Defenders of Palestinian rights need to demand more serious diplomacy, especially from the Global South, in a world of European and Middle Eastern docility and Latin American bravado without content.

Buenos Aires (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Most coverage of the ongoing Israeli wars have fomented a superstitious belief that limits our ability for action: there prevails this idea that the gruesome erasure of Gaza can only be determined by Israel and the White House and by the good will of the Democratic Party’s foreign-policy-makers, and that otherwise this campaign of destruction is utterly unstoppable for the rest of the watching world. But it is really another, ideological, factor that has emerged in global power relations in recent years that has made this genocide thus far possible: the unprecedented complicity of numerous Western allies who endorse the US-Israeli effort while repressing critical speech amongst their citizenries. These participants in the genocide include the leading economies of Europe, Canada, and the wider Western world, as well as former allies of the Palestinians in the Global South—many of whom have vowed to never again question US foreign policy in the 21^st century.

When the PLO was at the height of its powers, and figures like liberation poet Mahmoud Darwish were exiled in Sweden or appearing in Godard movies, European opinionmakers and journalists had more self-confidence and autonomy and dared to repudiate American foreign policy despite living in NATO countries. Just recall the widespread condemnation from the European mainstream towards Ariel Sharon’s 1982 proxy-massacre at the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila camp in Lebanon. Back then, NATO generals were not yet proclaimed authorities on “truth” or “facts’’ or entrusted as the arbiters of so-called “democratic health” as they are in our current authoritarian context. European elites had not yet become intoxicated on the fanfare for ex-president Barack Obama (as they currently are blindly enamored of and aligned with the Harris campaign) and Europeans understood that their ex-colony, the US, was a relatively new and juvenile culture, which attained superpowerdom almost by accident by being the last Western frontier still intact after the second world war.

Part of the Occident’s “old world” cynicism towards the US was simply an autumnal European arrogance towards an ex-colony. But there was also the much wiser and genuine old-world perception of the US being a culture based on naiveté—that “pursuit of happiness”, the idea of “making it” from scratch, the “American dream”, an innocence and optimism that have inspired millions, but which still limit the American vision, often rendering the US commentariat incapable of understanding the complex and tragic histories of much of the world—particularly when it comes to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the two regions which today endure mayhem under the dominance of a naive American power that proclaims itself the chief harbinger of good in these regions.

Latin America, however, is also guilty of a different kind of excess optimism: the continent famed for producing anti-imperialist heroes appears largely absent from the picture when it comes to real diplomacy on Palestine.

While right wing Latin American leaders like Argentina’s Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele — himself the son of Christian Palestinian immigrants to El Salvador — form part of a global reactionary renaissance that glorifies Israeli violence, the Latin American progressive governments of Lula, Petro and Boric have contented themselves with displays of sentimental rhetoric which amount to little more than appeals to the White House and the West to do more soul-searching (see Lula’s statements on Biden’s lack of sensitivity for Gaza). These leaders have struggled in the world of politics long enough to know that beseeching Antony Blinken to “have a heart” will not end American backing for these massacres. Such pronouncements make successful memes for social media but prove disappointingly insufficient.

“Lulu in Gaza,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Brazil especially, as a pioneering leader of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) bloc, could play a key part in diplomacy by confronting other countries on their inaction—by challenging Egypt and Turkey, for example, on their lack of imagination when it comes to matching bluster with geopolitical deeds: Egypt and Turkey receive altogether roughly 10 billion euros a year from the EU to block refugees from traversing the Mediterranean. If Muslim states in the Mediterranean would refuse to perform their watchdog duties until European countries agreed to a full weapons embargo on Israel and on Sudan, how long would the EU’s fanatical “Zionist” fervor last until they accepted to stop the flow of weapons in exchange for a halt in the flow of desperate rafters from Central Africa?

The lack of concerted geopolitical opposition and cooperation beyond mere words — for in American slang, “talk is cheap”—has emboldened the US and Israel to push through the drastic plans that were on the drawing-board long before October 7th, the machinations of a bloody realpolitik which end up being tantamount to a final solution for the tedium of the Palestine issue. The alternative — enforcing international law — has long been treated as utopian only because of the pusillanimous lack of coordinated pressure toward that end.

Europe has decided that it will engage in self-harming complicity and uncritical submission unto American foreign policy adventures, however reckless.

European countries consistently discard the historic Western commitments to civil liberties when punishing critics of Israel, while continuing to ship weapons to foreign armies at war, all in violation of European law.

Progressive states such as Lula’s Brazil, meanwhile, succumb unto the folly of a superficial, easy anti-Americanism which Edward Said had warned against shortly before his death. Simply highlighting the damaging US role in all this belligerence is not enough to help Palestinians now.

Latin American representatives are in an excellent position to lobby fellow energy-producers in the world — for instance, to demand that countries like the Emirates be less passive, by refusing to cooperate commercially with Israel until an end to the genocide and occupation. Latino officials have instead opted for clichés and the well-known talking points, rather than transnational organizing towards exerting pragmatic, coordinated pressure. Global South countries and civic organizations could invoke laws of Universal Jurisdiction against Israeli war criminals. Some US-Israeli weapons manufacturers rely on Latin America’s minerals. There are multiple fronts for diplomatically pressing Canada and Europe to stop championing Netanyahu’s imagined right to massacre.  The window of time for action, narrower than ever, has not yet been closed or bricked in.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Just days after her inauguration as the first female president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum called for the recognition of the State of Palestine as a step towards achieving peace in the Middle East, and reaffirmed her country’s longstanding support for the Palestinian people.

“We condemn the aggression currently taking place,” said Sheinbaum, “and we also believe that the state of Palestine must be fully recognised, just as Israel is.”

The president condemned the violence in the Middle East and outlined what Mexico’s position will be during her term in office. “This has been Mexico’s position for many years,” she pointed out, “and it remains the same. We seek peace above all.”

Speaking at her daily press conference, the new president addressed Israel’s actions in the region, stressing that mutual recognition of a Palestinian state is key to finding a diplomatic solution to end the violence in Gaza. Sheinbaum also stressed that “war will never lead to a good outcome,” urging a peaceful resolution to the conflict and calling on international institutions to take a more active role. “The United Nations should be much more proactive as an institution in the pursuit and construction of world peace,” she insisted.

Furthermore, the Mexican president recalled that the previous Mexican government, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, condemned the aggression of the Israeli government. “The previous government condemned the aggressions of the Israeli state against Palestine and what is currently happening in the world. There is concern about the risk of this conflict expanding to Lebanon and Syria, which could greatly complicate the situation in the Middle East.”

She also mentioned that Mexico joined Chile’s complaint at the International Court of Justice regarding Israel’s disproportionate response following the attacks of 7 October last year. “The international community is aware of the growing complexity of the Middle East conflict with its potential for expansion,” she noted. The leaders of both Chile and Mexico emphasised the latter’s commitment to international legal mechanisms in seeking justice and accountability.

Claudia Sheinbaum is the daughter of Jewish parents, but she rarely discusses her heritage. When she does, she tends to express a more distant connection to Judaism than many others in Mexico’s Jewish community, which has been present since the country’s early days and now numbers about 59,000 people in a population of 130 million.

“Of course I know where I come from, but my parents were always atheists,” Sheinbaum told the New York Times in a 2020 interview. “I never belonged to the Jewish community, and we grew up kind of removed from that.”

Sheinbaum’s Jewish heritage has made her the target of a smear campaign. False rumours have circulated that she is not a Mexican citizen and was “born in Bulgaria”.

Despite being part of the Latin American Jewish community, which is often associated with Israel, she supports left-wing governments in the region, such as those in Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, many of which have a strong anti-Israel stance.

Since the war broke out last year, Sheinbaum has condemned attacks on civilians, called for a ceasefire and expressed her support for a Palestinian state. Her consistent stance highlights her long-term commitment to advocating for peace and the recognition of Palestinian rights. Moreover, she has extended a helping hand to some 30,000 Palestinians living in Mexico.

“Many of my relatives from that generation were exterminated in concentration camps,” she wrote in a 2009 letter to La Jornada, in which she also condemned what she described as the “murder of Palestinian civilians” during an Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

via Middle East Monitor

The International Court of Justice is holding hearings Monday and Tuesday of this week regarding whether it should issue precautionary measures against Germany. Nicaragua brought the case in March, saying that the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has not even attempted to “prevent what is plausibly a genocide” against Gaza Palestinians, demanding that it cease providing “political, financial and military support” to Israel.

Carlos José Argüello Gómez, Nicaragua’s ambassador to The Hague, said, “Germany seems unable to differentiate between self-defense and genocide. Germany is not fulfilling its own obligation to prevent genocide or ensure respect for international humanitarian law.”

The ambassador pointed to a German double standard. Merely on Israel’s say-so, Berlin halted financing for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Gaza. But the German government has ignored much more credible allegations that Israel itself is committing genocide in Gaza.

Israel’s charge that UNRWA was riddled with Hamas militants was fact-free and lacking in any sound evidence, and most of the countries that suspended support for UNRWA after Netanyahu’s scurrilous accusations have now restored their donations.

Argüello said, “The Palestinian people are being subjected to one of the most destructive military actions in modern history.”

He said that without the unstinting support of countries such as Germany, Israel would not be able to act with impunity.

The ambassador acknowledged that Germany recognizes a special obligation to assist the Jewish people because the National Socialist government of Germany genocided them during World War II. He observed, “that is an understandable and commendable policy if it were addressed to the Jewish people, but the State of Israel, and particularly its current Government, should not be confused and equated with the Jewish people.”

Argüello has a point. The policies of the current extremist Israeli government are often being dictated by people like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are plausibly characterized as fascists.

For Germany to be compliant with demands of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir is to compound the sins of the Holocaust, not to alleviate them. You can’t make up for mass murder committed by fascists by supporting fascists committing mass murder.

Al Jazeera English Video: “ICJ hears Nicaragua’s case against Germany over Israel’s war on Gaza”

Argüello added, “True friends of the Jewish people should emphasize the difference: the Jewish victims in the concentration camps in World War II would feel sympathy and empathize with the more than 30,000 civilians, including 25,000 mothers and children, massacred so far in Palestine, and the 20,000 orphaned children, with two mothers murdered every hour.”

Again, he makes a good point. For many people and many Jews, the Nazi genocide was a universal event in human history, with universal implications. The implications are that the world should never again stand aside and allow mass murder with impunity. For the ilk of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir the lesson of the Holocaust is instead that they should genocide their enemies quickly before those enemies can kill any more Jews. It is a tribal reading of the Nazi genocide, and itself can lead to genocidal acts.

Al Jazeera English reports that the Nicaraguan team also argued that German arms firms have made a great deal of money supplying tank shells and other ammunition to Israel for use against civilian buildings in Gaza.

There are, of course, many ironies in this story for people who like irony (i.e. the appearance of the unexpected). It is ironic that Germany should be accused of genocide once again, this time for being overly solicitous of Zionist politicians who are themselves quite willing to commit atrocities.

It is also ironic that the dictatorial government of Daniel Ortega, which has chased 30,000 people out of the country through its repression and has banned opposition politicians and closed down newspapers (including the print edition of the neoliberal La Prensa), should be the one pointing a finger at Germany on grounds of human rights abuses.

La Prensa quotes Carlos Murillo Zamora, a professor at the University of Costa Rica with expertise in international law, as saying that the Ortega government is merely grandstanding and attempting to break the isolation into which it has painted itself by posing as a champion of human rights at The Hague.

All that is no doubt true. But it is also true that the United States and Germany, by giving the extremist Netanyahu government carte blanche to commit unspeakable war crimes against civilians, has created exactly this sort of opening for critics of liberal values such as Ortega and the ayatollahs of Iran. That Ortega’s ambassador can score undeniably valid points on the failures of democratic societies to halt a genocide playing out before the world’s eyes is the fault of Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz, who have undermined the whole regime of international humanitarian law.

The name Frantz Fanon has become inseparable from both the horrors of colonialization and the history of liberation movements. He inspired generations of militants to fight colonialism. Since the 1961 publication of The Wretched of the Earth, which has been called the “Bible of Decolonialization,” Fanon — the Black West Indian psychiatrist who fought for Algerian independence — has been idealized by activists in the global south and beyond. For them, Frantz Fanon is the uncompromising prophet of revolution.

In The Wretched of the Earth’s infamous first chapter “On Violence,” Fanon described colonialism as a pathological system — the complete imposition of violence by the settler on the natives, who are given a “colonial identity,” ”reduced to the state of an animal,” and thereby dehumanized. The colonist uses a “language of pure violence” and “derives his validity from the imposition of violence.” The colonial system, Fanon emphasized, was itself founded on “genocidal acts of dispossession and repression.”

Since Hamas‘s brutal October 7 attack, Fanon has been frequently invoked, seeming more popular than ever. Quoted in essays and social media posts, Fanon’s provocative ideas have been used by supporters of Palestine to contextualize or justify Hamas’s horrific assault as well as to castigate Israel’s colonial subjugation and genocidal obliteration of Gaza and its people. The Israeli bombardment has slaughtered more than 33,000 Palestinians with uncounted more buried under the rubble and has wounded over 75,000 people while starving the surviving population.

The ongoing calamity for Palestinians is not limited to the besieged Gaza Strip —  it also afflicts those in the occupied West Bank, which has been all but shut down since October 7. Road closures, checkpoints, and the increased risk of military and settler violence have kept West Bank Palestinians restricted to their towns and villages. As Israeli soldiers carried out a mission of dispossession, U.N. data showed that 2023 had been an especially deadly year for Palestinians, with Israeli forces killing more of them — 499 — than in any other non-conflict year since 2005. According to Hamas‘s leaders, this provided motivation for their attack. The pure violence of the Israeli Occupation has never been more clear.

“Colonialism is not a thinking machine,” wrote Fanon. “It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” The way out of colonial oppression and the colonized person’s “inferiority complex and his despairing attitude,” is through the “cleansing force” of violence. Fanon believed that violent resistance would restore the humanity of the colonized, elevate them psychologically to a position of equality, and deliver social justice: “The native discovers that his life, his breath, his beating heart are the same as those of the settler. He finds out that the settler’s skin is not of any more value than a native’s skin.”

Fanon’s concepts have become integral to the rationalization of Hamas‘s terrorism. On X, TikTok, and Instagram, Fanon quotes proliferated after October 7: “Decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ of men” and “Decolonization is an inherently violent phenomenon” among many others.

H/t Wikimedia.

An article in the Middle East Eye declared, “Don’t ask Palestinians to condemn Hamas – they are already condemned to live in hell on Earth” and concluded “those bearing the brunt of the onslaught today aren’t caught up in the semantic trap of condemnation. For Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for the wretched of our shared earth, as for Fanon, ‘to fight is the only solution.’”

In a statement titled “Oppression Breeds Resistance,” Columbia University students began by mourning “the tragic losses experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis” but concluded with a Fanon quote: “When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

Many of Fanon‘s contemporary admirers have apparently not read past the first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth; or, they have ignored the final chapter “Colonial Wars and Mental Disorders” — a series of disturbing case studies that depict the debilitating and long-lasting effects of violence. By regurgitating his provocative phrases alone, Fanon’s devotees portray this complex and challenging thinker as nothing more than a sloganeer of political violence. In a timely new biography — The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon — author Adam Shatz, an editor at the London Review of Books, rescues Fanon from reduction while still agreeing that he wrote “some of the most memorable catchphrases of the liberation struggle.”

The Rebel’s Clinic elaborates the drama and contradictions in Fanon’s life story and political writings, striving to explain why he is such a compelling figure more than 60 years after his death. Significantly, Shatz points out that Fanon’s “practice as a healer” who pledged to do no harm contradicted his practice as a revolutionary, who advocated violence which is harmful to both the victim and perpetrator.

As a psychiatrist, Fanon believed that the violent struggle of the colonized for liberation was a kind of shock treatment that would “restore confidence to the colonized mind” and “overcome the paralyzing sense of hopelessness induced by colonial subjugation,” but “was only a first step toward the birth of a new humanity.” The Rebel’s Clinic provides a comprehensive perspective on Fanon — one that social media slogans cannot suggest. As for Fanon’s advocacy of violence, Shatz calls it “alarming” at one point but emphasizes the humanist side of Fanon — “a dashing and sophisticated intellectual who earned the admiration of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.”

Though Fanon would eventually identify with the powerless, he was a child of empire — born into a middle-class family on the island of Martinique, a French colony. A fervent French patriot, Fanon eagerly joined the Free French Army. He fought against the Nazis in North Africa and Europe, even sustaining a shrapnel injury. Experiencing racism in the Army, his relationship to France and his own racial identity underwent a radical change – from French patriot who fought for empire to Black West Indian who rebelled against it. His first book Black Skin White Masks, published in 1952, diagnosed the pathological symptoms of racism in everyday life.

After completing his studies, Fanon directed a psychiatric hospital in colonial Algeria, where he discerned the many ways that French colonialism itself was the main cause of his patients’ psychological ailments. Algerians — like Palestinians today — were violently uprooted, their lands were confiscated, while their culture, language, and religion were denigrated. These experiences of dispossession, violence and alienation constituted a profound psychological trauma. Mental illness could never be divorced from racist social conditions, writes Shatz, so Fanon “approached psychiatry as if it were an extension of politics by other means.”

He turned against French colonialism, joined the revolt orchestrated by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1954, and fought for Algerian independence. Subversively, Fanon used the hospital as a hideout for anti-French fighters as well as a treatment center for all walks of colonial Algeria, including FLN militants who had been tortured by French forces.

The Martiniquais philosopher later incorporated his insights and experiences as a psychiatrist and a revolutionary into what would be his final book. The Wretched of the Earth was published in 1961 as Fanon, 36, lay perishing from leukemia in a Maryland hospital in the heart of the American empire he despised as “the country of lynchers.” He would never see a free Algeria, dying three months shy of its liberation in March, 1962. The Wretched of the Earth was the culmination of his thinking about anti-colonial revolution and, writes Shatz, “one of the great manifestos of the modern age.”

The Wretched of the Earth spread across the planet within a few years of its appearance transforming Fanon into a hero among leftwing and developing-world revolutionaries and inspiring radicals in the national liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It was translated widely — Che Guevara commissioned a Cuban version — and “cited worshipfully by the Black Panthers.” Huey Newton, for example, spoke of Black people as an occupied colony in imperialist America whose only option was revolutionary violence. According to Shatz, Fanon’s book helped galvanize the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, Latin American guerrillas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Islamic revolutionaries of Iran, Black Lives Matter activists, and “not least the Palestinian fedayeen in training camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.”

Helping to propel the book’s proliferation, especially in the West, was Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers. Though not an adaptation, The Battle of Algiers functioned as a filmic depiction of The Wretched of the Earth. A strikingly realistic, politically radical film that sympathized with the revolutionaries, The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the oppressive colonial social conditions, the French brutality in response to anti-colonial demonstrations, the FLN attacks on French policemen, the torture of Algerian civilians, and the terror bombings that marked the four-year insurgency in the streets of Algiers leading to independence.

Summoning Fanon in support of Hamas implies that the war in Gaza is the battle of Algiers of our time. However, the Gaza catastrophe is less a reenactment of The Battle of Algiers, more Hotel Rwanda or Apocalypse Now. Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance through indiscriminate violence any more than Palestine can win an Algerian-style war of liberation. “Palestine today is not Algeria in 1956,” notes Al Jazeera, “which was Fanon’s most important reference point. There will be no long-fought war of independence resulting in the vast majority of Jews” being evicted “from a reconquered Palestine.”

Further, the outcome in Algeria does not provide a model for a free and democratic Palestine. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon stressed that mere violence as an end in itself, disconnected from any wider achievable political and social goal, would only reproduce the power relations of the colonizer. He suggested that liberation movements can become new oppressors once they attain power, thus exchanging one barbarism for another.

Though Fanon did not live to see it, Algeria descended into one-party rule built on state terror and religious fanaticism. Fanon’s warnings about the obstacles to post-colonial freedom: corruption, autocratic rule, religious zealotry, the enduring wounds of colonial violence, and the persistence of underdevelopment and hunger came to pass and still haunt liberation movements today.

“The militant who confronts the colonialist war machine with his rudimentary resources realizes that while he is demolishing colonial oppression he is indirectly building up yet another system of exploitation,” wrote Fanon. “Such a discovery is galling, painful, and sickening. It was once all so simple with the bad on the one side and the good on the other. The people discover that the iniquitous phenomenon of exploitation can assume a Black or Arab face.”

In a passage that none of his latter-day followers have cited, Fanon warned that “racism, hatred, resentment, and the legitimate desire for revenge alone cannot nurture a war of liberation — one does not endure massive repression or witness the disappearance of one’s entire family in order for hatred or racism to triumph.” Fanon — the authentic revolutionary — shows himself more doubtful of violent resolutions than his less courageous social media acolytes, who indulge in easy revolutionary talk from positions of comfort.

The social media application of The Wretched of the Earth to Palestine eliminates the aspirational aspects of his anti-colonial prescription. Fanon’s advocacy of anti-colonial violence cannot be separated from his belief in a revolutionary humanism, emancipated from colonialism and empire. He wrote that the overthrow of the colonial oppressors will inevitably lead to a “new humanism written into the objectives and methods of the struggle.”

Fanon asserted that a violent uprising by the native people would be the first step in a transformative process that would lead to a postcolonial society based on universalist ideas of freedom and equality for all — a society that might very well include the former colonizers. Palestine, however, is a long way from this social transformation that would deliver a political solution rooted in equality, dignity and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis.

The Caribbean thinker perceptively diagnosed the disease of colonialism that Israel continues to propagate as it replicates its primary pathology: the obliteration of Palestinians. As a new UN report states: “Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure. For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically – seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources.” Fanon, the psychiatrist, did not enunciate a enduring cure for this vengeful colonial pathology.

Surprisingly, Fanon concluded The Wretched of the Earth in the same place as John Lennon in his utopian song Imagine, which conceives of “no wars and a brotherhood of man.” Fanon ended The Wretched of the Earth with an idealistic challenge to imagine a new world: “For humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man.” But Fanon did not clarify how we would arrive at this new, more equitable reality.

Despite this apparent disconnect, we read Fanon today for his startlingly prescient analysis of contemporary ills: the enduring trauma of racism, the persistent plague of white supremacy and xenophobia, the scourge of authoritarianism, and the savagery of colonial domination. Poetic, enraged, and insubordinate, Frantz Fanon gave voice to the anguish of the colonized voiceless and his words continue to resonate with a new global “wretched of the earth.”

He continued, “It is not a war between soldiers and soldiers. It is a war between a well equipped army on the one hand and women and children on the other.”

Lula is not the first world leader to compare Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Hitler over his actions in Gaza — Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan made the same comparison.

Since Hitler murdered six million Jews, the comparison is hurtful. It could also be rejected on grounds of scale. Hitler not only killed all those European Jews, he also killed 6 million Poles. And consider Ukraine: “of the 41.7 million people living in Ukrainian Soviet Republic before the war, only 27.4 million were alive in Ukraine in 1945. Official data says that at least 8 million Ukrainians lost their lives: 5.5 – 6 million civilians, and more than 2.5 million natives of Ukraine were killed at the front. The data varies between 8 to 14 million killed, however, only 6 million have been identified.”

The Times and the Sunday Times Video: “Brazil’s Lula likens Gaza war to Holocaust”

While Netanyahu’s policies are not like those of Nazi Germany in almost any respect if we consider absolute numbers and consider the scale of killing, Lula is not completely in error if we consider more qualitative aspects of history and look to European fascism as a whole and not just the German National Socialists (who were peculiar in many ways).

FIRST: KEEPING PEOPLE STATELESS ON THE BASIS OF ETHNICITY

For instance, the Fascists stripped citizenship from millions of people and made them stateless, without the rights that come from a direct relationship to a state of their own. Chief Justice Earl Warren defined citizenship as “the right to have rights.”

Hitler took citizenship from German Jews but also from the Roma and from persons of African heritage.

Netanyahu keeps 5.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories stateless and without citizenship. So his policies in this narrow regard are similar to those of the National Socialists in the 1930s. In essence, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are living under something like the Nuremberg Laws. Their establishments and homes are attacked by militant Israeli squatters with impunity in a sort of rolling Kristallnacht.

Note that by Israeli law, Israeli squatters in the occupied Palestinian territories have all the citizenship rights of other Israelis. So the lack of rights on the West Bank is not territorial. It is by ethnicity.

Netanyahu has boasted about derailing the Oslo Peace Accords and presents himself as the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state from being established. He reiterated his opposition to any international diplomatic track that leads to a Palestinian state just this weekend.

SECOND: DEPRIVATION OF BASIC INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

Another feature of Fascism, underlined by Robert Paxton, is the elimination of individual rights. Israel’s regime over the occupied, stateless Palestinians fully demonstrates this feature. Palestinians can be arrested under “administrative detention” without charge or trial or habeas corpus and held for months or years. We have seen a treatment of detained Palestinians in Gaza that constitutes war crimes. It is alleged that forms of torture are practiced.

THIRD: TOTAL WAR

Netanyahu’s Gaza campaign has demonstrated a reckless disregard for the lives of innocent noncombatants, who make up nearly all of the nearly 30,000 people so far killed, and who have been deprived of domiciles and sufficient food and potable water by the Israeli military.

Total war was adopted as a military strategy by fascist states, according to historian Alan Kramer. One academic summarized his argument: “Kramer indicated a very interesting question regarding the specificity of the kind of war implemented by fascist regimes during the thirties and the forties, characterized by its genocidal nature and opened, according to him, with the colonial war launched by Italy in Abyssinia [Ethiopia] in 1935. Kramer underlined that the specificity of this particular way of waging war typical of fascism would define itself by the final elimination of the «distinction between combatants and non-combatants», pointing how in the six years of this conflict between 350.000 and 760.000 Ethiopians were killed, victims of an asymmetric war based on the overwhelming use of air force, chemical weapons and politics of collective terror against any sign of real or imagined resistance.”

The fascist way of war eliminates the distinction between combatants and non-combatants and wreaks mass death on the latter to achieve military aims. There doesn’t seem much doubt that Netanyahu is waging total war on Gaza and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and a whole plethora of Israeli officials have repeatedly insisted that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. This, even though half of Gaza’s population consists children.

Total war easily leads to genocide, of course, which is why the International Court of Justice has found it at least plausible that Netanyahu is waging a genocide in Gaza, attempting to destroy a people in part or in whole because of who they are.

So, no, Netanyahu is not a Hitler. But, yes, his policies bear a strong resemblance to those of inter-war Fascism.

Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A decade of revolt.” From Tunis to New York, Madrid, Hong Kong, Tehran, or Khartoum, the past decade was marked by protests, demonstrations, and uprisings. If the notion that history is an almost continuous march towards the progress of human kind (a popular view among Western intellectuals in the 1990s such as Francis Fukuyama) still had some currency, the last decade should have put this idea to rest.

That is because, in hindsight, it is difficult to be optimistic about the results of this decade of revolt. This is a feeling shared by many and examined in the book “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.” The author, Vincent Bevins, is a US journalist who was highly praised for his previous book, “The Jakarta Method”, which discusses the US support for human rights abuses during the Cold War in the name of anti-Communism.

The question at the core of Bevins’ second book, “If We Burn”, is a very straightforward one: “How is it possible that so many mass protests led to the opposite of what they asked for?”[1] With the temporal focus set on the 2010s, but having a global geographical scope, Bevins conducted around 200 interviews in twelve different countries with activists, politicians, and other people with key insights on this decade of mass protests.

“If We Burn” discusses many different cases of protests during the last decade, but special attention is paid to Egypt, Hong Kong, Chile, and, above all, Brazil. This is no coincidence because, from 2010 to 2016, Bevins worked as a foreign correspondent based in São Paulo for the Los Angeles Times. The chapters on Brazil are a pleasure to read, but the strong focus on the country is somewhat disproportionate when considering that the book is presented as a work of global history. An alternative approach would have been to focus on a smaller number of cases, perhaps narrowing it down to a few Global South countries.

Bevins appears a bit uncomfortable when moving away from the countries he knows best. For instance, when he refers to the protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in 2013, Bevins writes that after coming to power in 2003, Turkey’s ruling party AKP embraced “more conservative Muslims and small business owners (as long as they were ethnic Turks).”[2] This is actually not the case, as the AKP has historically outperformed the main opposition party CHP – which has a much stronger Turkish nationalist discourse – in the Kurdish areas of Turkey.

Notwithstanding this inaccuracy, and the fact that the geographical scope of the book often works against the final result, there is much to be praised in “If We Burn.” A key success of the book is that Bevins strikes the perfect balance between critically examining what protests achieved in terms of tangible results and remaining deeply respectful of the protesters and their sacrifices. Tunisian President Kais Saied might have entrenched himself in power after 2021 and established a dictatorship similar to the one headed by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, brought down by mass demonstrations in 2011. But this does not take anything away from the personal stories of people like Jawaher Channa, a university student who joined the protests against Ben Ali in December 2010. Jawaher explains to Bevins how she was tortured for her political activity in a Tunisian police station before the regime collapsed.

Bevins’ reporting allows us to see how relatively unknown people shaped and were shaped by this decade of protests. Take the example of Mayara Vivian, who was a teenager when in 2005 she joined the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) that demanded free transportation in Brazil. In 2013, Fernando Haddad, the mayor of São Paulo from the center-left Workers’ Party, announced a rise in the price of public urban transportation. Mayara and her colleagues at MPL mobilized the streets against Haddad’s decision, forcing the mayor to cancel the price increase. Mayara and other members of the MPL were even granted a meeting with then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, also from the Workers’ Party, who was trying to understand the growing discontentment with her government.

Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. Click here.

The likes of Mayara would soon be replaced in the streets by right and far-right-wing groups. These protesters, in conjunction with sympathetic judges like Sergio Moro and media conglomerates like Grupo Globo, pushed for Rousseff’s impeachment on flimsy charges. Rousseff was ousted in 2016. Two years later,  Fernando Haddad, the Workers’ Party candidate, was defeated in the presidential election by far-right and Brazilian dictatorship apologist Jair Bolsonaro. Mayara, then living in Santiago de Chile, wept while lamenting the election loss of the man she had opposed in the streets, explains Bevins.

Mayara soon joined the protests against the conservative Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, who was forced to accept the election of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship. After two referendums, Chile still does not have a new constitution. What is has, though, is Gabriel Boric as president, someone who became famous in the student protests of the early 2010s. Boric represents like no other the difficult relationship between activism and institutional politics, which is often manifested in the tensions between protesters who want to use their leverage to gain political concessions and those who prefer to keep pushing for maximalist objectives. A congressman since 2014, Boric was seen as a traitor by many protestors when he agreed to a constitutional referendum as a way to resolve the conflict with the Piñera government in 2019. After he was elected president of Chile in 2022, many of those who perceived Boric as too compromising in 2019 saw his decision in a more positive light, observes Bevins.

A key topic covered in “If We Burn” is the importance of traditional and social media in defining the protests of the last decade. Their relevance was accentuated by the fact that these were mostly de-centralized protest movements with no clear spokespersons. The protesters who had the opportunity to present their views to the traditional media were not necessarily those who put their bodies on the line when it mattered or were more representative of the whole movement. Instead, those who were interviewed were usually the more Western-media friendly. Writing about the protests in Egypt that led to the fall of dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Bevins graphically explains that despite how bravely street youth had fought against the police, Western journalists “were not likely to grab a teenager who lived on the street, addicted to drugs.”[3] Equally relevant was managing the narrative in social media platforms. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, open fights emerged over who controlled the movement’s social media accounts.

“If We Burn” does not provide any conclusive answer on why so many protest movements failed to achieve their objectives during the 2010s, and this only makes the book better. Anyone claiming to have a perfect explanation for such a complex puzzle should be approached with caution. Still, Bevins presents reflections that help us make sense of what he calls ‘the mass protest decade.’ One of them is that horizontally structured, leaderless mass protests are “fundamentally illegible.”[4] As Bevins sees it, “movements that cannot speak for themselves will be spoken for”, with the ensuing danger that the protesters’ goals will be misrepresented. [5]

Strongly connected to this idea is the fact that successful protests will lead to a momentary political vacuum. Influenced by the experience of Brazil, where reactionary forces took the streets against Rousseff using some of the protest repertoire of the MPL movement advocating for free public transportation, Bevins notes that “unclaimed political power exerts an irresistible gravitational pull on anyone who might want it.”[6] Therefore, he argues, a protest movement that believes in creating a better society needs to be ready to enter the political vacuum that will emerge if successful.

In the absence of a plan, someone else will step in, most likely with a very different agenda but equally relying on the power of street mobilizations. The greatest merit of Bevins’ latest book is that it leaves a deep imprint on the reader and will serve as a prompt for many fruitful discussions. We cannot know which kind of retrospective articles will be published by the end of 2029. Still, it is reasonable to assume that protests in the 2020s are likely to play at least as important a role as they did in the previous decade.

[1] Vincent Bevins, “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023), p. 3.

[2] Ibid., pp. 108-109.

[3] Ibid., p. 68.

[4] Ibid., p. 276.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., p. 263.

Iván Cabrera at N+ reports that the megastorm destroyed 80% of the city’s infrastructure, leaving the inhabitants without light, electricity, communications or internet. Some 274,000 homes and 600 hotels were affected by the outages in this city of some 800,000 workers in the tourism industry, at an estimated cost of $18 billion. Over 32,000 homes suffered physical damage.

As of midweek this week, only 35% of the city had potable drinking water. Seven soup kitchens set up by the provincial Guerrero government delivered 4,000 servings of food every day. Although 10,200 electricity poles were downed and 38 high tension wires were damaged, some 75% of the city now again has electricity.

The unprecedented destruction came about because humans are burning fossil fuels and heating up the earth and especially the oceans. Otis accelerated as it neared the Pacific coast of Mexico, jumping in only 12 hours from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane just before it slammed into “America’s Paradise.” Ordinarily such storms slow as they approach landfall, and their force is dissipated once they get beyond the warm waters that feed them. It was the first known Category 5 storm to strike the Pacific coast of Mexico. It won’t be the last.

Guardian News: “Hurricane Otis: before and after footage shows scale of destruction in Mexico’s Acapulco”

Jeff Masters and Bob Henson at Yale Climate Connections observe, “In what the National Hurricane Center called a ‘nightmare scenario,’ Hurricane Otis made landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, at 1:25 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 25, as a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane with 165 mph winds and a central pressure of 923 mb. Otis unexpectedly intensified from a tropical storm with 65 mph winds to a Category 5 storm with 165 mph winds — an astonishing 100 mph increase — in the 24 hours before landfall. Rapid intensification is extremely dangerous because it leaves people little time to prepare for strong storms. The phenomenon is expected to happen more often as the climate warms.”

Let that sink in. “Rapid intensification” of hurricanes and cyclones will become more and more frequent, making any early warning system for evacuations almost impossible.

One reason Otis intensified so rapidly was that it was passing over a sea surface that was 86-88°F (30-31° C.) The Pacific is usually much colder than that, but it is 1.8° F. warmer than the average of the past twenty years. It has been an unusually hot summer, and September had set a record for a spike in temperatures. Both underlying climate change, caused by our burning fossil fuels (the equivalent of setting off 400,000 nuclear bombs the size of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima every single day) , and El Niño contributed to this hot mess off the coast.

In addition, the authors explain, Otis was helped along by a “jet streak,” a band of powerful winds connected to the jet stream, which gave oxygen to the hurricane, just as you can fan the flames of a fire.

Acapulco, they say, isn’t an obvious place for a hurricane to land. Usually they are blown north along the Mexican coast. Only two twentieth-century hurricanes that struck the city or near it are known, and both were much less powerful than Otis.

Mexico’s Pacific coast typically gets 4 hurricanes that make landfall every 3 years. But in October of 2023, already three hurricanes have made landfall along this coast.

What happened to the “Pearl of the Pacific” was not normal. But it wasn’t a freak occurrence, either. It was our new reality, of ever-changing, ever-challenging climate phenomena impelled by the terajoules of energy we are infusing into the atmosphere and the oceans. The Hiroshima nuclear device released 63 terajoules of energy. And we put 400,000 of them into the atmosphere every day, 365 days a year. Much of that energy is going into the oceans, and they are feeding it to hurricanes and cyclones. We are doing this to ourselves.

Russia’s disastrous military performance so far in the war in Ukraine has weakened its military reputation in the eyes of Beijing, but also sharpened China’s desire not to see Moscow humiliated or Russian leader Vladimir Putin driven from power; Beijing fears regime change in Russia would leave it isolated and potentially faced with a pro-Western regime along its northern border.

China’s attendance boosted the profile of the summit,  something which pleased the US, and in may help smooth still-strained personal ties between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) and US President Joe Biden. The US, India, Brazil, the EU also attended the talks, as well as a number of Global South states like Zambia, Indonesia and Egypt. Moscow was excluded however.

Is China breaking with Russia on this issue? 

On the surface China’s change of direction by attending the summit would appear to move it away from Russia, whose invasion it has so far refused to condemn. However, while China has close economic ties with Ukraine which it wishes to preserve, its position on the conflict still mirrors the ambivalent attitude of many Global South states like South Africa, who have chosen to take a neutral stance or even tilted towards Russia somewhat. Li Hui, the Chinese special representative who attended the event, previously served as China’s ambassador to Russia for a decade, for example. Many Chinese see the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a proxy war between Washington and its ally Moscow, one which the US is also using to encircle China, for example by strengthening NATO countries’ ties to American allies in Asia like South Korea and Japan.

China’s attendance at the Saudi summit served several strategic purposes from Beijing’s point of view. It allowed Beijing to join Riyadh in burnishing its credentials with Global South countries as a peacemaker and to leverage improved relations into stronger economic ties down the line which provide it with an alternative to reliance on trade with an increasingly anti-China US-led global bloc. It was a concession to Ukraine to attend but at an event which would produce no final outcome that would put pressure on Russia.

Attendance further allowed China to support a Saudi initiative at no diplomatic cost to itself, building on the momentum it gained from its sponsorship of the Saudi-Iran peace deal earlier this year. Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat and returning foreign minister, helped broker that agreement. China’s relationship with Saudi Arabia remains a shallow and transactional one,  but, given each regime has its problems with the current US-led global order, this is often sufficient motivation for the two sides to cooperate for now.

Saudi Diplomacy-washing

The Saudi-led conference was billed as an event for Ukraine to reach out to countries outside the Western zone of influence, given Riyadh’s neutrality (it maintains ties with Beijing, Kiev and Moscow). More quietly it was also intended to help re-invent MBS as a responsible global statesman, part of a concerted effort to turn a page on his past history of erratic and dangerous decision making. Past highlights have included allegedly kidnapping Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, invading neighboring Yemen and his probable involvement in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

For its part, Russia has also annoyed Riyadh by failing to implement OPEC+ production cuts in recent months, and MBS may not have been averse to causing Moscow symbolic discomfort on the global stage by publicly hosting a large international forum to which Russia was not invited.

Is China using Riyadh as a back channel to Washington? 

China and the US are slowly rebuilding bilateral meetings between senior officials this year after Beijing suspended or cut off multiple official contacts in protest last August at then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. Relations between the two countries remain poor but at present both sides are attempting to put a floor under their relationship, in China’s case motivated by the need to support its flagging economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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BEIJING, CHINA – AUGUST 31: Saudi Arabia Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shake hands during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State guest house on August 31, 2016 in Beijing, China. The deputy prince is meeting Chinese officials during his visit to boost bilateral ties between the two nations. (Photo by Rolex – Pool/Getty Images). FILE.

Given this situation, Beijing does not need to use Riyadh as a back channel to Washington; however Saudi Arabia is likely leveraging its burgeoning relationship with China — of which the Ukraine summit is the latest instance — in its bilateral relations with the US and Beijing will not object to Saudi Arabia’s attempts to balance itself between the two superpowers. China may one day wish to supplant the US as Saudis’ main political and security partner in the Middle Eastern region, but at present it is not unhappy for the US to continue to act as the leading power there, given that this ties down American military assets and political capital which might otherwise be used against China in East Asia.

Oil and Wheat

Commodities form another factor in Chinese and Saudi diplomatic calculations. Despite tensions over Saudi oil production levels, Saudi Arabia is no longer as important to the US as an energy supplier as it was in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is also currently faltering, which is likely to reduce Chinese demand for Saudi energy supplies this year (though it is still a major oil customer).

Ideally, Saudi Arabia would like to keep relations with both superpowers stable enough that it can sell to them (given softer demand from both for its main export at present) while preserving its freedom of manoeuvre when it comes to oil production levels. Moreover, given its recent raft of diplomatic activity with China, Saudi Arabia will probably be happy to balance this with renewing ties to Washington. The two sides have tried to mend fences since the fallout from the murder of Jamal Khashoggi strained ties with the Biden White House several years ago.

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (4th R) attends a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (3rd L) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on February 22, 2019. (Photo by HOW HWEE YOUNG / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read HOW HWEE YOUNG/AFP via Getty Images). FILE.

While working with China allows Riyadh to show Washington it can find alternative partners if pushed too hard on issues like human rights, Saudi Arabia still wants US help on many issues which matter too it. Washington in turn is now seeking assurances Riyadh will not get too close to China, despite the fact it was happy to see Beijing attend the latest round of Ukraine-related peace talks in Jeddah.

For its part, China will be keen that the Saudi talks create a constructive atmosphere that helps it achieve its goal of resurrecting the collapsed Russia-Ukraine Black Sea grain deal. China was the top purchaser of Ukrainan agricultural goods through the initiative before Russia withdrew from it in July. China places a high political priority on food security but is reliant on imports due to a lack of food self-sufficiency. \

Large parts of the country’s farmland was flooded this summer in the aftermath of Typhoon Doksuri, damaging crop production and causing officials to warn of further risks to agricultural output from pests and disease once the flood waters recided. Its public support for a third round of talks after Jeddah may in part be calculated to help its relationship with Ukraine, to help win it over at a later date should Beijing be able to persuade Russia to allow grain shipments to resume in the Black Sea.

When asked to situate the world’s most iconic rainforest on a map, most people will pinpoint Brazil. And given the intense media coverage of the country’s deforestation and fires – concerns reached a peak under former president Jair Bolsonaro and his free-for-all approach – they might also imagine a thick black soot clinging to the remaining trees. While newly re-elected president Lula da Silva has vowed to prioritize the Amazon forest and sparked hope among environmentalists, deforestation in the Brazilian section of Amazon remains of deep concern.

That interest is only set to grow as Brazil gets ready to host a high-level meeting to renew the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) in the northern town of Belem on 8 and 9 August. Bringing together the eight countries containing the Amazon forest – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela – along with senior officials from the United States and France, the event will enable them to discuss how to attract investment, fight deforestation, protect indigenous communities and encourage sustainable development.

The meeting will also be the occasion for sustainability scientists such as ourselves to draw attention to one of the Amazonian ecosystems that will be just as vital to protect if we are to limit global warming to the safer threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels: Bolivia.

One of the highest carbon-emitting countries per capita

I have studied the flows that contribute to deforestation in the Amazon for more than five years. Earlier this year, I met with academics, environmental NGOs, smallholder farmers, and multilateral development banks in Bolivia to learn more about their work to protect the Bolivian Amazon.

Bolivia is not only at the centre of the current international rush for lithium. It is also one of the world leaders in deforestation. According to Global Forest Watch, the country lost more than 3,3 million hectares of humid primary forest from 2002 to 2021 to deforestation, or the equivalent of 4 million soccer fields, with an exponential growth in deforestation rates of more than 5.5% per year over the last two decades.

Bolivia’s forests have also increasingly been forced to cope with a combination of drought and large wildfires. In 2020 alone, 4,5 million hectares were affected by such fires, of which more than 1 million hectares took place in protected areas (data from Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza) – and the deforestation trend is worsening (see Figure 1). As a result, Bolivia has placed itself at the top of carbon-emitting countries per capita, with emissions of 25 tCO2eq per person per year – more than five times higher than the global average, ahead of large economies like the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Accelerated deforestation might seem paradoxical in a country known internationally for its commitment to the “Rights of Mother Earth”. But it seems that the government has chosen to prioritize economic development based on natural resources over its promises to become stewards of Nature.

The accelerated loss of tropical rainforest is the result of destructive and familiar combination: increased global demand for commodities such as soy and cattle, and extractive national and regional policies with the explicit ambition to boost economic growth with little consideration on its environmental impact.

Soybean production has accelerated from negligible levels in 1970 to almost 1.4 million hectares in 2020, and 5 million hectares deforested since 2001 is mainly used for cattle. A similar trend can be observed for the export of beef in the last years, as well as for mining.

Between 2015 and 2021, the number of mining concessions in the country’s Amazon regions (La Paz, Beni and Pando) has increased from 88 to 341 while the mining area (cuadriculas in Spanish) have increased from 3,789 to 15,710 (+414%). According to Bolivian mining law, a cuadricula is a square of 500 meters per side, with a total surface area of 25 hectares, according to the Study Center for Labor and Agrarian Development (CEDLA). The rapid expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon powers one of the country’s largest export industries. As global gold prices have increased, the industry is creating massive social and environmental challenges as well as severe health threats to indigenous communities.

This expansion is fuelled in part by generous fossil-fuel subsidies, which in turn finance the growth of the soy, cattle and mineral sector. According to 2021 data from the International Monetary Fund fossil-fuel subsidies consume 6,7% of Bolivia’s GDP. In addition, illegal settlements in the lowlands feed from these larger economic changes as communities transform forests into agricultural production lands through destructive slash-and-burn techniques, which increase wildfire risks.

How to save the Amazon

Regional collaboration to protect the Amazon took a serious hit during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The announced revitalization of cooperation in the Amazon basin and surrounding forests through the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization offers a unique window of opportunity to end deforestation. But this opportunity will be wasted unless the following key issues are addressed.

• Pan-continental regulation: It is no secret that countries that enforce strict forest-conservation laws tend to see the most ruthless industries emigrate to less-regulated countries; experts call this phenomenon “deforestation leakage”. To protect the Amazon in Brazil, the international community therefore has every interest in ensuring that Bolivia is not forgotten. World Bank data shows that Bolivia is a perfect destination for its neighbours’ predatory sectors, with much of the state’s regulation rolled back in the past 10 years.

  To counter this, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization should form a task force that directly addresses such cross-border leakage risks to protect the forests of the region, and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods. Lessons from studies of the effects of previous zero-deforestation policies] will offer useful guidance in these ambitions. Countries should ramp up their support for cross-border supply chain transparency, provide enough resources to enforce environmental legislation on the ground, and make sure indigenous rights are properly protected.

• Phasing out forest-hungry policies and industries: The case of Bolivia also highlights a general challenge that countries in the region are facing: the need to not only “scale up” green financial innovations, but also actively phase out unsustainable economic activities, harmful subsidies and policies that increase inequality.

  Don’t get us wrong: saying goodbye to industries like unchecked cattle ranching, and incentives such as fossil-fuel subsidies will take strong political will. But the world abounds with examples to draw inspiration from. Two include the Just Energy Transition Partnership that was concluded at the annual climate summit in Glasgow, COP26 and the international support to help decarbonize coal retirement in Indonesia. They show it is possible to move away from harmful industries while making sure local communities aren’t left behind.

• Cleaning up the finance industry: In today’s globalized economy, large companies often rely on capital from financial institutions to conduct their operations. The financial sector has made progress in mobilizing its influence as owners and lenders to put pressure on industries associated with deforestation risks in the Brazilian Amazon. The sector must now mobilize to help protect the enlarged Bolivian Amazon.

Cascading negative changes resulting from deforestation, such as disrupted hydrological cycles, negative health impacts, and biodiversity loss will eventually impact negatively on investments. The financial sector thus needs to support national legislation and financial regulation that shift investments away from extractive economic practices that amplify social inequalities, toward new ways of protecting forests while simultaneously promoting education, health, sanitation, employment, and other development goals. Major initiatives like the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment, pension funds in the Global North, and international development banks must work closely with countries around the Amazon basin to make sure deforestation and climate ambitions are translated into action.

Bolivia’s forests, and the communities that depend on their resilience for their livelihoods, are facing a perfect deforestation storm. Swift national and international action is of the essence.

This article was co-written with Guido Meruvia Schween, a programme officer at the Swedish Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia.

Victor Galaz, Deputy Director and Associate Professor, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Featured Image: Deforestation in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (2021). Photo courtesy of Overview.
https://www.over-view.com/, CC BY-NC