7/24/00
Just a few days ago I posted this...
> Nurev Ind Research wrote:
>
> 7/22/00
>
> One of the most serious problems related to Capitalism, is that it produces
> a bumper crop of capitalists who eventually dominate the most important human
> institutions. As a result, all these institutions come to serve the system and
> those who benefit most from it. The Rich.
>
> In the Capitalist system, all solutions to any problem must involve profit for
> someone. If it doesn't it is not worthy of consideration. This is why
> capitalism can be accurately likened to cancer. It spreads until it chokes and
> kills all biological systems and the host finally dies.
>
> Here below is a small example.
>
> Joshua2
>
> ==========================================================================
Then I got this...
-------
Subject:
Putting a price tag on paradise
Date:
Sat, 22 Jul 2000 23:23:49 -0500 (CDT)
From:
Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 20 JULY 2000 AT 14:00 ET US
Contact: Mark Shwartz
[2][EMAIL PROTECTED]
650-723-9296
[3]Stanford University
Conservationists and corporations often do not see eye to eye
An environmentalist may argue that a rainforest should be protected
for its inherent beauty, while a logging company executive might
claim that its real worth lies in its cut timber.
With such a wide range of opinion, is it ever possible to reach a
consensus on the economic value of a rainforest?
Yes, say 17 ecologists and economists in a new article published in
the journal Science.
"We must make conservation profitable," says biologist Gretchen C.
Daily, lead author of the July 21 Science report.
She maintains that time is running out for the planet, and those
who want to save it must create economic incentives to do so.
"Some might say this is an act of desperation that is doomed to
fail," she concedes -- an attempt to align almighty market forces
with environmental conservation.
"But we'll never save the environment on the basis of charity
alone," she adds. "We have decades of experience showing this. We
need to create ways of rewarding people financially for protecting
environmental assets."
Daily is director of the Tropical Research Program at Stanford's
Center for Conservation Biology. Her Science co-authors from
Stanford are Nobel laureate Kenneth J. Arrow, professor emeritus of
economics; Paul R. Ehrlich, professor of biological sciences; and
David Starrett, former chair of the Economics Department.
The authors also are affiliated with the Beijer Institute of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
"The world's ecosystems are capital assets," write the authors. "If
properly managed, they yield a flow of vital services, including
the production of goods (such as seafood and timber), life support
processes (such as pollination and water purification) and
life-fulfilling conditions (such as beauty and serenity).
"Unfortunately, relative to other forms of capital, ecosystems are
poorly understood, scarcely monitored, and (in many cases)
undergoing rapid degradation and depletion. Often the importance of
ecosystem services is widely appreciated only upon their loss."
This is beginning to change, note the authors, particularly in
Australia and Costa Rica.
The firm Earth Sanctuaries, Ltd. now is listed on the Australian
Stock Exchange, making it one of the world's first conservation
companies to go public.
The corporation, valued at $25 million, buys up land and restores
native vegetation and wildlife, earning income from tourism,
consulting and wildlife sales, according to the Science article.
"The firm lobbied for and won a change in accounting law so as to
include rare native animals as assets," add the authors.
Meanwhile, they write, the Sydney Futures Exchange is positioning
itself to be a global leader in the trading of ecosystem services
such as "carbon credits."
For example, if a company agrees to purchase and protect an
Australian forest, the Sydney Futures Exchange will calculate how
much carbon dioxide gas the forest soaks up from the atmosphere,
then give the company a UN-sanctioned carbon credit, which allows
its factories to emit an equal amount of CO2 gas into the air.
"Costa Rica's leadership in these areas is also remarkable," says
Daily, who has done extensive research in that Central American
country.
Since 1997, the Costa Rican government has been paying local
landowners for protection of watersheds, biodiversity and even
scenic beauty.
"The payments, about $20 an acre per year, are financed in part by
a tax on fossil fuels and are resulting in significant forest
conservation and restoration," she writes.
"Worldwide," she adds, "ecosystems are being protected or restored
to control floods, filter water, enhance soil fertility, stabilize
climate, to offer human enjoyment and even to recycle orange peels.
Such efforts are being rewarded with innovative financial
mechanisms, whose scope and variety are expected to grow."
Daily points to New York City's 1996 decision to improve its
drinking water by investing $1.5 billion to restore the Catskill
mountains watershed, instead of spending more than $6 billion on
new water treatment facilities.
"New York was able to put a price tag on the Catskill watershed --
part of its 'natural or ecosystem capital' that it needs to
survive," she comments.
"Individuals and societies already assess the value of nature
implicitly in their collective decision-making, too often treating
ecosystem services as 'free,' " write Daily and her Science
co-authors.
"Until recently, this was generally safe to do; relatively
speaking, ecosystem capital was abundant, and the impacts of
economic activity were minimal," they point out.
But now, warns Daily, "ecosystem capital is becoming scarce. We're
running out, so ecologists are becoming more practical. We're
teaming up with economists to create a new field that allows us to
put an economic value on nature, and to integrate that value into
our decision-making. There's more and more demand for this kind of
information, as people realize the values that are being lost
through the destruction of ecosystems. But there are a lot of
things people value that can't readily be expressed in dollar
terms. We need to use other metrics, and to move cautiously."
Daily and her fellow authors concede that coming up with a
universally acceptable method for evaluating nature will be a
challenge.
"Ecosystems are idiosyncratic," they write. "What holds true in one
region may not apply well elsewhere."
Daily suggests four basic steps for calculating the economic value
of an ecosystem. First, make a list of the goods and services from
nature that we depend on to survive. Next, determine which goods
and services are most threatened. Third, figure out how their loss
will affect society -- not just in dollars but also in terms of
human welfare. Finally, once the risks are determined, people at
all levels of society should work together to create incentives for
protecting critical elements of ecosystem capital.
"In a way, it's writing off certain species. If it benefits
humanity directly, we'll save it. But what happens to the condors
and the pandas?" asks Daily. "We're faced with hideous tradeoffs no
matter how you look at it. What we're offering is a framework for
thinking about these tradeoffs.
"As the population approaches 10 billion people, we'll continue to
fight over smaller and smaller scraps of land and fewer resources,"
she notes. "Never before has society been faced with these kinds of
challenges."
###
Daily can be contacted by e-mail at [4][EMAIL PROTECTED]
-By Mark Shwartz-
______________________________________________________________
[5]Back to EurekAlert!
References
1. http://www.eurekalert.org/cgi/users/toc
2. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
3. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/
4. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
5. http://www.eurekalert.org/cgi/users/toc
===========================================================================
This was the original posting...
> Subject:
> NGO letter against Ex-Im AIDS drugs proposal
> Date:
> Sat, 22 Jul 2000 00:52:27 -0500 (CDT)
>
> Yesterday, the US Export-Import Bank announced a new initiative to make $1
> billion in loans per year to African countries to purchase HIV/AIDS drugs.
>
> These loans would be made at commercial rates, and would pile on top of
> the existing debt burden of poor African countries. They would go to buy
> overpriced drugs, and perhaps are intended -- and certainly would have the
> effect -- of blocking countries from pursuing policies to make cheaper
> generic drugs available to their people. This is a brutal corporate
> welfare policy.
>
> Below follows a letter from the Health GAP coalition denouncing the new
> plan.
>
> Robert Weissman
> Essential Information | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> HEALTH GAP COALITION
> http://www.durban2000march.org
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> JULY 20, 2000
>
> Dear President Clinton:
>
> We are writing from the Health GAP coalition to express our strong
> opposition to the just-announced initiative from the Export-Import Bank to
> provide financing to African countries for AIDS drugs purchases.
>
> Health GAP is a coalition of individuals and organizations, which works to
> assure access to essential medicines by people with HIV/AIDS in the
> developing world. We have played a leading role in persuading the U.S.
> government to abandon its opposition to countries undertaking policies --
> known as compulsory licensing and parallel importing --- that could
> dramatically reduce the price of pharmaceuticals and which comport with
> country obligations under the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related
> Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement.
>
> We believe today's announcement by the Ex-Im Bank represents a substantial
> and unacceptable step backwards from the administration's commitment not
> to interfere with TRIPS-compliant compulsory licensing and parallel
> importing, mocks the administration and G-7's purported effort to provide
> debt relief to developing countries, and runs directly counter to the
> consensus at the just-completed world AIDS conference that the key to
> addressing the AIDS epidemic lies in ensuring poor countries gain access
> to medicines, not more debt.
>
> The Ex-Im Bank proposal, coming on the heels of the XIII International
> AIDS Conference in South Africa, is a striking example of past and current
> policies clearly and forcefully repudiated by the public health, economic
> and political leaders in Durban last week. Peter Piot, General Secretary
> of UNAIDS, announced that the most important factor in increasing drug
> access is competition between generic and patented drugs. He also cited
> heavy debt burden as a crucial impediment to effective action against the
> escalating African and Asian AIDS epidemics.
>
> Additionally, the Durban conference brought together thousands of people
> with AIDS and activists from all continents who have united around calls
> for debt relief and full treatment access, including access to quality
> generic medication.
>
> We demand that the United States heed the growing consensus for policies
> of economic aid based on public health imperatives and not the
> profit-driven agenda of pharmaceutical corporations. We will not allow
> retrograde proposals such as this to pass without widespread condemnation.
>
> We are writing to urge you to take the necessary steps to cancel the Ex-Im
> Bank initiative.
>
> While there has been a laudable increase in US contributions to combat the
> global AIDS epidemic, we agree that billions, rather than millions of
> dollars a year are necessary to begin to significantly address this
> challenge.
>
> However, rather than offering spurious loans that perpetuate the debt
> spiral, the United States must provide billions of dollars in grants for
> comprehensive treatment access programs, based in sound public health and
> scientific standards, including cost-effective bulk purchasing of generic
> medication; TRIPS-compliant mechanisms for generic production or parallel
> importation; and significant, structural-adjustment free debt relief. Such
> grants must be administered and overseen by an international public health
> organization, such as UNAIDS or WHO, not by a financial institution.
>
> We oppose the current initiative on three primary grounds.
>
> 1. A New Debt Burden for Africa
>
> It makes no sense to burden African countries with loans, when existing
> debt burdens are undermining their ability to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS
> (and to address other diseases, and other critical needs) and when the
> AIDS epidemic is itself already undermining their economic capacity. The
> Ex-Im loans would be made at commercial rates, meaning the debt burden
> would be very high.
>
> The United States and the G-7, through their Cologne Initiative, are
> supposedly seeking to relieve poor countries of their presently
> unmanageable debt burdens. If the intent of the initiative is to be
> taken seriously, (despite inappropriate structural adjustment conditions
> and an insufficient scale of debt relief), there is no plausible rationale
> for piling new commercial-rate loans on poor countries at the same time
> some of their debts are being forgiven.
> ,
> 2. Treatment Money Should Not Be Used for Corporate Welfare
>
> All indications are that the Ex-Im loans will be used to buy drugs from
> U.S. companies at a discounted rate similar to that which may be offered
> to the United Nations.
>
> Since money is clearly an enormous constraint in providing HIV/AIDS
> medication, funding for HIV/AIDS treatment must be well spent, and only on
> medicines at the lowest prices achievable. As reported, the industry offer
> to the UN does not come close to meeting this standard.
>
> Although there has been no distinct confirmation of the discount amounts
> since the non-specific announcements from five pharmaceutical companies in
> May, many published reports suggest the UN discounts will be in the 80-85
> percent range. Such price levels, which we believe are far above
> production and distribution costs, will enable the pharmaceutical
> companies to continue to profiteer from drug sales, yet still keep
> treatment unaffordable for the vast majority of people living with HIV.
>
> Several well-researched studies, including a recent report from Medicins
> Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), have shown that the cost of
> HIV/AIDS medicines could decline an additional 90 percent from the
> estimated drug industry discounts, so that the cost of combination
> HIV/AIDS drug therapies would be on the order of $200 per person per year.
>
> 3. No U.S. Government Initiative Should Interfere with African Efforts to
> Undertake Compulsory Licensing and Parallel Importing
>
> Linking the U.S. financing to purchases of U.S. or Western brand-name
> drugs appears to be a means to preempt efforts by African and other
> developing nations to lower prices through compulsory licensing and
> parallel importing.
>
> As the New York Times reported yesterday, "It seems unlikely that Brazil,
> India or other nations that produce such drugs for home consumption would
> have the export financing available to help African nations buy the goods.
> The American loans, along with a recent commitment by the World Bank to
> provide at least $500 million to help African nations set up anti-AIDS
> initiatives, give added incentive to African nations to treat many of
> their AIDS cases with Western medicine."
>
> Actually, the example of Brazil emphasizes the need for generic
> competition. Through the use of generic production, Brazil has provided
> combination anti-HIV treatments to over 90,000 people, and seen an over
> 50% drop in the AIDS death rate. The savings on hospitalizations and OI
> treatment avoided were US$472 million from 1997 -1999, and net cost per
> patient declined by 50% over the same period as savings were increasingly
> realized and use of generics became more widespread.
>
> We would have hoped that by now the administration had abandoned the
> impulse to prioritize U.S. corporate commercial concerns over the public
> health imperatives of the African HIV/AIDS crisis. Such hope appears to be
> misplaced.
>
> As best we can tell from initial reports, the Ex-Im initiative is a plan
> to supply overpriced drugs to Africa while burdening African nations with
> new debt. That may be good corporate welfare policy, but it is disastrous
> public health policy.
>
> We urge you to terminate the Ex-Im policy before it gets underway and
> makes the HIV/AIDS crisis worse.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dr. Alan Berkman, Health GAP Coalition
> Julie Davids, Critical Path AIDS Project
> Asia Russell, ACT UP Philadelphia
> Robert Weissman, Co-Director, Essential Action
>
> Cc:
> Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
> James A. Harmon, President and Chairman of Export-Import Bank
> Jackie M. Clegg, Vice Chair and Chief Operating Officer
> William M. Daley, Ex Officio Board Member and former Secretary of Commerce
> Charlene Barshefsky, U.S. Trade Representative
> Members of the United States Senate
> Members of the United States House of Representatives
>
> stop-imf mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/stop-imf
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