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POST #1(August 15, 2019)--Zimbabwe faces Economic Crisis

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POST #1(August 15, 2019)--Zimbabwe faces Economic Crisis

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The people of Zimbabwe are experiencing the worst economic crisis of this decade. The scarcity for simple everyday resources such as food and drink are increasing. Along with the economy deteriorating, the local Bishop has resorted to sharing daily bible versus and sermons via WhatsApp to those who are too poor to travel. This article is an example of how third world countries struggle to keep up with development and how development works in favor for those who are developed and disables those who are not. With such a high command the economy is crippling “Third World” Countries and driving them straight into poverty.

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A T HIS PENTECOSTAL church in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, Bishop Never Muparutsa sighs at the empty pews. In recent weeks, as the economy has deteriorated, his congregation has shrunk from 400 to 120. Mr Muparutsa sends Bible verses via WhatsApp to those too poor to travel. He tries to keep sermons upbeat. But he is worried about his formerly ebullient flock. "The joy I used to see is gone," he says. "They might as well be Anglicans."

Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic crisis in a decade. Electricity is available for just six hours a day. Clean tap water runs once a week. Petrol stations either have no fuel or long queues. About 7.5m people, roughly half the country, will struggle to eat one meal a day by early next year, says the World Food Programme, a UN agency. Annual inflation is running at about 500%, reckons Msasa Capital, a local advisory firm. "I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel," says one businessman. "Just the light from an incoming train."
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The government blames the weather. Cyclone Idai, which hit southern Africa in March, and a regional drought have contributed to a poor harvest. Scant rainfall has cut the supply of water to Lake Kariba, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, and thus to an adjacent hydropower plant. Though the climate has been cruel to Zimbabwe, the mess is mostly man-made.

Power shortages were avoidable. Low water levels at Kariba have been predicted for almost a year. A coal-fired power station in the west of the country ought to help fill the gap, but it is plagued by faults. Extra power could be bought from Eskom, but Zimbabwe has struggled to pay its debts to South Africa's state-run utility.

A lack of power is crippling what is left of Zimbabwean industry. Many factories open only for a brief night shift. The informal economy is struggling, too. Obey Mapupa, who makes tombstones in Mbare, a poor suburb of Harare, says that business should be good: more people are dying. But without power he cannot etch epitaphs.

The shortage of water also stems from inept governance. Harare's reservoirs are leaky. The chemicals used to clean them have not been imported because of a lack of foreign currency. Zimbabweans must instead queue at wells. At one in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town outside Harare, Gaudencia Maputi, 66, says she has been waiting for more than a day. She needs to wash and feed her 83-year-old brother, who has cancer. "I cannot do anything because there is no water," she says.

Looming hunger reflects state failings as well. The Grain Marketing Board ( GMB), the pillar of Zimbabwe's command economy in agriculture, once kept plentiful stores of maize. But today there may be just six weeks' worth, reckons Eddie Cross, an opposition MP. He blames corruption. The board is racking up huge losses. It sells maize at $240 per tonne and buys it at $390, so it is easy for crooked insiders to drive from one depot to another, making $150 a time. (Assuming they can find petrol.)

The food, water and power crises are part of a broader economic catastrophe. This can be traced back to the end of Robert Mugabe's kleptocracy. In the years before he was toppled in a coup in November 2017, Mr Mugabe's regime created money out of thin air to finance graft and profligacy.

Unlike in 2008-09, when Zimbabwe printed bank notes with ever more zeroes on them, this time the government used a keyboard. It credited banks' books with electronic "Real-Time Gross Settlement" ( RTGS) dollars, which it said were equivalent to real dollars. But these electronic notes, or "zollars", had no backing. It became hard, then impossible, to withdraw cash. On the black market zollars traded at various fractions of a greenback.

After Emmerson Mnangagwa replaced Mr Mugabe, the regime initially kept claiming that a zollar was worth a dollar. But from October 2018, as black-market prices spiked, it seemed to give up the fiction. It first ring-fenced real dollar deposits, an admission that zollars were, in fact, a new currency. In February it went a step further, allowing banks to trade between the two. Mthuli Ncube, the finance minister, has also taken steps to balance the budget by cutting spending and raising taxes.

In theory this all made sense. Zimbabwe was living beyond its means. In practice the reforms clashed with the instincts of the ruling Zanu-PF party: command, control, steal. Despite the government's efforts to prop up the zollar, it lost 90% of its value versus the dollar from February to June. Civil servants and soldiers, who are paid in zollars, saw their earnings evaporate.

Fearing protests from state employees who wanted to be paid in dollars, the government announced on June 24th that foreign currencies "shall no longer be legal tender". As ever, though, it soon undermined its own policy. Exceptions to the ban have been granted to some businesses.

Zimbabwe is locked in a downward spiral, fears Derek Matyszak of the Institute for Security Studies, a think-tank. The regime relies on exporters for its supply of dollars. But there will be few exports without raw materials and power. Tobacco farmers, for example, are already planning on planting fewer seeds next year.

Helping countries hit with balance-of-payments crises is the job of the International Monetary Fund ( IMF). But the IMF cannot lend to Zimbabwe until it clears its arrears to other international institutions, such as the World Bank. Zimbabwe will struggle to do that without another loan.

Yet Western governments, led by America, are clear that political reform must precede economic assistance. Here Mr Mnangagwa has dragged his feet. The West has suggested that he remove two repressive laws as a starting point. Mr Mnangagwa has repeatedly promised to repeal them, but has not done so. His security services, meanwhile, keep shooting, abducting and beating his opponents with impunity.

This terror has cowed civil society. But such is the anger among ordinary Zimbabweans that calls for further protests have grown. The opposition MDC Alliance will stage a rally in Harare on August 16th.

Some Zimbabweans are protesting in a different way. By leaving. A decade ago economic crisis forced hundreds of thousands to flee. So far the new outflow is much smaller. But it has begun, reckons Bishop Muparutsa. He brings up the latest Bible verse he has distributed on WhatsApp. It is a passage from the Book of Exodus. ■

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Zimbabwe faces its worst economic crisis in a decade

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A T HIS PENTECOSTAL church in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, Bishop Never Muparutsa sighs at the empty pews. In recent weeks, as the economy has deteriorated, his congregation has shrunk from 400 to 120. Mr Muparutsa sends Bible verses via WhatsApp to those too poor to travel. He tries to keep sermons upbeat.

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POST #2(August 28,2019)--Disaster Resiliency for Protection

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POST #2(August 28,2019)--Disaster Resiliency for Protection

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The Climate changes in Asia and The Pacific are causing economic hardship for their people. The unpredictable changes have led to this vicious cycle of poverty and distress. This articles stresses that they are in need of social protection and technological innovations to establish resiliency against natural disasters. This relates to the class discussions regarding development because in order for them to survive they will need help from other nations to invest in them. This also relates to the Theory of Liberalism because of the natural human desire for technological advancements in order to keep up with globalization and development.

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BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 (IPS) - The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought.

Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region's GDP.

Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region's efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific's poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia.

Many countries' sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies.

As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial.

While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region's disaster resilience effort.

With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific's Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region.

This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.
© Inter Press Service (2019) - All Rights Reserved Original source: Inter Press Service
Where next?

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Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communities

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BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 (IPS) - The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought.Yet heat is only part of the picture.

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POST #2(September 19,2019)-- Sterilized Workers Demand Justice.

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POST #2(September 19,2019)-- Sterilized Workers Demand Justice.

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Decades ago, workers were exposed to harsh pesticides that were being sprayed in the banana fields. This chemical resulted in the workers becoming sterilized and essentially robbed them of a chance to start a family. Today, these workers are still trying to fight for justice and the government has compensated for lawyers to assist them in their trials. This article reminds me of the discussion we had regarding the World System Theory. This is an example of how large companies locate in areas where they can pay their workers cheap and still make profit. The workers are exposed to serious health issues because of how undervalued they are to the companies.

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Nicaraguan banana workers who say they have been affected by the pesticide Nemagon, with one of their French lawyers, Pierre-Olivier Sur, center. The workers are suing Dow Chemical in French courts. Credit Credit Maynor Valenzuela/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

PARIS - Decades ago, banana plantations around Central America sprayed a powerful pesticide with a terrible side effect: It sterilized workers on a mass scale. Thousands of victims have sought compensation ever since from the chemical companies that produced it.

Now, some survivors and their families are suing three big chemical makers in France to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid damages awarded to them by courts in Nicaragua, where many of the poisonings of banana workers occurred. If successful, the case could set a legal precedent and lead to more lawsuits in France for harm done in other countries by the pesticide Nemagon.

Last decade, Nicaraguan courts ordered a total of $805 million in damages to be paid to hundreds of victims by Dow Chemical, Shell Oil and Occidental Chemical, which has since become OxyChem. The companies refused to pay, saying the courts lacked jurisdiction and had denied them fair trials.

The case now has a new life half a world away in Europe, where the companies have significant assets and 1,245 former workers and relatives are looking to collect the money. While French courts have been open to hearing cases linked to human rights abuses that have occurred elsewhere, this is the first with such a large monetary award at stake. On Tuesday, a French court delivered documents to Dow France provisionally freezing shares worth 99 million euros, or about $110 million, pending a trial scheduled for January at the Paris Trial Court.

Dow Chemical, in a statement, disputed that the freezing had taken place, claiming that the United States-based parent company did not own any capital in Dow France, which is held by other Dow European entities.

The action is a precautionary measure to prevent Dow from moving assets out of France until the trial, said François-Henri Briard, a French lawyer who is part of an international legal team representing the former workers and relatives. A French judge will determine whether court opinions in other countries - in this case, Nicaragua - can be enforced in France and in the European Union.

If the plaintiffs prevail, they will seek to collect part of the $805 million from the Nicaraguan judgments from Dow in France and move to freeze and sell assets owned by Dow, Shell and Occidental in other European countries where they operate. They would cite a European Union rule that allows a court order issued in a member state to be enforced in any of the bloc's 28 countries.

"We live in a globalized world where it's easy for multinational companies to hide assets so as not to allow justice and court orders to be enforced," Mr. Briard said. "This is what the U.S. companies did in Nicaragua: They poisoned people, they were sentenced by the courts, and they left without paying anything."

In such a world, he added, victims should also be allowed to cross borders to enforce payment.

Dow said in its statement that the Nicaraguan courts hadn't given it and other defendants a fair trial. "Courts confronted with these Nicaraguan judgments have unanimously held them to be unenforceable," it said. "We are confident that French courts will conclude the same."

The case caps decades of high-stakes legal maneuvering and litigation that have bounced back and forth between the United States, where the companies are based, and countries in Central America and beyond where the chemicals were used.

The chemical dibromochloropropane, or DBCP, an active ingredient in Nemagon, was banned in most of the United States in 1977 after it was found to have caused sterility among thousands of male workers who were exposed to it at Dow, Shell and Occidental plants across America. Food growers based in the United States continued to use Nemagon through the early 1980s at banana and pineapple plantations in countries with lower environmental standards, according to lawsuits filed in Nicaragua and elsewhere.

"It's a sperm-killer," said Stuart H. Smith, an environmental lawyer in New Orleans who is part of the plaintiffs' legal team. "Thousands of individuals were knowingly put into the zone of risk of these pesticides after it was banned."

He added that the sterilizations prevented them from having "a normal life with a family and children."

A wave of lawsuits by Nicaraguan plantation workers followed in the United States in the 1990s. Dow and Shell - along with the growers Dole Fruit, Del Monte Fruit and Chiquita Brands - blocked the suits on the ground that the United States was not the place to try them because the alleged damage happened in Central America.

Nicaragua passed a law for DBCP victims that required corporate defendants to put up a bond of $100,000 per case, triggering hundreds of lawsuits there last decade. When Nicaraguan courts awarded hundreds of millions in compensation to victims, Dow, Shell and Dole declared that the courts lacked jurisdiction and refused to pay.

In particular, Shell said that the courts lacked jurisdiction because its headquarters were in the United States, and that it had no employees in the country. Dow said the Nicaraguan law for DBCP victims denied it due process, and Dole said the court had never obtained jurisdiction over it.

Efforts to enforce Nicaragua court judgments in the United States failed. A Florida court denied recognition of a $97 million judgment against Dow and Dole in 2009, saying the Nicaraguan proceedings were biased against the companies.

A California judge in 2009 also threw out separate lawsuits brought in the United States against Dow and Dole after ruling that the plaintiffs and their lawyers used fraudulent tactics, including faked sterility results and plaintiffs who never worked on banana plantations.

Those cases recall another widely publicized litigation, over oil-related pollution in Ecuador. In 2014, a federal judge in Manhattan threw out a $19 billion verdict against Chevron after finding that a lawyer had submitted false evidence. The judge did not dispute that pollution occurred in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Mr. Smith said that the plaintiffs seeking enforcement in France were damaged by the chemicals and that the Nicaraguan Supreme Court had upheld their cases.

French judges will consider whether the Nicaraguan judges who ruled on the cases were competent and if any fraud or violation of due process was involved in determining whether to seek enforcement of the $805 million in payouts in France.

Mr. Smith said the case constituted a "multibillion-dollar liability" that had not been disclosed to Dow Chemical's stockholders or the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dow said in its statement that it was in compliance with all laws and regulations regarding its reporting requirements.

The chemical and banana companies have long argued that they have no further responsibility after settling claims decades ago. All except Dole settled in 1997 with 26,000 former banana workers in Central America, Africa and the Philippines for $41 million. Dole agreed in 2014 to compensate more than 1,700 former banana workers from Nicaragua for an undisclosed amount.

The workers and families suing in France were not part of those agreements, and Mr. Briard said they were ultimately hoping to reach their own settlement.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Sterilized in Nicaragua and Suing Dow Chemical in France. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Sterilized Workers Seek to Collect Damages Against Dow Chemical in France

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PARIS - Decades ago, banana plantations around Central America sprayed a powerful pesticide with a terrible side effect: It sterilized workers on a mass scale. Thousands of victims have sought compensation ever since from the chemical companies that produced it.

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POST #3 (October 7,2019)-- Rebuilding after The Caribbean Hurricane

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POST #3 (October 7,2019)-- Rebuilding after The Caribbean Hurricane

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When Hurricane Irma hit it took people’s lives and economic stability along with it. The government promised a speedy recovery but only the tourist side of the island has been restored and the others are left fighting for the means to survive. This is relevant because it captures Government Stratification. Which shows how as a culture, we have been corrupted to favor those areas that bring in cash flow and are willing to invest because of the benefits. This is causing working class citizens to let go of properties of land that have been in their family for generations.

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Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island. Credit... Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

Promises Made

When Hurricane Irma crushed St. Martin two years ago, the French state vowed swift assistance. Aid has flowed in, but a fight has followed about recovery plans, exposing racial and class tension.

Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island. Credit... Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right. But do they? In this series, The Times investigates to see if those promises were kept.
SAINT-MARTIN, French West Indies - In the debris that had once been furniture and a roof were the vestiges of a holiday home: a cluster of flip-flops, a romance novel, a child's ball floating in a plunge pool's fetid waters.

On a recent visit, it looked like an artillery barrage had smashed into this small bungalow and a dozen or so other nearby cottages in a similar state of ruin, in what had been a pleasant vacation compound on a bluff above the Atlantic Ocean.

This scene of utter destruction in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane was not in the Abaco Islands or on Grand Bahama, devastated by Dorian last month. This wasteland was on St. Martin, an island that took a direct hit from Hurricane Irma on Sept. 6, 2017, and where, two years later, recovery is still far from complete.

The hurricane caused billions of dollars in damage across the 34-square-mile island, which is split between the French territory of Saint-Martin, with a population of about 32,000,and Sint Maarten, a mostly autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with a population of about 41,000.

Immediately after the storm blasted the island, President Emmanuel Macron of France promised a speedy recovery for the French side.

"Saint-Martin will be reborn, I am committed," Mr. Macron vowed. "We will do it quickly, we will do it well, and we will do it better."

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But Saint-Martin's slow, if steady, recovery shows just how difficult coming back from a hurricane can be on a small island, with challenges that go well beyond just the size of financial aid packages.

In Saint-Martin, the toughest, most uncomfortable questions are less about who will pay for rebuilding - France has delivered more than a half-billion dollars of aid - but where and how to rebuild, or whether to rebuild at all amid the threat of evermore powerful storms.

This has made the debate less an economic one and more about politics, class, culture and race, often pitting the local majority-black population against the French state.

The top French official on the island says she wants more restrictions on construction in the areas most at risk to future storms, in order to protect lives and the economy.

But many working-class residents fear they could be forced to abandon property that has been in their family for generations. Some suspect a land grab, where their waterfront plots will be taken and sold to wealthy developers.

In a region that has experienced the awesome forces of Category 5 storms with terrifying frequency in recent years, the story playing out on St. Martin is likely to be repeated on many other Caribbean islands - and in the United States, too.

WHAT WE FOUND

On the French side of the island, Hurricane Irma damaged about 95 percent of the buildings, including the home of Bernadette Carty.

Ms. Carty had lived all her 65 years on the waterfront, and she felt it was safe to ignore the evacuation orders that preceded Irma's landfall. After all, at least seven generations of her family had survived numerous hurricanes on this same patch of land, and she figured this time would be no different.

But Irma was among the most powerful storms ever to hit the island, and a prime example of how climate change has made hurricanes more destructive.

As Irma rumbled ashore, Ms. Carty, her daughter and two grandchildren dove for cover under a mattress and rode out the storm as it mauled her island.

When Irma had finally moved on, the family emerged from their hideaway to discover that the storm surge and wind had gouged holes in two sides of the house and had swept away Ms. Carty's sister from her home next door. She was one of 11 people who died on the French side of the island, according to the local authorities. Two died on the Dutch side, according to the prime minister's office.

Ms. Carty has been living in a temporary apartment ever since, and hopes to get permission to rebuild her house.

"This hurricane is the devil," she said.

The storm devastated the island's main airport, blocked its ports and effectively shut down the island's essential tourism industry for months.

The French government's promise to deliver substantial help was not an empty one.

It allocated more than $500 million in aid and subsidies in the first six months after the storm to the recovery and reconstruction of Saint-Martin and the smaller, nearby French island of Saint-Barthélemy, according to Sylvie Feucher, the French state's top representative based in the two territories.

Considering the dire shape Saint-Martin was in right after the storm, with its infrastructure flattened, the fact that much of the territory is back on its feet confirms the aid has made a difference.

Hotels and restaurants have reopened, and tourists are again lounging on its beaches.

But on a visit to the island in late August, a checkerboard of remaining damage was visible all around. Buildings without roofs. Businesses still shuttered. The half-sunken hulls of storm-scuttled ships.

While Irma battered the island for just a matter of hours, Ms. Feucher predicted that it could take up to three more years for the territory to fully recover.

WHAT WE FOUND

Hurricane Irma made clear that natural disasters not only obliterate structures and lives; they can also expose deep socioeconomic fault lines. In Saint-Martin, a long simmering discontent - loaded with racial and class tension - is on the verge of boiling over.

Ms. Feucher, the deputy prefect for Saint-Martin, is convinced that some areas of the territory are just too dangerously exposed to the power of the most severe storms to be safely inhabitable. And she is trying to convince the population of this, too.

The focus of her mission, backed by Paris, is a push for more severe restrictions on construction and land use in the areas at greatest risk of damage during major storms, like that bluff with the pulverized cottages.

But the campaign has become a flash point in an increasingly contentious relationship between the French government and a local population bristling against French bureaucracy and overseas control.

Several of the flood-prone coastal neighborhoods of greatest concern to Ms. Feucher have large low-income populations, and many residents suspect the French government is waging a veiled campaign to drive poor, black residents off their land through condemnation so it can be sold to developers.

Cédrick André, a community activist in Sandy Ground, one of the high-risk neighborhoods, views the matter as nothing less than an existential struggle for Saint-Martin's working-class population.

"They want to change everything: the way we live, the way we speak, the way we sex, the way we eat," said Mr. André, 42. "They want to change who we are."

"They are not attacking the people who have their pocket full and can defend themselves," he added. "They are attacking people without their pocket full."

Sandy Ground - bracketed by a bay on one side and a lagoon on the other - was first settled by squatters decades ago, many of them black immigrants from other Caribbean islands.

The authorities turned a blind eye to the settlement, allowing it to grow, and now thousands of people live along the neighborhood's narrow streets and unpaved lanes.

"Many of us living by the sea, we know the risk," said Marie Abner, 48, who has lived in the neighborhood since she immigrated from Haiti as a child. "If anything happen, we leave the home. Then we come back."

The French government has set up a fund to buy out property owners living in the highest-risk flood zones, but Ms. Feucher insists that nobody will be forced to sell.

Still, residents of Sandy Ground, and other neighborhoods with significant working-class populations, like Grand Case and Quartier d'Orléans, are unassuaged and angry.

Daniel Gibbs, president of the local government in Saint-Martin, has demanded that the French state give the community more time to study the issue.

"I need to hear the needs of my population - at least the majority of my population," Mr. Gibbs added. "I think there's plenty of room for compromise."

On a recent evening, Jah Bash, a Rastafarian farmer, said that the population's patience with an overbearing French state was wearing thin.

"For me, it's a conspiracy to take over the island," said Mr. Bash, whose family has lived in Sandy Ground for five generations. "It's about wealth."

Protests against the plan could turn violent, Mr. Bash warned. "The only way to get your attention is to do something to you that you fear," he said. "The country will burn easily."

WHAT WE FOUND

Hurricane recovery is hard anywhere. And that's particularly true in Caribbean islands like St. Martin because of a unique combination of factors.

As with many places in the Caribbean, the economy is over-reliant on a single industry - tourism - for jobs and tax revenue. When hotels are wrecked by a storm, business dries up, unemployment soars and government coffers suffer.

Geographic isolation makes everything more expensive. Building materials need to be brought in by ship or plane, increasing costs. The elevated demand for qualified workers in a small labor pool jacks up wages.

Recovery is also hamstrung by the fact that few are left untouched by a severe disaster: The officials responsible for leading the recovery are themselves sometimes fighting to get on their feet.

"They are so small that almost every human being on the island is directly impacted," said Tahseen Sayed, the World Bank country director for the Caribbean. "The challenge of the government for reconstruction becomes even longer and more difficult."

Local governments often lack the resources to manage the task of hurricane recovery alone.

Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin of Sint Maarten said her government had insufficient fiscal, legal and environmental staff to help manage those aspects of recovery after Irma.

"The hurricane really exposed those weak areas that we have as a government," she said.

WHAT WE FOUND

The island that Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten occupy was divided between the French and the Dutch in the 17th century. As with two competitive siblings close in age, just about everything that happens on one side demands comparison with the other.

Hurricane recovery has been no different, revealing that distinctions in culture and governance have had a significant bearing on progress during the past two years.

The consensus view on both sides of the island is that the Dutch half has recovered more quickly. A higher percentage of hotel rooms on the Dutch side, for example, are open again for business.

The French state runs a famously laborious bureaucracy that, according to residents, has slowed the rebuilding process.

"We have norms and rules and regulations on the French side," said Angèle Dormoy, the president of Saint-Martin's Chamber of Commerce. "Everything is controlled and re-controlled, three or four times."

In contrast, Sint Maarten has developed a more laissez-faire culture, helping to accelerate the rebuilding process.

While the French state may seem overbearing to some in Saint-Martin, whose residents are French citizens, its people are entitled to all the protections of France's generous social net. But that state largess may have undermined private initiative during this reconstruction period.

"That's the strength and weakness of France," Ms. Feucher said. "We give a lot of attention to the population, and it can prevent people from developing a sense of responsibility in terms of taking care of themselves."

On the Dutch side, much of the rebuilding has been driven by private funds, particularly those associated with tourism, which dwarfs the French-side tourism sector.

"They pulled up their socks and got on with it," said Lorraine Talmi, board president of the Sint Maarten Hospitality & Trade Association.

But the differences have also left some on the Dutch side wondering whether in their haste to rebuild, and in their comparatively looser regulatory environment, the rebuilding did not happen with enough thought given to withstanding future storms.

On the French side, some believe their patience will pay off with a more resilient island, better able to withstand the effects of the Atlantic's warming waters.

In 2017, Mr. Macron said Saint-Martin will be "rebuilt in a durable way that also meets seismic and environmental needs." The widespread destruction, he said, could be blamed in part on "buildings that were constructed under conditions that wouldn't have been accepted in other territories of France."

Ms. Feucher said she was trying to get the population to take the long view in these matters: that getting the rebuilding right, even if it takes time, could save lives in the next big storm.

But Ms. Feucher conceded that persuading people to accept new regulations is no easy task.

"Changing mentalities is always difficult," she said.

The Takeaway: As storms become more destructive, hurricane recovery is as much about rethinking as it is rebuilding.

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After a Caribbean Hurricane, the Battle Is Where, or Even Whether, to Rebuild (Published 2019)

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Promises Made When Hurricane Irma crushed St. Martin two years ago, the French state vowed swift assistance. Aid has flowed in, but a fight has followed about recovery plans, exposing racial and class tension. Two years after Hurricane Irma, many damaged buildings can still be seen on Saint Martin, the French side of the island.

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POST #4(October 8, 2019)-- Trumpian Backlash to Globalization

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POST #4(October 8, 2019)-- Trumpian Backlash to Globalization

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According to Capital Economist Neal Shearing the world is starting to "de globalize" and our current President is only making it worse. Integrating billions of workers into the economy and work force has decreased the labors share of income and increased the income that goes to the companies. So once again, the corporations are profiting of the working class making it almost impossible for anyone to move up the economic ladder. This is why the "rich get richer" while the "poor stay poor" mentality is so heavily imprinted in our memories.

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Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics says globalization has peaked.

De-globalization could have a major impact on the global economy, as well as geopolitical stability.

A Trumpian backlash to globalization has resulted from "the integration of several billion workers into the global economy has pushed down labor's share of income and pushed up the share flowing to company profits."

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The world is starting to de-globalize.

That's according to Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, who said that while globalization over the last 30 years has boosted the global economy, "the integration of several billion workers into the global economy has pushed down labor's share of income and pushed up the share flowing to company profits."

Shearing says this "has contributed to the Trumpian backlash to globalization over the past couple of years."

The outcome could be grim, he says.

"A mix of restrictions on trade in specific sectors and products seems likely, as does some sort of technological iron curtain," he wrote. "Were this to happen, it would have a more deleterious effect on global growth, not to mention geopolitical stability."

The latest globalization wave "hit a wall," he says, even before President Donald Trump's trade war against China kicked off. Trade and capital flows have plateaued since about 2010.

"It is possible that this leveling off is just a temporary hiatus and that an unforeseen technological breakthrough will trigger a new wave of globalization," he said. "But such waves are rare."

Shearing said: "New technologies have made it less attractive for firms to maintain large and complex supply chains.

"Governments have increasingly started to question the benefits of some aspects of the financial liberalization that has been a central feature of the most recent wave of globalization. China, in particular, is unlikely to open its capital markets significantly."

Unfortunately, Shearing says that for the world's poorest, this trend is likely to damage quality of life.

"Given that the most common development path begins with labor-intensive manufacturing in sectors such as textiles, life for the poorest countries that have yet to gain a foothold on the development ladder will become more difficult."

He did caveat that the outlook is perhaps not all doom and gloom:

"In most scenarios, the effects on the world economy as a whole would be negative, but manageable," says the economist.

"Admittedly, it seems unlikely that trade and investment flows between the West and China dry up completely, in a repeat of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union."

See More: The WTO slashed its global trade forecast in half - citing Trump's trade war, Brexit, and shifting monetary policy

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The 'Trumpian backlash' to globalization could lead to a 'technological iron curtain,' says this economist | Markets Insider

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Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics says globalization has peaked. De-globalization could have a major impact on the global economy, as well as geopolitical stability. A Trumpian backlash to globalization has resulted from "the integration of several billion workers into the global economy has pushed down labor's share of income and pushed up the share flowing to company profits."