The water is crystalline, the sand is whiter than white, and elegantly bent palm trees sway in the breeze. This is how the Seychelles markets itself: as “another world”. Tourism is the mainstay of this heavenly island, averaging 20% of GDP and 60% of foreign exchange earnings.
But given the climate crisis, prospects are dim for climate-vulnerable island nations like the Seychelles. Half its population lives in coastal areas directly exposed to rising ocean levels, coastal erosion, flooding, and erratic rainfall. The island is also heavily dependent on agriculture, with 70% of crops located in the coastal areas and subject to increasingly common saltwater tidal surges. The rising waters thus threaten the livelihoods of the people of Seychelles, as well as the existence of the island itself.
According to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, many of these island nations are likely to disappear by the end of 21st century. One reason may be the increasing scarcity of fresh water sources. “The Seychelles, in particular, is almost entirely dependent on surface water and therefore highly vulnerable,” revealed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The future of this paradise isn’t as immediately dire as the Maldives, its fellow member of the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) formed in the lead-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. The lowest country on the planet, the Maldives has a maximum ground level of 7,5 feet (one inch below the height of Chinese basketball player, Yao Ming). But the Seychelles would be one of the next islands in line if the water level doesn’t stop rising.
The sad irony, however, is that despite producing little in the way of carbon emissions, both island nations may have contributed to their own demise. After all, the Seychelles and the Maldives share the same secret underpinning to their respective economies.
More than 50% of AOSIS members are secrecy jurisdictions, misleadingly labelled as offshore centres and tax havens. These economies — characterised by opaque legal and financial services ensuring little or no disclosure, high levels of client confidentiality, and few requirements for substantial economic activity — are recipients of illicit capital. These laundered profits have been siphoned from resource-rich but artificially impoverished developing nations.
Such island hubs act as key facilitators of the network by providing offshore financial services, remotely controlled from onshore head offices such as the City of London. Mobile units of lawyers, bankers, and accountants serve as the intermediaries between white-gloved multinationals and black-gloved political elites. The money that could otherwise go toward reducing the carbon footprint of multinationals and funding sustainable development in developing countries is instead sunk in island accounts. And that money may well end up sinking the islands themselves.
Islands of Money
Presently, almost $13-trillion in secrecy-protected wealth is held offshore and out of reach. If moderately taxed, these funds would yield over $250-billion. Such funds could more than finance the Millennium Development Goals, which are estimated by the World Bank at $40-$60 billion annually through 2015. They could also go toward the adaption and mitigation funds needed by developing and emerging nations, which the UN puts at $4-billion to $86-billion annually.
But the recovery of this illicit capital will be difficult. The islands that host these accounts are dependent on this revenue. The economy of the Seychelles is dependent on the financial sector for 11% of its GDP. This puts the Seychelles not far behind the notorious Cayman Islands, the world’s fifth largest financial centre, where financial services account for 14% of GDP. Switzerland, which launders one-third of all illicit capital, depends on financial services for 15% of its GDP.
Most island economies are politically and economically dependent on major economies like the United Kingdom and the United States. They compete to be the offshore repository of choice by offering opaque financial and legal services and low or zero tax rates. Through these secrecy services, developed governments are also on the final receiving end of illicit flight from regions like sub-Saharan Africa, which is a net creditor to developed nations.
The source of funds
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and the fifth largest exporter to the United States. Since the 1960s, the country’s political and military elite has stolen more than $400-billion in oil revenues from Nigeria’s citizenry and deposited it in secrecy jurisdictions such as Switzerland. Meanwhile, despite the extravagant promises of multinationals like Chevron operating in the country, Nigeria’s people have become progressively poorer. The extractive industries have generated considerable opposition, human rights violations, and violence. And the mass ecological degradation is pegged at $5-billion per annum.
Africa does not share much responsibility for global warming. The continent only contributes 3% of global greenhouse emissions. But the extractive industries that operate in Africa are major emitters. Shell, for instance, emits more greenhouse gasses than many countries: Its carbon emissions of 102-million tonnes in 2005 exceeded the emissions of 150 countries.
Although Africa occupies a small carbon footprint, the continent’s autocratic regimes in Angola, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon are located at the base of the commodity chain and depend primarily on the capital-intensive extractive industries that supply the world’s largest carbon-intensive engines with a significant share of fuel. But neither the corrupt regimes nor the corporations that financed and facilitated global warming made it to the Copenhagen agenda.
At Copenhagen
The discussions at the climate change conference in Copenhagen last year focused on “developed” and “developing” nations, and the new market for carbon offsets. Industrialised governments created these carbon permits from thin air and allocated them to the largest multinationals with the largest carbon footprints. The latter architects of the system, Goldman Sachs, with foreign subsidiaries criss-crossing the globe from the Bermuda to the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong to Jersey, Ireland, the British Virgin Islands and Africa’s own world-famed hub, Mauritius, not only designed the huge carbon market, but also hold a 10% share in Al Gore’s Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) — the pilot carbon trading program in the United States.
Gore’s CCX, whose board includes top VIPs such as the UN’s Kofi Annan and the World Bank’s James Wolfensohn, had advocated for the privatisation of the atmosphere as far back at the Rio Earth Summit.
One well-publicised engine of the new carbon trade is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which enables polluters to circumvent caps by financing projects in the developing world that emit little or no carbon. Yet, according to studies by Stanford University’s Energy and Sustainable Development Programme, “between a third and two-thirds” of CDM projects do not represent real reductions.
Meanwhile, G20 governments subsidised fossil fuels to the tune of $300-billion in 2009. So, as the G20 spends its time creating a carbon trade market that does little to reduce carbon emissions, multinationals continue to expand their extractive enterprises, dictators continue to siphon off capital, financial firms cash in on pollution credits, and this illicit capital continues to flow into offshore locations that are themselves threatened by the rising waters associated with global warming.
Post Mortem of the Climate Change movement: “Death of a Salesman”.
Voters dictate social science policy, not the lab coat consultants.
Climate change needed voter consensus, not scientist consensus. Promising death of the planet wasn’t sustainable for another 24 years anyways. Voters would have to go to the poles on a hot day in February starving from a climate crisis to have given the proposed taxes and citizen sacrifices the ok.
RIP Global Dooming/Climate Change/Global Warm Mongering
Now we can preserve, protect and respect Nature and face the future with courage, not like climate cowards who tried to scare our children with SAVE THE PLANET.
Very interesting article, but could you please cite some references? There are many facts and figures that are not backed up by any references. It weakens your position.
the planet will survive until it doesn’t. humans will disappear much sooner – it may take another million years or less – in geological time, so what? – a footnote for pedantic universe historians.
Goodness ‘Meme Mine’, did you overdose on the lobby group kool aid or something?
It is heartening, I guess, that the only people still spouting denialist crap sound a lot like David Icke fans….
@ Meme Mlne – “Now we can preserve, protect and respect Nature”
What’s left of it anyway… I suppose species loss through human action is just another conspiracy to scare the kids with, it happens naturally every now and then.
@Khadija Sharife – Thank you. Articles of this nature that looks at the other angles of the environment and geopolitics is very necessary.
The answer to the rip-of of the developing / under-resourced world is for them to say “No thank you” to the developed world. But how do one get the developing countries to see through the hocus pocus of the west? Education, of course, and uncovering the coverups. Continue the good work.
Carbon credits actually sanction pollution by their existence and the credits are not necessarily validated if thrown into a common pool (market). Some could be dirtier than pollution itself.
Hi Andrew:
(UNFCC) http://unfccc.int/files/adaptation/adverse_effects_and_response_measures_art_48/application/pdf/200702_sids_adaptation_bg.pdf
MDG costs –http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/mdgassessment.pdf
climate adaptation and mitigation funds: http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/chronicle/cache/bypass/lang/en/home/archive/Issues2009/pid/5070?ctnscroll_articleContainerList=1_0&ctnlistpagination_articleContainerList=true
Seychelles FS: http://www.secrecyjurisdictions.com/PDF/Switzerland.pdf
Cayman FS: http://www.secrecyjurisdictions.com/PDF/CaymanIslands.pdf
Switzerland FS: http://www.secrecyjurisdictions.com/PDF/Switzerland.pdf
The methodology is very sound as relates to FS..
Shell emissions: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/feb/02/oilandpetrol.climatechange
This one is a bit of a stretch! There is a really brittle connection being made here. It wouldn’t stand up to the gentlest scrutiny.
Leaving aside for a bit the whole sea level scare (sea level is not determined just by the amount of water in the oceans and the amount of ice melted, but is substantially affected by fluctuations in the relative level of the land itself) and the AGW debate, even if the capital that is stashed offshore was in fact taxed as per the law, does anybody really believe that it would be used to reduce the world’s carbon footprint?
Hands up those who believe so… anyone? anyone? You over in the corner, is that a hand? Oh, you couldn’t hear me. Never mind then.
Hi X Cepting: true true true. This is an article interrogating the notion of carbon credits incentivising pollution in a longer format with more room for explanations..’Carbon Trading: Colonising the Atmospheric Commons’ http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/60017
This has to be a joke, Khadija I am sure you would have made a great hippy as most of your pet hates are as antiquated as your silly Beret…… CLIMATE DEATH is now gone, the IPCC is about to be disbanded turns out they were talking crap the whole time, the polar bears are going to be fine, in fact their numbers are on the increase, and thank god for CLIMATEGATE as the successful nations of the earth (READ WESTERN NATIONS) will no longer have to pay some socialist driven tax to the UNSUCCESSFUL nations of the earth’s leaders to put into another new CO2 squirting Mercedes and Swiss bank account while their people continue to live in their own poo….if anything more CO2 and more heat will allows to grow even more crops and people, until the next Ice Age which cannot be far away, enjoy it while it lasts….
Interesting article.
Of course it might be cheaper and more profitable to erect flood-protection measures…
Would you change your opinions on the issue if any of the facts surrounding the plight of the islands could be successfully rebutted?
Glad a wise activist is at last cottening on to the climate change swindle. Just another developed country idea/scheme to rip off the worlds wealth while the Greenies do their promotion work for them.
Thank goodness you can’t fool all the people all the time, someone will use their brain cells and expose the lies.
Brent
Havelock: it is the system… (extractive industries, 60% illicit flight from continent chiefly derived from oil rents siphoned by way of corporate mispricing (60%) and corrupt flight (2-5%), lending to the use of secrecy jurisdictions where criminogenic activity is protected via SIA, dependent on the continuation of the commodity chain…)
Zookeeper – erecting barriers does not interrogate the roots of the system – exploitation of oil, propping up rentier regimes, fueling climate change. By 2005, solar and other technology was able to reduce emissions to pre-2000 levels with zero net costs, for instance, while generating 50% profit…no political will..IPCC head, for example, was nominated by Exxon several days after Bush was in office (‘can we replace him (watson) now’ asked exxon head randy)…
Khadija
If the profit is there, why has it not been done? These folk are ruthless profiteers according to your analysis.
If it was going to fill their wallets, what’s stopping them?
Solar Powered electricity has been used for industrial usages as early as the 1970′s, and is particularly used now even more than in the past. Being brand new united states government polices on unpolluted coal come to pass, the price of electricity will be anticipated to spiral. Several business people as well as individuals are looking towards solar driven electrical energy in an effort to lower expenses.
Your article was impressive and made me very attentive… What was even greater was your informed responses to the ostriches out there. Well written, well researched and well done Khadija.
Good article Khadija. Thank you.
Perhaps we should all stop calling each other names for a moment (yeeech @me – anger management perhaps?) and start thinking: Where to humanity?
How would aliens perceive our species?
- civilised homo sapiens are inherently lazy and therefore likes to enslave their perceived uncivilised brethren to do their dirty work for them.
-civilised homo sapiens like to hoard more than it can ever use and likes slaves to do the hoarding.
-civilised homo sapiens loves living in beautiful scenic spots which, on discovery, it will immediately flock to and destroy by sheer numbers.
The thing that separates us from all the other species is that we are sentient and can choose how to live and can breed whenever we want to. Then why do we choose to live the way we do?
Global warming might not be happening the way some scientists predicted, but surely, coming down Sir Lowry’s pass, or approaching Johannesburg, Durban, one can see what we’ve done to the air we breath? Surely, spending a weekend away from the city, especially in an undisturbed natural spot will tell you that what we’ve done to the other species in the places we live is just not on?
The Cape Peninsula is a biodiversity hotspot, meaning we have more endemic species packed into this small area than anywhere else in the world bar 2 others. For how long? How many more rivets will we willfully, obstinately remove before the whole structure fly apart? Just because we can?
@Khadija – I am relieved that there are others out there who actually thought the whole thing through and came up with the same answer. In the business circles where I move I am still seen as a cracy green nutter for warning against the carbon credit scam. I often wonder if it is not guilty conciences that makes denialists so angry at “green activists”. After all, it is much easier to give to one of these sanitised “causes” than to actually do something about the way we live.
There are other concience salves like “Recycle” instead of “use less, with less packaging and advertising then recycle what’s left”, which of course does not go down well with advertising, packaging and oil companies.
They have all the amunition on their side since, should one point out, for instance, that the “trolley people” are already doing a grand job of being micro enterpreneurs in the recycling business and should merely be supported by the law, one is shot down in flames because “organised business” creates jobs. Yes, of course, with someone creaming the profits off the top. Slavery by another name stinks just as badly.
The “facts” about the islands ar not as clear as people might think.
(1) take the mnaldives who recently held an underwater Cabinet meeting to highlight their looming disaster. According to a top oceanographic expert (Dr Nils Axel-Morner), sea levels have not rsien in the Maldives for over 30 years. Not at all.
(2) The salinity problem is not due to rising sea-levels. These islands are often effectively floating coral. With sea-level rise, the coral grows, and the islands also “rise”. The fresh water (from rain) is in a natural resevoir just below the “land” surface. This is unaffected by the sea-level.
However, land-use issues and rate of water usage will affect the salinity as over-usage of fresh water will create a form of vacuum, which will “suck in” salt water.
“No political will” should be on the human race’s tombstone.
@The world according to Mike Atkins
1) Climate change to force 75 million Pacific Islanders from their homes:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5915829/Climate-change-to-force-75-million-Pacific-Islanders-from-their-homes.html
2) Scientific American: The Maldives, threatened by drowning due to climate change, set to go carbon-neutral
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=maldives-drowning-carbon-neutral-by-2009-03-16
3) Climate Change – Sea levels rising twice as fast as predicted – Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica force UN scientists to issue dramatic warning
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sea-levels-rising-twice-as-fast-as-predicted-1642087.html
WARM REGARDS
Mike Atkins,
Atolls are most definitely ‘land’ and do not float.
Atolls are in fact of volcanic origin, the surrounding coral reef resting upon an ancient volcanic seamount rising typically some 3000meters from the oceanic floor.
The ‘new’ volcano projecting hundreds of meters above the ocean, once cool, provides a substrate around it’s periphery for the development of coral within the first 100m of sea depth.
Over millions of years the volcano subsides due to crust dynamics, and the coral grows upwards to stay in the sunlight. (also doubtless due to rising sea levels over past 18,000 years )
Eventually the sea breaks over the lowest point in the remaining projecting volcanic rim, filling the creator and forming the deep central lagoon.
Coral fragments from weathering action (& parrot fish!) collect around the atoll forming the ‘sand’ (cay) which supports the establishment of subsequent vegetation.
Occasionally, raised atolls, such as Nauru and Niue, are produced when geologic action elevated the coral limestone above the surrounding sea.
Point being, some of these places may become uninhabitable before the end of the current interglacial period regardless of what humans do or don’t do.
They rise and fall on a grand scale over hundreds of millennia, and should afford politicians some humility and perspective in their hysterical rantings as to their imagined power to control the planet during their (geophysical ) insignificant lifetime.
Hi Mike – in response to your first comment: http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/khadijasharife/2009/03/26/capital-flight-gingerbread-havens-cannibalised-economies/
thanks for reading!
Climate change is real – I’ve seen the melting glaciers in Alaska… The human greed factor is what doesn’t change.
@Khadija
Absolutely correct that the system allows capital flight and particularly the theft of African sovereign wealth. However, much as I enjoy your writing, your connection between capital flight to secrecy jurisdictions and the carbon footprint remains tenuous at best. My question stands: without capital flight, what exactly would change that would reduce carbon output? I would suggest that the likelihood of the increased national revenue being used to reduce the carbon footprint is approaching zero. I concede that a system that rules out illicit capital flight may also demand more accountability and environmental responsibility, but frankly economic pragmatism, especially among the less well-off (as Africa is) would certainly be the order of the day.
As a disclaimer, I do count myself among the AGW sceptics, but my comments here are not made because I don’t believe in the danger; my comments would be the same if I though Al Gore walked on water.
As far as carbon trading goes, I’m right with you that it’s a monster scam….
Oh and don’t mind “me”‘s comment about the hat – it’s a cool hat. And if you would have made a great hippy, well the world needs more hippies.
@Havelock Veritinari
I believe climate change sceptics are becoming scarcer by the day. I heard a number of sceptics in Australia have now capitulated and embraced mainstream science, so good luck with your last stand.
Havelock – oil revenue that is concealed, siphoned enables autocratic regimes liquidating the resources to stay in power.. if a primary cause of climate change is unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels such as oil, and those in power depend solely or significantly on unearned rent from finite revenue, it follows that secrecy jurisdictions are the linchpins of the system…however, I may not have made the point all that well and the piece was heavily edited for the foreign publication (by an excellent editor)…
Continued….
Of course climate change denialism will never dissappear altogether:
“Christopher Monckton, a hereditary peer and former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, believes that climate change and the Copenhagen summit are part of a global conspiracy whipped up by former communists. “They are about to impose a communist world government,” he told an audience in St Paul, Minnesota, during a tour of the US…….
The Bitish National Party leader, Nick Griffin, also equates environmentalists and communists. “Climate change is their new theology … but the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out. Climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao.”
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/climate-sceptics-public-opinion
Yours Borrie
