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Ed Webb

Indonesia mass strikes loom over cuts to environmental safeguards and workers' rights |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-safeguards-and-workers-rights

Indonesia investment environment sustainability labor regulation protests strike pandemics

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Indonesia has passed a wide-ranging bill that will weaken environmental protections and workers’ rights in an attempt to boost investment, a move condemned as a “tragic miscalculation” that could lead to “uncontrolled deforestation”.Groups representing millions of workers said they would strike on Tuesday in response to protest against the bill, which will amend about 1,200 provisions in 79 existing laws after it was pushed through parliament with unprecedented speed
  • The bill has also been criticised by both environmental experts and some of the world’s biggest investors, who expressed concern over its impact on the country’s tropical forests.
  • The government argues that the bill will make the country more attractive to investors at a time when the economy is reeling from the impact of Covid-19. Millions of people have lost their jobs as a result of the virus, which has infected more than 300,000 people and claimed 11,253 lives.
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  • According to a draft version of the bill, mandatory paid leave for childbirth, weddings, baptism and bereavement will be scrapped, as will menstrual leave for women. Work overtime will be increased to four hours a day, and mandatory severance benefits paid by employers will be reduced, from 32 times monthly wages, to 19 times monthly wages.
  • Phelim Kine, senior campaigns director with the environmental group Mighty Earth, said the Indonesian parliament had made “a ruinous false choice between environmental sustainability and economic growth”
  • Restrictions placed on foreign participation in some sectors will be eased, and the government will set up a land bank and manage this to acquire land for public interest and redistribute the land
  • only high-risk investments required to obtain a permit or carry out an environmental impact assessment
  • would legitimise “uncontrolled deforestation as an engine for a so-called pro-investment job creation policy.”
Ed Webb

Amazonia Is Burning. Corruption Is One of the Reasons. | GAB | The Global Anticorruptio... - 0 views

globalanticorruptionblog.com/...rruption-is-one-of-the-reasons

Brazil environment climate crime corruption

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19 - Cached
  • environmental crimes in Amazonia—including those related to the fires—are in part the product of widespread corruption
  • The greatest environmental threats in this region are the illegal harvesting of timber and the illegal clearing of land (often through burning) to prepare the land for commercial use for agriculture and livestock. (Between 70% and 80% of the deforested area in Amazonia has been used to create pasture for breeding cattle to produce meat for domestic and international consumption.) To be sure, Brazil has laws in place to protect Amazonia from over-exploitation and other forms of environmental damage.
  • The Brazilian government is responsible for enforcing these rules and for regulating and overseeing the extraction, transportation, and commercialization of timber from Amazonia. The regulatory system involves government approval of forest management plans, the issuance of permits for timber harvesting and land clearing, and the tracking of timber to ensure that it was not illegally removed from public lands or from the protected areas of private lands.
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  • in practice, private companies collude with corrupt public servants—forest wardens, police officers, and others—to evade these rules. As a result, substantial quantities of timber are illegally extracted from public lands and protected private areas, and agricultural and livestock interests illegally burn and clear irreplaceable forests. The corrupted public servants not only turn a blind eye to these environmental crimes, but they also warn the infringers about possible inspections by other agents.
  • sense of impunity encourages the persistence of illegality and environmental degradation
  • Brazil should amend its laws to enhance penalties for corruption offenses that are associated with environmental crime. (That is, a connection to environmental crime should be considered an aggravating circumstance for an ordinary corruption offense, such as bribery.)
  • Brazil should allocate more resources to the prevention, detection, and repression of corruption crimes related to the environment
  • Brazilian regulatory and enforcement authorities should make greater use of technology, such as big data and business intelligence tools, to monitor forest exploitation, and to identify not only possible violations, but also instances of likely complicity of public agents
  • Brazil should create a federal appellate court specifically for the Amazon region, in order to increase the speed of criminal cases related to Amazonia exploitation
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