Essay by Eric Worrall
Like rich nations have nothing better to do than discuss than giving big climate handouts to poor nations which have a shameful corruption index score.
For Cop29 to succeed, rich nations must get their parliaments to agree more finance now
Published on 30/01/2024, 2:49pm
Rich nations always say they need their parliaments approval for climate finance at Cops – now is the time to start
By Evans Njewa
Although 2024 has just begun, the coming months will determine if Cop29 will be a success and whether benefits will trickle down to vulnerable communities in developing countries.
The Cop29 summit in Baku in November will focus on climate finance.
Government negotiators in the Global North always tell us that their ambition on finance depends on their parliaments.
…
They stress that they have no mandate, or possibility to scale up funds, as parliaments will not approve.
So, as parliamentarian debates about budgets and allocations begin early in the year, they need to act now.
…
Without more grant-based funding, our plans to adapt to climate change and cut emissions will not be implemented; our efforts to ensure green and sustainable growth and development will not be successful and our possibilities to address the growing threat of climate-related loss and damage will never occur.
…
Evans Njewa is the chair of the Least Developed Countries group and an official in Malawi’s environment ministry
Read more: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/01/30/for-cop29-success-rich-nations-must-get-their-parliaments-to-agree-more-finance-now/
The author is “chair of the Least Developed Countries group”.
Why are those countries so undeveloped?
Malawi has lots of sunlight, good agricultural land and abundant rainfall in the wet season.
But there are problems in paradise. Transparency.org, which tracks global corruption, paints a bleak picture of Malawi corruption. 72% of surveyed locals thought corruption had increased in the last 12 months. 28% of public service users admitted they had paid a bribe.
From the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom :- Economic expansion remains fragile in the absence of a dynamic private sector. Malawi lags in competitiveness and promotion of the broad-based economic activity that is needed to reduce poverty. The poor quality of physical and legal infrastructure, made worse by the government’s inefficiency, is a serious impediment to long-term economic development.
Somehow I doubt a plane load of climate cash would help improve this situation.
Officials like Evans Njewa should put their energy into fixing Malawi’s domestic problems, to encourage more development, instead of demanding handouts from other countries.
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You could give everyone in Malawi a million dollars, and guess what? Prices would skyrocket and they’d all be just as poor, except the cronies who stashed it in Swiss bank accounts.
Although … perhaps all those suddenly rich cronies would flee to Switzerland to spend their ill-gotten gains, and the remaining poor would suddenly discover how to get by without having to pay bribes.
The chances are 28 to one that COP29 won’t ‘succeed’.
I remember in the early 1950s a missionary came from someplace in Africa to ask for money from dozens of small churches. Mother gave the kids a quarter to put in the basket. Now, Africa seems to be in worse shape than when we — the poor of America — started pouring money and talent into the place.
I can’t write what I would like Mr. Evans Njewa to hear – my loving, but long departed, mother would not approve.
It’s an old, old story…
“We need other people’s monies to spend!”
“””Rich Nation Parliaments Need to Debate OUR Climate Cash NOW
Aww sorry about that. They were on their way, honest, but something’s come up…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-michael-brooks-lincoln-united-states-tesla-b2488223.html
Picking up bad habits from bureaucrats? Particularly socialist apparatchiks, who are bad enough in countries with traditions of private enterprise.
Jason Riley’s book lays it out in the domestic context but it applies internationally, too.
https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594038414
Good presentation, Eric. I worked in a lot of countries and usually consulted Transparency.org regularly. As a company President I have avoided paying bribes, except once to play on a famous golf course. My bad.
I think golf can be forgiven 🙂
Best push back on a bribe I ever saw, I was in a taxi in the Phillipines which was stopped by corrupt police officers. The taxi driver started shouting at the police officers! One of them came over and looked at me, then waved me on.
I asked the taxi driver “what happened?”.
He said “They wanted money, but I told them you are a UN delegate, and if they want to keep their jobs they should f*ck off”.
Might it be more productive, for them an us, to provide each resident with a copy (translated) of Human Action by Mises?
Probably.
Coincidentally, the Mises website just published a daily article that points out the futility of setting public policy based on the errors / uncertainties inherent in both ‘mainstream’ economic theory and ‘consensus’ climate science. Here’s a link if it’s of interest as a ‘story tip’:
https://mises.org/wire/navigating-complexity-climate-change-closer-look-scientific-method-and-its-challenges
You can give away or lend as many copies as you want. I pretty sure that the % of copies read will not increase past a short introductory period.
No cash to anyone, cash only enables and encourages corruption. Turn the spigot off now.
Evans Njewa, hmmmm . . .hey!, I think I recently got an out-of-the-blue email from that guy, under a pen name, of course, asking me to help him out with a deal to secure a large amount of money—something like $63 million USD—that was unclaimed and just sitting in a Malawian bank. I would get 10% of that if I just wire-transferred to him $45,000 so he could get a lawyer-cousin to start the necessary paperwork.
Waddaya think, wire the money to him before he gets it from the IMF?
I’m not so gullible as to believe something like that. Plus, I don’t have the $45,000 to spare since I just finished paying off the IRS in Google Play gift cards to clear a US tax debt I didn’t know I had.
“Officials like Evans Njewa should put their energy into fixing Malawi’s domestic problems, to encourage more development, instead of demanding handouts from other countries.”
Dosen’t put hard currency into his Swiss bank account
The funny thing is it would, if he’s that way inclined. The reason Communist China started copying the Hong Kong Asian Miracle is they realised there was an opportunity to skim far more money, by curtailing their greed just enough to allow business to flourish.
The push in so many of these island countries seems to be to encourage and expand their tourist trade as much as possible. Any infrastructure funds go mainly to that end so that more wealthy tourists will come to spend more money locally. This, plus their own population growth, fed mainly by the leavings of that tourist trade, are what create the real problems, which have nothing to do with climate, changing or not.
They intrinsically have a very limited fresh water supply. The more people, the faster that is used up. The more people, local or imported, the more trash they rapidly accumulate, and the more environmental degradation they achieve. Any handouts they receive, if not exported to secret accounts, will be used mainly to increase the very things that are causing the problems to begin with because the locals with power and influence will be most tied up in those industries, so will use whatever is available to help them to grow.
Island countries, with limited fresh water?
Malawi ?
In the middle of southern Africa, complete with a massive lake.
Story tip – The Delusions of Davos and Dubai – Part Two: Can Wind & Solar Energy Expand 50-100 Times? › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
Don’t give them anything. Let the big emitters like China and India take care of these contributions, except those countries have been wise to the developing world’s corruption and inefficiencies for years now and don’t intend to adversely impact their own economies by giving them money that’s likely to be either wasted or stolen.
One of the problems is that China has been taking care of ‘contributions’ – in return for certain considerations. This is why Chinese warships will be able to dock at the Solomon Islands, for example.
Someone ought to prepare the desperate minister and tell him that he asks for money in the framework of a scam and that that scam will end on November 4, 2024.
We are trying to measure tribal societies by our standardized tests. Take an aboriginal tribe somewhere – let’s say in Andaman Islands, or in Amazon jungle. Their tribal organization allows them to survive, and, from their point of view, to prosper. They don’t even use money. And in our hubris we declare them “corrupt”.
No, not really. It’s the countries that have developed from a tribal society into a more modern nation with a civil service bureaucracy that then demands bribes from the citizenry for basic rights. These are the ones we declare ‘corrupt’ because of the extensive corruption.
Kind of like when all of the virtue signaling Progressive politicians bragged about their “sanctuary city”. It was all fun and games until folks from third world countries actually took them for their word and started showing up asking for free stuff.
And it is going to get worse -unless there is regime change – soon
Dropping the planeload of illegals into Martha’s Vineyard was just poetry 🙂
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/17/us/marthas-vineyard-migrants-journey-desantis/index.html
Yes, yes it was. The smell of hypocrisy was overwhelming.
I see John Podesta was installed as a replacement for John Kerry’s useless job.
So John Podesta will fly to Azerbaijan?
Azerbaijan which, coincidentally, is a big regional centre for sex trafficking?
Rich Nation Parliaments Need to Debate OUR Climate Cash NOW
OK, we debated it, and the answer is still no.
The poor quality of physical and legal infrastructure, made worse by the government’s inefficiency,
The poor quality of . . .legal infrastructure? Maybe the US has a high-quality legal infrastructure, one that can award $83.3 million to a woman whose testimony wouldn’t send a shop lifter to jail or that can pay the widow of a famous athlete $29 million because cops took pictures of an accident. The names involved in that case should include whoever it was that signed the paperwork authorizing the settlement.
Nobody in the US should criticize the legal system of any other country in view of the daily legal travesties that afflict Yankeeland, a secular society administered by legal Levites with their own particular religion.
Story Tip;
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/01/31/skippy-will-replace-kerry-and-move-into-the-white-house/
They shouldn’t demand handouts, but on the other hand, with 30 years of COPs hammering on the theme that all of the pain suffered by poor countries was caused by the developed countries burning fossil fuels …I can see they are going to want the rich to pay.