The Political Economy of Global Warming and Its Changing Strategic Role
To a military strategist of the last century when nation states were eager to retain their sovereign power, weather was a potential weapon. In the 21st century, when the role of the nation states is being redefined, the strategic importance of weather may have changed. This paper has been divided into three sections were the changing importance of climate, in a TNC (transnational corporation) dominated world order has been analyzed. The first section, briefly discusses the genesis of the global warming concept - its scientific basis, economic consequence and political motives. The second section, deals with the major developments in the global warming issue during the period between the Rio Earth Summit and ratification of Kyoto protocol in 2005. This section we also highlights the fact that within a decade of its declaration, the basic objectives of the Rio Earth Summit have been distorted systematically confirming to the suspicion that from its inception, the objectives were not seriously taken up by the leaders. In this new century, the TNCs would play more important role than the sovereign nation states, in developing rules and regulations of different multilateral treaties, pertaining to important issues like climate change, intellectual property rights etc. The power of the nation states is eroding very fast. The TNCs with the help of mainstream global media, on which they have almost total control, are capable to systematically establish or suppress any 'scientific' view, which are important for their strategic planning. Under this changed power structure, old strategies and tactics are bound to change. 'Weather' which had a strategic importance as 'weapon' to a nation state during cold war period, is likely to have a strategic importance of different type (as 'economic good') to a TNC dominated world order of this century. Now the emphasis is more on economics than politics. The paradigm shift is very clear and distinct. The third section discusses the implications of the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment and energy market. By shifting environmentally hazardous activities to the fund-starved poorer countries, pollutions will be 'parceled out' to the Southern states. The responsibility of reducing the 'green house gas' has been shifted already to the less polluting developing countries by promising a few extra dollars. The Kyoto protocol basically has done this through its much-hyped clean development mechanism. However, few civil societies in the North have taken initiatives to correct this practice.The study concludes with the observation that in an integrated global economy, where TNCs have developed alliances with their local partners for further consolidation of their power, an international alliance of consumer and civil societies to safeguard common citizens' interest across the globe is essential. Fortunately few initiatives to this effect have been made. In the absence of such a coordinated effort, Southern countries, as before, will remain at the receiving ends and would be treated as dump yards for Northern wastes and pollutants.
Sustainable development: paradigm or paranoia?
Sustainable development is the globally embraced paradigm for integrating environment and development policies. Agreement ends with attempts at quantifying the elusive notion of sustainability. A contentious debate among "environmentalists" and "environmental economists" has brought about a confusing proliferation of indicators and policy advice on sustainable development. Generating a common language by means of integrated physical and monetary environmental accounting could moderate the debate. Economic and ecological sustainability is thus distinguished and operationalised in terms of capital maintenance and dematerialisation of economic activity. Empirical results presented are not conclusive, however. Moreover, the reconciliation of environmental and economic policies requires more than comparable statistics strategies and instruments of environmental cost internalisation need to be evaluated and combined with those of raising resource productivity. A social compact between government and civil society should provide the necessary support for achieving consensus and partnership. The sustained implementation of sustainable development depends on it.
The structure of Ibibio death prevention names
This paper examines death prevention names among the Ibibio in South-eastern Nigeria, from their structural perspectives. Ibibio death prevention names can generate and maintain some level of assurance and security that is vital for a child’s survival, given the implicit assumption that spiritual forces of some kind are at work. These names are believed to link their bearers to their past, ancestors and spirituality. This paper argues that these names represent enriching morphosyntactic properties that provide a window to the grammatical description of the Ibibio language. Their syntax is not constrained to a limited set of structures, thus they are structurally versatile and open ended, representing the various types and functions of sentences in the Ibibio language. The paper concludes with the claim that, in addition to the referential contents and metaphysical presuppositions of these names, they have other formal structural properties that distinguish them from ordinary Ibibio names.