Sweden – the leader still leads

Yes, I love Sweden. I lived there and I am favouring the swedish education system and the general attitude towards each other up there (despite it being a little cold) over Germany or even the States. But since the Socialdemocratic Kingdom of Sweden became right-wing, there was much reason to concern. They turned back the wheel of time towards free Capitalism and environmental bollocks. The Swedish Green Party was brave enough to hold a bit against this. Let’s hope they lead the system to change in next year elections.

Now, they introduced a climate-labeling of food-products. As 20 to 30% of all our Greenhouse-Gas emissions comes from what we eat, it makes sense to be transparent enough for people to chose. Eat Carrots instead of Tomatoes and if you cannot hold your unnatural instinct of eating live, eat chicken instead of cows! Now consumers can choose for themselfes and – even better – get informed for the first time what their food actually “costs nature”. You might could have checked it out in the internet, but now everybody has to read it. This is necessary education thise we – humans – a f***ing up the planet.

Sweden might have lost the lead in general politics, but when it comes to consumer-education and climate-protection, they are in the lead again. Bravo!

Lost in Translation: Greens

Can a Green Party make a coalition with a conservative one?

Green Youth at the Party Conference, protesting the "Jamaica" coalition in the tiny German state of Saarland between Greens, Liberals (yellow) and Conservatives (black). But the shape of the ballons was somehow misleading...

In Germany the system recently changed a little but this was enough to switch the inner logic of the system. The two main archrivals (Social Democrats and Christian Democrats) are more in the middle (=lost) and the small Parties (Left, Liberals and Greens) are hoping around the slagging giants. While it is clear that the Liberals stay onthe far right and the Left wher the name says they have to stay (except on immigration surprisingly), the Greens are… well… lost in translation.

Africa afraid of being taken hostage

An interesting blog on the COP15-website. It would be very brave of African countries to walk out of the Bella Center in Copenhagen if the deal gets to bad in December. However, having been in Eritrea and see firsthand what happens if a country is “self-relied” and “strong and honest” makes me wonder if this strategy, while being morally probably the better one, is in realpolitik really senseful. Interesting that the otherwise rather mainstreamed WWF has the position stated here.

Highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Africa badly needs an agreement in Copenhagen. But an agreement could become so weak, that it would be better to walk away, some analysts say.

by Morten Andersen

Can a global deal become so weak that Africa will do better by walking out of the UN negotiations in Copenhagen this December? The issue is being debated at news site AllAfrica as a new report by two UN institutions highlights the continent’s vulnerability to climate change.

“If the (Copenhagen) deal does not respond to the expectation of African nations to adapt to climate change, (and) if it fails to provide the necessary finance, technology and capacity building, then Africa should consider not signing in Copenhagen,” argues Hawa Sow, Africa Climate Policy Coordinator at global conservation organization WWF, adding that “a really bad deal could be worse than no deal”.

The opposite view is held by Gabriel Odima, President of the US based Africa Center for Peace and Democracy:

“(The African continent) is facing a real challenge in dealing with climate change. Poor governance, lack of democracy, lack of political will and institutional framework are some of the challenges facing Africa. But threatening to walk away from the negotiations is not a wise idea,” Gabriel Odima states, while adding that “the African Union should put its house in order first and come up with a workable plan to address the problems relating to climate change in Africa.”

WWF’s Africa Climate Policy Coordinator does not try to hide the fact that following the international negotiations has made her pessimistic.

“We would like the Copenhagen deal to provide special help and treatment for Africa and other vulnerable countries, but at the current state of the negotiations, we are not very confident that this will happen to a high enough level,” she says.

“Suggestions that we can do without the Kyoto Protocol (as has been suggested by primarily USA, editors remark) and replace it with an entirely new instrument are unproductive at this point. It will take too long, and we have no way of knowing what we will get. And it is very likely that the process will just lead to a prolonged race to the bottom,” says Hawa Sow.

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Mamirauá: Conservation, Sustainable Development and Research (Jannas Blog)

Look what I found on a good friends Blog! Amazing pictures and an interesting report. Check it!

(Dolphin-Photo: The Boto Project, Mamirauá)

EGP Council in Malmö in full swing

The Green movements European leg currently meets in Malmö: all Green Parties of Europe plus some affiliated groups are represented here. There are some intersting points on the agenda. The election of a new committee of the European Green Party (EGP), a discussion on the common election-campaign this year that brought yet again a bunch of Greens into the European Parliament, and some resolutions on issues ranging from the Stockholm Program of the EU Commission (tabled by the Young Greens) or how to deal with Russia.

I am here as one of the German delegates, together with my friend Anna, who know works in the European Parliament, and some old Greens. We are strongly supporting the young critical cause and so far have received some warm reactions of not only the other German delegates (among them the head of our Party, Cem Özdemir as well as young MP Manuel Sarazzin) but from the other country delegates as well.

Further, I try hard here to lobby for the Global Young Greens. The upcoming Congress in Berlin still has a lack of funds we have to close. A lot of Greens are friendly to our cause and could imagine to support us. The way is still long, but we will manage.

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Trip to Massawa

Another wonder. As the first German intern in years I was allowed to actually leave the City of Asmara officially with a so called “travel-permit”. While most other interns spend their weekends in interesting spots I had to stay home. Now this changed. Wow!

Here are some pictures from the magnificent (but almost empty) twon of Massawa. It used to be the biggest port on Africas East-coast but after the war few industry is left. Further, this weekend was some holiday so we had an almost empty landscape. Snorkeling, chilling, swimming. Great! Now I have a sunburn!

A bike tour outside of the gates of Asmara

Sometimes, little wonders happen. So it did recently. It was another weekend and while the other expatriats where curing their hungovers form the night before I used this free time (Mon.-Fr. I am working from 7.30am-5pm, then university-papers!) to get on the old bike and discover places. This time I came to the check point where the cars on the way to Massawa, Ghinda and Nefasit were waiting. Slowly I approached. I said that it would be nice if I could just make a click-click (photo) from some hundret meters further down the road as the mountain-view is better there. The poor police-man probably didn’t understand but a nice police-woman was nodding and off I went.

I was going downhill and stopped after a little bit and got off the bike and the road into a cactus field. some people there were picking cactus-fruits with self-made devices and showed me how it worked. The plants really were not to touch under any circumstances. Nasty stuff! I had to carry my bike downhill through the fields to get back on the road (supposedly a shortcut…) and ended up in a nice bar where I had a cold Asmara Beer!

The weekend after, I took a friend of mine with me and we discovered the road together even further downhill (and up, uff!). We met nice individuals on the way and had a “chai”(tea) together. Really a nice sunday!

Different than expected

Things are usually different form what one may expect. This lies in the natural order of the worlds being, it seems. Take for example bananas: One might think that the big, strong, solid yellow ones are the most tasty. Size matters, right? No, not always! After an intensive research among half a dozen “banana-shops” (which are the regular buy-almost-everything shops in my chauvinistic language) I came to the conclusions that the small, soft, brownish ones have by far the most taste. This is not an easy issue, folks! You need to buy them when they (the small ones!) start developing the first brown spots on the outside. Then you have about 48 hours to eat them before the start having also some muddy spots on the inside (which doesn’t kill you if you would eat it, by the way).

Another surprise came to me in the form of climate. Of course I was aware that Asmara lies on the Ethiopian Plateau (which you probably call different here) and is therefore cooler. But I took my white clothe and sunglasses and now – I’m standing in the rain. Fortunately, the raining-season (which was late this year but provides fruitful falls so far) is not an all-day wet experience but rather some occasional showers. The English would probably call this kind of weather “sunny summer” still.

The same with politics. You have to visit a place to make some sort of judgement about it. Lately it was reported that the ousted Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka had their fighter jets stored here in Asmara. Well, seems reasonable as the Tigers are also a minority trying to break away from a larger entity (sounds familiar? Well, the means between EPFL and the Tigers were vastly different I can tell you.). But from my little office here I can see the airport of Asmara which is basically a field with a landing-strip and a house which stores not much expect the smallest duty-free shop of the world and a lot of left (rotten) luggage – just in case you wonder if you bags gone missing during travelling. But no jets.

I have never been in Somalia but it seems very unlikely, that a place like Eritrea (poor, building on the concept of “self-reliance”) has any means of giving meaningful support to some weird Islamist Terrorists. Sad, that Mr. Clinton, Mr. Merkel and all the others were visiting their fellows in Nairobi and Addis only, but didn’t drop in here. Asmara is always worth a visit – not just for the bananas.

A smile can make your day

I had to renew my Visa and it took me a while. The cliche about the bureaucracy in Africa seemed right. (Well, applying for a job in Germany if your a not white and deutsch is probably alsoreally hard!) So I was kind of pizzd with the situation as I had to pay more and my Visa is still not long enough. Then I was going to a coffee place to have – a coffee! I had one. Nice. A friend dropped by saying hi (yes, you meet people you know all the time in Asmara, despite us having about 100 coffee-places here). I was then looking out of the window and looked at people, some smiled back.

And this is what made my day and what is “saving” most days. It might rain, it might be cold (or me having a cold). There might be no water (like today), no electricity (like many days) or no internet (like on the office-free weekends). You might be forgotten by people who wanted to have dinner with you or just got lost in Asmara with nobody being able to read a map – but everybody having an opinion where X or Y is, usually very different ones from one another.

A smile can make your day. So I bought a poster and hung it in my apartment where I am reading or writing Univ.-Papers. So every day is an Eritrea-day. Smile!

Beni Amer Boy from one of the nine ethnic groups in ERI.