Management Programme immediately to comply with the long outstanding implementation of the Basel Convention requirements on the management of Hazardous waste oil.

A media announcement and publicity would be made with issuance of Express of Interest (EOI) to shippers and local waste companies

A presentation would be made to NEC Cabinet and a NEC decision before the sitting of Parliament.

Matthew Vari is a senior journalist and former editor of the PNG Post-Courier. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

It is the final day of election campaigning in Solomon Islands and there is a palpable sense of anticipation in the country, which is holding national and provincial elections simultaneously for the first time this year.

There is also significant international interest this year in the outcome of the National Election, as it is the first to be held since 2019 when Taiwan cut its decades-long diplomatic ties with the country — leaving Honiara in the lurch as it moved to formally establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.

The elections this week were officially scheduled to take place last year but were postponed, somewhat controversially, so that the country could host the Pacific Games.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Excitement in Solomon Islands as election nears

Most of the voters RNZ Pacific has spoken to in Honiara so far seem both excited and determined to exercise their democratic right.

In and around the capital, stages are being erected for final campaign rallies and all manner of vehicles are being decked out for colourful and noisy float parades.

Overnight, down at the main Point Cruz wharf, hundreds of voters were still boarding ferries paid for by election candidates trying to shore up their numbers.

Many of the ships are not actually designed for passengers — they are converted fishing or cargo vessels purchased through Special Shipping Grants given to MPs to help meet transportation needs for their constituents.

Voter ferries
One such vessel is the MV Avaikimaine run by Renbel Shipping for the Rennell and Bellona constituency.

The man in charge of boarding last night, Derek Pongi, said voters for all election candidates were allowed to travel on the vessel.

Pongi said some people had their fares paid for by the candidates they support, while others meet their own travel costs.

He said the vessel had completed four trips carrying 400 or more passengers each time.

“It’s important because people from Rennell and Bellona can go back and participate in these elections and exercise their right to vote for their member of Parliament and the members of the Provincial Assembly,” Pongi said.

But not all vessels have such an open policy — some of the wealthier candidates in larger constituencies either charter or call in favours to get potential voters to the polls.

A couple of jetties over from the Avaikimaine was the bright neon green-coloured Uta Princess II.

Her logistics officer, Tony Laugwaro, explained the vessel was heading to the Baegu Asifola constituency and that most of the people on board were supporters of the incumbent MP John Maneniaru.

Three trips
He said they had made three trips already, but had to be wary of remaining within the campaign expenses’ maximum expenditure limit.

“It’s only around SBD$500,000 (US$58,999) for each candidate to do logistics, so we have to work within that amount for transporting and accommodating voters,” Tony Laugwaro said.

According to Solomon Islands electoral laws, candidates are also only allowed to accept donations of up to SBD$50,000 (US$5900) for campaigning.

As each ship pulls away from the jetty and disappears into the night, another appears like a white ghost out of the darkness and begins the process of loading more passengers.

The official campaign period ends at midnight today, followed immediately by a 24-hour campaign blackout.

Polls open on Wednesday at 7am and close at 4pm. Counting is expected to continue through until the weekend.

Depending on the official results, which will be announced by the Governor-General, lobbying to form the national and provincial governments could last anywhere from a few days to several weeks.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Singapore cargo ship Dali chartered by Maersk, which collapsed the Baltimore bridge in the United States last month, was carrying 764 tonnes of hazardous materials to Sri Lanka, reports Colombo’s Daily Mirror.

The materials were mostly corrosives, flammables, miscellaneous hazardous materials, and Class-9 hazardous materials — including explosives and lithium-ion batteries — in 56 containers.

According to the Mirror, the US National Transportation Safety Board was still “analysing the ship’s manifest to determine what was onboard” in its other 4644 containers when the ship collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing it, on March 26.

• READ MORE: Baltimore Key Bridge collapse investigation begins

The e-Con e-News (ee) news agency reports that prior to Baltimore, the Dali had called at New York and Norfolk, Virginia, which has the world’s largest naval base.

Colombo was to be its next scheduled call, going around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, taking 27 days.

According to ee, Denmark’s Maersk, transporter for the US Department of War, is integral to US military logistics, carrying up to 20 percent of the world’s merchandise trade annually on a fleet of about 600 vessels, including some of the world’s largest ships.

The US Department of Homeland Security has also now deemed the waters near the crash site as “unsafe for divers”.

13 damaged containers
An “unclassified memo” from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said a US Coast Guard team was examining 13 damaged containers, “some with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and/or hazardous materials [HAZMAT] contents.

The team was also analysing the ship’s manifest to determine if any materials could “pose a health risk”.

CISA officials are also monitoring about 6.8 million litres of fuel inside the Dali for its “spill potential”.

Where exactly the toxic materials and fuel were destined for in Sri Lanka was not being reported.

Also, it is a rather long way for such Hazmat, let alone fuel, to be exported, “at least given all the media blather about ‘carbon footprint’, ‘green sustainability’ and so on”, said the Daily Mirror.

“We can expect only squeaky silence from the usual eco-freaks, who are heavily funded by the US and EU,” the newspaper commented.

“It also adds to the intrigue of how Sri Lanka was so easily blocked in 2022 from receiving more neighbourly fuel, which led to the present ‘regime change’ machinations.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: U.S. Navy Photo – Public Domain

On December 30, 2023, the Singapore-flagged Maersk Hangzhou, owned by Danish company Maersk Line, came under missile and subsequent boat attacks by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. The U.S. Navy responded by using helicopters to destroy three of the four ships used in the assault. Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, immediately announced it was suspending operations in the sea indefinitely, rejoining major Western shipping firms and energy companies in redirecting shipping away from the region.

Houthi attacks have occurred regularly since October 2023 after the group declared it would target ships associated with Israel. In response, Washington announced a task force on December 18—Operation Prosperity Guardian—to combat the attacks, and imposed sanctions on Houthi funding networks, mainly linked to Iran. But the difficulty in securing the Red Sea’s narrow waters and the bottleneck at the Suez Canal have laid bare the fragility of global shipping, with an estimated 20 percent decline in ship traffic through the Red Sea in December 2023. Daily container vessel traffic through the Suez Canal had meanwhile halved by early January 2024, compared to a year before.

The repercussions of redirecting shipping are being felt globally, with ocean cargo rates skyrocketingsince the attacks began. By early January, the logistics company Freightos reported that rates for Asia-to-North Europe shipping had more than doubled to above $4,000 per 40-foot container. By mid-January, the cost of sending a 24-foot shipping container from India to Europe and the U.S. East Coast had risen from $600 to $1,500. Adding to the financial burden, surcharges ranging from $500 to $2,700 per container are anticipated, and rates for shipments from Asia to North America have also experienced significant hikes.

For those daring to navigate the Red Sea, insurance premiums have more than tripled from 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent of a vessel’s value per journey. Though consumers haven’t yet felt the brunt of rising prices, the specter of inflation looms in the coming weeks. The anticipated domino effects recall the aftermath of the 2021 Ever Given disaster, when a ship ran aground in the Suez Canal for six days, leaving a lasting impact that reverberated for months.

The imperative for the U.S. in controlling and stabilizing threats to shipping is underscored by its commitment to global economic stability, dollar-dominated international trade, and the leverage it gains over allies and adversaries. Being able to ensure or compromise the safe movement of other countries’ goods and military vessels complements Washington’s ability to enforce blockades and economic sanctions, as well as to respond quickly to global crises and combat terrorism and organized crime.

Despite the challenges in maintaining its influence, the U.S. has successfully dealt with threats to global shipping before. Multilateral safeguards like the Combined Maritime Forces, consisting of dozens of countries under U.S. command, monitor the Middle East, and task forces such as the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), created in 2009, have successfully tackled specific threats such as Somali piracy.

Since 2015, the Houthis have intermittently targeted ships in the Red Sea, but their sustained campaign since October 2023 has raised significant doubts about the U.S. military’s capacity to safeguard shipping. Operating out of Yemen, the Houthis employ a mix of missiles, radars, helicopters, small boats, and inexpensive drones, presenting a challenge as they lack substantial infrastructure susceptible to targeting. The use by the U.S. Navy of $2 million missiles to intercept $2,000 drones adds to concerns about the cost-effectiveness of its response.

Benefitting from Iranian logistical aid and driven by their steadfast commitment to the Palestinian cause, the Houthis have encountered minimal resistance from regional countries hesitant to escalate tensions. Following its eight-year campaign in Yemen, neighboring Saudi Arabia withdrew from the country and entered peace talks with the Houthis in 2022. Apart from tiny Bahrain, local partners of the U.S. have refrained from joining Operation Prosperity Guardian out of fear of being accused of supporting Israel. Even Egypt, which is witnessing substantial losses in transit revenue through the Suez Canal, has opted to stay on the sidelines.

The inability of the Saudi military, bolstered by modern Western weapons, to overcome Houthi forces over the last decade by relying on air raids and drone strikes implies that a ground intervention may be necessary to effectively defeat the Houthis. Yet Washington lacks the resolve and influence to undertake such an effort. Notably, NATO allies, including France, Italy, and Spain, withdrew from Operation Prosperity Guardian to avoid being under U.S. command, leaving only a few core allies like the UK and Australia—the latter of which has sent 11 military personnel to the region but no ships.

Meanwhile, other major powers have sought to conduct their own independent operations in the region. After declining Washington’s invitation to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Indian Navy began its own operations in the region. China also declined the opportunity to join the multilateral coalition, and has also distanced itself from U.S. messaging on the crisis as it deploys its own military vessels to the region.

Failing to deter the Houthis will inspire others to test Washington’s willingness to defend open shipping lanes. After declining significantly in recent years, Somali piracy since increased in 2023. Southeast Asia has also seen a steady rise in piracy over the last few years, and there are fears incidents could continue to rise with the U.S. distracted in the Middle East. Additionally, Iran has seized Western ships sailing through the region before and was accused by the Pentagon in December 2023 of using a drone to attack a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.

The attacks and blowback from the conflict have reverberations beyond regional trade. In December 2023, Malaysia closed its ports to Israeli ships, while Russian actions in the Black Sea have further disrupted international shipping. Moreover, the situation could impact freedom of navigation exercises globally. Heightening tensions and China’s escalatory movements in the South China Sea and Taiwan have stirred unease in the U.S., prompting two-day talks between defense officials from Washington and Beijing in early January ahead of Taiwan’s recent election.

Russia, China, and Iran welcome the U.S.’s struggle to maintain control over sea lanes due to the Houthi threat, seeing it as an opportunity to exploit Washington’s global standing. However, particularly in the case of China, they have also benefited from the stability that this system has provided to global trade, and viable alternative routes for overseas trade remain undeveloped and untested.

Amid the chaos, the Panama Canal, another crucial juncture for international shipping, faces disruptions from severe drought lowering water levels. As only a limited number of ships can navigate through, Washington’s oversight in ensuring the uninterrupted flow of global sea lanes appears more precarious than it has been in decades. While options like continued military convoys and the rise of private maritime security companies are on the table, the Suez Canal’s eight-year closure after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War remains an ominous reminder of what is at stake.

As Washington attempts to balance control with the risk of escalation, the Houthis have underscored the resilient influence of non-state actors in 21st-century geopolitics amid the resurgence of great power competition. The situation has become the latest litmus test for Washington’s commitment to preserving access to global sea lanes, even as it pivots toward friendshoring and reshoring economic policies encouraging overland trade and manufacturing in North America.

As the 2024 election season unfolds and the enduring impact of Trump’s “America First” policies persists, safeguarding global sea lanes may emerge as a pivotal topic in the upcoming election. Coupled with the unique challenges posed by the Houthis, mounting an effective and decisive response against the maritime threat has so far proven elusive for the Biden Administration. Ongoing U.S. and UK airstrikes against the Houthis have not prevented further attacks on shipping. The longer it takes to respond effectively, the greater the threat to the future of the current state of global supply chains and U.S. dominance of the world’s waterways.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The post Houthis Emerge as Latest Threat to U.S. Control Over Global Shipping appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John P. Ruehl.

Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov told deputies in Moscow on January 25 that Ukrainian military intelligence had been given a 15-minute warning before the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane entered the Belgorod region in Russia, near the border with Ukraine, and that Russia had received confirmation the message was received.

Kartapolov did not provide any evidence to back up his claim and Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov reiterated in comments to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.

Yusov said Ukraine had been using reconnaissance drones in the area and that Russia had launched attack drones. There was "no confirmed information" that Ukraine had hit any targets, he said.

"Unfortunately, we can assume various scenarios, including provocation, as well as the use of Ukrainian prisoners as a human shield for transporting ammunition and weapons for S-300 systems," he told RFE/RL.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

There has been no direct confirmation from Kyiv on Russian claims that the plane had Ukrainian POWs on board or that the aircraft was downed by a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for an international investigation of the incident, and Yusov reiterated that call, as "there are many circumstances that require investigation and maximum study."

The RIA Novosti news agency on January 25 reported that both black boxes had been recovered from the wreckage site in Russia's Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into what it said was a "terrorist attack." The press service of the Investigative Committee said in a news release that preliminary data of the inspection of the scene of the incident, "allow us to conclude that the aircraft was attacked by an antiaircraft missile from the territory of Ukraine."

The Investigative Committee said that "fragmented human remains" were found at the crash site, repeating that six crew members, military police officers, and Ukrainian POWs were on board the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on January 25 called the downing of the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane a "monstrous act," though Moscow has yet to show any evidence that it was downed by a Ukrainian missile, or that there were Ukrainian prisoners on board.

While not saying who shot down the plane, Zelenskiy said that "all clear facts must be established...our state will insist on an international investigation."

Ukrainian officials have said that a prisoner exchange was to have taken place on January 24 and that Russia had not informed Ukraine that Ukrainian POWs would be flown on cargo planes.

Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have "reliable and comprehensive information" on who was on board the flight but said the Russian POWs it was responsible for "were delivered in time to the conditional exchange point where they were safe."

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's commissioner for human rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that "currently, there are no signs of the fact that there were so many people on the Il-76 plane, be they citizens of Ukraine or not."

Aviation experts told RFE/RL that it was possible a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile downed the plane but added that a Russian antiaircraft could have been responsible.

"During the investigation, you can easily determine which system shot down the plane based on the missiles' damaging elements," said Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian reserve colonel and an aviation-instructor pilot.

When asked about Russian claims of dozens of POWs on board, Svitan said that from the footage released so far, he'd seen no evidence to back up the statements.

"From the footage that was there, I looked through it all, it’s not clear where there are dozens of bodies.... There's not a single body visible at all. At one time I was a military investigator, including investigating disasters; believe me, if there were seven or eight dozen people there, the field would be strewn with corpses and remains of bodies," Svitan added.

Russian officials said the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members, and three escorts.

A list of the six crew members who were supposed to be on the flight was obtained by RFE/RL. The deaths of three of the crew members were confirmed to RFE/RL by their relatives.

Video on social media showed a plane spiraling to the ground, followed by a loud bang and explosion that sent a ball of smoke and flames skyward.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

UFA, Russia -- A court in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, has sentenced eight men to up to 14 days in jail for taking part in an unprecedented rally earlier this week to support the former leader of the banned Bashqort movement, Fail Alsynov, who has criticized Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine.

The Kirov district court on January 18 sentenced activists Salavat Idelbayev and Rustam Yuldashev to 14 and 13 days in jail, respectively, after finding them guilty of taking part in "an unsanctioned rally that led to the disruption of infrastructure activities and obstructed the work of a court" on January 15.

A day earlier, the same court sentenced Ilnar Galin to 13 days in jail, and Denis Skvortsov, Fanzil Akhmetshin, Yulai Aralbayev, Radmir Mukhametshin, and Dmitry Petrov to 10 days in jail each on the same charges.

The sentences were related to a January 15 rally of around 5,000 people in front of a court in the town of Baimak, where the verdict and sentencing of Alsynov, who was charged with inciting ethnic hatred, were expected to be announced. But the court postponed the announcement to January 17 to allow security forces to prepare for any reaction to the verdict in the controversial trial.

On January 17, thousands of supporters gathered in front of the court again, and after Alsynov was sentenced to four years in prison, clashes broke out as police using batons, tear gas, and stun grenades forced the protesters to leave the site. Several protesters were injured and at least two were hospitalized.

Dozens of protesters were detained and the Investigative Committee said those in custody from the January 17 unrest will face criminal charges -- organizing and participating in mass disorder and using violence against law enforcement.

Separately on January 18, police detained two young men in Baimak on unspecified charges. Friends of the men said the detentions were most likely linked to the rallies to support Alsynov.

The head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, made his first statement on January 18 about the largest protest rally in Russia since Moscow launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying he "will not tolerate extremism and attempts to shake up the situation," and promising to find the "real organizers" of the rallies.

It was Khabirov who initiated the investigation of Alsynov, accusing him of inciting ethnic hatred as well as calling for anti-government rallies and extremist activities and discrediting Russia's armed forces.

In the end, Alsynov was charged only with inciting hatred, which stemmed from a speech he gave at a rally in late April 2023 in the village of Ishmurzino in which he criticized local government plans to start mining gold near the village, as it would bring in migrant laborers.

Investigators said Alsynov's speech "negatively assessed people in the Caucasus and Central Asia, humiliating their human dignity." Alsynov and his supporters have rejected the charge as politically motivated.

Bashkortostan's Supreme Court banned Alsynov's Bashqort group, which for years promoted Bashkir language, culture, and equal rights for ethnic Bashkirs, in May 2020, declaring it extremist.

Bashqort was banned after staging several rallies and other events challenging the policies of both local and federal authorities, including Moscow's move to abolish mandatory indigenous-language classes in the regions with large populations of indigenous ethnic groups.

With reporting by RusNews

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

UFA, Russia -- A court in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, has sentenced eight men to up to 14 days in jail for taking part in an unprecedented rally earlier this week to support the former leader of the banned Bashqort movement, Fail Alsynov, who has criticized Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine.

The Kirov district court on January 18 sentenced activists Salavat Idelbayev and Rustam Yuldashev to 14 and 13 days in jail, respectively, after finding them guilty of taking part in "an unsanctioned rally that led to the disruption of infrastructure activities and obstructed the work of a court" on January 15.

A day earlier, the same court sentenced Ilnar Galin to 13 days in jail, and Denis Skvortsov, Fanzil Akhmetshin, Yulai Aralbayev, Radmir Mukhametshin, and Dmitry Petrov to 10 days in jail each on the same charges.

The sentences were related to a January 15 rally of around 5,000 people in front of a court in the town of Baimak, where the verdict and sentencing of Alsynov, who was charged with inciting ethnic hatred, were expected to be announced. But the court postponed the announcement to January 17 to allow security forces to prepare for any reaction to the verdict in the controversial trial.

On January 17, thousands of supporters gathered in front of the court again, and after Alsynov was sentenced to four years in prison, clashes broke out as police using batons, tear gas, and stun grenades forced the protesters to leave the site. Several protesters were injured and at least two were hospitalized.

Dozens of protesters were detained and the Investigative Committee said those in custody from the January 17 unrest will face criminal charges -- organizing and participating in mass disorder and using violence against law enforcement.

Separately on January 18, police detained two young men in Baimak on unspecified charges. Friends of the men said the detentions were most likely linked to the rallies to support Alsynov.

The head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, made his first statement on January 18 about the largest protest rally in Russia since Moscow launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying he "will not tolerate extremism and attempts to shake up the situation," and promising to find the "real organizers" of the rallies.

It was Khabirov who initiated the investigation of Alsynov, accusing him of inciting ethnic hatred as well as calling for anti-government rallies and extremist activities and discrediting Russia's armed forces.

In the end, Alsynov was charged only with inciting hatred, which stemmed from a speech he gave at a rally in late April 2023 in the village of Ishmurzino in which he criticized local government plans to start mining gold near the village, as it would bring in migrant laborers.

Investigators said Alsynov's speech "negatively assessed people in the Caucasus and Central Asia, humiliating their human dignity." Alsynov and his supporters have rejected the charge as politically motivated.

Bashkortostan's Supreme Court banned Alsynov's Bashqort group, which for years promoted Bashkir language, culture, and equal rights for ethnic Bashkirs, in May 2020, declaring it extremist.

Bashqort was banned after staging several rallies and other events challenging the policies of both local and federal authorities, including Moscow's move to abolish mandatory indigenous-language classes in the regions with large populations of indigenous ethnic groups.

With reporting by RusNews

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah – the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis – as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism”.

Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.

One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in.

One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.

US Re-Designates Houthis as ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists’
The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthis
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) January 17, 2024

In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people,

“history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.”

DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.

Still trying to recover
So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that is still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.

That’s right: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the Middle East, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.

Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist – Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 17, 2024

It just says so much about how the US empire sees itself that it can impose blockades and starvation sanctions at will upon nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to bow to its dictates, but when Yemen imposes a blockade for infinitely more worthy and noble reasons it gets branded an act of terrorism.

The managers of the globe-spanning empire loosely centralised around Washington literally believe the world is theirs to rule as they will, and that anyone who opposes its rulings is an outlaw.

Based on power
“What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people.

The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.

We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise.

Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: U.S. Navy Photo – Public Domain

What a show.  As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza, a decision was made by his government, the United Kingdom and a few other reticent collaborators to strike targets in Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.  These were done, purportedly, as retribution for attacks on international commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statementon January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.” Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Photograph Source: U.S. Navy Photo – Public Domain

What a show.  As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza, a decision was made by his government, the United Kingdom and a few other reticent collaborators to strike targets in Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.  These were done, purportedly, as retribution for attacks on international commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statementon January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.” Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

The post Futile and Dangerous: Bombing Yemen in the Name of Shipping appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statement on January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.”  Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Israel, however, has been spared any toothy sanctions regime over its conduct in Gaza.  If anything, the Biden administration in Washington has been brightly enthusiastic in sending more shells to the Israeli Defence Forces, despite Congressional reservations and some grumbling within the Democratic Party.  This has made such figures as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who has a long-standing association with the health system in Gaza, wonder why the wealthy states of the West exempt Israel from financial chastisement while economically punishing other powers, such as Russia, without reservation.  “Where are the sanctions against the war crimes of Israel?” he asks.  “Where are the sanctions against the occupation of Palestine?  Where are the sanctions against these abhorrent attacks on civilian healthcare in Gaza?”

The retaliatory initiative has tended to be left to protests at the community level, typified by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement created in 2005.  The war in Gaza, however, has resulted in a broader efflorescence of interest.  Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems have become specific targets of international protest. On December 21, a global coalition of groups under the umbrella of Progressive International took a day of action against the country’s largest arms company, drawing attention to the tentacular nature of the enterprise in the US, UK, Europe, Brazil and Australia.

Restricting the docking of Israeli shipping at ports, notably from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, has also presented an opportunity to the protest movement.  Actions have been organised as far afield as Australia where “Block the Boat” measures have taken place.  During the early evening of November 8, several hundred protesters flocked to the entrance of Melbourne’s international container terminal.  On catching sight of a ZIM-branded shipping container, the protestors staged a blockade lasting till the morning of the next day.  A similar action was repeated in Sydney on November 11, involving several hundred protestors holding the line on the shores of Port Botany and delaying the arrival of a ZIM vessel.

The assessments that followed the protest were mixed.  Zacharias Szumer, writing in Jacobin, admits that such blockades, on their own, “are unlikely to cause a major dint in ZIM’s bottom line.”  That said, he is confident enough to see it as part of a globalised effort which “can cumulatively make a difference.”

Then came the sceptical voices who felt that these actions fell dramatically short of substance and effect, a product of righteous, ineffectual tokenism.  An anonymous contribution to the New Socialist, purporting to be from one of the protestors, went so far as to call the “Block the Boat” strategy misguided, since it never actually entailed blocking vessels.  The promotional materials for the events “indicated that the purpose was actually to say somebody should ‘Block the Boats’, and to ‘call for’ a boycott – a message addressed to ZIM and Albanese.”  The writer, clearly agitated, also took issue with the choice of locations (they “weren’t conducive to disruption”) and the “suspiciously rigid, and convenient” timing of the rallies.

Short of these efforts, it is precisely the absence of responses at the highest levels that has precipitated a more global reaction that is upending the order of things.  Beyond the protests of activists, community groups, and the more generally outraged come the more direct, state-sponsored measures that have rattled financiers, the carriers and the operators.  The crisis in the Red Sea, for instance, where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah), are putting the brakes on international shipping, is the stellar example.  While the measure initially began on November 14 to target Israeli-affiliated merchant shipping, largescale operators have not been spared.  “Unlike previous piracy related events in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden this is a sophisticated military threat and requires a very sophisticated response,” states a briefing note from Inchcape Shipping Services.

The disruptions are significant, given that 30 percent of all container ship traffic passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, the point where both the Red Sea and Indian Ocean meet.  The actions and threats by the Houthis have seen various oil and gas companies reroute their tankers. Decisions are even being made to suspend shipping through that route in favour of the safer, though costlier and longer route via the Cape of Good Hope.  Insurance premiums are also on the rise.

The Egyptians are also raising fees for those using the Suez Canal for the new year.  In an October announcement, the SCA promised an increase of between 5-15%, effective from January 15, 2024.  The measure is applicable to a fairly comprehensive list of vessel categories, including crude oil tankers, petroleum product tankers, liquefied petroleum gas carriers, containerships and cruise ships.

On December 20, Malaysia, as if heeding the “Block the Boat” protests, announced that it would be preventing Israeli-flagged cargo ships from docking at the country’s ports.  Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the decision in a statement, with a specific reference to ZIM.  “The Malaysian government decided to block and disallow the Israeli-based shipping company ZIM from docking at any Malaysian port.”  Such sanctions were “a response to Israel’s actions that ignore basic humanitarian principles and violate international law through the ongoing massacre and brutality against Palestinians.”

Malaysia also announced, in addition to barring ships using the Israeli flag from docking in the country, the banning of “any ship on its way to Israel from loading cargo in Malaysian ports.”

Blockade, barring, embargo, constriction – all these measures are familiar to the Israeli security establishment as it seeks to strangle and pulverize the Gaza Strip.  While closing ports to Israeli shipping is modest in comparison to starving and strafing an entire population, it is fittingly reciprocal and warranted.  The Israel campaign against Gaza, and Palestinians more generally, is no longer a local, contained affair.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

While Japan’s discharge of nuclear waste waters into the Pacific from its Fukushima nuclear plant has been drawing flak across the Pacific, a high-powered delegation of Chinese ocean and marine scientists and Asia-Pacific scholars from Shandong Province visited Fiji to promote South-South cooperation to mitigate climate change — the Pacific island nations’ biggest security threat.

Facilitated by the Chinese Embassy in Suva, Shandong Province and Fiji signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to exchange scholars and experts from the provincial institution to assist the Pacific Island nation in the agriculture sector.

At the signing event, Agriculture Minister Vatimi Rayalu said Fiji and China had a successful history of cooperating in agriculture.

• READ MORE: China in the Pacific

He told the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation that this initiative was critical to agricultural production to promote heightened collaboration among key stakeholders and help Fiji connect to the vast Chinese market.

Shandong Province has a 3000 km coastline with a population of 100 million. It is China’s third largest provincial economy, with a GDP of CNY 8.3 trillion (US$1.3 trillion) in 2021—equivalent to Mexico’s GDP.

The province has also played a major role in Chinese civilisation and is a cultural center for Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism.

On August 30, during a day-long conference at the University of the South Pacific under the theme of sustainable development of small island states, scholars from Shandong Province and the Pacific exchanged ideas on cooperation in the sphere of the ocean and marine sciences, and education, development and cultural areas.

Chinese assistance welcomed
In a keynote address to the conference, Fiji’s Education Minister Aseri Radrodro welcomed China’s assistance to foster a scholars exchange programme and share best practices for improved teaching and learning processes.

He said: “We are restrategising our diplomatic relations via education platforms disturbed by the pandemic.”

Emphasising that respect is an essential ingredient of Pacific cultures, he welcomed Chinese interest in Pacific cultures.

Also, he invited China to assist Fiji and the region in areas such as marine sciences, counselling, medical services, IT, human resource management, and education policies and management.

“Overall, sustainable development for Small Island States requires a realistic approach that integrates social, economic, and environmental considerations and collaborations among governments, civil society, international organisations, and the private sector that is essential for achieving sustainable development goals,” he told delegates.

Radrodro invited more Chinese scholars to visit the Pacific to increase cultural understanding between the regions and suggested developing a school exchange programme between Fiji and China for young people to understand each other.

The Chinese ambassador to Fiji, Zhou Jian, pointed out that China and the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), were connected by the Pacific Ocean and in a spirit of South-South cooperation, China already had more than 20 development cooperation projects in the region (he listed them) and 10 sister city arrangements across the region.

Building a human community
Pointing out that his province’s institutions have some of the prominent scholars in the world on climatic change action and marine technology, the Vice-Chairman of Shandong Provincial Committee, Wang Shujian, said he hoped that these institutions would help to build a human community with a shared future in the Pacific.

Many Chinese speakers reflected in their presentations that their cooperative ventures would be in line with the Chinese government’s current international collaboration push known as the “Global Development Initiative”.

This initiative has eight priority areas: poverty alleviation, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, financing for development, climate change and green development, industrialisation, digital economy, and connectivity in the digital era.

Jope Koroisavou of the Ministry of iTaukei (indigenous) affairs explained that the “Blue Pacific” leaders in the region talk about is a way of life that “bridges our past with our future,” and it was important to re-establish the balance between taking and giving to nature.

He listed three takeaways in this respect: cultural resilience and preservation, eco-system stewardship and conservation, and community component and inclusive decision-making.

Professor Yang Jingpeng from the Centre for South Pacific Studies at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications acknowledged that they needed to learn from indigenous knowledge, where indigenous people were closely connected to the environment.

Bio-diversity, climate action, South-South cooperation
“They play an important role in protecting biodiversity,” he noted. “Their knowledge of nature will be greatly beneficial to address climatic change”.

He expressed the wish that under South-South cooperation, their centre would be able to work with this knowledge and scientific methodologies to mitigate climatic change.

Mesake Koroi of the FBC noted that Pacific Islanders needed to get over the idea that because indigenous villagers practice subsistence farming, they were poor when, in fact, they were rich in traditional knowledge, which was important to address the development and environmental challenges of today.

“Using this traditional knowledge, people don’t go out fishing when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction or the moon is not in the correct place”, he noted.

“In my village, 10,000 trees will be planted this year to confront climatic change.”

On an angry note, he referred to Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated water to the Pacific Ocean using a purely “scientific” argument, which he described as “inexcusable vulgar, crude and irresponsible”.

He asked if science said was so safe, why did they not use it for irrigation in Japan?

Nuclear tests suffering
Koroi lamented that historically, major powers had used the Pacific for nuclear testing without respect for the islanders’ welfare — who had to suffer from nuclear fallouts.

“The British, French, and Americans are all guilty of these atrocities, and now the Japanese”, noted Koroi.

Since China was coming to the Pacific without this baggage, he hoped this would transform into a desire to work with the people of the Pacific for their welfare.

Professor He Baogang, of Deaking University in Australia, noted that though the Chinese mindset acknowledged that dealing with climate change was a human right (health right) issue, it still needed to be central to their approach to the problem.

“This should be laid down as important, ” he argued, and suggested that this could be demonstrated by working on areas such as putting green shipping corridors into action.

“China and Pacific Island countries need to look at an agreement to decarbonise the shipping industry,” he argued. “This conference needs to address how to proceed (in that direction)”.

Pointing out that there was a long history — going back to more than 8000 years — of Chinese ancestry among some Pacific people, pointing out that some Māori traditional tattoos were similar to the Chinese tattoos, Professor Chen Xiaochen, executive deputy director, Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, East China Normal University, noted “now we are looking for common ground for Pacific development needs”.

Knowing each other better
In an informal conversation with IDN, one of the professors from China said that the time had come for the people of China and the Pacific to come to know each other better.

“Chinese students hardly know about Pacific cultures and the people,” he told IDN, adding, “I suppose the Pacific people don’t know much of our cultures as well.”

He believes closer collaboration with universities in Shandong Provincial would be ideal “because it is a centre of Chinese civilisation”.

“Now the Pacific is looking north,” noted Professor Xiaochen, adding, “my flight from Hong Kong was full of Chinese tourists coming South to Fiji”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a visiting consultant with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme. IDN-InDepthNews is the flagship news service of the nonprofit Inter Press Syndicate. Republished in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The announcement of a partnership between the New Zealand government and the world’s biggest investment manager BlackRock in a NZ$2 billion climate infrastructure fund suggests the company is expecting renewable energy in New Zealand to increase its own profitability.

The new fund is the first country-specific renewable investment BlackRock has made, following its 2022 acquisition of New Zealand company SolarZero, which produces solar battery storage and other energy services.

The initiative also underpins the government’s aspirational goal of having 100 percent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2035.

The purpose of this fund is to accelerate investment from Crown companies and agencies to speed up decarbonisation. But will it cut costs to consumers?

Given New Zealand’s isolation and reliance on exports and tourism, the country remains vulnerable to climate change impacts and carbon pricing designed to help cut emissions.

Aside from storm and drought damage from climate change that disrupts food production, both imports and exports are likely to increase in price, and carbon-based tariffs may adversely affect New Zealand’s economy.

To address climate change threats in New Zealand will require more than mobilising private investment with a focus on renewable energy. It will need a comprehensive and collaborative approach that acknowledges dependencies on shipping and air travel, which continue to depend on fossil fuels.

Here are ten broad areas that must be considered when tackling the specific and sometimes unique challenges New Zealand faces in the years ahead:

1. Maximising renewable energy
Most of New Zealand’s electricity comes from hydro power as well as wind and solar power. It is already over 80 percent renewable, but the grid is topped up by coal.

Promoting renewable electricity is essential but likely not enough. Energy for industrial processes (heating, drying, steel production) still relies on fossil fuels, and we need to make more use of abundant solar and wind resources.

Because these resources are intermittent, they must be integrated with hydro power to serve as a “battery” by storing water behind a dam. This requires a national, publicly owned entity whose goal is to maximise renewable energy production (not profits in private companies).

2. Rethinking travel
New Zealand has a growing fleet of electric vehicles, but the transport system still largely runs on fossil fuels. It is one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 17 percent of gross emissions.

Apart from improving public transport and promoting cycling and walking, simply avoiding unnecessary travel becomes essential. The covid pandemic has shown the way with teleconferencing and virtual meetings.

3. Reduce shipping emissions
If shipping were a country, it would be sixth in total emissions. Last month, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency that regulates global shipping, agreed to a new climate strategy to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “close to 2050”.

Already, penalties are being implemented to prevent use of high-sulphur oil. A carbon tax or levy is likely, starting in the European Union in 2024. Biofuels, methanol and perhaps even wind power may help shipping.

4. Trains versus planes
For international air travel, development of sustainable aviation fuels is progressing. Further optimising air traffic and flight routes and promoting the use of fuel-efficient aircraft and technologies is essential.

It seems likely carbon offsets may be required, and these could be expensive. For domestic travel, trains may become more viable.

Climate policy expert ‘cautiously optimistic’ over BlackRock deal https://t.co/6GwrYVrIP1

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 9, 2023

5. Prepare for tourism declines
Ecotourism is likely to grow, and operators will have to abide by sustainability certifications and limits to fragile ecosystems areas. Off-peak and new, dispersed destinations seem likely.

Offsetting carbon may become mandatory and the cost is likely to go up, with adverse effects on New Zealand’s economy.

6. Better carbon offsets
The need for quality offsets for fossil fuel use is likely to increase. The main potential is wood in trees, since plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, trees have a finite lifetime and this can only be a temporary fix. Indigenous trees grow more slowly and can lock up carbon for more than a century. But considerable care is needed to avoid forest fires and disease, or the offset value diminishes rapidly.

7. Strategic forestry
Protecting and restoring existing native forests helps conserve biodiversity. It also helps limit runoff and erosion. Large-scale afforestation and reforestation efforts to expand forest cover should continue, as strategic planting of native trees will enhance carbon sequestration and restore ecosystem balance.

Implementation of sustainable forest management practices, emphasising selective logging and reforestation after harvesting, will ensure a continuous carbon sink, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive ecosystems.

8. Greener cities and towns
Urban forestry can counteract urban heat island effects and enhance air quality. Planting trees in public spaces and along streets in residential areas can reduce energy consumption for cooling and improve people’s wellbeing.

9. Biofuel development
As well as using wood to temporarily sequester carbon, it can be used as a biofuel. Torrefaction is a thermal process that involves heating biomass in the absence of oxygen to produce a more energy-dense and stable material.

This process can be applied to various types of biomass, including wood chips, slash, agricultural residues and other organic materials. The resulting torrefied biomass has several advantages, including improved grindability, increased energy density and reduced moisture content.

It is currently used at the Huntly power station in place of coal but the torrefied wood chips are imported. Instead, this could be an important fuel and an export, given the shortages in Europe arising from the Ukraine war.

10. Incentives for better land use
Regenerative farming, agroforestry and silvopasture techniques integrate trees with agricultural practices. This enhances carbon sequestration, improves soil health and provides additional income streams for farmers.

New Zealand should implement financial incentives and regulations to encourage private landowners to participate in tree planting and sustainable forest management. Tax incentives, carbon offset programmes and grants can drive private investment in climate-friendly practices.

A more self-sufficient future
Addressing climate change threats in New Zealand requires acknowledgement of the dependencies on shipping, air travel and tourism. Planning for the consequences of climate change and building resilience are both essential.

New Zealand needs to become a lot more self-sufficient and reduce volumes of exports by increasing domestic processing and manufacture. These changes may be hastened by international tariffs on trade based on carbon content.

By transitioning to green shipping, transforming air travel and fostering sustainable tourism, New Zealand can mitigate its carbon footprint, protect natural ecosystems and ensure long-term socioeconomic prosperity. Public-private partnerships and robust policy implementation are crucial.

Kevin Trenberth, distinguished scholar, NCAR; affiliate faculty, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Pacific island countries’ “relentless” efforts at the UN’s specialist agency on shipping, International Maritime Organisation (IMO), has resulted in the adoption of a new emissions reductions strategy to ensure the Paris Agreement goal remains within reach.

The IMO’s 80th Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC80) was under pressure to deliver an outcome to reduce the global maritime transportation industry’s carbon footprint and to steer the sector towards a viable climate path that is 1.5 degrees-aligned.

It was a political compromise after two weeks of intense politicking that got member states through to settle on the 2023 IMO Greenhouse Gas Strategy on Friday, just as hopes were fading of any meaningful outcome from the negotiations at the IMO’s climate talks in London.

• READ MORE: Other emissions reduction strategy reports

The Pacific collective from the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tonga and Solomon Islands, who have been at the IMO since 2015 joined by Vanuatu, Nauru, Samoa and Nauru — referred to as the 6PAC Plus — overcame strong resistance to ensure international shipping continues to steam towards full decarbonisation by 2050.

Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regevanu, who attended the IMO meeting for the first time, said: “This outcome is far from perfect, but countries across the world came together and got it done — and it gives us a shot at 1.5 degrees.”

Pacific nations were advocating for global shipping to reach zero emissions by 2050 consistent with the science-based targets.

They had proposed absolute emissions cuts from the sector of at least 37 percent by 2030 and 96 percent by 2040 for the industry, to ensure the IMO is not out of step on climate change.

Countries came up short
But countries came up short, instead agreeing that to “reach net-zero GHG emissions from international shipping” a reduction of at least 20 percent by 2030, striving for 30 percent, and at least 70 percent by 2040, striving for 80 percent compared to 2008, “by or around 2050”, was sufficient to set them on the right trajectory.

While there were concerns that targets were not ambitious, they were accepted as better than what nations had decided on in an earlier revised draft text on Thursday, when they agreed for only 20 percent by 2030, with the upper limit of 25 percent, and at least 70 percent by 2040, striving for 75.

“These higher targets are the result of relentless, unceasing lobbying by ambitious Pacific islands, against the odds,” Marshall Islands special presidential envoy for the decarbonisation of maritime shipping, Albon Ishoda said.

​​”If we are to have any hope of saving our beautiful Blue Planet, and building a truly ecological civilisation, the climate vulnerable needs our voices to be heard and we are confident that they have been heard today.”

Tuvalu’s Minister for Transport, Energy and Tourism, Nielu Mesake, said he was “very disappointed” to have “a strategy that falls short of what we need”.

“But we are also realistic and understand that to reach any chance of setting this critical sector in the right direction we needed to compromise,” Mesake said.

He said Tuvalu was confident in the shipping industry’s ability to change.

“We have seen it before. We are confident that our industry will now prioritise each effort and each capital into decarbonizing [and] see shipping stepping up to the plate and fulfil its responsibility to reduce emissions.”

Ishoda said the IMO’s focus now was to deliver on the targets.

“We look forward to swift agreement on a just and equitable economic measure to price shipping emissions and bend the emissions curve fast enough to keep 1.5 alive.”

More work ahead
IMO chief Kitck Lim said the adoption of the strategy was a “monumental development” but it was only “a starting point for the work that needs to intensify even more over the years and decades ahead of us.”

“However, with the Revised Strategy that you have now agreed on, we have a clear direction, a common vision, and ambitious targets to guide us to deliver what the world expects from us,” Lim said.

And Pacific nations are under no illusion of the task ahead for international shipping truly to truly meet the 1.5 degrees limit.

Fiji’s Minister for Transport Ro Filipe Tuisawau said: “We know that we have much more work to do now to adopt a universal GHG levy and global fuel standards urgently.

“These are tools which will actually reduce emissions. We also look forward to the utilisation of viable alternative fuels,” Tuisawau said.

Kiribati Minister for Information, Communication and Transport Tekeeua Tarati said the process of arriving at the final outcome “has been an extremely challenging and distressing negotiation for all parties involved.”

“We had hoped for a revised strategy that was completely aligned to 1.5 degrees, not a strategy that merely keeps it within reach,” Tarati said.

“We need to work on the measures that are essential to achieve the emissions reductions we so desperately need.”

Carbon levy on the table

The calls for a GHG levy for pollution from ships also made it through as an option under the basket of candidate mid-term GHG reduction measures, work on which will be ongoing in future IMO forums.

While the word “levy” is not mentioned, the strategy states an economic measure should be developed “on the basis of maritime GHG emissions pricing mechanism”.

“A GHG levy, starting at $100/tonne, is the only way to keep it there. Ultimately it’s not the targets but the incentives we put in place to meet them. So we in the Pacific are going to keep up a strong fight for a levy that gets us to zero emissions by 2050.”

Ishoda said a universal GHG levy “is the most effective, the most efficient, and the most equitable economic measure to accelerate the decarbonisation of international shipping.”

But he acknowledged more needed to be done.

“There is much work to do to ensure that 1.5 remains not just within reach, but it’s achieved in reality.”

‘Wish and prayer agreement’
But shipping and climate campaigners say the plan is not good enough.

According to the Clean Shipping Coalition, the target agreed to in the final strategy was weak and “is far short of what is needed to be sure of keeping global heating below 1.5 degrees.”

“There is no excuse for this wish and a prayer agreement,” the group’s president, John Maggs, said.

Maggs said the member states had known halving emissions by the end of the decade “was both possible and affordable”.

“The most vulnerable put up an admirable fight for high ambition and significantly improved the agreement but we are still a long way from the IMO treating the climate crisis with the urgency that it deserves and that the public demands.”

University College London’s shipping expert Dr Tristan Smith said outcome of IMO’s climate talks “owes so much to the leadership of a small number of climate vulnerable countries – to their determination and perseverance in convincing much larger economies to act more ambitiously”.

“That this still does not do enough to ensure the survival of the vulnerable countries, in spite of what they have given to help secure the sustainability of global trade, is why more is needed, and all the more reason to give them the credit for what they have done and to heed their calls for a GHG levy,” Dr Smith added.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

That’s an improvement over the IMO’s previous climate target for the sector — to merely halve emissions by midcentury — but it’s left many environmental advocates severely disappointed.

“There is no excuse for this wish-and-a-prayer agreement,” John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, said in a statement. Others called it a “historic failure” and a “wishy-washy compromise.”

Negotiators sealed the deal on Friday following 10 days of heated discussions meant to address the shipping industry’s outsize carbon footprint. Cargo ships, which carry goods and materials across oceans and are responsible for almost all international trade, account for about 3 percent of humanity’s overall carbon emissions — about as much as Germany. 

In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — the target countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement — experts have estimated that the shipping industry must cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 before reaching near-zero emissions in 2040.

Those are the targets that a coalition of Pacific Island countries, plus a few allies including the United States and the U.K., were advocating for at the IMO summit. “Anything less than 36 percent by 2030 and 96 percent by 2040 will be detrimental” to reaching international climate goals, the Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda told journalists at the summit last week. 

Instead, the agreement set a decarbonization deadline for “by or around, i.e., close to 2050,” with the justification that this would provide greater flexibility for poorer developing countries. (Countries will be responsible for setting policies to achieve the emissions reductions.) The final agreement also included interim targets for 2030 and 2040, although they are far less ambitious than what scientists and many developing countries had been hoping for. The nonbinding agreement asks the shipping industry to reduce emissions by at least 20 percent by 2030 and 70 percent by 2040. It says the industry should continue “striving” for greater reductions of 30 percent and 80 percent.

“Nations failed to put the shipping industry on a credible, 1.5-degree C pathway,” said Madeline Rose, senior climate campaign director for the nonprofit Pacific Environment. She said the IMO’s agreed-upon strategy would exhaust the shipping industry’s carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees by 2032, although individual governments and shipping companies could take more aggressive action to prevent that from happening.

Several groups said the only reason there were any interim targets at all was because of a handful of negotiators from small island states, including Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. These negotiators, whose countries are particularly sensitive to sea-level rise and other climate impacts, eked out stronger targets in the face of heavy opposition from oil-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia, which stand to gain from continued reliance on a fossil fuel-powered shipping sector. 

Larger developing countries like Brazil and Argentina also argued that any reduction in climate pollution would cause them disproportionate economic harm — despite evidence to the contrary. A widely cited report published late last month found that existing solutions — some as simple as reducing ships’ speeds — could reduce global shipping emissions by up to 47 percent below 2008 levels by 2030, with minimal impacts to global trade.

Other solutions in the report, published by the consulting firm CE Delft, include adopting wind-assisted propulsion technologies and replacing 5 to 10 percent of ships’ heavy fuel oil with zero-emissions alternatives like green hydrogen and green methanol.

Maggs said countries baselessly refuted the report and others like it as if they were in a “Trumpian, post-truth alternative reality.” He said the shared desire to come to some kind of agreement gave the obstructionist countries outsize negotiating power. Delegates were “prepared to put up with a weak agreement,” he said, so long as they produced something by the end of the summit.

In addition to the emissions targets, the IMO’s agreement reached on Friday also includes a “basket of measures” to help them reach the new goals. One is an international fuel standard for greenhouse gases, similar to what the IMO has already adopted for sulfur oxide pollution. The other is a global levy on shipping emissions that could generate revenue to fund the shipping industry’s transition away from heavy fuel oil. Both measures are set to be designed in greater detail over the coming years, with implementation scheduled for no later than 2027.

The levy in particular proved controversial, and many consider its inclusion in the agreement a major success. More than 70 developing and developed countries supported it, while Brazil, Argentina, and China, the world’s largest exporter, led a coalition to oppose it. In a diplomatic note delivered to developing countries last month, Beijing officials said the levy was “a disguised way by developed countries to improve their own market competitiveness.”

None of the IMO’s newly agreed-upon targets are mandatory, meaning the onus will now fall on member states for compliance and enforcement. Many environmental advocates are hopeful that national policies will nudge the shipping industry to decarbonize faster, although this will likely lead to a more confusing tangle of standards than if the IMO had unified countries around a single set of science-based targets. “It’s not ideal,” said Delaine McCullough, shipping emissions campaign manager for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. “But it needs to happen.”

In the U.S., for example, the recently introduced federal Clean Shipping Act would set emissions standards for shipping companies that dock at American ports, requiring them to align with a pathway toward net-zero by 2040. Other proposed laws like the International Maritime Pollution Accountability Act, which would place a pollution fee on large ships unloading cargo at U.S. ports, could serve as policy models on the international stage.

Individual cities and ports can implement similar regulations on their own, before federal policies are passed. Freight companies can take action too. The shipping giant Maersk, for example, is aiming for net-zero by 2040 and has committed not to buy new ships unless they can run on carbon-neutral fuel. It recently announced the world’s first effort to retrofit a fossil fuel-powered ship to run on green methanol.

“[T]he time to act is now,” Marie Cabbia Hubatova, global shipping director for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “This is our last chance to get shipping close to Paris Agreement alignment and set the standard for other hard-to-abate sectors.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN sets ‘wishy-washy’ climate target for global shipping industry on Jul 7, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The deal was agreed to by the 175 member states. It came at the end of a five-day meeting at the London headquarters of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations’ global shipping regulator.

Maritime nations agreed on a revised strategy to “peak GHG emissions from international shipping as soon as possible and to reach net-zero GHG emissions by or around, i.e. close to 2050,” a statement from the IMO said.

The less firm deadline was agreed to take account of “different national circumstances,” it added.

“This outcome is far from perfect, but countries came together and got it done - and it gives us a shot at 1.5 C,” said Vanuatu’s climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanu.

Previously, the shipping industry had targeted cutting its emissions by at least half from 2008 to 2050. Most of the world’s 100,000 cargo ships are powered by highly polluting diesel.

Pacific island nations had been pushing for more ambitious targets, calling for a 50% reduction by 2030 and a 96% emissions cut by 2040. Rich countries, including the United States, backed the demand.

Due to pushback from China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and several other countries, the proposed strategy resulted in “indicative checkpoints” rather than a hard target to cut total annual GHG emissions “by at least 20%, striving for 30%, by 2030” and “by at least 70%, striving for 80%, by 2040,” compared to 2008 levels.

After the deal was agreed, Tuvalu’s negotiator said he was “very disappointed with a strategy which falls short of what we needed,” while the Marshall Islands negotiator said he had “mixed feelings” with more work to be done.

John Maggs, president of the environmental group Clean Shipping Coalition, said that “one of the reasons we’ve got this ridiculously caveated 2050 language is because of China, and one of the reasons that we don’t have stronger 2030 targets is because of Japan.”

On Monday, China’s negotiator had argued at the meeting that trade and development are as “existential” issues as climate change and that the emission targets should be “practical, reasonable and feasible,” with their impact properly assessed. 

Scientists consider keeping global warming below the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels the limit to stave off climate change’s most catastrophic and irreversible effects.

The agreement is lacking, experts say

Experts and environmentalists said the agreement falls short of what’s needed to curb warming to agreed temperature limits. 

“There is no excuse for this wish and a prayer agreement. They knew what the science required, and that a 50% cut in emissions by 2030 was both possible and affordable,” said John Maggs, president of the environmental Clean Shipping Coalition.

“Instead the level of ambition agreed is far short of what is needed to be sure of keeping global heating below 1.5C, and the language seemingly contrived to be vague and non-committal.”

The global shipping industry, carrying up to 90% of trade goods, is responsible for around 3% of global GHG emissions. It is roughly equivalent to the emissions of Germany and more than the entire aviation industry, which is aiming to reach net zero by 2050.

The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) said the new targets are incompatible with the Paris Agreement’s aim to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C by 2100.

“By our new estimates of the revised strategy, international shipping will exceed its current share of the world’s 1.5 C carbon budget by approximately 2032 but will not exceed the well below 2 C carbon budget (“well below” interpreted as 1.7 C) if it follows the emissions reduction pathway implied by this revised strategy,” said Bryan Comer, the marine program lead at the ICCT.

Experts have said the shipping industry must cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to keep on track with the 1.5 C temperature goal.

Attempts to impose a levy on emissions from international shipping to fund climate action were unsuccessful, but it is still in consideration despite attempts to block it.

“Ultimately, it’s not the targets but the incentives we put in place to meet them. So we in the Pacific are going to keep up a strong fight for a levy that gets us to zero emissions by 2050,” Regenvanu said.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.

In a keynote speech at the annual Pacific Update conference the region’s major university, Fiji deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad has warned delegates from the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand that Oceania is not in good shape because of problems not of their own making.

Professor Prasad was speaking at the three-day conference at the University of the South Pacific where he was the former dean of the Business and Economic Faculty,

He listed these problems as climate change, geopolitics, superpower conflict, a declining resource base in fisheries and forests, environmental degradation and debilitating health problems leading to significant social and economic challenges.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Update reports

He asked the delegates to consider whether the situation of the South Pacific nations is improving when they take stock of where the region is today.

“What is clear, or should be clear to all of us, is that as a region, we are not in entirely good shape,” said Professor Prasad.

Pacific Update, held annually at USP, is the premier forum for discussing economic, social, political, and environmental issues in the region.

Held on June 13-15 this year, it was co-hosted by the Development Policy Centre of the Australian National University (ANU) and USP’s School of Accounting, Finance and Economics.

Distant wars
In his keynote, Professor Prasad pinpointed an issue adversely affecting the region’s economic wellbeing.

“Our region has suffered disproportionally from distant wars in Ukraine,” he said. “Price rises arising from Russia’s war on Ukraine is ravaging communities in our islands by way of price hikes that are making the basics unaffordable.

“Even though not a single grain of wheat is imported from this region, the price increase for a loaf of bread across the Pacific is probably among the highest in the world.

“This is not unbelievable, not to mention unjust,” he noted, adding that this is due to supply chain failures in these remote corners of the world where the cost of shipping goods and services have spiralled.

Though he did not specifically mention the collateral damage from economic sanctions imposed by the West, he did point out that shipping costs have increased several hundred percent since the conflict started.

“In the backdrop of all these, or should I say forefront, is a runaway climate crisis whose most profound and acutest impacts are felt by small island states,” said Professor Prasad. “The impacts of climate change on our economies and societies are systematic; they are widespread, and they are growing”.

Rather than focusing on the problems listed by Professor Prasad, this year’s Pacific Update devoted a significant part of the event to the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, where Australia has opened its borders to thousands of workers from the Pacific island countries with new provisions provided for them to acquire permanent residency in the country.

Development aid scheme
Australia is presenting this as a development assistance scheme where many academics presenting research papers showed that the remittances they send back help local economies by increasing consumption(and economic growth).

Hiroshi Maeda, a researcher from ANU, said that remittances play a crucial role in the economy of the Kingdom of Tonga in the Pacific, a country of just over 106,000 people.

According to recent census data from Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America quoted in a UN report, 126.540 Tongans live overseas. According to a survey by Maeda, temporary migration has helped to increase household savings by 38.1 percent from remittances sent home.

It also increases the expenditure on services such as health, education and recreation while also helping the housing sector.

There was a whole session devoted to the PALM scheme where Australian researchers presented survey findings done among Pacific unskilled workers, mainly working in the farm sector in Australia, about their satisfaction rates with the Australian work experience.

Dung Doan and Ryan Edwards presented data from a joint World Bank-ANU survey. They said there had been allegations of exploited Pacific workers and concerns about worker welfare and social impacts, but this is the first study addressing these issues.

They have interviewed thousands of workers, and the researchers say “a majority of the workers are very satisfied” and “social outcomes on balance are net positive”.

Better planning needed
When IDN asked a panellist about PALM and other migrant labour recruitment schemes of Australia such as hiring of nurses from the Pacific and the impact it is creating — especially in Fiji where there are labour shortages as a result — his response was that it needs better planning by governments to train its workers.

But, one Pacific academic from USP (who did not want to be named) told IDN later, “Yes, we can spend to train them, and Australia will come and steal them after six months”. She lamented that there needed to be more Pacific academics who made their voices heard.

One such voice, however, was Denton Rarawa, Senior Advisor in Economics of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) from the Solomon Islands. He pointed out that a major issue the Pacific region needed to address to reach the sustainable development goals (SDGs) was to consider reforms and policies that strike a balance between supporting livelihoods and reducing future debt risks.

“Labour Mobility is resulting in increasing remittances to our region,” but Rarawa warned, “It is having an unintended consequence of brain drain with over 54,000 Pacific workers in Australia and New Zealand at the end of last year.”

All Pacific island nations beyond Papua New Guinea and Fiji have small populations — many have just about 100,000 people, and some, like Nauru, Tuvalu and Kiribati, have just a few thousand.

Rarawa argues that even though “we may be small in land mass, our combined exclusive economic zone covers nearly 20 percent of the world’s surface as a collective, we control nearly 10 percent of the votes at the United Nations.

“We are home to over 60 percent of the world’s tuna supply — therefore, we are a region of strategic value”.

Rarawa believes that good Pacific leadership is needed to exploit this strategic value for the benefit of the people in the Pacific.

“The current strategic environment we find ourselves in just reinforces and re-emphasize the notion for us to seize the opportunity to strengthen our regional solidarity and leverage our current strategic context to address our collective challenges,” argues Rarawa.

“We need deeper regionalism (driven by) political leadership and regionalism (with) people-centred development (that) brings improved socio-economic wellbeing by ensuring access to employment, entrepreneurship, trade, finance and investment in the region.”

Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sri Lanka-born journalist, broadcaster and international communications specialist. He is currently a consultant to the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific. He is also the former head of research at the Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC) in Singapore. In-Depth News (IDN) is the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

"The launch of today's escalation campaign to fight back against fossil fuels builds on the legacy of a diversity of resistance movements from across the world who have been leading the fight against the fossil industry and its pernicious influence," said Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network. "We expect all governments to implement a rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels together with a scaled-up phase-in of renewables."

"They have to signal that this is the end of the fossil fuel era," Essop added. "COP28 is a good place to start."

"We expect all governments to implement a rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels together with a scaled-up phase-in of renewables."

The coalition behind the mass mobilization invited people around the world to register local events and issued a list of straightforward demands that they say political leaders must embrace if there's to be any hope of curbing runaway warming.

"The climate crisis is escalating but so is the global movement for climate justice," the coalition says on its website. "We need all hands on deck to win this fight."

The six demands are as follows:

1. No new fossil fuels—no new finance public or private, no new approvals, licenses, permits, or extensions. The provision of sufficient, consensual climate funding to realize this commitment everywhere.

2. A rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of existing fossil fuel infrastructure in line with the 1.5°C temperature limit and a global plan, like a Fossil Fuel Treaty, to ensure that each country does its part.

3. New commitments for international cooperation to drastically scale up financial and technology transfers to ensure renewable energy access, economic diversification plans, and Just Transition processes so that every country and community can phase out fossil fuels.

4. Stop greenwashing and claiming that offsets, carbon capture and storage, or geoengineering are solutions to the climate crisis.

5. Hold polluters responsible for the damage they've caused and make sure it's coal, oil, and gas corporations that pay reparations for climate loss and damage and for local rehabilitation, remediation, and transition.

6. End fossil fuel corporate capture. No to corporations writing the rules of climate action, bankrolling climate talks, or undermining the global response to climate change.

Brenna TwoBears, coordinator of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement Thursday that "the time is now to end fossil fuels."

"This has been centuries in the making, when colonizers brought the first extractive systems to Turtle Island and commodified the land," she added. "But shutting down fossil fuels is only one strand among many to weave a basket to hold up the next seven generations. We need a just and equitable transition, where Indigenous people are leading. We need a culture shift to live in balance with our sky and land relatives. We need real solutions that address the problem at its root, not after the fact. A fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is that real solution."

COP27 in Egypt late last year did not yield any meaningful progress toward a global fossil fuel phaseout, and campaigners feel COP28 is also poised to fail given the still-pervasive influence of the oil and gas industry and rich nations' refusal to act.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, COP28's president-designate, is the CEO of the UAE's state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

The Guardianreported last week that "Majid Al Suwaidi, director-general of the COP28 climate talks for its host nation... said governments were not in agreement over whether the phaseout of fossil fuels should be on the agenda for the conference, which begins in November."

"Al Suwaidi said fossil fuels would form a key part of the discussions at COP28," the newspaper added, "but whether a phaseout would be discussed as part of the official agenda of the talks was still up for grabs."

Romain Ioualalen, the global policy lead for Oil Change International, emphasized Thursday that "there is no room for additional fossil fuel expansion while limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C" and implored world leaders to "urgently lay the path for the end of oil, gas, and coal" at COP28.

"People around the world have been fighting against the fossil fuel industry for years and will escalate this fight this September at the United Nations in New York and beyond to secure a full, fair, fast, and funded fossil fuel phaseout and massive expansion of renewable energy," said Ioualalen.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Whales are the biggest creatures on earth, but they are no match for a supertanker. In recent months there has been a rash of whales washed up on U.S. shores, with broken backs or other mortal injury.

These known deaths are only a fraction of the true toll. Most of the carcasses sink at sea and are never discovered.

But, by all indications, collisions between whales and ships are on the rise, devastating whale populations. At least three large whale species in U.S. waters are on the brink of extinction, with more listed as endangered. These would be the planet’s first large whale species lost in modern history.

The leading cause of death for many of these species is preventable ship strikes. And these deaths are expected to continue growing due to a number of causes. First, global trade has grown almost exponentially driving a huge growth in ship traffic in the world's oceans. Today, there are an estimated four times as many ships at sea than just three decades ago.

Second, this increasing cargo traffic is carried by bigger ships travelling through coastal waters that are primary whale habitats. Since 2006, the size of the largest container ships has more than doubled. Many of today’s ships are so big that they do not know that they have struck a whale. Both the size of ships and cargo volume are both projected to continue spiraling upward

At the same time, containership speeds have steadily grown with speeds now averaging between 20 to 25 knots.

These factors combine to devastating effect. Whales seem to rely on last‐second avoidance. Almost all ships are quieter at lower speeds. Quieter seas allow marine life more leeway to communicate for their essential life functions. The cumulative probability of detecting one of the available “cues” of whale’s presence (and direction of travel) decreases with increased ship-to-whale distances. Moreover, a big ship creates a “bow null effect” that blocks engine noise by the bow, creating a quiet zone in front of the vessel, leaving a whale unaware of the pending threat.

The net result of thousands of massive ships crisscrossing waters which are prime whale habitat is that many of our busiest coastal shipping routes have become death traps. For example, the Southern California shipping lanes to San Francisco cover the two busiest hubs in California and, not coincidentally, are also two epicenters of whale mortality from ship strikes.

Despite looming extinctions of whale populations and increasing vulnerability of whales to ship strikes in U.S. waters, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration lacks a coherent strategy for avoidance of these collisions. Instead, the U.S. has a piecemeal approach, limited by certain species and in certain areas.

In the absence of mandatory restrictions in much of U.S. waters, NOAA and other authorities have depended on voluntary measures, with mixed success. For example, a new analysis of automated ship tracking data shows that nearly 90 percent of vessels transiting mandatory speed zones to protect the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales are violating the speed limits.

In the San Francisco area, cooperation rates with NOAA’s voluntary speed limits have been hovering around 62 percent for the last three years, with compliance varying by company. Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, has slowed down 79 percent of the time in the Santa Barbara Channel. But ships operated by Matson, a major Pacific shipper, slowed only 16 percent of the time.

Similarly, collision avoidance techniques are mostly voluntary, and these programs are widely ignored by shippers. But these voluntary efforts do demonstrate that application of active whale avoidance techniques by large ships is feasible. Yet the effectiveness of these measures requires some form of mandatory enforcement to ensure widespread compliance.

Last year, Congress directed NOAA to establish a near real-time monitoring and mitigation program to reduce the risk to large cetaceans posed by vessel strikes. My organization is proposing a plan to NOAA that directly responds to this congressional direction. We urge the creation of Whale Safety Zones for all large ships entering or leaving U.S. ports or transiting marine sanctuaries and monuments. While in these Whales Safety Zones, these ships must reduce their speed and take other whale avoidance measures that studies show sharply reduces whale mortality when applied.

International law recognizes the interest of nations in protection of its living marine resources, including rare and endangered species, and the U.S. has the legal ability to impose speed restrictions.

What is required, however, is the political will to adopt mandatory safety measures that will be effective in stemming the rising tide of preventable whale deaths. Unless NOAA acts in a comprehensive fashion we fear the nation will witness the onset of a cascade of whale extinctions.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Tim Whitehouse.

A new report from the nonprofit Pacific Environment finds that the ships that carried imports for 18 of the U.S.’s largest retail, fashion, tech, and furniture companies emitted about 3.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2021, about as much as the annual climate pollution from 750,000 passenger cars. The ships transporting these companies’ clothes, computers, knickknacks, and other goods also released thousands of metric tons of cancer- and asthma-inducing nitrous oxide and particulate matter into port communities.

The report brings “awareness and accountability to the companies that were behind that onslaught of pollution in 2021,” said Madeline Rose, Pacific Environment’s climate campaign director. She called on retail companies to demand cleaner shipping fuels and practices from the freight companies they pay to transport their goods, with an eye toward net-zero emissions by 2030.

Pacific Environment’s report shines a spotlight on 18 major maritime importers in four retail categories, chosen based on their shipping emissions and their recognizability. Walmart, Target, and Home Depot led the pack in maritime climate and air pollution, together causing more than 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 33 metric tons of methane to be released into the atmosphere in 2021. The report attributes this pollution to the brands’ partnerships with shipping companies whose vessels rely on carbon-intensive heavy fuel oil. 

These vessels aren’t an anomaly; most of the planet’s maritime freight fleet is highly polluting, and the industry writ large accounts for about 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides contributing to climate change, the ships that U.S. companies rely on also release hazardous air pollution in port communities, whose residents tend to be lower-income people of color. For example, ships carrying goods for Walmart emitted thousands of metric tons of nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, and particulate matter during voyages to the Port of Houston in 2021, potentially elevating the risk of cancer and respiratory problems for port residents. 

Ships carrying products for Target and Home Depot caused similar pollution in port communities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, and Savannah, contributing to what Pacific Environment called “human rights and environmental racism crises.”

Walmart and Home Depot told Grist they are working with freight partners to “encourage” sustainable shipping solutions. Of the 16 other companies identified in the report — including Amazon, HP, Ikea, and Nike — only Dell responded to Grist’s request for comment, reiterating its previously announced emissions reduction targets, including the ambition to reach net-zero emissions across its supply chain by 2050.

Some global retail and furniture brands have pledged to reach net-zero maritime shipping emissions by 2040, but Rose said more is needed to spur ambitious action from the shipping industry. Rose said U.S. brands should demand their freight partners decarbonize by 2030 and lay out interim targets for the years before then. She also urged companies to reject ships that run on liquefied natural gas, or LNG — a fossil fuel that’s less carbon-intensive than heavy fuel oil but still contributes to climate change.

Big brands “have the power to say to their carriers, ‘We will not move our products on a new generation of LNG ships,’” Rose said. 

Instead, she pointed to 48 “zero-emission capable” container ships in development worldwide, all scheduled to become operational by 2025. These ships are mostly set to run on green methanol, which can be zero emissions if it’s produced using electricity rather than from organic matter, but Rose said there are other promising pilot projects involving battery power, wind propulsion, and green hydrogen — a fuel produced by splitting a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen using only renewable energy.

Experts say these technologies aren’t yet ready to be deployed at scale, but ambitious pledges — and pressure from state, national, and international regulators — could help bring them to market faster.

In California, environmental groups are currently calling on the state’s Air Resources Board, the agency that sets emissions standards for a number of pollution sources, to phase in a zero-emission requirement for all ships that dock in California ports. Federal legislation proposed last year would do something similar across the U.S. Experts also want tighter emissions targets from the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. body whose current nonbinding guidelines only call for the global shipping industry to halve its emissions by 2050, compared to 2008 levels.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Walmart, Target, Home Depot lead pack of retailers emitting millions of pounds of CO2 through shipping on Mar 1, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Her predecessor, Republican Doug Ducey, in the last months of his regime was ramrodding containers into place on a 60’ strip of desert as part of former president Trump’s border wall. His executive-ordered crash project cost nearly $100 million to buy, truck in, bolt containers together and weld sheet metal over three-foot gaps from roller-coaster terrain.

A few days ago, a federal lawsuit now forces the state to remove them because they rest on federal land. Costs are estimated to be $70 million.

Previously, Hobbs has said she might move the containers and repurpose them as affordable housing. So she’s got the right idea. So have others. In the last two years the trend for buying used containers has increased for temporarily sheltering the homeless. They join tiny-house villages, RV and campsite communities, storage units, motels, and vacant factory and office buildings.

Too, the railroads are selling off their 50-foot boxcars which could double container capacity for “affordable” housing. A boxcar’s average age is 30 years, however, explaining why prices range from $2,000 to $4,000, half the cost of a container ($8,300 for 40-footers).

Hobbs even may be aware of a model for a container community: the two-year-old architectural prize-winning pair of three-floor temporary shelters for 232 of the homeless in Los Angeles’ Chinatown: the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village owned by Los Angeles county.

Looking like New Orleans’ balconied apartments, the orange and yellow shelters face each other on 60,000 square feet of the former LA sheriff’s parking lot. Built in less than six months for $57 million , workers stacked and bolted three floors of 66 containers together for the two main buildings. They overlook 20 one-story modular wooden housing units. Each end of the two buildings has wide staircases, and an exterior prefabricated elevator at each floor’s midpoint.

Interiors of the 135 square-foot rooms and 8.6-foot ceilings—including a bathroom — have four-panel vertical windows with blinds. Each room was drywalled and painted, followed by air-conditioner and heating units, a half-refrigerator and sink. Furnishings were monastic: a bed, table, microwave, and shelving. Landscaping is a grassy courtyard between the two buildings, raised planters of herbs, and a tree at each end of the turf.

A sizable modular administration building houses offices for intakes, case records, counseling and healthcare services, as well as a laundry, commercial kitchen, and dining room. It has 24-hour security. The only drawback is that the four-acres are contaminated requiring an onsite treatment plant to “manage” the soil underneath the complex.

Before apartment builders rush to apply the Solis model for expanding units with extra containers, a few caveats need to be weighed against bargain-basement cost, availability, and transport. Many containers have been found to be toxic , their plywood flooring prone to fires. Inside temperatures could reach 135ºF with an AC breakdown. Lifespan is 10 to 15 years even with regular maintenance.

So Hobbs can convert containers—probably for permanent, low-income housing—into a Solis-like suburb. Or buy and remodel boxcars (and cabooses) for the homeless. Both are a vast improvement over packed, vermin-infested, crime-ridden shelters and the inhumane outdoor measures taken by at least two major cities—LA and Portland, OR. They are beset by sidewalk squatters, tent encampments, and RV settlers, all drawn to the West Coast’s mild, year-round temperatures, and social services. Current homeless populations: LA, at least 40,000; Portland, 5,228 and 800 encampments.

They’re scarcely alone. Last year, 326,126 were homeless, New York City leading with 102,656 packed in shelters and uncounted thousands on streets or subways. All cities with a “homeless problem” are being pressured by complaints from owners of small and large downtown businesses about doorways blocked by transients, trash, and toileting. Echoing Malthus’ “final solution,” they want the homeless gone forever, driven to residential neighborhoods or beyond the city limits. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

In Los Angeles, the ACLU of Southern California issued a report last year about police and sheriff’s deputies first harassing the homeless, then bulldozing encampments and seizing belongings. If victims persisted in living on the streets, they were banished by threats of citations to the Mojave Desert near Lancaster and Palmdale in unincorporated, East Los Angeles County.

LA’s new mayor, Karen Bass declared at her inauguration that her “first act as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness.” Heavy emphasis was laid on sheltering 15,000 by the end of her first year. During her campaign, she mused to the Los Angeles Times: “There’s a big chunk of land in Palmdale and maybe we could create a village out there.” Her vice mayor added that LA owns “thousands of acres in Palmdale.”

Lancaster (pop: 176,892) is only nine miles down the highway from Palmdale (pop: 172,790), and the first to revolt against Bass (local newspaper headline: “Homeless ‘Invasion’ is coming”). Its outraged city council just voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency to protect it from “an incursion” of LA’s homeless. Palmdale’s council probably won’t be far behind.

Up in Portland meantime, its city council was voting to spend $27 million chiefly to fund Mayor Ted Wheeler’s resolution that within 18 months the city would set up three, two- to four-acre sanctioned campsites. Each would eventually contain 100 tents and 250 people and perhaps expansion to three additional sites. Local channel KGW’s Blair Best reported that: “Residents will have access to food, case managers and mental health and substance-abuse treatment, and…on-site and perimeter [neighborhood] security.” Some $750,000 is allocated for private-security forces in designated neighborhoods.

Once the campgrounds are open, Wheeler warned that like New York City, the police will do street sweeps and arrest the homeless refusing to leave unless they either agreed to use city shelters or moved to the camps—no matter what the Constitutional ramifications are. Multnomah County which encompasses Portland, spent $2 million , two years ago to distribute 22,700 tents and 69,514 tarps to the homeless. Under Wheeler’s policy, most probably will wind up in landfills.

A major factor in this tragic dilemma is the fury of many neighbors where these complexes and campsites are to be located. The chief complaint against the homeless aside from unsightliness is the alleged increases in crime, drug use, garbage, and hygiene. Most of all, it’s the suspicion that any kind of congregate housing lowers property values and steals their taxpayer dollars.

A middle-class Portland resident typified that stereotypic view: “I live in this neighborhood, and I think it’s a very nice neighborhood. I would not want to have a large group of homeless around here. I think you would have the crime go up, that’s the main thing.”

And a news release from the city of Lancaster addressed Mayor Bass’s plans for neighboring Palmdale:

A large homeless population in one area could lead to increased crime and safety concerns and potential damage to property values. This could be a major concern for residents and businesses in the area, and it’s an issue Lancaster has already been struggling to support with its existing unhoused population. There are also serious health concerns for the homeless population who would be moved from a climate ranging from 60-80 degrees annually to the high desert which experiences extreme weather highs and lows.

But this view of homeless communities is not necessarily true at all, considering that, say, sober houses instantly boot troublemakers and backsliding alcoholics/addicts from the premises. There’s rarely noise nor traffic congestion. Can that be said for fraternity and sorority houses in residential neighorhoods? Too, Solis-type facilities offer only temporary housing, social services, and security to move residents into productive lives.

Those experiencing eviction because of layoffs, business bankruptcies, or acquisitions can readily identify with the plight of the homeless in those settings. Fortunately, many speak up in their defense at public meetings or in neighborhood informational canvassing—or take the time and make the effort to reach out on their behalf.

CounterPunch writer Desiree Hellegers set such myth-makers straight a few days ago: “Never mind that the Pacific Northwest is choc-o-bloc with models of tent cities and tiny- house communities that are democratically run, generally with elected councils: Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream 2, SHARE-WHEEL, etc. None of them is perfect, but they are safer and infinitely more empowering, humane, healing, and effective, and less likely to violate the Geneva Conventions than what Wheeler & Co. have in mind.”

And a Los Angeles tiny-house resident reminded the fearful or judgmental about shelter living: “For people who get their noses up in the air, this can happen to anybody.” That’s certainly true for many of the 3.8 million living paycheck to paycheck and either are about to be evicted because the American Rescue Plan’s rent-moratorium has expired , or the 8.5 million behind on rent, as well as those facing significant rent increases. Add to those figures the 1.5 million estimated to lose their jobs because the Federal Reserve’s continuing interest-rate hikes mean small and large companies can’t afford to expand operations, nor are startups able to raise capital.

Perhaps it’s time to educate “NIMBYs” (“Not in My Backyard”) and the general public about who most of the homeless are in those enclosures by WPA-like posters (“We’ve Been Downsized or Evicted, But Are Leaving Shortly!”) spread around affected neighborhoods.

Facing the prospect of a nation of Hoovervilles drawing violent reactions from local residents, a frightened President Biden’s team just launched a plan to reduce homelessness by 25 percent in 2025: the All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness . Unfortunately, nothing was said about funding or what would happen to the remaining 75 percent.

That’s because the plan was just a heavily researched “blueprint” for state and local governments to use as models “for addressing homelessness in their communities.” Said Biden: “ it is not only getting people into housing, but also ensuring they have access to the support, services, and income that allow them to thrive.”

Forget any Executive Order to finance a New Deal for jobs and housing, as president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did to help solve the Great Depression of the 1930s.

At bottom, the major question involving the overall homeless situation is almost never asked because it involves the responsibility of corporate America: What good is housing if people lack jobs to make rent or mortgage payments? To say nothing of buying basics.

FDR’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) did both. It hired and trained 8.5 million of the unemployed for past and new federal programs. They ranged from infrastructure and environment to park systems and artists/writers projects. His FHA low-cost home-buying loans have housed 44 million since 1934, spurring massive house construction and providing capital for 4.8 million rental units—not counting residential care facilities, hospitals, and manufactured houses.

Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure program could have done the same. But he farmed it out to private interests. They might add and train a few thousand new employees, yet hardly on a WPA scale. If he were an FDR, he would have had the courage to shift part of the Pentagon’s FY2023 $858 billion budget allocation to civilians—as did Trump to spend more than $12 billion on his porous wall—to provide thousands of construction jobs and affordable housing for the homeless.

For the Pentagon, this tactic also might stifle increasing public opposition about its bloated, unaudited budget by showcasing its contribution to “domestic tranquility,” as the Constitution’s preamble puts it. Some $152 billion of next year’s funding—a 20 percent increase—goes for construction and veterans. That’s how those 750 overseas bases and at home were built by its engineers, equipment and supplies, and continue to be maintained. It doesn’t specify constructing what so the door is wide open to building affordable houses or rent-controlled apartment buildings for America’s homeless.

Using Trump’s rationale that his wall would defend the nation from an invasion of illegals, Biden now has precedent to declare such a neoWPA jobs-and-housing project would “provide for the common defense” of this nation and stop any domestic upheaval. After all, a major recession could trigger a massive uprising dwarfing today’s major strikes. So could climate-change migrations around the states.

As the Poor People’s Campaign co-chair Liz Theoharis reminds us: “In the coming years, movements dedicated to democracy and our economic flourishing need to invest time and resources in building permanently organized communities to help meet the daily needs of impacted Americans, while offering a sense of what democracy looks like in practice, up close and personal.”

To this, add the famous admonition to us by that man born into homelessness and persecution: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Outgoing Republican Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona is spending nearly $100 million in his final weeks in office to erect a makeshift border wall along the state’s southern boundary with Mexico made of shipping containers and razor wire. Ducey has described it as an effort to complete former President Donald Trump’s border wall, but the shipping containers are being placed on federal and tribal lands without permission. Protesters who have tried to block construction warn the wall is destroying precious desert biodiversity and forcing asylum seekers to take even more dangerous routes along the border to seek refuge in the United States. Meanwhile, it is unclear what Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs will do with the container wall once she is sworn in. “It’s quite amazing that there’s simply been no [federal] law enforcement response,” says Myles Traphagen with Wildlands Network, who coordinates the group’s borderlands program. “Why aren’t they mobilizing a federal law enforcement response when this is a blatant disregard of the law?” We also speak with Alejandra Gomez, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA Arizona, who says immigrant communities in Arizona are responding with aid and compassion despite “the fueling of hate against migrants” by Ducey and other Republicans.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

At the mouth of a valley in the Huachuca Mountains, on the northern side of the U.S.-Mexico border, the governor of Arizona is picking a fight with the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt.

The battle is over a 60-foot-wide swath known as the “Roosevelt Reservation” — named for the president and conservative icon that created it 125 years ago — that cuts through the Coronado National Memorial, running parallel to the border. During a visit Wednesday, The Intercept observed a fleet of trucks and construction vehicles stacking 8,000-pound shipping containers one by one on the dirt road, which has historically fallen under federal jurisdiction. In a lawsuit he filed three days before the installation began, Ducey admitted he had not received authorization for the project but was proceeding anyway.

“The feds are silent. Where are they?”

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot, right, thanks Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, second from left, for his support and bringing in shipping containers to fill gaps in the border wall on Sept. 8, 2022, in Yuma, Ariz.

Photo: Randy Hoeft/The Yuma Sun via AP

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Some gaps in the border fence built by the Trump administration are seen filled with shipping containers on Sept. 27, 2022, in Yuma, Ariz.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

“It’s designed purely to foment or promote more fearfulness among Ducey’s racist followers so more of them will show up and vote.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has opened an investigation into whether southern border state governors misled immigrants as part of what he called a “political stunt” to transport them to Washington.

Racine told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune his office is examining whether immigrants were deceived by trip organizers before boarding buses for Washington, including several hundred who were bused from Texas under instructions from Gov. Greg Abbott and dropped near the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris. Racine’s office has the authority to bring misdemeanor criminal charges or to file civil fraud cases.

Racine said that in interviews with his investigators, arriving immigrants “have talked persuasively about being misled, with talk about promised services.” He offered no specifics about the inquiry, including whether it is being handled by his office’s criminal or civil divisions. The attorney general’s office declined to answer further questions.

Various state and federal laws could apply to transporting immigrants across state lines. Racine’s office could look into whether anyone committed fraud by falsely promising jobs or services, whether there were civil rights violations or whether officials misused taxpayers’ money.

Racine’s investigation comes after weeks of escalating tensions between some Republican governors and the Biden administration over immigration policy. In April, Abbott began busing to Washington immigrants who had been processed and released by federal immigration officials, and he later expanded the initiative to New York and Chicago. To date, more than 12,000 immigrants have been relocated from border towns.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has followed Abbott’s lead and bused 2,170 immigrants to Washington on 60 buses, according to Ducey’s spokesperson, C.J. Karamargin. Most of them, he said, had said they hoped to relocate to New York, New Jersey or Florida.

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking reelection, turbocharged the issue and moved it to the forefront of a national debate on Biden’s immigration policies. He sent two charter flights to Martha’s Vineyard carrying Venezuelan immigrants who had arrived in Texas. Local officials in Texas have said they were not consulted.

The immigrants and their advocates said that passengers on the charter flights had been told they would be given jobs and support. A sheriff in Texas has opened a criminal investigation into whether Florida officials violated the law by recruiting the migrants from a Texas shelter.

Racine’s involvement ratchets up the pressure on the governors over their actions.

Elected as a Democrat, Racine criticized the Republican governors for using “people as props. That’s what they’ve done with the immigrants.”

Racine’s office can prosecute certain misdemeanors, and felonies are handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. But its highest profile work has been bringing civil fraud lawsuits against nonprofits and businesses. In May, it reached a $750,000 settlement in a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, alleging that it had abused donors’ funds by overpaying for rentals at the Trump International Hotel.

The governors have said they have done nothing wrong in transporting immigrants to “sanctuary cities” that may be better equipped to care for them. They say they want the rest of the nation to share the burden of what they call the Biden administration’s open border policies.

Abbott, who is also campaigning for reelection, said that he had had immigrants bused from Texas to Harris’ residence in D.C. to call attention to border security, saying on Twitter, “We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job and secure the border.”

In a statement to ProPublica and the Tribune, Abbott’s press secretary, Renae Eze, denied that any trickery has been involved in Texas’ migrant transportation program, which has now sent 8,200 people to Washington on over 195 buses, 3,200 to New York City on over 60 buses and 920 to Chicago on over 15 buses.

“These Democrat elites in our nation’s capital know nothing about Texas’ busing operations. These migrants willingly chose to go to Washington, D.C., having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agreed on the destination. And they were processed and released by the federal government, who dumped them in small Texas border towns,” she wrote.

DeSantis’ office did not respond, but the governor has said he intends to transport more immigrants out of Florida. Ducey’s spokesperson said Arizona is working with a regional health center to ensure that immigrants are well-treated and get to their final desired destinations. Ducey has said he will continue busing migrants to Washington until he leaves office in January.

Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group, said that some immigrants who were sent from Texas to Harris’ residence in Washington have told his team they were misled about their final destination. The immigrants believed they were bound for Union Station, the city’s central transportation hub, where many hoped to connect with family or trains and buses to other locations. Instead, he said, they were dropped off at about 6 a.m. in an unfamiliar spot, where a church group quickly organized to pick them up.

“I think they are being tricked and being used,” Garcia said.

Since the spring, buses have arrived almost daily at Union Station, where immigrants can now seek support from a new city Office of Migrant Services. So far, Texas taxpayers have spent about $14 million on migrant transportation, according to state records. Buses into Washington have continued in recent days, with several additional arrivals at the vice president’s residence.

Meanwhile, Florida procurement records suggest that the state transportation agency intends to continue using charter air services to transport immigrants out of the state until June 30. The vendor chosen for the charter flights is run by a state Republican donor.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s inspector general is examining Florida’s use of money from COVID-19 funds to finance its migrant transportation program, Politico reported. DeSantis’s office says it used the money properly.

Kirsten Berg contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Marilyn W. Thompson and Perla Trevizo.

Minneapolis’ resolution takes aim at corporate maritime importers like Walmart, Amazon, and Ikea. It asks them to “abandon fossil-fueled ships” — most of which are contracted out by separate shipping companies — and adopt emissions-saving practices like wind-assisted propulsion and lower-speed travel. It also asks the big brands to commit to docking only 100 percent zero-emissions ships by 2030 and to disclose all maritime greenhouse gas emissions in public, annual reports.

“I join the call to top maritime polluters, especially those with large footprints in Minneapolis, to commit to immediate and impactful decarbonizing efforts,” Minneapolis City Council Member Aisha Chughtai said in a statement. Although Minneapolis closed its cargo port on the Mississippi River in 2014, the city is notable for being home to the retail brand Target, a major contributor to shipping emissions.

The international shipping industry is one of the world’s biggest climate polluters, emitting roughly 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year — about 3 percent of global emissions and more than all U.S. coal plants combined. This is partly because of the scale of international trade, 90 percent of which is facilitated by shipping, and partly because of the carbon-intensive fossil fuels that most ships still rely on. 

Shipping also poses environmental justice problems. Besides greenhouse gases, fossil fuel-powered ships generate hazardous particulate matter and sulfur oxide pollution, contributing to elevated rates of childhood asthma and cancer, as well as some 250,000 premature deaths each year. Because port communities tend to be low-income communities of color, they are often most brutally affected by these hazards.

Ship It Zero resolutions are “shining a light on this issue that is affecting people’s lives, shortening lives,” said Dawny’all Heydari, Ship It Zero campaign lead for the nonprofit Pacific Environment, one of the environmental organizations that coordinates the Ship It Zero coalition. For port communities in Long Beach, California, where she lives, Heydari said that life expectancy is up to eight years lower than for communities living away from the ports.

Experts say that fully decarbonizing shipping will be difficult. Today’s solar panels take up too much space to be used on massive cargo ships, batteries are too heavy, and zero-emissions fuels like green hydrogen and ammonia are still too expensive to power a global shipping fleet. Hydrogen and ammonia are also less energy-dense than fossil fuels, potentially necessitating ship redesigns for optimal storage. Ammonia has also been known to release hazardous nitrogen oxide or unspent fuel when combusted, posing additional safety problems. 

At present, there aren’t any zero-emissions shipping companies that could accommodate the needs of a major corporation like Target. But experts and environmental advocates say that resolutions like Minneapolis’ can help create the conditions necessary for decarbonization. By demanding fossil fuel-free shipping on an accelerated timeline, policymakers can spur research, generate demand, and increase pressure on major corporations — all of which can help make the Ship It Zero goals achievable.

“It’s becoming more of an imperative for these companies to take action because their consumers are demanding it,” Heydari said. “I think we’ll see a race toward the top, where it’ll increasingly become an economic business imperative to decarbonize to maintain a 21st-century reputation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Minneapolis is the latest US city to demand emissions-free shipping on Sep 15, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The move comes just months after a similar declaration from Los Angeles, whose port abuts Long Beach’s to make up the San Pedro Bay Port Complex — the U.S.’s largest port, handling more than 275 million metric tons of furniture, car parts, clothes, food, and other cargo every year. Together, the two cities’ resolutions represent one of the world’s most aggressive shipping decarbonization targets and reflect a growing desire among policymakers and environmental advocates to drive down the industry’s emissions.

“We need major shipping companies to lead the way to a cleaner future and ship their goods using only the best available technologies,” Long Beach City Councilmember Cindy Allen said in a statement.

But getting to net-zero shipping is a monumental task that will require significant technological advancement and investments in alternative fuels — in addition to ambitious pronouncements from policymakers. Although some zero-emissions solutions already exist, experts say they need to be refined, scaled up, and supported by government policies to facilitate industry-wide decarbonization. 

According to Jing Sun, a marine engineering professor at the University of Michigan, more work is needed to create viable clean fueling systems before they can be rolled out en masse. “It’s not just a technology deployment issue,” she said.

At any given time, more than 50,000 ships are zipping around the world’s oceans, carrying about 90 percent of all globally traded goods from port to port. Virtually all of these ships run on fossil fuels — either sludge-like heavy fuel oils, diesel, or liquefied natural gas, all of which release planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions when burned. Altogether, the global shipping industry is responsible for nearly 3 percent of all human-caused climate pollution, and international regulators say emissions could continue rising without urgent action.

But how do you propel a massive cargo ship — which can weigh hundreds of millions of pounds when fully loaded — across the ocean without using fossil fuels? Zero-emission technologies that are powering a rapid energy transition in other sectors fall short when it comes to global shipping. Batteries, for example, are currently much too heavy to push cargo ships across the oceans. Onboard solar panels take up too much space, and nuclear power creates safety and environmental concerns. Many companies have plans to launch or have already launched ships powered by biofuels — fuels produced from plant crops, algae, or animal fats — but experts expect them to play a limited role in the future of decarbonized shipping due to scalability constraints and high demand from other sectors. The nonprofit Pacific Environment has criticized biofuel as a “dead end” fuel that is only in some instances carbon neutral. 

Only two kinds of alternative fuels are widely considered to be viable candidates for decarbonized shipping: green hydrogen and green ammonia. Both can be produced with clean electricity and burned in an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell — a versatile technology that converts chemical energy into electricity — where they produce no greenhouse gas emissions.

However, these fuels aren’t quite ready for prime time, in part because their supply is so limited. Green hydrogen, produced by splitting a water molecule using renewable energy, is still too expensive to be made in the kinds of quantities that could power a global shipping fleet. The supply chain for ammonia — which is produced by combining hydrogen with nitrogen that’s extracted from the air — is more established, since ammonia is widely used as an agricultural fertilizer. But to make ammonia green, the hydrogen input has to be green hydrogen. This, along with costly storage requirements, makes green ammonia about as expensive as green hydrogen.

“There are definitely going to be some challenges along the road” to scaling green hydrogen and ammonia up, said Dan Hubbell, shipping emissions campaign manager for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. 

Ships also need to be configured differently to run on greener fuels. Although some pilot projects have developed small hydrogen-powered vessels, it’s another question to expand hydrogen and ammonia compatibility to all ships globally. According to Sun, at the University of Michigan, researchers are still grappling with many design and safety questions, like how best to fit alternative fuels — which are less energy-dense than oil and gas — onto a ship, or how to safely contain ammonia, which can release hazardous nitrogen oxide or unspent fuel when combusted. 

“We need to, as a research community, take a holistic approach and explore the whole space. I don’t think that has happened,” Sun said, calling for more government investment to make that exploration possible. She and other experts also want the International Maritime Organization, or IMO — a unique United Nations agency that can set legally binding regulations — to unify the industry behind a stronger decarbonization goal. The IMO’s current target is nonbinding: to achieve only a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2050, relative to a 2008 baseline. Hubbell called the goal “abysmal.” 

Still, the IMO isn’t the only government body capable of pushing the shipping industry. Madeline Rose, climate campaign director for Pacific Environment, noted that regulators like the California Air Resources Board or the federal Environmental Protection Agency could mandate emissions standards for all ships entering California ports, or all U.S.-owned ships, respectively. These policies could potentially spread outside the U.S., as California’s 2007 standard for sulfur emissions eventually did when the IMO adopted a similar — albeit weaker — standard in 2020. They can also help drive down prices for green technologies, allowing them to permeate throughout the shipping industry, by artificially increasing demand.

And even smaller jurisdictions like the Long Beach City Council can also make waves, helping to foster the conditions necessary for decarbonization. An ambitious commitment is one way to do that. “Having a port take a clear stance now … is a key enabler of the technology demonstration and wider regulation that is necessary to drive the switch away from fossil fuels,” said Tristan Smith, a lecturer at University College London’s Energy Institute. Other actions ports can take include prohibiting polluting ships from using their docks, giving docking preference to zero-emissions ships, or installing “shore power,” which allows ships to plug into electricity while docked so they don’t have to keep burning fuel. Both LA and Long Beach already provide shore power, and groups like Pacific Environment are pushing for them to adopt the other policies as well.

Although Smith called Long Beach’s 2030 target “entirely appropriate,” Sun was more cautious. She said that many shorter routes or routes along so-called “green corridors” with supportive infrastructure for alternative fuels could feasibly go net-zero by the end of the decade, but that decarbonizing long-haul voyages across the oceans by then might be overambitious. 

“The Long Beach initiative is great,” she said, because it puts greater pressure on lawmakers and industry to get to net-zero. But she called for more research and development to ensure that alternative fuels and the engines that run them are safe, effective, and reliable. “And then once we get that, then how do we scale them?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline California lawmakers are ready to decarbonize the shipping industry. The technology isn’t there yet. on Jul 11, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The post In Deep Water: Shipping in the Global Economy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joseph Grosso.

As U.S. consumers struggle with soaring prices and supply shortages, the highly concentrated industry that delivers their goods from overseas is making extraordinary profits — an expected record-breaking $300 million in 2022, according to British market research firm Drewry. While an emboldened Federal Reserve is willing to risk a crushing recession to bring down prices — and Democrats have offered little resistance to interest rate hikes — Congress is turning to an alternative solution too little seen: passing and enacting legislation.

Next week, the House is set to hold a final vote on a popular bipartisan measure to ease pressure on the clogged global supply chains and seaports that are contributing to higher prices. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act will crack down on shipping companies currently exploiting their market power to raise fees, deny transport for exporters, and turn record profits in the process.

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The Panama-flagged ship Ever Given set sail towards the northeastern Egyptian city of Ismailia for its departure from the Suez Canal and resumption of its voyage to the Dutch city of Rotterdam, on July 7, 2021.

Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“The ocean shipping companies need to be aware that their day is coming.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sara Sirota.

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service has issued two infringement notices to the captain of the seized Russian super yacht Amadea which is berthed in Lautoka port.

These are notices under Section 14 of the Customs Act of 1986 for failure to comply with procedure on arrival and Section 17 which deals with failure to comply with people disembarking.

Section 14 deals with infringements under “procedure on arrival” where the master of every aircraft or ship arriving in the Fiji Islands shall bring the ship or aircraft to an airport or port or mooring without touching at any other place.

• READ MORE: Russian billionaires head for Turkey to flee Western sanctions
• Earlier reports on the Amadea
• US seizes Russian super yacht docked in Spain
• France seizes Russian oligarch’s yacht amid EU sanctions

A fine not exceeding F$20,000 (NZ$14,000) or imprisonment for four years applies for the infringement.

Section 17 deals with “provisions as to persons disembarking from or going onboard an aircraft, ship” and states a person who contravenes or fails to comply with any direction given by the Customs comptroller under the provisions of this section is guilty of an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding F$10,000 (NZ$7000).

“These charges are as per the Customs Act 1986,” said Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho.

“Normally the Act, (FRCS) Fiji Revenue and Customs Service acts on a fine matrix. If he pays the fines, then good otherwise, we will need to go to the court.”

US officials join investigation
Repeka Nasiko reports that American government officials are working with the Fiji Police Force in investigations over the Amadea.

Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho said the US investigators had already boarded the super yacht.

Commissioner Qiliho said investigations were progressing well.

“We are working very closely with the US government in regard to the current seizure of the yacht at the moment while we go through that investigation process,” he said.

He said the next course of action would not take place overnight and “probably take the next couple of days”.

The crew, he said, were on board and the person of interest was the captain of the vessel.

“The crew are of other nationalities.

“Their embassies and high commissions have been in touch with the investigation team and we are working through the US government with those embassies regarding the crew members who continue to be on board the vessel.”

He added that all relevant defence and border agencies were involved in the investigations.

“We have the RFMF through the Fiji Navy, Customs, Fiji Police and our international counterparts that monitor the movement of vessels.”

Amadea is reportedly owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, who is currently sanctioned by foreign governments, including the US, over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Anish Chand is the Fiji Times West Bureau chief reporter; Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Fiji is making a mockery of its stand in the United Nations in condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine by allowing the Russian super yacht Amadea to berth in the western port of Lautoka, says opposition People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka.

He called on government to send it on its way immediately.

He made the comment as police are investigating why the Amadea had entered and stopped inside Fiji’s territorial waters before a clearance from Customs was issued.

• READ MORE: Fiji investigates arrival of Russian oligarch’s vessel, questions captain
• ‘We don’t do Russians’, says Fiji health minister
• Other Ukraine war reports

Police Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho said the super yacht was being investigated for alleged breach of Fiji’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The super yacht belonging to a Russian billionaire sanctioned by the USA, United Kingdom and Europe came into port at Lautoka on Tuesday.

Public sources say the Amadea is owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian oligarch who is currently sanctioned over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marine Traffic, a marine analytics service, started showing Amadea in Fiji waters from daytime on Tuesday and by 6pm it was headed to the Lautoka Wharf.

Left Mexico last month
The Amadea left Manzanillo port in Mexico on March 24.

The 106-metre yacht risks being seized by the US, UK or any European Union country after they placed sanctions on Kerimov’s assets.

According to Fiji port requirements, any yacht arriving into Fiji must obtain approval from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Transport and the Immigration Department.

“We have heard about it [Amadea] but nothing has come to Immigration,” said Immigration Secretary Yogesh Karan.

Questions sent to the Ministry of Health had not been answered on publication by The Fiji Times.

Anish Chand is the Fiji Times West Bureau chief reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“We don’t do Russians.” This was the response from Fiji’s Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete when asked about the arrival on Tuesday of Russian super yacht Amadea.

“We’ll need clarification on that then we can comment on that,” he said. “We don’t do Russians.”

While the Prime Minister’s office did not respond to queries on the subject, the United States Embassy in Suva and the Delegation of the European Union in the Pacific said they had been in contact with the Fiji government over the presence in Fiji of the super yacht.

• READ MORE: Other Ukraine war reports

The Amadea, which arrived on Tuesday and was still in port yesterday, is owned by Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov.

Kerimov is on the United States, British and European Union sanctions list that came out after Russia’s invasion on Ukraine. Yachts owned by other sanctioned individuals have been seized all over the world.

“Seizing assets of Russian oligarchs supporting the invasion of Ukraine is a part of the sanction regime applied by the European Union,” said Sujiro Seam, Ambassador of the Delegation of the European Union.

“Several Russian oligarchs’ yachts have already been impounded in the European Union. The European Union is cooperating with partners around the world on the matter, including in the Pacific.

Consulting with Fiji
“The European Union is aware of reports of the presence of Amadea in Lautoka and, together with like-minded partners, is consulting with the government of Fiji.”

The US Embassy in Fiji also issued a similar statement, saying they are “cooperating with Fijian authorities on the matter”.

“The United States is committed to finding and seizing the assets of the oligarchs who have supported the Russian Federation’s brutal, unprovoked war of choice against Ukraine,” Stephanie Fitzmaurice, the regional public affairs officer said.

We are working closely with governments and private sector partners in Europe, and the entire world, including Fiji, on this issue.”

According to Fijian entry requirements, yachts must seek approval from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Tourism and the Immigration Department before departing their last port.

Anish Chand is the Fiji Times West Bureau chief reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sara Sirota.

New Zealand has two new cases of covid-19 in managed isolation and quarantine and two historical cases today, says the Ministry of Health says — but no new cases in the community.

In a statement, the ministry said 10 previously reported cases had now recovered.

This morning, 11 of the 21 crew on board the Rio De La Plata container ship off Tauranga were revealed to have tested positive for covid-19. One test result is currently indeterminate.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid reports

Officials had said they expected to know after further testing how many cases were historical and how many were active.

In today’s statement the ministry said testing at the Port of Tauranga was under way for workers who had contact with the container ship.

“The crew have been informed of the positive covid-19 test results and, as of Monday morning, crew members on board are reported to be well,” it said.

“Officials have worked with employers to identify 94 port workers who had contact with the ship, unloading cargo in shifts over the four-day period it was berthed at Port of Tauranga from 6pm on Wednesday, 4 August, to 2pm on Saturday, 7 August.

All contacted, told to isolate
“All have been contacted, told to isolate awaiting a negative covid-19 test result, and are being tested for covid-19 today. So far, 91 workers have been tested, as of 11.30am. The first results are expected later today.”

The ministry said some workers would require a second test, based on their contact with the ship, and would also be required to remain in isolation until the result of those second tests were known.

“The ministry understands from local public health staff that all infection prevention controls, and PPE protocol, were followed by port workers who had contact with the ship during their duties.”

Meanwhile, the Mattina remained in quarantine at a secure berth in Bluff, the ministry said.

As of Monday morning, 13 of the original 21 mariners remain on board the vessel.

The ministry said that on Saturday, five mariners were released after 14 days in managed isolation. These mariners have consistently returned negative covid-19 test results.

One mariner, who was transferred off the boat at a later date, remained in a managed isolation facility in Christchurch, it said.

Two further mariners discharged
“Two further mariners, who both required hospital care, have been discharged, and are in Southern DHB-arranged accommodation where their health can continue to be monitored and treated. The ministry understands from Southern DHB that the mariners are recovering well.”

On returnees from Australia, the ministry said it was continuing to remind anyone who returned from Queensland on return flights last week to keep checking locations with the Queensland Health website and monitor for any symptoms.

“If people have been at a location of interest at the relevant time, they should immediately isolate at home or appropriate accommodation and call Healthline on 0800 358 5453 for advice on testing. New locations of interest have also been added for Victoria and Western Australia.”

The ministry said contact tracing staff had also identified 2995 people who returned on managed flights from Victoria between July 25 and 30 and had been required under a section 70 notice to isolate until a negative day 3 test.

Of those 2848 had so far returned a negative test; six have returned overseas and don’t need to be followed up; and 91 have been granted a clinical exemption, it said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The agent for a ship carrying two covid-19-infected fishermen says New Zealand officials jumped the gun in announcing all its crew would be taken into managed isolation.

The mariners were in a group of nine sailors who arrived in Auckland on Monday without having to quarantine and were immediately driven to New Plymouth to board their deep sea fishing vessel.

Yesterday, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the Viking Bay was returning to New Plymouth where all 15 crew would be taken into managed isolation.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘We shouldn’t speculate too soon’ – Bill Preston (duration 6′:55″)

However, last night that was rejected by the port, which said it would put staff at risk.

As of last night, the Ministry of Health said it was now unclear where the ship would dock. The ministry declined to be interviewed today on RNZ Morning Report.

The vessel’s agent when it was at Taranaki, Bill Preston, told Morning Report the ship appeared to be in international waters.

Preston said there had been a lack of communication.

‘Jumping the gun’
“Announcements have been made without collaboration with the port or anybody. So I think everybody is jumping the gun a bit.”

He said the first he had heard of the situation was when the port’s chief executive called him to confirm the news, after Dr Bloomfield’s announcement in the weekly vaccine update yesterday.

“I said [to the port’s chief executive], ‘no, there’s been no decision around what the vessel is going to do at this stage’.”

Dr Bloomfield’s announcement was also the first time that the port had heard of the news too, Preston said.

Since then, he said he had seen communication with the ministry overnight, about making a plan of what the ship would do.

Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison said the port should reverse that decision on humanitarian grounds.

“Taranaki could let the vessel pull on site and tie up and not let anyone off but get them close to medical health in case something happens.”

Port’s ban ‘harsh’
Harrison said the port’s decision was “harsh”.

“We really feel for the crew now … this crew has got nowhere to go and you can guarantee that any foreign port that’s close to us now won’t let them in their waters… they won’t want to touch them,” he said.

“Unfortunately, I think New Zealand will have to do something about it.”

He said preventing the virus spreading to other crew on the cramped vessel would be difficult, with closed ventilation on the ship and only one galley.

“I feel really sorry for the crew that are out there, because you can imagine that what’s going through their minds is sooner or later are they going to get covid-19. It’s a terrible situation to be in and I think time is of the essence.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Vanuatu’s capital island of Efate has gone into covid-19 lockdown for three days after a body was found on a beach near Port Vila.

The body, which tested positive for covid, was that of a Filipino crewman from the British-flagged liquified petroleum gas carrier Inge Kosan, a medium range tanker that supplies Pacific ports.

Inge Kosan was due today in Honiara, Solomon Islands, but has been detained in Port Vila.

Usually Inge Kosan sails to Vanuatu from ports on Australia’s east coast.

The body, which has yet to be named, was found on April 11 at Pango village beach, about 11 km from where the ship is now moored.

The Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office said that after the body was found it had been taken to the Vanuatu Central Hospital morgue where a covid test was conducted. It tested positive.

So all outbound travel from Efate island stopped for 3 days to allow contact tracing to be carried out

— Ralph Regenvanu (@RRegenvanu) April 18, 2021

Police officers who handled the body have been tested and isolated. Contact tracing is underway.

Authorities said chances of community transmission were small.

Vanuatu’s opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu tweeted on the news: “So while imposing admirably strict quarantine protocols on all ports of entry into the country, we did not foresee that a dead body washed ashore and put in the only mortuary in the country where people gather to mourn every day could be carrying the COVID-19 virus.”

Contact tracing
RNZ Pacific reports that as contact tracing began today, Director-General of Health, Russell Tamata, confirmed that 16 people had been put in quarantine at Ramada Hotel.

Most of them were police officers who attended the scene when the body was discovered.

Prime Minister Bob Loughman said business would operate as usual but he appealed to the people to abide by covid-19 safety protocols such as social distancing.

The dead body of the Filipino was still at the mortuary at Vila Central.

Vanuatu has reported only three previous cases of covid-19, all at the border.

Republished from The Pacific Newsroom with permission.

Fears are mounting over the safety of 1040 crew members – many of them from the Philippines – on board the Ruby Princess cruise ship as another union today raised the alarm about Covid-19 coronavirus infection risks.

“There are now 18 deaths and around 700 coronavirus cases associated with the cruise ship Ruby Princess,” said Peter Murphy, spokesperson for the Philippines Australia Union Link (PAUL).

“Quarantine on board the ship does not work, and the 1040 crew on board are in grave danger,” he said in a statement about the crisis in Port Kembla, NSW.

READ MORE: Ruby Princess crew at Port Kembla test Covid-19 positive

“The crew must be taken off the ship now, all tested and placed in isolation or hospital, and repatriated to their home countries when safe, at the expense of their employer, Carnival Corporation.”

Murphy was speaking for PAUL, which has been operating for 36 years to strengthen ties between the trade unions of Australia and the Philippines.

– Partner –

“We believe the biggest single group [of the crew on board] is from the Philippines, and we are supporting all of the crew to be able to enjoy their basic rights to a safe workplace, and repatriation to their homes by air.

“The International Transport Workers Federation, the South Coast Labour Council and the Maritime Union of Australia have forced more testing of the sickest crew members over Easter, and the result is shocking – 97 more workers were tested and 57 were positive cases.

‘Other crew with symptoms’
“Add the previous nine confirmed cases and there are 66 cases out of 106 tested. There are at least another 100 crew members showing symptoms of respiratory illness.

“The NSW government should change its plan that all these workers should stay on the ship and that it should sail this week, because this is certain to lead to more coronavirus cases on board, serious illness and some deaths. The Carnival Corporation must be made to fulfil its duty of care.

“We are appalled at the images of police officers boarding the ship in full body protective suits to carry out their investigation, while the crew have no protective gear at all. Aspen Medical was put in charge of the vessel last week, and we understand that the maximum medical treatment provided has been taking of temperatures.”

NSW Health must take direct control of the situation on the Ruby Princess to ensure that these workers were “treated like human beings”, Murphy said.

“Hundreds of thousands of Australians have enjoyed cruises with Carnival Corporation over the years, and it is these workers who have made those cruises enjoyable.

“Right now they are being treated like disposables who have no rights at all, who have to be kept out of sight and pushed off as soon as possible.

“This is not our Australia and we call for this situation to be put right now, before it is too late.”