Apathy is not an option

Here’s a post from the ONE BLOG about the International Anti-Corruption Conference getting under way in just a few days in Bangkok. This is a major gathering with more than 1500 people from 130 countries scheduled to attend.  I’m thrilled that my short film, Cameroon: Pipeline to Prosperity? will be screening at the conference.

Nov 4th, 2010 4:37 PM EST
By Malaka Gharib

Next week, delegates from more than 130 countries will converge in Bangkok, Thailand to participate in the world’s largest anti-corruption meeting, the 14th annual International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC).

According to Andrew Marshall’s Time Magazine article “How Corruption Is Holding Asia Back,” corruption is a problem that affects dozens of countries across the world — not just developing nations — and has been met with increasing apathy and acceptance from both world leaders and citizens.

What is most alarming, says Mr. Marshall, is that corruption creates an environment in which dishonesty can thrive even further. Last year’s Transparency International report said that the most common source of bribe demands is the police. And in sub-Saharan Africa, corruption is one of the region’s major barriers to ending extreme poverty. In fact, Africa loses around $148 billion each year as a result of corruption alone.

As you can see, “corruption is everyone’s problem — and apathy is no longer an option,” says Mr. Marshall.

We couldn’t agree more. It’s our duty as advocates to make sure that people know that corruption hurts — not helps — the fight against poverty. We’re curious to see what comes out of this year’s IACC meeting and hope that the delegation makes some headway in this growing issue.

Good News for Journalists

Here’s some information from Thomson Reuters via the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development:

Thomson Reuters Holding Journalism Workshops in Africa on Tracking Illicit Money

November 4, 2010

By Clark Gascoigne

The Thomson Reuters Foundation is partnering with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) to hold workshops for journalists in African countries to improve their expertise in financial journalism (Full Disclosure: Norad is also a major financial supporter of the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development). The sessions will have a specific focus on how to track illicit financial flows out of the developing world.

From Thomson Reuters:

About 100 journalists, spread over eight courses in different African locations in the course of the next year, will receive intensive training to hone their financial reporting and analytical skills.

It is the first time the Thomson Reuters Foundation has teamed up directly with a national development aid agency to deliver this kind of training, although it has previously worked with multilateral organisations and local partners to run courses aimed at strengthening financial journalism in Africa.

The article continues:

A special angle in this new series of workshops is the issue of money being illicitly siphoned out of poor countries, often into tax havens. By its nature this is a highly sensitive topic, and a challenge for journalists to uncover.

The first 2 courses will be offered in Dakar (Nov 29-Dec 3, 2010) and Nairobi (Dec 6-10, 2010).

You can apply for the Dakar course here and the Nairobi course here.

Corruption Index

Transparency International has released its 2010 Corruptions Index.  Chad ranks among the ten most corrupt countries in the world. Cameroon has made some progress — just a few years ago the country was at the bottom of the ratings — but is still mired in corruption.

Corruption was a problem in both Chad and Cameroon before Exxon began drilling. Organizations opposed to the World Bank’s involvement in the project warned that rampant corruption would certainly impact any poverty alleviation plans. They were right, but the World Bank knew this, too…which brings us back to the Bank’s crackdown on corruption. You can stop doing business with companies that bribe officials, but as long as those officials operate in a culture of impunity you’re not reducing corruption.

 

 

 

Definitions of corruption

Station on Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. Photo by Christiane Badgley

Defining corruption is not as simple as one might think.  The Asian Development Bank (ADB) website provides some interesting information on the definitions of corruption: “As a shorthand definition, ADB defines corruption as ‘the abuse of public or private office for personal gain.’ A more comprehensive definition is as follows: ‘Corruption involves behavior on the part of officials in the public and private sectors, in which they improperly and unlawfully enrich themselves and/or those close to them, or induce others to do so, by misusing the position in which they are placed.'”

I recently posted an article about anti-corruption efforts at the World Bank. I found the article interesting and the efforts of the Bank worth noting. However the fight against corruption has to go a lot further than crackdowns on bribery to be effective. If the Bank really wants to fight corruption, it has to work towards a cultural shift, supporting capacity-building measures that can help countries move away from a culture of impunity and towards the rule of law.

Worse, at times it appears that the Bank plays a double role: crackdowns on bribery and fraud on one hand, enabling projects that reinforce the status quo on the other.

Look at the Chad-Cameroon oil development project. Chad reneged on its pledge to the World Bank to use oil revenues for poverty alleviation. But Bank officials will tell you that despite its problems the project has dramatically increased the revenues of Chad, adding that they continue to work with the Chadian government on revenue management.

Yes, but what does that mean?

Chad’s revenues went up dramatically because of the rising price of oil; the World Bank had nothing to do with this. Of course Bank officials say the project would not have gone ahead without World Bank participation, but this is perhaps a bit misleading. ExxonMobil wanted the Bank on board and one can argue that the Bank’s involvement was more important for Exxon than for Chad. After all, there were others, including the Chinese, who would have developed Chad’s oil without World Bank financing. Without the Bank, there may not have been an ExxonMobil-led project, but chances are good that Chad’s oil would have been developed nonetheless.

Certainly Bank financing has proven more beneficial to Exxon than to the people of Chad (false advertising?). The people of Chad are not doing better today by any measurable standards, but the government and the oil companies are doing quite well.

The World Bank is a large institution with many dedicated employees who believe in its mission. But as long as the Bank continues to finance projects that benefit multinational corporations more than the people on the ground, in countries lacking the capacity (or the will) to insure that project revenues are used to fight poverty, it’s hard to get too excited about bribery crackdowns.

Licence to probe: World Bank trains its sights on corruption crackdown

This is significant news from the World Bank so I’m posting the entire Guardian article below.  I tend to agree with the author’s assessment: this is an important step in the right direction, but there’s a long, long way to go.  I’m looking into parts of the loan agreements with Chad and Cameroon that have not been effectively enforced.  It may be too much to say that this adds to a culture of impunity, but it certainly doesn’t help advance the rule of law. I’ll be posting more about this soon.

Article by Larry Elliott, guardian.co.uk, October 8 2010

The World Bank’s latest anti-corruption initiative may sound a bit Bond, but it shows issues like fraud and bribery are being taken seriously. Photograph: Reuters

It will have 250 staff operating out of 150 countries and sounds like Ian Fleming dreamed it up. Yet the International Corruption Hunters Network (ICHN) is not something out of a James Bond novel, but the World Bank‘s latest initiative for stamping out bribery, fraud and the pilfering of money designed to alleviate poverty.

The idea is a good one. There are countless individual agencies around the world dedicated to stamping out financial crime: pooling their expertise should make it more difficult for the venal to get away with it. And not before time, since the taxpayers who last year provided the $70bn-plus spent by the World Bank in the field need to know that their money is not finding its way into numbered Swiss bank accounts or swelling the profits of unscrupulous companies.

I’m back…

The marine loading terminal (FSO), photo by Christiane Badgley

It has been quite awhile, but I’m back to work on Pipe(line) Dreams. I’ll post new video soon along with some updates and oil news.

Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon

"Oil Tear," by George Osodi

Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon | | AlterNet.

Read this and think.

This excellent article details many of the “externalized” costs of oil production — costs that we pay through the myriad subsidies we provide to the oil companies.  And one thing worth noting with this accounting: the costs of damage caused by drilling and spills in many developing countries can only be guesstimated. Standard operating procedure for oil companies working in locales far from prying journalists or vigilant authorities is to simply ignore environmental and economic damage.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Pipeline to Prosperity?

Tourists at Bume Beach, opposite marine loading terminal. Photo by Christiane Badgley

I have finished a short piece for Frontline/World to mark the 10th anniversary of the World Bank’s involvement in the Chad-Cameroon Oil Development and Pipeline Project.  This short film revisits the story of the “model” oil for development project that promised to show the world how oil could be a force for good.  Watch it below or on the Frontline/World page. You can also read more about the project and watch the film at the Pulitzer Center website.

Please support my ongoing work on this project by visiting the Frontline/World website, viewing the film and leaving your feedback. It is crucial to show funders that this work matters, especially today in light of the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades.

John Vidal, environment editor, The Observer, Sunday 30 May 2010

A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. “We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,” said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. “This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months.”

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP‘s Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

The Yes Men Inspire Nigerian Activists

The Yes Lab has helped Nigerian activists pull off a successful hoax.  Here’s the story:

Shell Flummoxed by Fakers

Company flummoxes back; activist group takes responsibility

The Hague – Hours before Shell’s annual general shareholder meeting on Tuesday, and not long after BP’s oil rig catastrophe, millions of people around the world received press releases announcing that Shell would implement a “comprehensive remediation plan” for the oil-soaked Niger Delta. The plan included an immediate halt to dangerous offshore drilling, the end of health-damaging gas flaring, and reparations for the human damage caused over the decades of Shell’s involvement.

The “good news” was fiction, created by an ad-hoc activist group called the Nigerian Justice League to generate pressure on Shell to withdraw from, and remediate, the Niger Delta. According to the activists, Shell’s operations in the Delta have helped transform that area into the world’s most polluted ecosystem, which has in turn resulted in a human rights catastrophe.

(The NJL developed the project as part of the Yes Lab, a workshop run by a group called “The Yes Men” to share their experiences and facilitate the projects of others. The Yes Lab is in the midst of a fundraising drive.)

“Shell, Chevron, and the others are perpetrating a massive, life-threatening hoax by claiming that they can’t quickly stop their gas flaring, reduce their oil spills, and clean up their mess in the Niger Delta,” said Chris Francis of the Nigerian Justice League. “Our press release revealed the truth: that there is a decent way forward, instead of the continual deceit we get from them.”

Shell’s public relations staff quickly and energetically moved to contain the fallout from the fake release. On Tuesday, Shell attempted to eliminate the Justice League’s spoof Shell website by complaining that it was a “phishing scheme” to the upstream internet service provider. Shell then sent a threatening legal letter to the Danish internet provider hosting the site.

In a related story, the Financial Times (a blog of which, incidentally, was duped by the fake release) refused to run a hard-hitting advertisement, created and paid for by Amnesty International, that called for action against Shell for its Niger Delta legacy. Like the fake release, the ad was timed to coincide with Shell’s May 18 AGM.

“For now, Shell’s legal threats are bearing ripe fruit,” said Esmée de la Parra of the Nigerian Justice League. “But they can’t keep blustering their way to destruction forever. Eventually, people will have had enough. For the sake of the planet, let’s hope ‘eventually’ is very soon.”