Day: January 16, 2023

Big oil firms came under pressure at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) from activists who accused them of hijacking the climate debate, while a Greta Thunberg-sponsored "cease and desist" campaign gained support on social media.

Major energy firms including BP BP.L, Chevron CVX.N and Saudi Aramco 2222.SE are among the 1,500 business leaders gathering for the annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos, where global threats including climate change are on the agenda.

"We are demanding concrete and real climate action," said Nicolas Siegrist, the 26-year-old organiser of the protest who also heads the Young Socialists party in Switzerland.

The annual meeting of global business and political leaders opens in Davos on Monday.

"They will be in the same room with state leaders and they will push for their interests," Siegrist said of the involvement of energy companies during a demonstration attended by several hundred people on Sunday.

The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world's energy mix as countries shift to low carbon economies.

On Monday, a social media campaign added to the pressure on oil and gas companies, by promoting a "cease and desist" notice sponsored by climate activists Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, through the non-profit website Avaaz.

It demands energy company CEOs "immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need," and threatens legal action and more protests if they fail to comply.

The campaign, which had been signed by more than 660,000 people, had almost 200,000 shares on Monday morning.

Sumant Sinha, who heads one of India's largest renewable energy firms, said it would be good to include big oil companies in the transition debate as they have a vital role to play.

"If oil people are part of these conversations to the extent that they are also committing to change then by all means. It is better to get them inside the tent than to have them outside the tent," Sinha, chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, told Reuters, saying that inclusion should not lead to "sabotage."

Rising interest rates have made it harder for renewable energy developments to attract financing, giving traditional players with deep pockets a competitive advantage.

As delegates began to arrive in Davos, Debt for Climate activists protested at a private airport in eastern Switzerland, which they said would be used by some WEF attendees, and issued a statement calling for foreign debts of poorer countries to be cancelled in order to accelerate the global energy transition.

Source: Voice of America

Uganda on Wednesday declared the end of the Ebola disease outbreak, less than four months after the first case was confirmed in Mubende district on September 20, 2022.

The announcement brought a smile to many faces, including organizations like Amref Health Africa, which worked with its partners to support the fight against the disease that was caused by the Sudan ebolavirus.

Amref Health Africa, through its subsidiary Amref Uganda, joined the campaign against Ebola, through its project dubbed the Hygiene Behavioral Change Coalition (HBCC).

Amref, with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and Unilever, is implementing the second phase of HBCC in Wakiso and Kampala to continue increasing awareness of preventive and control measures against Covid-19.

But when Ebola broke out, Amref asked its funders to channel some of the funds to the government of Uganda in battling it.

“We approached our donors to allow us to use part of the resources to integrate messages on Ebola prevention… and we are grateful that our donors allowed us to use part of the resources to do so,” Eng. Mutwalib Walude, project manager of HBCC, said while speaking to this reporter at Amref head offices in Kololo, Kampala.

The funding was used for talk shows, conducting mobile van drives in the aforementioned districts, providing PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment) for frontline health workers (especially VHTs [Village Health Teams]), and working with influencers (religious leaders, digital media, and cultural leaders).

They also did Integrated Home Improvement campaigns in hotspots, according to Eng. Walude.

He said: “With those interventions, we believe were able to stem the spread of Ebola in Kampala and Wakiso.”

Amref Uganda Country Manager Dr. Patrick Kagurusi said announcing Uganda Ebola-free was a great achievement.

“I join everybody in celebrating this moment and also congratulating Ugandans upon successfully ending this outbreak of Ebola,” he said, going on to explain his organization’s mandate.

“Amref Health Africa is a health development organization that works toward a lasting change in healthcare in Africa and for Uganda… and our role in all countries of presence is to strengthen health systems so that they can respond to diseases… so, we do not do this alone, we do it with communities, we do it with partners, with funders, donors, we work with the ministry of health.”

Dr. Kagurusi also thanked partners who made the execution of activities possible.

“I want to thank the ministry of health for the able leadership in fighting this Ebola outbreak, the outbreak of Covid… Ebola came after Covid. The leadership has been excellent. Our donors have been very helpful in giving us funds that we can use. Our teams [including the Amref team] have been excellent in really joining the response… As Amref, we remain committed to supporting communities to respond to such outbreaks,” he said

He encouraged communities to be aware that Covid is still around even when Ebola has gone.

There are also many other diseases that can be dealt with through behavioral change, he said.

The last Ebola case in Uganda was registered on November 30.

It was the country’s first Sudan ebolavirus outbreak in a decade and its fifth overall for this kind of Ebola. In total there were 164 cases (142 confirmed and 22 probable), 55 confirmed deaths and 87 recovered patients.

More than 4000 people who came in contact with confirmed cases were followed up and their health was monitored for 21 days. Overall, the case-fatality ratio was 47%. The last patient was released from care on November 30 when the 42-day countdown to the end of the outbreak began.

Source: Amref Health Africa

As the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gets underway this week at the Swiss ski resort of Davos; the charity Oxfam says extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years – and is calling for fairer taxation in response to the soaring inequality.

Hundreds of billionaires, dozens of government ministers and central bank governors are due to attend the WEF, widely seen as a get together for the global super rich. In its report, "Survival of the Richest,” published Monday, Oxfam says the world’s billionaires are becoming richer.

“Davos is back in January. The festival of wealth is back. And we're bringing alarming new findings which show that the one percent, the richest one percent in the world have grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020,” Oxfam America’s director of economic justice, Nabil Ahmed, told VOA.

Pandemic profits

Oxfam says the source of that wealth is partly government money: emergency liquidity pumped into the global economy as the coronavirus pandemic forced countries into lockdown in 2020.

“That was essential. But at the same time the ultra-wealthy were able to really ride this asset boom that resulted, the stock market boom that resulted. And without the guardrails of progressive taxation in the economy, the ultra-wealthy were really able to line their pockets,” Ahmed said.

Inflation

Oxfam calculates that at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, meaning people are becoming poorer. The wealth of billionaires, however, has surged as inflation drives up food and energy prices.

“The current cost-of-living crisis, with spiraling food and energy prices, is also creating dramatic gains for many at the top. Food and energy corporations are seeing record profits and making record pay-outs to their rich shareholders and billionaire owners. Corporate price profiteering is driving at least 50% of inflation in Australia, the U.S. and Europe, in what is as much a ‘cost-of-profit’ crisis as a cost-of-living one,” the Oxfam report says.

“We were able to show how 95 food and energy corporations have actually been able to double their profits in 2022,” the charity’s Ahmed told VOA.

Fair taxes

Oxfam is calling for windfall taxes imposed on energy companies to be extended to food companies making big profits. It also wants a tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires.

“The spectacular rise of wealth and income at the very top has coincided with a collapse in taxes on the richest 1%. While there are differences between countries, the general trend towards lower taxes for the rich has been remarkably similar across all regions of the world,” the report says.

“Extreme inequality is not inevitable,” Ahmed told VOA. “This isn't about nurses, teachers, the middle class. This is really about those at the very top, ensuring that they're paying far fairer taxes.”

Solutions

The president of the WEF maintained that the annual Davos summit does benefit the whole world.

“So much is at stake, we really need to find solutions on the wars and conflicts. We also have to secure that we don’t go into a recession, and we have 10 years of low growth, as we had in the 1970s. That is at stake, and we need all the stakeholders to be part of working towards a safer and more inclusive growing global economy,” World Economic Forum President Borge Brende told The Associated Press.

Source: Voice of America