PREAMBLE: Continuing from last month’s theme, linking extreme weather patterns to longer term climate change and impacts on human displacement, this month we focus more broadly on the phenomenon of disasters. Our primary sources for this material are IDMC, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Council of the Norwegian Refugee Centre, and the 2011 United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, both referenced below [1,3]. Our selections of material are captured verbatim, with only minor editorial amendments e.g., subheadings, paragraph breaks and use of italics, to emphasize aspects that we believe to be of interest to our readers. NOTE: This does not mean that we agree with each and every interpretation, but we do believe that the essence of the material is accurate and in the public interest. Readers who find our selection to be of value of course may visit the original documents as cited.
WHAT IS A DISASTER?
The United Nations has defined a disaster as “a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own resources”[2]. By this definition, only those events where the losses exceed a society’s ability to cope and external aid is required constitute a disaster.
Most classifications of disaster identify two main types: natural and human-made. Natural disasters are subcategorized as sudden impact, slow-onset, and epidemic diseases; human-made disasters include two sub-categories— industrial/technological disasters and complex emergencies:
1. Sudden impact disasters include floods, earthquakes, tidal waves, tropical storms, volcanic eruptions, and landslides. Floods are most frequently associated with sudden migration of large populations and food shortages. Earthquakes cause the greatest number of deaths and overwhelming infrastructural damage.
2. Slow-onset disasters include droughts, famine, environmental degradation, deforestation, pest infestation, and desertification. These disasters are usually the result of adverse weather conditions combined with poor land use.
3. Epidemic diseases such as cholera, measles, dysentery, respiratory infections, malaria, and, increasingly, HIV, generally do not trigger large-scale displacement even during a severe outbreak although they often threaten displaced populations, especially those clustered in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions following a major disaster.
4. Industrial/technological disasters result from a society’s industrial and technological activities that lead to pollution, spillage of hazardous materials, explosions, and fires. Earthquakes, floods as well as human factors such as armed conflict may trigger secondary disasters such as fires, industrial explosions and pollution/contamination.
5. Complex emergencies are usually human-made with multiple contributing factors (e.g., war, internal conflict and natural disaster) and are marked by large-scale displacement, food insecurity, human rights violations and elevated mortality.
DISASTER TRENDS
Over the past two decades, the number of natural and technological disasters has climbed. From 1994 to 1999, reported disasters averaged 459 per year; from 2000 to 2004, this average shot up to 728 disaster events each year, with Asia experiencing the most events. Both hydro-meteorological and geophysical disasters are more common, becoming respectively 68 % and 62% more frequent between 1993 and 2003. This reflects longer-term trends:
• between 1960 and 2003, the number of reported hydro-meteorological disasters has risen x7, while geophysical disasters have risen x5
• despite the increased number of disasters, average annual death toll dropped, from over 75,000 per year (1994-1998) to 59,000 per year (1999-2003); the death toll from natural and technological disasters during 2004 soared to around 250,000, mainly due to the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004
• numbers of people affected (people requiring immediate assistance for basic needs, injured or homeless) continued to climb; an average 250 million people per year were affected by disasters between 1994 and 2004. Disasters during 2000-2004 affected one-third more people than during 1995-1999. Over this period, the numbers of people affected by disasters in countries of low development doubled, with Africa showing the greatest increase
• that more people are being affected by disasters reflects a range of factors. Overall numbers of reported disasters are increasing, driven partly by a more variable global climate. Meanwhile, a rapid increase of population in poorer parts of the world – combined with rapid, unplanned development (particularly in urban areas) – is putting more people at risk.
Disaster Risk Reduction: The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 [1]
The World Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Hyogo, Japan, in January 2005, pledged to reduce the risks facing millions of people who are exposed to natural disasters. The 168 delegations adopted a framework for action calling on States to put DRR at the centre of political agendas and national policies. The “Hyogo Framework for Action: 2005 – 2015” aims to strengthen the capacity of disaster-prone countries to address risk and invest heavily in disaster preparedness.
The conference also adopted a declaration recommending, among other things, that a “culture of disaster prevention and resilience” must be fostered at all levels, and recognised the relationship between disaster reduction, sustainable development and poverty reduction. These non-binding documents were to serve as a “blueprint” to guide nations and individuals to build disaster-resilient communities, calling on the international community to pursue an integrated multi-hazard approach for sustainable development to reduce the incidence and severity of disasters.
Progress in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action [1]
Disaster-related economic losses are increasing across all regions, critically threatening the economies of low-income countries and even outstripping wealth creation across many of the world’s richer nations.
The 2nd edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR11) shows that damage to infrastructure continues to rise, especially in low- and middle-income countries where governments are still struggling to address the underlying risk drivers [1,3]. And while the risk of being killed by cyclone and floods in East Asian countries is today markedly lower than it was 20 years ago, the risk of economic loss due to floods has increased by over 160% and to tropical cyclones by 262% since 1980 in the high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). During that time, the absolute value of global GDP exposed to risk tripled from US$525.7 billion in the 1970s to US$1.6 trillion in the 2000s.
Drawing from country examples, the report highlights that since 1982 each Mexican government has absorbed disaster losses of over US$10 billion, which is now rising to almost US$20 billion in the new millennium – a clear illustration of the loss governments have to deal with in the absence of investments in disaster risk management. The GAR11 report makes the direct correlation between disaster-related economic losses and the limited investment in risk management particularly at the local level, with resulting skewed actions. On the one hand, there is good progress in early warning, preparedness and response for example, but on the other hand, countries are struggling with addressing the underlying risk drivers such as unplanned urbanization, ecosystem degradation and vulnerable livelihoods as well as critical issues such as public awareness or gender.
This current economic scenario affects all regions, and governments need to decide how they can tip the balance so that the scale of public investment no longer dwarfs current investment in disaster risk management. They must also decide now on how much risk they are willing to retain and how much they can afford to transfer. Drawing on a large volume of new and enhanced data on both risks and risk management taken from UN, governmental, civil society, scientific and academic sources, as well as from almost 100 governments and regional inter-governmental organizations about their progress in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action, the report gives an important overview of trends and patterns in disaster risk globally and regionally. This includes analysis of new emerging risks, such as technological break-downs in highly interdependent systems, as experienced in Europe recently after the Iceland volcanic eruptions and in Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The report also provides new information on earthquake mortality, which is increasing exponentially in low- and middle-income countries, and points to drought risk as mainly the product of economic decisions and social choices.
As half of humanity is now living in cities - commitment to resilience is urgently needed particularly in vulnerable groups, localities, and regions. Governments, institutions, communities and individuals need to place disaster risk reduction at the forefront of efforts to preserve and protect the balance of nature, and ensure sustainable development and well-being for generations to come. More action is needed to reduce disaster risk including supporting local governments, building on the role of women as agents of change, involving children and youth in decisions that affect their future, and fully engaging the private sector as leaders in the construction of resilient infrastructure and systems for sustainable development. Well-planned and coordinated recovery will achieve better results at lower cost, and support sustainability and disaster-resilience.
Conclusion: The imperative of disaster risk reduction [3]
Each country has its own unique risk profile or signature with different kinds and proportions of extensive, intensive and emerging risks. To reduce their risks, therefore, governments will need to adopt a mix of prospective, corrective and compensatory risk management strategies together with strategies to manage disasters and anticipate emerging risks.
Countries that have invested in strengthening their disaster management capacities have witnessed a steady decline in mortality risk, at least with respect to weather-related hazards. However, much more needs to be done to reduce economic losses fuelled by the rapid growth of asset exposure. If the objective of the Hyogo Framework for Action – the significant reduction of disaster losses – is to be achieved and if progress is to be made towards the UN’s Millenium Development Goals, a new paradigm in disaster risk reduction must emerge.
Reducing disaster risk is primarily an issue of identifying the political and economic incentives and negotiating the different trade-offs. Unfortunately, without systematically accounting for disaster impacts and comprehensively assessing the full range of risks they face, few countries have been able to find these incentives, let alone to identify the costs, benefits and trade-offs that would inform a balanced and effective portfolio of risk management strategies.
The good news is that a new paradigm is indeed emerging. It is driven by innovations in accounting for disaster losses and assessing risk, in the adaptation of development planning and public investment, and in efforts to strengthen risk governance by those governments that have recognized the importance of investing today for a safer tomorrow. An opportunity to reduce disaster risk is now appearing: learning from, building on, and scaling up these innovations; revealing risk; and redefining development.
References:
1. Norwegian Refugee Centre, Internal Displacement Monitoring Council: Training on the Protection of IDPs. http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/7CE8640E88EEB381C125711500479885/$file/Protection%20during%20module%20handout%20natural%20disaster.pdf Accessed July 15, 2011.
2. From: Risks and Rights: the Causes, Consequences and Challenges of Development-Induced Displacement, by W. Courtland Robinson, the Brookings Institution-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, May 2003, as cited by : Norwegian Refugee Centre, Internal Displacement Monitoring Council: Training on the Protection of IDPs.
3. 2011 United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR11). http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2011/en/home/executive.html Accessed July 15, 2011.
Friday, 15 July 2011
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
EXTREME WEATHER, CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN DISPLACEMENT
PREAMBLE: In this issue of Global Perspectives, we report on the essence of the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, convened in Oslo Norway, June 6-7, 2011. As summarized by IISD reporting services (1):
Climate change is the world’s most serious threat to sustainable development, with adverse impacts projected for the environment, human health, food security, economic activity, natural resources and physical infrastructure. While global climate varies naturally, rising concentrations of anthropogenically-produced greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere are leading to changes which, over the short- and long-term, lead to an increase in the severity of droughts, land degradation, desertification, salinization, riverbank and coastal erosion, sea-level rise and the intensity of floods, tropical cyclones and other geophysical events. This in turn will negatively affect crop yields and food production, water supplies, livelihoods and human settlements.
An impact of particular concern is the potential for human displacement and migration (1): it is projected that climate change and the increasing frequency of natural disasters will trigger larger and more complex movements of people, including large-scale displacement of people, both within and across borders, and has the potential to render some people stateless. The implications for human welfare and security, and for strategies for adaptation, DRR, humanitarian aid and protection of displaced people, could be far-reaching.
While environmental migration is not officially recognized, according to the International Organization on Migration (IOM), the number of persons forced to move due to climate change and environmental degradation by 2050 is forecast to vary by a factor of 40 (between 25 million and 1 billion) and largely depends on which climate scenario unfolds. The world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will be disproportionately affected, with the level of vulnerability, exposure to risk and capacities of people being among the determinants of this migration (1).
BACKGROUND: This issue of Global Perspectives was stimulated mostly by media reports from the conference, particularly that which appeared on June 8th, 2011 in the Guardian newspaper (2). In “A perfect storm of stupid” Amy Goodman notes that “the news is full of extreme weather headlines – floods, wildfires, droughts, tornadoes – but the US still doesn't get climate change”. We feel obliged to add that nor do a lot of other countries that also should know better. For examples, neither Canada and Australia, both of whom have recently endured unprecedented flooding while the prospect of historically hotter and drier weather now confronts them, have in place serious policies to combat global warming. All three countries mentioned are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, as are many other countries around the world.
Goodman quotes Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate action organisation 350.org, who has been advocating to stop climate change for more than two decades:
"We're making the Earth a more dynamic and violent place … We're trapping more of the sun's energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere, and that's now expressing itself in many ways. We don't know for sure that any particular tornado comes from climate change. There have always been tornadoes. We do know that we're seeing epic levels of thunderstorm activity, of flooding, of drought, of all the things that climatologists have been warning us about."
Drawing attention to the plight of climate refugees, at the Nansen Conference, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres warned of two threats: slow onset disasters like drought and desertification that lead to "a tipping point at which people's lives and livelihoods come under such serious threat that they have no choice but to leave their homes", and "natural disasters [that] uproot large numbers of people in a matter of hours" (2). He noted that most climate refugees will be internally displaced within their home countries. However, Naomi Klein (author of The Shock Doctrine – the Rise of Disaster Capitalism) goes further in a recent warning, "This crisis will be exploited to militarise our societies, to create fortress continents”. (2)
According to Linda Ngyen of PostMedia News (3), Lester Brown, for the Earth Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. stated:
“We know the best way to manage disasters is to prevent them in the first place.” “We should’ve done something about climate change years ago, which makes it all the more urgent now to begin to get serious about cutting carbon emissions,… we don’t know the point of no return… nature sets these… thresholds…”
Brown will deliver this message in Toronto to more than 1,500 participants from around the world at the upcoming 21st World Conference on Disaster Management, June 19-22.
According to Brown, the world is ill-prepared and may not survive an impending colossal natural disaster such as flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or record-breaking heat waves that are triggered by climate change. “At some point, these disasters will be unmanageable at the societal level,” said Brown. Furthermore, a number of recent weather-related incidents should act as a warning for the world to take action. He notes that one of the most troubling impending disasters is the current “irreversible” rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If temperatures continue to rise, it is feared the ice sheet will melt completely and raise sea levels by a projected seven metres, which will disrupt rice production in the river deltas in Asia, where 60% of the world’s population lives. (3)
Envoi: It is sadly obvious that it is the poor and the dispossessed who are so far bearing the burden of climate change, not the overpaid CEOs in the fossil fuel and financial industries, nor for that matter the politicians and media sycophants who support them. However, a more positive scenario than the one painted still appears to be largely a matter of choice, even as most of our current political “leaders” remain negligent in not making a serious decision to come to grips with this potentially terminal threat. To quote again from the conference summary (1):
“Responding to climate change has the potential for millions of green jobs, to transform societies to energy systems that are safe, that are stable and that are based on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is being embraced now by more and more countries, although funding for alternative systems pales in comparison to subsidies for oil, gas and coal.”
References:
1) Summary of the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century. 6-7 June 2011. Linkages. IISD Reporting Services. http://www.iisd.ca/ymb/climate/nansen/html/ymbvol189num1e.html
2) Goodman A. A Perfect Storm of Stupid. The Guardian June 8, 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/08/climate-change-extreme-weather
3) Nguyen L, World needs to manage weather disasters by preventing climate change: environmentalist. Postmedia News June 12, 2011. http://www.canada.com/news/World+needs+manage+weather+disasters+preventing+climate+change+environmentalist/4933889/story.html#ixzz1PITTzgJ7
Climate change is the world’s most serious threat to sustainable development, with adverse impacts projected for the environment, human health, food security, economic activity, natural resources and physical infrastructure. While global climate varies naturally, rising concentrations of anthropogenically-produced greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere are leading to changes which, over the short- and long-term, lead to an increase in the severity of droughts, land degradation, desertification, salinization, riverbank and coastal erosion, sea-level rise and the intensity of floods, tropical cyclones and other geophysical events. This in turn will negatively affect crop yields and food production, water supplies, livelihoods and human settlements.
An impact of particular concern is the potential for human displacement and migration (1): it is projected that climate change and the increasing frequency of natural disasters will trigger larger and more complex movements of people, including large-scale displacement of people, both within and across borders, and has the potential to render some people stateless. The implications for human welfare and security, and for strategies for adaptation, DRR, humanitarian aid and protection of displaced people, could be far-reaching.
While environmental migration is not officially recognized, according to the International Organization on Migration (IOM), the number of persons forced to move due to climate change and environmental degradation by 2050 is forecast to vary by a factor of 40 (between 25 million and 1 billion) and largely depends on which climate scenario unfolds. The world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will be disproportionately affected, with the level of vulnerability, exposure to risk and capacities of people being among the determinants of this migration (1).
BACKGROUND: This issue of Global Perspectives was stimulated mostly by media reports from the conference, particularly that which appeared on June 8th, 2011 in the Guardian newspaper (2). In “A perfect storm of stupid” Amy Goodman notes that “the news is full of extreme weather headlines – floods, wildfires, droughts, tornadoes – but the US still doesn't get climate change”. We feel obliged to add that nor do a lot of other countries that also should know better. For examples, neither Canada and Australia, both of whom have recently endured unprecedented flooding while the prospect of historically hotter and drier weather now confronts them, have in place serious policies to combat global warming. All three countries mentioned are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, as are many other countries around the world.
Goodman quotes Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate action organisation 350.org, who has been advocating to stop climate change for more than two decades:
"We're making the Earth a more dynamic and violent place … We're trapping more of the sun's energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere, and that's now expressing itself in many ways. We don't know for sure that any particular tornado comes from climate change. There have always been tornadoes. We do know that we're seeing epic levels of thunderstorm activity, of flooding, of drought, of all the things that climatologists have been warning us about."
Drawing attention to the plight of climate refugees, at the Nansen Conference, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres warned of two threats: slow onset disasters like drought and desertification that lead to "a tipping point at which people's lives and livelihoods come under such serious threat that they have no choice but to leave their homes", and "natural disasters [that] uproot large numbers of people in a matter of hours" (2). He noted that most climate refugees will be internally displaced within their home countries. However, Naomi Klein (author of The Shock Doctrine – the Rise of Disaster Capitalism) goes further in a recent warning, "This crisis will be exploited to militarise our societies, to create fortress continents”. (2)
According to Linda Ngyen of PostMedia News (3), Lester Brown, for the Earth Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. stated:
“We know the best way to manage disasters is to prevent them in the first place.” “We should’ve done something about climate change years ago, which makes it all the more urgent now to begin to get serious about cutting carbon emissions,… we don’t know the point of no return… nature sets these… thresholds…”
Brown will deliver this message in Toronto to more than 1,500 participants from around the world at the upcoming 21st World Conference on Disaster Management, June 19-22.
According to Brown, the world is ill-prepared and may not survive an impending colossal natural disaster such as flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or record-breaking heat waves that are triggered by climate change. “At some point, these disasters will be unmanageable at the societal level,” said Brown. Furthermore, a number of recent weather-related incidents should act as a warning for the world to take action. He notes that one of the most troubling impending disasters is the current “irreversible” rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If temperatures continue to rise, it is feared the ice sheet will melt completely and raise sea levels by a projected seven metres, which will disrupt rice production in the river deltas in Asia, where 60% of the world’s population lives. (3)
Envoi: It is sadly obvious that it is the poor and the dispossessed who are so far bearing the burden of climate change, not the overpaid CEOs in the fossil fuel and financial industries, nor for that matter the politicians and media sycophants who support them. However, a more positive scenario than the one painted still appears to be largely a matter of choice, even as most of our current political “leaders” remain negligent in not making a serious decision to come to grips with this potentially terminal threat. To quote again from the conference summary (1):
“Responding to climate change has the potential for millions of green jobs, to transform societies to energy systems that are safe, that are stable and that are based on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is being embraced now by more and more countries, although funding for alternative systems pales in comparison to subsidies for oil, gas and coal.”
References:
1) Summary of the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century. 6-7 June 2011. Linkages. IISD Reporting Services. http://www.iisd.ca/ymb/climate/nansen/html/ymbvol189num1e.html
2) Goodman A. A Perfect Storm of Stupid. The Guardian June 8, 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/08/climate-change-extreme-weather
3) Nguyen L, World needs to manage weather disasters by preventing climate change: environmentalist. Postmedia News June 12, 2011. http://www.canada.com/news/World+needs+manage+weather+disasters+preventing+climate+change+environmentalist/4933889/story.html#ixzz1PITTzgJ7
Monday, 16 May 2011
CANADIAN OIL SPILL THREATENS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
PREAMBLE: On April 29, 2011, there was a major oil spill from a pipeline in Northern Alberta, Canada. This adversely affects the Lubicon Cree people living in the area, as well as wildlife, forests, streams and lakes.
By way of background, in November 2009, citing a report by Amnesty International, Global Perspectives drew attention to the estimated $14 billion in revenue generated on Lubicon lands, even as traditional water sources have been contaminated since the onset of resource exploration. Despite this, Lubicon houses lack running water and plumbing. Within 3 years of the first oil wells the number of people dependent on social assistance increased from 10 to 90%. As a matter of human rights, action is required to alleviate these appalling health conditions. In addition, it is now clear also that a competent and independent health team must be provided to the community to address new concerns about the headaches, nausea and other illness experienced since the April 29 spill.
The main aim of this edition of Global Perspectives is to support Amnesty’s call that both federal and provincial (majority Conservative) governments have a responsibility to ensure that such an assessment is carried out with the results fully available to the community as a whole, and to the general public.
Apparently also, access to the spill site is controlled. We therefore also support Amnesty’s call to ensure that the Lubicon people have full access to the spill site so as to document the spill for themselves.
The main focus of this issue is to capture the content of two current information sources: A. A post by Melina Laboucan-Massimo on the Greenpeace site, dated May 4, 2011; and B. A new Amnesty Factsheet which outlines the situation in more technical detail. Both items are reproduced verbatim below:
A. RESIDENTS, INCLUDING CHILDREN, SICK AFTER LARGE OIL SPILL IN ALBERTA’S PEACE REGION
by Melina Laboucan-Massimo - May 4, 2011 at 13:43 on Greenpeace site (cited below)
Little Buffalo community members, including school children, continue to experience nausea, burning eyes and headaches after one of the largest pipeline spills in Alberta history last Friday by Plains All American leaked nearly 30,000 barrels of oil into Lubicon traditional territory in the Peace Region of Northern Alberta.
Instead of attending an in-person community meeting, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) faxed a one-page fact sheet to Little Buffalo School. The fact sheet indicates that 28,000 barrels of crude oil, or 4,500 cubic metres, has spread into nearby stands of “stagnant water.” The spill, April 29 at 7:30 a.m., occurred only 300 metres from local waterways. The ERCB said the spill has been contained, but community members report that the oil is still leaking into the surrounding forest and bog. The ERCB also said to the community that there is “no threat to public safety as a result of the leak.” Yet people are still getting sick, the local school has been shut down and children ordered to stay at home. An investigation into the incident is underway.
“It has been four days since classes were suspended due to the noxious odours in the air. The children and staff at the school were disorientated, getting headaches and feeling sick to their stomachs,” said Brian Alexander, the principle of Little Buffalo School. “We tried to send the children outside to get fresh air as it seemed worse in the school but when we sent them out they were getting sick as well.
“The company and the ERCB have given us little information in the past five days. What we do know is that the health of our community is at stake,” said Chief Steve Nosky. “Our children cannot attend school until there is a resolution, The ERCB is not being accountable to our community; they did not even show up to our community meeting to inform us of the unsettling situation we are dealing with. The company is failing to provide sufficient information to us so we can ensure that the health and safety of our community is protected.”
The ERCB fact sheet states that air monitors are in place on site and have “detected no hydrocarbon levels above Alberta Ambient Air Quality guidelines.” But this is little consolation for a community that is scared to breathe the air. Veronica Okemow has six children, the youngest one attending the school, and she is very worried. “We are deeply concerned about the health effects on the community,” Okemow said. “It is a scary thing when your children are feeling sick from the air. People are scared to breathe in the fumes.”
Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation and also a Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner said: “The Plains All American spill marks the second pipeline spill in Alberta in just a week, with Kinder Morgan spilling just days before. This is an alarm bell for Alberta residents. If this 45-year-old pipeline were to break elsewhere along its route there would be more safety and health hazards. Communities across Alberta and B.C. are demanding an end to this type of risky development; yet the government refuses to listen. Instead it continues on as business as usual without plans for the cleaner, healthier, sustainable future that is possible.”
Source: Greenpeace Canada. Blogpost by Melina Laboucan-Massimo May 4, 2011. http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/residents-including-children-sick-after-large/blog/34569
B. FACTSHEET - BACKGROUND TO THE PIPELINE SPILL ON TRADITIONAL LUBICON LANDS
1. Pipelines and Lubicon lands
There are more than 2300 kms of oil and gas pipe¬lines through the traditional lands of the Lubicon.
According to an Alberta government study, from 1983 to 1997, there were between one and eight leaks or ruptures per year for every 1000 km of pipeline in the province, depending on the kind of pipeline.
In 2008, when the Province of Alberta approved the last major pipeline across Lubicon land (TransCanada Pipeline’s North Central Corridor project) the Alberta Utility Commission denied the Lubicon the opportu¬nity to present their concerns. The Commission ruled that the Lubicon had not established that the project was harmful to their rights. The pipeline was then built over the community’s objections.
2. Indigenous rights denied
The Lubicon Cree have never entered into a treaty with the Government of Canada. They have not given up their rights to their lands and resources through any other legal agreement. Resolution of the dispute requires a negotiated settlement but there have been no negotiations since 2003.
Large-scale development began on Lubicon territory in 1979. Since then, more than 2600 oil and gas wells have been drilled, along with some in situ oil sands extraction.
The scale of development led to the rapid collapse of the Lubicon hunting and trapping economy. At the same time, the community has been denied basic services that most other communities in Canada take for granted, such as running water and sanitation.
Since the early 1980s, the Lubicon have reported pervasive health problems associated with poverty, environmental degradation and cultural erosion. These problems include high rates of infectious dis¬ease such as tuberculosis; disproportionate numbers of miscarriages, stillbirth and other maternal health concerns; and high youth suicide.
The Alberta government has leased approximately 70 percent of Lubicon territory for future oil, gas and minerals development.
3. Repeatedly condemned by the United Nations
In 1990, the United Human Rights Committee ruled that Canada was violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by failing to properly protect Lubicon land rights from the impact of re¬source extraction activities.
Since then, the treatment of the Lubicon Cree has been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee again in 2006 and 2007, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2006, and by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Ad¬equate Housing in 2008. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination raised concerns about pipeline development in 2008.
In 2010 the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples submitted a detailed report to the UN Human Rights Council in which he said there should be no further development on Lubicon land unless the Lubicon people give their consent.
Source: Amnesty International (Canada). Fact Sheet: Background to the pipeline spill on traditional Lubicon lands http://www.amnesty.ca/files/factsheet_context_of_pipeline_spill.pdf
EPILOGUE: On May 15, 2011, efforts at clean up and to contain the impact were suspended due to numerous uncontained forest fires in the region.
By way of background, in November 2009, citing a report by Amnesty International, Global Perspectives drew attention to the estimated $14 billion in revenue generated on Lubicon lands, even as traditional water sources have been contaminated since the onset of resource exploration. Despite this, Lubicon houses lack running water and plumbing. Within 3 years of the first oil wells the number of people dependent on social assistance increased from 10 to 90%. As a matter of human rights, action is required to alleviate these appalling health conditions. In addition, it is now clear also that a competent and independent health team must be provided to the community to address new concerns about the headaches, nausea and other illness experienced since the April 29 spill.
The main aim of this edition of Global Perspectives is to support Amnesty’s call that both federal and provincial (majority Conservative) governments have a responsibility to ensure that such an assessment is carried out with the results fully available to the community as a whole, and to the general public.
Apparently also, access to the spill site is controlled. We therefore also support Amnesty’s call to ensure that the Lubicon people have full access to the spill site so as to document the spill for themselves.
The main focus of this issue is to capture the content of two current information sources: A. A post by Melina Laboucan-Massimo on the Greenpeace site, dated May 4, 2011; and B. A new Amnesty Factsheet which outlines the situation in more technical detail. Both items are reproduced verbatim below:
A. RESIDENTS, INCLUDING CHILDREN, SICK AFTER LARGE OIL SPILL IN ALBERTA’S PEACE REGION
by Melina Laboucan-Massimo - May 4, 2011 at 13:43 on Greenpeace site (cited below)
Little Buffalo community members, including school children, continue to experience nausea, burning eyes and headaches after one of the largest pipeline spills in Alberta history last Friday by Plains All American leaked nearly 30,000 barrels of oil into Lubicon traditional territory in the Peace Region of Northern Alberta.
Instead of attending an in-person community meeting, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) faxed a one-page fact sheet to Little Buffalo School. The fact sheet indicates that 28,000 barrels of crude oil, or 4,500 cubic metres, has spread into nearby stands of “stagnant water.” The spill, April 29 at 7:30 a.m., occurred only 300 metres from local waterways. The ERCB said the spill has been contained, but community members report that the oil is still leaking into the surrounding forest and bog. The ERCB also said to the community that there is “no threat to public safety as a result of the leak.” Yet people are still getting sick, the local school has been shut down and children ordered to stay at home. An investigation into the incident is underway.
“It has been four days since classes were suspended due to the noxious odours in the air. The children and staff at the school were disorientated, getting headaches and feeling sick to their stomachs,” said Brian Alexander, the principle of Little Buffalo School. “We tried to send the children outside to get fresh air as it seemed worse in the school but when we sent them out they were getting sick as well.
“The company and the ERCB have given us little information in the past five days. What we do know is that the health of our community is at stake,” said Chief Steve Nosky. “Our children cannot attend school until there is a resolution, The ERCB is not being accountable to our community; they did not even show up to our community meeting to inform us of the unsettling situation we are dealing with. The company is failing to provide sufficient information to us so we can ensure that the health and safety of our community is protected.”
The ERCB fact sheet states that air monitors are in place on site and have “detected no hydrocarbon levels above Alberta Ambient Air Quality guidelines.” But this is little consolation for a community that is scared to breathe the air. Veronica Okemow has six children, the youngest one attending the school, and she is very worried. “We are deeply concerned about the health effects on the community,” Okemow said. “It is a scary thing when your children are feeling sick from the air. People are scared to breathe in the fumes.”
Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation and also a Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner said: “The Plains All American spill marks the second pipeline spill in Alberta in just a week, with Kinder Morgan spilling just days before. This is an alarm bell for Alberta residents. If this 45-year-old pipeline were to break elsewhere along its route there would be more safety and health hazards. Communities across Alberta and B.C. are demanding an end to this type of risky development; yet the government refuses to listen. Instead it continues on as business as usual without plans for the cleaner, healthier, sustainable future that is possible.”
Source: Greenpeace Canada. Blogpost by Melina Laboucan-Massimo May 4, 2011. http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/residents-including-children-sick-after-large/blog/34569
B. FACTSHEET - BACKGROUND TO THE PIPELINE SPILL ON TRADITIONAL LUBICON LANDS
1. Pipelines and Lubicon lands
There are more than 2300 kms of oil and gas pipe¬lines through the traditional lands of the Lubicon.
According to an Alberta government study, from 1983 to 1997, there were between one and eight leaks or ruptures per year for every 1000 km of pipeline in the province, depending on the kind of pipeline.
In 2008, when the Province of Alberta approved the last major pipeline across Lubicon land (TransCanada Pipeline’s North Central Corridor project) the Alberta Utility Commission denied the Lubicon the opportu¬nity to present their concerns. The Commission ruled that the Lubicon had not established that the project was harmful to their rights. The pipeline was then built over the community’s objections.
2. Indigenous rights denied
The Lubicon Cree have never entered into a treaty with the Government of Canada. They have not given up their rights to their lands and resources through any other legal agreement. Resolution of the dispute requires a negotiated settlement but there have been no negotiations since 2003.
Large-scale development began on Lubicon territory in 1979. Since then, more than 2600 oil and gas wells have been drilled, along with some in situ oil sands extraction.
The scale of development led to the rapid collapse of the Lubicon hunting and trapping economy. At the same time, the community has been denied basic services that most other communities in Canada take for granted, such as running water and sanitation.
Since the early 1980s, the Lubicon have reported pervasive health problems associated with poverty, environmental degradation and cultural erosion. These problems include high rates of infectious dis¬ease such as tuberculosis; disproportionate numbers of miscarriages, stillbirth and other maternal health concerns; and high youth suicide.
The Alberta government has leased approximately 70 percent of Lubicon territory for future oil, gas and minerals development.
3. Repeatedly condemned by the United Nations
In 1990, the United Human Rights Committee ruled that Canada was violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by failing to properly protect Lubicon land rights from the impact of re¬source extraction activities.
Since then, the treatment of the Lubicon Cree has been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee again in 2006 and 2007, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2006, and by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Ad¬equate Housing in 2008. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination raised concerns about pipeline development in 2008.
In 2010 the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples submitted a detailed report to the UN Human Rights Council in which he said there should be no further development on Lubicon land unless the Lubicon people give their consent.
Source: Amnesty International (Canada). Fact Sheet: Background to the pipeline spill on traditional Lubicon lands http://www.amnesty.ca/files/factsheet_context_of_pipeline_spill.pdf
EPILOGUE: On May 15, 2011, efforts at clean up and to contain the impact were suspended due to numerous uncontained forest fires in the region.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
WHY IS CANADA FOLLOWING FAILED U.S. PRISON POLICIES? And What It Could Learn from NAACP's "Misplaced Priorities" Report
PREAMBLE: Canada’s Conservative government is copying failed US prison policies even as its favoured role model, the US Republican Party, repudiates them: policies that lead the US to having the highest incarceration rates in the world.
In Canada, a $2-billion prison-building bonanza is about to spawn more than two dozen new prisons as Conservative candidates make pre-election announcements on 8 prisons in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, while in Ontario 3 minimum-security prisons will each get 50 new cells, and Quebec’s medium-security Cowansville Institution a 96 cell addition, in addition to new cells at another Quebec prison.[1]
The motivations behind Prime Minister Harper’s prison obsession appear ideologically driven and politically motivated. There is no evidence of increasing crime in Canada (the overall trend is actually down), nor is there good scientific evidence that incarceration is an effective solution to most of the crime that does occur. Nonetheless, Canada is now scrambling to expand the penitentiary system to house a surging inmate population due to legislative changes that were not properly costed in the first instance. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, abolition of the 2-for-1 pre-trial custody credit will add 4,000 more inmates over the next 5 years, and other proposals including tightened parole rules and more mandatory minimum sentences will have similar effects. These ill considered legislative measures are creating a level of overcrowding that contravenes international standards on treatment of prisoners. It does nothing for rehabilitation, even as it displaces resources away from measures that could prevent crime in the first place.
It is difficult to imagine that any political party now so far into the throes of an election campaign could reverse its own “tough on crime” platform. However, we live in hope, and for this reason offer the following review of the just released and already much acclaimed NAACP policy report from the USA.
We have taken the liberty of minor paraphrasing, so as to focus on what is most relevant to Canada. However, the full report should be required reading by federal politicians of all stripes. Let us learn from this report which documents how Harperian “tough on crime” policies have already been shown to fail south of the border. QUESTION FOR THE ELECTION: Why copy failure?
References
1. Robb Tripp. Harper Government to announce more prison expansion. iPolitics.ca Postmedia News. January 10, 2010. http://ipolitics.ca/2011/01/10/harper-government-to-announce-more-prison-expansions/
2. NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.
MISPLACED PRIORITIES – The Report
Misplaced Priorities, released by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s leading Civil Rights group, focuses on the over-funding of prisons and under-funding of education in the USA (reference 2 above). The Report reveals how that nation is wasting financial resources on over-incarceration while depriving schools of resources that would help children in distressed communities - who, without adequate education, are at greatest risk of becoming the next generation of prisoners.
Misplaced Priorities examines research and analysis from leading experts on crime, public safety, and education policy, and analyzes new information gathered at neighborhood level to provide a unique local perspective on the national incarceration crisis in the USA. It was released in the context of a Smart and Safe policy framework that ensures public safety as a civil and human right for all communities, especially for the many communities in crisis. Instead of calling for “lock ‘em' up" practices to solve social problems, Smart and Safe was developed to meet public safety goals by meeting community needs and more effectively addressing violent crimes.
Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate
The report’s key conclusion is that excessive spending on incarceration undermines educational opportunity and public safety in communities. States are thereby urged to lock away fewer prisoners for drug offenses, and to redirect some of the massive amount of money that goes to jails to schools.
The report has been endorsed by some politically unexpected allies: former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, conservative founder of Americans for Tax Reform. "You have Tea Party activists and NAACP activists pushing the same bills," NAACP president Ben Jealous said during a PBS NewsHour report, referencing the prison reform movement in Texas.
Executive Summary – Selected Extracts
In Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate, NAACP researchers assembled data from leading research organizations and profiled 6 cities to show how escalating investments in incarceration over the past 30 years have undermined educational opportunities. Misplaced Priorities is a call to action for public officials, policymakers, and local NAACP units and members by providing a framework to implement a policy agenda that will financially prioritize investments in education over incarceration, provide equal protection under the law, eliminate sentencing policies responsible for over incarceration, and advance public safety strategies that effectively increase healthy community development.
Misplaced Priorities echoes existing research on the impact excessive prison spending has on education budgets. Over the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars nationwide, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. In 2009, as the nation plummeted into the deepest recession in 30 years, funding for K–12 and higher education declined; however, in that same year, 33 states spent a larger proportion of their discretionary dollars on prisons than they had the year before.
Other Important Findings from Misplaced Priorities:
1. Over incarceration impacts vulnerable populations and destabilizes communities.
• The majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are people of color, people with mental health issues and drug addiction, people with low levels of educational attainment, and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.
[Ed: In Canada, the situation is similar: for example, under current legal frameworks and practices, aboriginals are 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-aboriginals. Nothing in the Conservative “tough on crime” platform addresses these inequities.]
• The (USA) nation’s reliance on incarceration to respond to social and behavioral health issues is evidenced by the large numbers of people who are incarcerated for drug offenses. Among people in federal prisons, people in local jails, and young people held in the nation’s detention centers and local secure facilities, more than 500,000 people—nearly a quarter of all those incarcerated—are incarcerated as the result of a drug conviction.
• During the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education.
2. In the six cities profiled in the report, the NAACP research team found stark disparities. Approximately each year:
• In Texas, taxpayers will spend more than $175 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 10 of Houston’s 75 neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to only about 10 percent of the city’s population but account for more than one-third of the state’s $500 million in prison spending.
• In Pennsylvania, taxpayers will spend nearly $290 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 11 of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to just over a quarter of the city’s population but account for more than half of the state’s roughly $500 million in prison spending.
• In New York, taxpayers will spend more than half a billion dollars ($539million) to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from 24 of New York City’s approximately 200 neighborhoods (by zip code). These areas are home to only about 16 percent of the city’s population but account for nearly half of the state’s $1.1 billion in prison spending.
3. Incarceration impacts educational performance at the local level.
• For three cities—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Houston—the research team examined the spatial relationship between “high-incarceration communities” and “low-performing schools” (as measured by mathematics proficiency). By grouping five different ranges of incarceration from the two lowest to the two highest, the authors have shown where high- and low-performing schools tend to be clustered:
◦◦In Los Angeles, 69 of the 90 low-performing schools (67 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates;
◦◦In Philadelphia, 23 of the 35 low-performing schools (66 percent) are clustered in or very near neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration; and
◦◦In Houston, 5 of the 6 low-performing schools (83 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration.
Call to Action & Recommendations
Among a growing number of states that are finding better ways to manage their corrections systems, four states—Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York—have seen significant declines in their prison population as a result of policy changes that seek to re¬verse the trend of overspending on incarceration. However, the relative successes in these states have yet to spread across the nation or result in increased investments in education.
It is critical that all states prioritize education over incarceration. The NAACP calls for the downsizing of prisons and the shifting of financial resources from secure corrections budgets to education budgets. This can be accomplished if states accept the following recommendations:
1. Study the problem: Support federal, state, and local efforts to create a blue-ribbon commission that will conduct a thorough evaluation of the criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform in a range of areas, including: sentencing policy, rates of incarceration, law enforcement, crime prevention, substance abuse and mental health treatment, corrections, and reentry.
2. Create reinvestment commissions: Support commissions charged with identifying legislative and policy avenues to downsize prison populations and shift savings from prison closures to education budgets.
3. Eliminate disparities in drug laws: Support efforts to eliminate disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine at the state and federal level.
4. Increase earned time: Support reforms that would allow prisoners to earn an earlier release by participating in educational and vocational programming as well as drug and mental health treatment.
5. Support youth violence reduction programs: Support programs and policies to develop a comprehensive plan for implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies for at-risk youth to prevent gang activity and criminal justice involvement.
6. Reform sentencing and drug policies: Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses that help fuel drug imprisonment.
7. Use diversion for drug-involved individuals: Reform prosecutorial guidelines to divert people to treatment who would otherwise serve a mandatory prison term.
8. Shorten prison terms: Send young offenders who would otherwise receive mandatory sentences to structured programs to help them earn their GED and shave time off their prison sentences.
9. Increase parole release rates: Improve parole boards’ ability to use evidence-based strategies when making decisions to parole prisoners, thus improving parolees’ chances for success and increasing parole approval rates.
10. Reduce revocations of people under community supervision: Develop alternative-to-incarceration programs that will reduce the number of people sent to prison for technical violations.
11. Support reentry and the sealing of records: Support legislation that will close criminal records of certain offenders after they have not committed another crime within a certain number of years.
Reference: NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.
OUR COMMENT
Given this backdrop of serious reexamination of failed US prison policies, and the sane response to the ensuing recommendations not only by Democrats but also Republicans, surely it is time that our own Conservative Party of Canada did some serious homework, and cleaned up its own misguided policies on crime? The current divergence between Canadian and US conservative thinking is odd indeed, especially given their otherwise close ideological bonds and operational ties. If a US Republican Party Epiphany was possible, then all is not lost here in Canada: how about a Conservative Epiphany? Alternatively why not throw the blighters out, or at least consider this as yet one more reason to continue to deny them a majority in parliament?
In Canada, a $2-billion prison-building bonanza is about to spawn more than two dozen new prisons as Conservative candidates make pre-election announcements on 8 prisons in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, while in Ontario 3 minimum-security prisons will each get 50 new cells, and Quebec’s medium-security Cowansville Institution a 96 cell addition, in addition to new cells at another Quebec prison.[1]
The motivations behind Prime Minister Harper’s prison obsession appear ideologically driven and politically motivated. There is no evidence of increasing crime in Canada (the overall trend is actually down), nor is there good scientific evidence that incarceration is an effective solution to most of the crime that does occur. Nonetheless, Canada is now scrambling to expand the penitentiary system to house a surging inmate population due to legislative changes that were not properly costed in the first instance. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, abolition of the 2-for-1 pre-trial custody credit will add 4,000 more inmates over the next 5 years, and other proposals including tightened parole rules and more mandatory minimum sentences will have similar effects. These ill considered legislative measures are creating a level of overcrowding that contravenes international standards on treatment of prisoners. It does nothing for rehabilitation, even as it displaces resources away from measures that could prevent crime in the first place.
It is difficult to imagine that any political party now so far into the throes of an election campaign could reverse its own “tough on crime” platform. However, we live in hope, and for this reason offer the following review of the just released and already much acclaimed NAACP policy report from the USA.
We have taken the liberty of minor paraphrasing, so as to focus on what is most relevant to Canada. However, the full report should be required reading by federal politicians of all stripes. Let us learn from this report which documents how Harperian “tough on crime” policies have already been shown to fail south of the border. QUESTION FOR THE ELECTION: Why copy failure?
References
1. Robb Tripp. Harper Government to announce more prison expansion. iPolitics.ca Postmedia News. January 10, 2010. http://ipolitics.ca/2011/01/10/harper-government-to-announce-more-prison-expansions/
2. NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.
MISPLACED PRIORITIES – The Report
Misplaced Priorities, released by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s leading Civil Rights group, focuses on the over-funding of prisons and under-funding of education in the USA (reference 2 above). The Report reveals how that nation is wasting financial resources on over-incarceration while depriving schools of resources that would help children in distressed communities - who, without adequate education, are at greatest risk of becoming the next generation of prisoners.
Misplaced Priorities examines research and analysis from leading experts on crime, public safety, and education policy, and analyzes new information gathered at neighborhood level to provide a unique local perspective on the national incarceration crisis in the USA. It was released in the context of a Smart and Safe policy framework that ensures public safety as a civil and human right for all communities, especially for the many communities in crisis. Instead of calling for “lock ‘em' up" practices to solve social problems, Smart and Safe was developed to meet public safety goals by meeting community needs and more effectively addressing violent crimes.
Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate
The report’s key conclusion is that excessive spending on incarceration undermines educational opportunity and public safety in communities. States are thereby urged to lock away fewer prisoners for drug offenses, and to redirect some of the massive amount of money that goes to jails to schools.
The report has been endorsed by some politically unexpected allies: former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, conservative founder of Americans for Tax Reform. "You have Tea Party activists and NAACP activists pushing the same bills," NAACP president Ben Jealous said during a PBS NewsHour report, referencing the prison reform movement in Texas.
Executive Summary – Selected Extracts
In Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate, NAACP researchers assembled data from leading research organizations and profiled 6 cities to show how escalating investments in incarceration over the past 30 years have undermined educational opportunities. Misplaced Priorities is a call to action for public officials, policymakers, and local NAACP units and members by providing a framework to implement a policy agenda that will financially prioritize investments in education over incarceration, provide equal protection under the law, eliminate sentencing policies responsible for over incarceration, and advance public safety strategies that effectively increase healthy community development.
Misplaced Priorities echoes existing research on the impact excessive prison spending has on education budgets. Over the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars nationwide, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. In 2009, as the nation plummeted into the deepest recession in 30 years, funding for K–12 and higher education declined; however, in that same year, 33 states spent a larger proportion of their discretionary dollars on prisons than they had the year before.
Other Important Findings from Misplaced Priorities:
1. Over incarceration impacts vulnerable populations and destabilizes communities.
• The majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are people of color, people with mental health issues and drug addiction, people with low levels of educational attainment, and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.
[Ed: In Canada, the situation is similar: for example, under current legal frameworks and practices, aboriginals are 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-aboriginals. Nothing in the Conservative “tough on crime” platform addresses these inequities.]
• The (USA) nation’s reliance on incarceration to respond to social and behavioral health issues is evidenced by the large numbers of people who are incarcerated for drug offenses. Among people in federal prisons, people in local jails, and young people held in the nation’s detention centers and local secure facilities, more than 500,000 people—nearly a quarter of all those incarcerated—are incarcerated as the result of a drug conviction.
• During the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education.
2. In the six cities profiled in the report, the NAACP research team found stark disparities. Approximately each year:
• In Texas, taxpayers will spend more than $175 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 10 of Houston’s 75 neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to only about 10 percent of the city’s population but account for more than one-third of the state’s $500 million in prison spending.
• In Pennsylvania, taxpayers will spend nearly $290 million to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from just 11 of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods (by zip code). These neighborhoods are home to just over a quarter of the city’s population but account for more than half of the state’s roughly $500 million in prison spending.
• In New York, taxpayers will spend more than half a billion dollars ($539million) to imprison residents sentenced in 2008 from 24 of New York City’s approximately 200 neighborhoods (by zip code). These areas are home to only about 16 percent of the city’s population but account for nearly half of the state’s $1.1 billion in prison spending.
3. Incarceration impacts educational performance at the local level.
• For three cities—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Houston—the research team examined the spatial relationship between “high-incarceration communities” and “low-performing schools” (as measured by mathematics proficiency). By grouping five different ranges of incarceration from the two lowest to the two highest, the authors have shown where high- and low-performing schools tend to be clustered:
◦◦In Los Angeles, 69 of the 90 low-performing schools (67 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates;
◦◦In Philadelphia, 23 of the 35 low-performing schools (66 percent) are clustered in or very near neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration; and
◦◦In Houston, 5 of the 6 low-performing schools (83 percent) are in neighborhoods with the highest rates of incarceration.
Call to Action & Recommendations
Among a growing number of states that are finding better ways to manage their corrections systems, four states—Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York—have seen significant declines in their prison population as a result of policy changes that seek to re¬verse the trend of overspending on incarceration. However, the relative successes in these states have yet to spread across the nation or result in increased investments in education.
It is critical that all states prioritize education over incarceration. The NAACP calls for the downsizing of prisons and the shifting of financial resources from secure corrections budgets to education budgets. This can be accomplished if states accept the following recommendations:
1. Study the problem: Support federal, state, and local efforts to create a blue-ribbon commission that will conduct a thorough evaluation of the criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform in a range of areas, including: sentencing policy, rates of incarceration, law enforcement, crime prevention, substance abuse and mental health treatment, corrections, and reentry.
2. Create reinvestment commissions: Support commissions charged with identifying legislative and policy avenues to downsize prison populations and shift savings from prison closures to education budgets.
3. Eliminate disparities in drug laws: Support efforts to eliminate disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine at the state and federal level.
4. Increase earned time: Support reforms that would allow prisoners to earn an earlier release by participating in educational and vocational programming as well as drug and mental health treatment.
5. Support youth violence reduction programs: Support programs and policies to develop a comprehensive plan for implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies for at-risk youth to prevent gang activity and criminal justice involvement.
6. Reform sentencing and drug policies: Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses that help fuel drug imprisonment.
7. Use diversion for drug-involved individuals: Reform prosecutorial guidelines to divert people to treatment who would otherwise serve a mandatory prison term.
8. Shorten prison terms: Send young offenders who would otherwise receive mandatory sentences to structured programs to help them earn their GED and shave time off their prison sentences.
9. Increase parole release rates: Improve parole boards’ ability to use evidence-based strategies when making decisions to parole prisoners, thus improving parolees’ chances for success and increasing parole approval rates.
10. Reduce revocations of people under community supervision: Develop alternative-to-incarceration programs that will reduce the number of people sent to prison for technical violations.
11. Support reentry and the sealing of records: Support legislation that will close criminal records of certain offenders after they have not committed another crime within a certain number of years.
Reference: NAACP. Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. April, 2011. http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf Accessed April 13, 2011.
OUR COMMENT
Given this backdrop of serious reexamination of failed US prison policies, and the sane response to the ensuing recommendations not only by Democrats but also Republicans, surely it is time that our own Conservative Party of Canada did some serious homework, and cleaned up its own misguided policies on crime? The current divergence between Canadian and US conservative thinking is odd indeed, especially given their otherwise close ideological bonds and operational ties. If a US Republican Party Epiphany was possible, then all is not lost here in Canada: how about a Conservative Epiphany? Alternatively why not throw the blighters out, or at least consider this as yet one more reason to continue to deny them a majority in parliament?
Monday, 14 March 2011
COMPARATIVE RISKS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY
PREAMBLE: Need for Objectivity in light of Japan’s Emergency.
The situation of Japan, following the world’s fifth largest recorded earthquake since 1900 and resulting tsunami, is catastrophic. It is possible that tens of thousands may have drowned, swept away with their coastal infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, have been displaced and lost family members and their livelihoods.
The catastrophe has given rise to a new emergency as a result of damage to several nuclear power plants. There is a risk of reactor meltdown. Containment efforts now underway are in a dynamic phase, with changes in status reported on a continuous basis.
Although there appears to have been comprehensive coverage of Japan’s humanitarian disaster, the global media is also monitoring this sub-story with an intensity that may turn out to be disproportionate to the overall catastrophe, or perhaps not, giving time to both nuclear power proponents and adversaries to vent their opportunistic viewpoints.
Even some mainstream media in Canada (e.g., CTV 10 pm News, March 14 Pacific DST) appeared to hype this aspect of the disaster, seemingly appealing to populist fear about nuclear power, rather than objectively placing this in the perspective of the far greater human impact of a massive earthquake and tsunami. American PBS Newshour at 6pm was more balanced.
In light of these observations, we searched for up to date sources of scientific information on nuclear safety, and selected as a primary reference for this issue a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources [1]. We refer readers to it (reference below) for a policy-relevant technical document, written for intelligent lay readers.
A RATIONAL APPROACH TO ENERGY CHOICES
Some Observations (our italics added for selective emphasis)
As the 2010 OECD report notes, many countries are reconsidering the role of nuclear energy in their energy mix, as a means to alleviate the concerns over climate change, security of energy supply and the price and price volatility of fossil fuels. However, nuclear energy remains a contentious technology in some political circles and in the minds of many members of the public.
One of the common themes of concern is the safety of nuclear power plants. However a rational choice of energy sources should involve an even handed comparison of risks across the various energy chains available.
There is little value in rejecting one source if that which replaces it presents even greater hazards. The purpose of the OECD document therefore, is said to provide energy policy makers with quality data and information that will enable understanding of how accident risks are managed in nuclear plants and also to provide a rational analysis of the relative risks presented by the various major energy chains used for the production of electricity.
The OECD report presented data compiled by the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) on accidents causing five or more prompt deaths in the energy industry between 1969 and 2000, during which there were 1870 such severe accidents globally resulting in 81,258 deaths. The only severe accident at a nuclear power plant (Chernobyl) killed 31 plant and emergency workers.
Regarding long range health impacts in areas affected by Chernobyl, one set of OECD estimates project up to 33,000 eventual deaths over 70 years, using a particular assumption. However, the assumption is that of a "linear dose response relationship with no threshold" (LNT), and if the same logic is applied to background radiation (normally experienced by all people) … "for the 70 years…the collective dose from natural background would be… 1500 times larger, therefore theoretically causing 1500 times as many fatalities (~50 million) due to exposure to natural background radiation…” Clearly the validity of the LNT model is controversial at best, and some consider it discredited.
With nuclear accidents being so rare, and data on resulting adverse health and safety outcomes therefore being so limited, the OECD analysis also uses an alternative technique called “probabilistic safety analysis”. Applied to a Swiss nuclear power plant, this shows a 1 in 1 million-year probability of an accident serious enough to cause 2000 latent fatalities. Overall, the likelihood of an accident and radiological release at a new nuclear plant is 1600 times lower than it was when the first reactors were built.
Interestingly, latent deaths from accidents in non-nuclear energy sources were not included, although premature deaths caused by particulates from fossil fuel generation are estimated at around 288,000 per year worldwide.
Translation: Consider this in terms of over a million dead every four years from inhaling the emissions of burning fossil fuel!
From such OECD analyses and observations therefore, it is difficult not to recognize and concur with their observation that...
"Overall, accident-related deaths from (nuclear) energy use are much smaller than those that result from the health effects of fossil fuel emissions, but they attract much more media and public attention."
Discussion
The US Academy of Sciences, like scientific advisory bodies of other nations, has recognized for decades that all energy systems entail some health, environmental, or socio-political risks. But there is considerable difference among various energy systems in the magnitude, timing, and nature of these associated risks. It is this difference that allows (and requires) a degree of choice,…with regard to selecting energy alternatives.[2]
However, Japan’s current nuclear power plant emergency is being utilized by at least some of the world media to focus concern on the global expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel. Although there may be some special interests also involved in this position, such concerns have a completely legitimate foundation, especially in Japan, the only country ever to have experienced the human tragedy of nuclear bombing. Nonetheless, issues surrounding the development of nuclear power are highly complex and choices between nuclear and alternative sources should involve relevant comparisons of risks and benefits.
The body of up to date scientific evidence presented in the referenced OECD report indicates that nuclear power may be the safest available option to meet the energy demands of developed and developing nations.[1] By contrast, based on the evidence, fossil fuels are actually the most hazardous, whether through the perspective of human health (short or long term) and environmental impacts e.g., global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. Hydroelectricity appears safe (notwithstanding that the worst energy-related accident is the Banqiao/Shimantan dam failure in China, when ~30,000 people were killed in 1975), but the reality is that most hydro opportunities are already exploited. The potential of biofuels, wind and tidal power, also appear to have significant trade-offs (e.g., crops for food versus fuel; environmental and aestheic impacts of wind power; fish migration, bird habitat disruption, silt build up with regard to tidal power); however, there may be more potential in these options than currently realized as technologies advance, and this may be true also for solar and geothermal power.
Conclusion
In the end, it is obvious that risks are associated with every source of energy. And of course, in each setting decisions must be made as to the viability of available choices. However, rather than the media exploiting reactor damage associated with Japan’s major earthquake and tsunami, surely it would be more responsible journalism to promote a debate better informed by scientific evidence, taking into account long term biological and environmental sustainability, and placed in the global context.
References:
1. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources OECD Nuclear Energy Agency NEA No. 6861. ISBN 978-92-64-99122-4. http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-risks.pdf Accessed March 14, 2011.
2. Energy Policy and Strategy. National Center for Atmospheric Research. In: Proceedings of a Conference on Non-Fossil Fuel and Non-Nuclear Fuel Energy Strategies. Volume 4, Issue 5, October 1979, Pages 919-931 Honolulu, Hawaii.
The situation of Japan, following the world’s fifth largest recorded earthquake since 1900 and resulting tsunami, is catastrophic. It is possible that tens of thousands may have drowned, swept away with their coastal infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, have been displaced and lost family members and their livelihoods.
The catastrophe has given rise to a new emergency as a result of damage to several nuclear power plants. There is a risk of reactor meltdown. Containment efforts now underway are in a dynamic phase, with changes in status reported on a continuous basis.
Although there appears to have been comprehensive coverage of Japan’s humanitarian disaster, the global media is also monitoring this sub-story with an intensity that may turn out to be disproportionate to the overall catastrophe, or perhaps not, giving time to both nuclear power proponents and adversaries to vent their opportunistic viewpoints.
Even some mainstream media in Canada (e.g., CTV 10 pm News, March 14 Pacific DST) appeared to hype this aspect of the disaster, seemingly appealing to populist fear about nuclear power, rather than objectively placing this in the perspective of the far greater human impact of a massive earthquake and tsunami. American PBS Newshour at 6pm was more balanced.
In light of these observations, we searched for up to date sources of scientific information on nuclear safety, and selected as a primary reference for this issue a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources [1]. We refer readers to it (reference below) for a policy-relevant technical document, written for intelligent lay readers.
A RATIONAL APPROACH TO ENERGY CHOICES
Some Observations (our italics added for selective emphasis)
As the 2010 OECD report notes, many countries are reconsidering the role of nuclear energy in their energy mix, as a means to alleviate the concerns over climate change, security of energy supply and the price and price volatility of fossil fuels. However, nuclear energy remains a contentious technology in some political circles and in the minds of many members of the public.
One of the common themes of concern is the safety of nuclear power plants. However a rational choice of energy sources should involve an even handed comparison of risks across the various energy chains available.
There is little value in rejecting one source if that which replaces it presents even greater hazards. The purpose of the OECD document therefore, is said to provide energy policy makers with quality data and information that will enable understanding of how accident risks are managed in nuclear plants and also to provide a rational analysis of the relative risks presented by the various major energy chains used for the production of electricity.
The OECD report presented data compiled by the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) on accidents causing five or more prompt deaths in the energy industry between 1969 and 2000, during which there were 1870 such severe accidents globally resulting in 81,258 deaths. The only severe accident at a nuclear power plant (Chernobyl) killed 31 plant and emergency workers.
Regarding long range health impacts in areas affected by Chernobyl, one set of OECD estimates project up to 33,000 eventual deaths over 70 years, using a particular assumption. However, the assumption is that of a "linear dose response relationship with no threshold" (LNT), and if the same logic is applied to background radiation (normally experienced by all people) … "for the 70 years…the collective dose from natural background would be… 1500 times larger, therefore theoretically causing 1500 times as many fatalities (~50 million) due to exposure to natural background radiation…” Clearly the validity of the LNT model is controversial at best, and some consider it discredited.
With nuclear accidents being so rare, and data on resulting adverse health and safety outcomes therefore being so limited, the OECD analysis also uses an alternative technique called “probabilistic safety analysis”. Applied to a Swiss nuclear power plant, this shows a 1 in 1 million-year probability of an accident serious enough to cause 2000 latent fatalities. Overall, the likelihood of an accident and radiological release at a new nuclear plant is 1600 times lower than it was when the first reactors were built.
Interestingly, latent deaths from accidents in non-nuclear energy sources were not included, although premature deaths caused by particulates from fossil fuel generation are estimated at around 288,000 per year worldwide.
Translation: Consider this in terms of over a million dead every four years from inhaling the emissions of burning fossil fuel!
From such OECD analyses and observations therefore, it is difficult not to recognize and concur with their observation that...
"Overall, accident-related deaths from (nuclear) energy use are much smaller than those that result from the health effects of fossil fuel emissions, but they attract much more media and public attention."
Discussion
The US Academy of Sciences, like scientific advisory bodies of other nations, has recognized for decades that all energy systems entail some health, environmental, or socio-political risks. But there is considerable difference among various energy systems in the magnitude, timing, and nature of these associated risks. It is this difference that allows (and requires) a degree of choice,…with regard to selecting energy alternatives.[2]
However, Japan’s current nuclear power plant emergency is being utilized by at least some of the world media to focus concern on the global expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel. Although there may be some special interests also involved in this position, such concerns have a completely legitimate foundation, especially in Japan, the only country ever to have experienced the human tragedy of nuclear bombing. Nonetheless, issues surrounding the development of nuclear power are highly complex and choices between nuclear and alternative sources should involve relevant comparisons of risks and benefits.
The body of up to date scientific evidence presented in the referenced OECD report indicates that nuclear power may be the safest available option to meet the energy demands of developed and developing nations.[1] By contrast, based on the evidence, fossil fuels are actually the most hazardous, whether through the perspective of human health (short or long term) and environmental impacts e.g., global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. Hydroelectricity appears safe (notwithstanding that the worst energy-related accident is the Banqiao/Shimantan dam failure in China, when ~30,000 people were killed in 1975), but the reality is that most hydro opportunities are already exploited. The potential of biofuels, wind and tidal power, also appear to have significant trade-offs (e.g., crops for food versus fuel; environmental and aestheic impacts of wind power; fish migration, bird habitat disruption, silt build up with regard to tidal power); however, there may be more potential in these options than currently realized as technologies advance, and this may be true also for solar and geothermal power.
Conclusion
In the end, it is obvious that risks are associated with every source of energy. And of course, in each setting decisions must be made as to the viability of available choices. However, rather than the media exploiting reactor damage associated with Japan’s major earthquake and tsunami, surely it would be more responsible journalism to promote a debate better informed by scientific evidence, taking into account long term biological and environmental sustainability, and placed in the global context.
References:
1. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources OECD Nuclear Energy Agency NEA No. 6861. ISBN 978-92-64-99122-4. http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-risks.pdf Accessed March 14, 2011.
2. Energy Policy and Strategy. National Center for Atmospheric Research. In: Proceedings of a Conference on Non-Fossil Fuel and Non-Nuclear Fuel Energy Strategies. Volume 4, Issue 5, October 1979, Pages 919-931 Honolulu, Hawaii.
Monday, 14 February 2011
REGULATORY CAPTURE – A CASE STUDY FROM CANADA: Dietary Sodium Regulation
PREAMBLE:
The theory of regulatory capture was set out by Richard Posner, an economist and lawyer at the University of Chicago, who argued that "Regulation is not about the public interest at all, but is a process, by which interest groups seek to promote their private interest ... Over time, regulatory agencies come to be dominated by the industries regulated."[1] More descriptively he referred to this as "Gamekeeper turns poacher, or at least helps poacher".
The ethical principle stated here has long roots and other important ramifications across many areas of activity. For example, in the field of public health, it is well recognized that "People who work on not only tobacco control, but on chronic disease control, should be critical about receiving money from revenue generated through tobacco sales."[2]
Beyond the tobacco industry, there are numerous examples where the credibility of policy makers, regulators, researchers and practitioners may be undermined on the basis of their association with industry e.g., the energy industry, mining interests, agricultural chemical companies, pharmaceutical firms, beverage industries, arms manufacturers, the gambling industry… and so on. This is why government needs to remain at arms length from such industries, and not be involved simultaneously in regulating and operating such industries. Regulation needs to be based on the best scientific objective evidence; while industrial interests are also relevant, those interests should follow, not lead.
Our blog for this month focuses on regulatory capture recently facilitated by Canada’s Conservative government in favour of the food industry. For the source of this story, we have taken verbatim an article in the Globe and Mail, fully acknowledged, as cited.
1. Posner R. The Economist - Business School: Research Tools. http://www.economist.com/research/economics/alphabetic.cfm?letter=R)
2. White F. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. Uneasy money: Tobacco philanthropy and conflict of interest in global health. ProCor Global Dialogue. Dec 13, 2010. http://www.procor.org/globaldialogue/globaldialogue_show.htm?doc_id=1435171
CASE STUDY
Canada’s federal government has dismantled its sodium reduction task force and is handing responsibility over to a group with heavy ties to the food industry. Clearly this jeopardizes efforts to curb Canada’s excessive sodium consumption. Why is this important? Sodium intake is strongly linked to the risk of hypertension and stroke, which are major preventive causes of morbidity and mortality in our country. The government is also proposing new sodium reduction targets for food that are clearly not tough enough and give too much leeway to manufacturers. For the purpose of this case study, we are quoting the entire report verbatim below, as it appeared in the Globe and Mail:...
According to the report:
“The federal government has dismantled its sodium reduction task force and is handing responsibility over to a group with heavy ties to the food industry, a move many medical and consumer experts fear jeopardizes efforts to curb Canada’s excessive sodium consumption. The government is also proposing new sodium reduction targets for food that experts say are not tough enough and give too much leeway to manufacturers.
The developments have taken many key players in the initiative by surprise and are raising doubts about the government’s commitment to cutting the population’s salt consumption. ‘It’s certainly a cause for concern because there’s lots of work still to be done,’ said Kevin Willis, director of partnerships at the Canadian Stroke Network and a member of the former Sodium Working Group. ‘My major overall fear is that we will make slow progress on reducing the sodium in the food supply.’
The working group was created by the government in 2007 to develop a comprehensive strategy to slash the country’s dangerously high sodium intake, a key risk factor for high blood pressure and subsequent heart problems or stroke. The average Canadian consumes 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day, and nearly 80 per cent comes from processed foods such as soups, sauces, bread and salad dressings.
The group released a report last summer that called for a voluntary program to reduce sodium consumption to 2,300 milligrams a person by 2016. The goal hinges on the ability of the food industry to lower the amount of sodium in its products. The working group had planned to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the voluntary program by 2016, and, if necessary, call on the government to create binding regulations.
But Dr. Willis said he and others in the working group were told during a conference call in December their responsibilities would be handed to a group called the Food Regulatory Advisory Committee.
Members of the former working group say that they had expected to be involved in national sodium reduction efforts for years to come and that Health Canada has not told them why responsibility is being transferred. ‘I’m pretty upset by [the disbandment],’ said Norm Campbell, a pre-eminent sodium expert who was a member of the working group and holds the Canadian Research Chair in hypertension prevention and control.
Health Canada spokeswoman Leslie Meerburg said in a statement the department is moving to the next phase of the sodium reduction strategy and ‘will continue to consult’ former members of the working group when necessary.
Many members of the new Food Regulatory Advisory Committee are involved in the food industry, or have little or no experience in matters related to sodium or high blood pressure. For instance, chair Paul Paquin, a professor at Laval University, is also vice-president of the Canadian arm of the International Dairy Federation, which represents the dairy industry. Associate chair Keith Mussar heads the food committee of the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters and has held management positions with companies such as Kraft-General Foods and Labatt Brewing Co., according to his Health Canada biography.
Bill Jeffery, national coordinator of Ottawa’s Centre for Science in the Public Interest and former Sodium Working Group member, said Health Canada’s moves are ‘indirect evidence they don’t place a high priority’ on sodium reduction. Sodium experts are also criticizing new proposed sodium reduction targets for food. The proposals use a ‘sales weighted average’ approach, which would allow manufacturers to keep higher levels of sodium in some of their products as long as they are reduced in others.
In a consultation document that contains the proposed targets, Health Canada said the approach ‘provides companies the ability to plan their sodium reduction efforts according to which products are most amenable to reformulation or discontinuation. …’
But Dr. Willis said that rationale means Canadians will continue to be exposed to high-sodium food products that could be detrimental to their health. 'Obviously, I would have liked to have seen more aggressive targets,’ he said. ‘We want reduction of sodium in all products across the board.’”
Reference: Weeks C, Galloway G. Ottawa Disbands Sodium Reduction Task Force. The Globe and Mail. Published on-line Thursday, Feb. 03, 2011 8:40PM EST. Also published in hard copy as Doctors Fear for Canadian’s health after Ottawa disbands task force into sodium consumption. The Globe and Mail. A4 February 4, 2011.
Commentary
Under Canada’s Conservative government, there are other examples of regulatory capture, most visible being the oil sands industry where adverse environmental impact is becoming more daily more evident. The industry has been given disproportionate representation over independent scientists, for example on advisory groups now examining the contamination of fresh water sources. Later this year, we will examine this as a case study. The political mentality, having nothing to do with “conservation”, is increasingly revealed as an ideology that places commerce above science or public health as a basis for public policy. Regulatory Capture appears part of their modus operandi.
The theory of regulatory capture was set out by Richard Posner, an economist and lawyer at the University of Chicago, who argued that "Regulation is not about the public interest at all, but is a process, by which interest groups seek to promote their private interest ... Over time, regulatory agencies come to be dominated by the industries regulated."[1] More descriptively he referred to this as "Gamekeeper turns poacher, or at least helps poacher".
The ethical principle stated here has long roots and other important ramifications across many areas of activity. For example, in the field of public health, it is well recognized that "People who work on not only tobacco control, but on chronic disease control, should be critical about receiving money from revenue generated through tobacco sales."[2]
Beyond the tobacco industry, there are numerous examples where the credibility of policy makers, regulators, researchers and practitioners may be undermined on the basis of their association with industry e.g., the energy industry, mining interests, agricultural chemical companies, pharmaceutical firms, beverage industries, arms manufacturers, the gambling industry… and so on. This is why government needs to remain at arms length from such industries, and not be involved simultaneously in regulating and operating such industries. Regulation needs to be based on the best scientific objective evidence; while industrial interests are also relevant, those interests should follow, not lead.
Our blog for this month focuses on regulatory capture recently facilitated by Canada’s Conservative government in favour of the food industry. For the source of this story, we have taken verbatim an article in the Globe and Mail, fully acknowledged, as cited.
1. Posner R. The Economist - Business School: Research Tools. http://www.economist.com/research/economics/alphabetic.cfm?letter=R)
2. White F. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. Uneasy money: Tobacco philanthropy and conflict of interest in global health. ProCor Global Dialogue. Dec 13, 2010. http://www.procor.org/globaldialogue/globaldialogue_show.htm?doc_id=1435171
CASE STUDY
Canada’s federal government has dismantled its sodium reduction task force and is handing responsibility over to a group with heavy ties to the food industry. Clearly this jeopardizes efforts to curb Canada’s excessive sodium consumption. Why is this important? Sodium intake is strongly linked to the risk of hypertension and stroke, which are major preventive causes of morbidity and mortality in our country. The government is also proposing new sodium reduction targets for food that are clearly not tough enough and give too much leeway to manufacturers. For the purpose of this case study, we are quoting the entire report verbatim below, as it appeared in the Globe and Mail:...
According to the report:
“The federal government has dismantled its sodium reduction task force and is handing responsibility over to a group with heavy ties to the food industry, a move many medical and consumer experts fear jeopardizes efforts to curb Canada’s excessive sodium consumption. The government is also proposing new sodium reduction targets for food that experts say are not tough enough and give too much leeway to manufacturers.
The developments have taken many key players in the initiative by surprise and are raising doubts about the government’s commitment to cutting the population’s salt consumption. ‘It’s certainly a cause for concern because there’s lots of work still to be done,’ said Kevin Willis, director of partnerships at the Canadian Stroke Network and a member of the former Sodium Working Group. ‘My major overall fear is that we will make slow progress on reducing the sodium in the food supply.’
The working group was created by the government in 2007 to develop a comprehensive strategy to slash the country’s dangerously high sodium intake, a key risk factor for high blood pressure and subsequent heart problems or stroke. The average Canadian consumes 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day, and nearly 80 per cent comes from processed foods such as soups, sauces, bread and salad dressings.
The group released a report last summer that called for a voluntary program to reduce sodium consumption to 2,300 milligrams a person by 2016. The goal hinges on the ability of the food industry to lower the amount of sodium in its products. The working group had planned to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the voluntary program by 2016, and, if necessary, call on the government to create binding regulations.
But Dr. Willis said he and others in the working group were told during a conference call in December their responsibilities would be handed to a group called the Food Regulatory Advisory Committee.
Members of the former working group say that they had expected to be involved in national sodium reduction efforts for years to come and that Health Canada has not told them why responsibility is being transferred. ‘I’m pretty upset by [the disbandment],’ said Norm Campbell, a pre-eminent sodium expert who was a member of the working group and holds the Canadian Research Chair in hypertension prevention and control.
Health Canada spokeswoman Leslie Meerburg said in a statement the department is moving to the next phase of the sodium reduction strategy and ‘will continue to consult’ former members of the working group when necessary.
Many members of the new Food Regulatory Advisory Committee are involved in the food industry, or have little or no experience in matters related to sodium or high blood pressure. For instance, chair Paul Paquin, a professor at Laval University, is also vice-president of the Canadian arm of the International Dairy Federation, which represents the dairy industry. Associate chair Keith Mussar heads the food committee of the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters and has held management positions with companies such as Kraft-General Foods and Labatt Brewing Co., according to his Health Canada biography.
Bill Jeffery, national coordinator of Ottawa’s Centre for Science in the Public Interest and former Sodium Working Group member, said Health Canada’s moves are ‘indirect evidence they don’t place a high priority’ on sodium reduction. Sodium experts are also criticizing new proposed sodium reduction targets for food. The proposals use a ‘sales weighted average’ approach, which would allow manufacturers to keep higher levels of sodium in some of their products as long as they are reduced in others.
In a consultation document that contains the proposed targets, Health Canada said the approach ‘provides companies the ability to plan their sodium reduction efforts according to which products are most amenable to reformulation or discontinuation. …’
But Dr. Willis said that rationale means Canadians will continue to be exposed to high-sodium food products that could be detrimental to their health. 'Obviously, I would have liked to have seen more aggressive targets,’ he said. ‘We want reduction of sodium in all products across the board.’”
Reference: Weeks C, Galloway G. Ottawa Disbands Sodium Reduction Task Force. The Globe and Mail. Published on-line Thursday, Feb. 03, 2011 8:40PM EST. Also published in hard copy as Doctors Fear for Canadian’s health after Ottawa disbands task force into sodium consumption. The Globe and Mail. A4 February 4, 2011.
Commentary
Under Canada’s Conservative government, there are other examples of regulatory capture, most visible being the oil sands industry where adverse environmental impact is becoming more daily more evident. The industry has been given disproportionate representation over independent scientists, for example on advisory groups now examining the contamination of fresh water sources. Later this year, we will examine this as a case study. The political mentality, having nothing to do with “conservation”, is increasingly revealed as an ideology that places commerce above science or public health as a basis for public policy. Regulatory Capture appears part of their modus operandi.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
The VIENNA DECLARATION - Evidence-Based Drug Policy and the Need for a Paradigm Shift
PREAMBLE Canada’s minority Conservative government is currently considering Bill S-10, the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act. This Bill proposes amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and other related Acts, including the introduction of mandatory minimum prison sentences.
Unfortunately, this proposed legislation and its provisions demonstrate an approach to policy development that is ideological and not evidence-based and that will likely not meaningfully improve health and safety in Canadian communities.
Research indicates that the approach proposed by Bill S-10 will only serve to create greater health and social harms. Canada needs an evidence-based approach to drug policy that prioritizes public health, not costly incarceration schemes that will take resources away from effective prevention and treatment initiatives.
As health professionals and health systems researchers, our goal is to improve public health and safety. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. recently joined the Canadian Public Health Association, the Urban Health Research Initiative and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in petitioning the federal government on behalf of doctors, scientists, researchers, and scholars concerned about this proposed legislation, and particularly the potential impact of introducing mandatory minimum sentences.
In support of this position, this issue of PacificSci Global Perspectives draws attention to the Vienna Declaration (www.viennadeclaration.com). The Declaration is a scientific statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of evidence based research into the development of illicit drug policies.
The Vienna Declaration was the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS conference (AIDS 2010) held in Vienna, Austria from July 18-23, 2010.
Since its launch on June 27, 2010, the Vienna Declaration has been endorsed by six Nobel Laureates, thousands of scientific experts, law enforcement leaders, and former heads of state including Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former President of Brazil), Ernesto Zedillo (former President of México) and César Gaviria (former President of Colombia). In Canada, the declaration has been signed by five chief provincial medical health officers, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Health Officers Council of British Columbia, and a growing number of municipalities which deal with these issues first hand. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. also has signed.
The VIENNA DECLARATION
[Note: We took the liberty of adding italics to highlight particular areas of emphasis. The wording is otherwise unchanged.]
In response to the health and social harms of illegal drugs, a large international drug prohibition regime has been developed under the umbrella of the United Nations.(1) Decades of research provide a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the global “War on Drugs” and, in the wake of the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, the international scientific community calls for an acknowledgement of the limits and harms of drug prohibition, and for drug policy reform to remove barriers to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care.
The evidence that law enforcement has failed to prevent the availability of illegal drugs, in communities where there is demand, is now unambiguous.(2),(3) Over the last several decades, national and international drug surveillance systems have demonstrated a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity—despite massive investments in drug law enforcement.(4),(5)
Furthermore, there is no evidence that increasing the ferocity of law enforcement meaningfully reduces the prevalence of drug use.(6) The data also clearly demonstrate that the number of countries in which people inject illegal drugs is growing, with women and children becoming increasingly affected.(7) Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV.(8),(9) In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, HIV prevalence can be as high as 70% among people who inject drugs, and in some areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are among this group.(10)
In the context of overwhelming evidence that drug law enforcement has failed to achieve its stated objectives, it is important that its harmful consequences be acknowledged and addressed. These consequences include but are not limited to:
• HIV epidemics fuelled by the criminalisation of people who use illicit drugs and by prohibitions on the provision of sterile needles and opioid substitution treatment.(11), (12)
• HIV outbreaks among incarcerated and institutionalised drug users as a result of punitive laws and policies and a lack of HIV prevention services in these settings.(13),(14),(15)
• The undermining of public health systems when law enforcement drives drug users away from prevention and care services and into environments where the risk of infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis C & B, and tuberculosis) and other harms is increased.(16),(17),(18)
• A crisis in criminal justice systems as a result of record incarceration rates in a number of nations.(19),(20) This has negatively affected the social functioning of entire communities. While racial disparities in incarceration rates for drug offences are evident in countries all over the world, the impact has been particularly severe in the US, where approximately one in nine African-American males in the age group 20 to 34 is incarcerated on any given day, primarily as a result of drug law enforcement.(21)
• Stigma towards people who use illicit drugs, which reinforces the political popularity of criminalising drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts.(22),(23)
• Severe human rights violations, including torture, forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, and execution of drug offenders in a number of countries.(24),(25)
• A massive illicit market worth an estimated annual value of US$320 billion.(26) These profits remain entirely outside the control of government. They fuel crime, violence and corruption in countless urban communities and have destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan.(27)
• Billions of tax dollars wasted on a “War on Drugs” approach to drug control that does not achieve its stated objectives and, instead, directly or indirectly contributes to the above harms.(28)
Unfortunately, evidence of the failure of drug prohibition to achieve its stated goals, as well as the severe negative consequences of these policies, is often denied by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.(29) This has created confusion among the public and has cost countless lives.
Governments and international organisations have ethical and legal obligations to respond to this crisis and must seek to enact alternative evidence-based strategies that can effectively reduce the harms of drugs without creating harms of their own.
We, the undersigned, call on governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, to:
• Undertake a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies.
• Implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the individual and community harms stemming from illicit drug use.
• Decriminalise drug users, scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options and abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.(30)
• Unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the implementation of the comprehensive package of HIV interventions spelled out in the WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS Target Setting Guide.(31)
• Meaningfully involve members of the affected community in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives.
Basing drug policies on scientific evidence will not eliminate drug use or the problems stemming from drug injecting. However, reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfill human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.
References
1. William B McAllister. Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century: an international history. Routledge, New York, 2000. [↩]
2. Reuter P. Ten years after the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals. Addiction 2009;104:510-7. [↩]
3. United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs: 1981 through the Second Quarter of 2003. Executive Office of the President; Washington, DC, 2004. [↩]
4. United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs: 1981 through the Second Quarter of 2003. Executive Office of the President; Washington, DC, 2004. [↩]
5. World Drug Report 2005. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; 2005. [↩]
6. Degenhardt L, Chiu W-T, Sampson N, et al. Toward a global view of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. PLOS Medicine 2008;5:1053-67. [↩]
7. Mathers BM, Degenhardt L, Phillips B, et al. Global epidemiology of injecting drug use and HIV among people who inject drugs: A systematic review. Lancet 2008;372:1733-45. [↩]
8. Wolfe D, Malinowska-Sempruch K. Illicit drug policies and the global HIV epidemic: Effects of UN and national government approaches. New York: Open Society Institute; 2004. [↩]
9. 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; Geneva, 2008. [↩]
10. Wolfe D, Malinowska-Sempruch K. Illicit drug policies and the global HIV epidemic: Effects of UN and national government approaches. New York: Open Society Institute; 2004. [↩]
11. Lurie P, Drucker E. An opportunity lost: HIV infections associated with lack of a national needle-exchange programme in the USA. Lancet 1997;349:604. [↩]
12. Rhodes T, Lowndes C, Judd A, et al. Explosive spread and high prevalence of HIV infection among injecting drug users in Togliatti City, Russia. AIDS 2002;16:F25. [↩]
13. Taylor A, Goldberg D, Emslie J, et al. Outbreak of HIV infection in a Scottish prison. British Medical Journal 1995;310:289. [↩]
14. Sarang A, Rhodes T, Platt L, et al. Drug injecting and syringe use in the HIV risk environment of Russian penitentiary institutions: qualitative study. Addiction 2006;101:1787. [↩]
15. Jurgens R, Ball A, Verster A. Interventions to reduce HIV transmission related to injecting drug use in prison. Lancet Infectious Disease 2009;9:57-66. [↩]
16. Davis C, Burris S, Metzger D, Becher J, Lynch K. Effects of an intensive street-level police intervention on syringe exchange program utilization: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. American Journal of Public Health 2005;95:233. [↩]
17. Bluthenthal RN, Kral AH, Lorvick J, Watters JK. Impact of law enforcement on syringe exchange programs: A look at Oakland and San Francisco. Medical Anthropology 1997;18:61. [↩]
18. Rhodes T, Mikhailova L, Sarang A, et al. Situational factors influencing drug injecting, risk reduction and syringe exchange in Togliatti City, Russian Federation: a qualitative study of micro risk environment. Social Science & Medicine 2003;57:39. [↩]
19. Fellner J, Vinck P. Targeting blacks: Drug law enforcement and race in the United States. New York: Human Rights Watch; 2008. [↩]
20. Drucker E. Population impact under New York’s Rockefeller drug laws: An analysis of life years lost. Journal of Urban Health 2002;79:434-44. [↩]
21. Warren J, Gelb A, Horowitz J, Riordan J. One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008. The Pew Center on the States Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts 2008. [↩]
22. Rhodes T, Singer M, Bourgois P, Friedman SR, Strathdee SA. The social structural production of HIV risk among injecting drug users. Social Science & Medicine 2005;61:1026. [↩]
23. Ahern J, Stuber J, Galea S. Stigma, discrimination and the health of illicit drug users. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2007;88:188. [↩]
24. Elliott R, Csete J, Palepu A, Kerr T. Reason and rights in global drug control policy. Canadian Medical Association Journal 2005;172:655-6. [↩]
25. Edwards G, Babor T, Darke S, et al. Drug trafficking: time to abolish the death penalty. Addiction 2009;104:3. [↩]
26. ref:3 [↩]
27. ref:3 [↩]
28. The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (2001). Shoveling up: The impact of substance abuse on State budgets. [↩]
29. Wood E, Montaner JS, Kerr T. Illicit drug addiction, infectious disease spread, and the need for an evidence-based response. Lancet Infectious Diseases 2008;8:142-3. [↩]
30. Klag S, O’Callaghan F, Creed P. The use of legal coercion in the treatment of substance abusers: An overview and critical analysis of thirty years of research. Substance Use & Misuse 2005;40:1777. [↩]
31. WHO, UNODC, UNAIDS 2009. Technical Guide for countries to set targets for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care for injection drug users. [↩]
SOURCE: http://www.viennadeclaration.com:80/the-declaration/
Unfortunately, this proposed legislation and its provisions demonstrate an approach to policy development that is ideological and not evidence-based and that will likely not meaningfully improve health and safety in Canadian communities.
Research indicates that the approach proposed by Bill S-10 will only serve to create greater health and social harms. Canada needs an evidence-based approach to drug policy that prioritizes public health, not costly incarceration schemes that will take resources away from effective prevention and treatment initiatives.
As health professionals and health systems researchers, our goal is to improve public health and safety. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. recently joined the Canadian Public Health Association, the Urban Health Research Initiative and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in petitioning the federal government on behalf of doctors, scientists, researchers, and scholars concerned about this proposed legislation, and particularly the potential impact of introducing mandatory minimum sentences.
In support of this position, this issue of PacificSci Global Perspectives draws attention to the Vienna Declaration (www.viennadeclaration.com). The Declaration is a scientific statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of evidence based research into the development of illicit drug policies.
The Vienna Declaration was the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS conference (AIDS 2010) held in Vienna, Austria from July 18-23, 2010.
Since its launch on June 27, 2010, the Vienna Declaration has been endorsed by six Nobel Laureates, thousands of scientific experts, law enforcement leaders, and former heads of state including Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former President of Brazil), Ernesto Zedillo (former President of México) and César Gaviria (former President of Colombia). In Canada, the declaration has been signed by five chief provincial medical health officers, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Health Officers Council of British Columbia, and a growing number of municipalities which deal with these issues first hand. Pacific Health & Development Sciences Inc. also has signed.
The VIENNA DECLARATION
[Note: We took the liberty of adding italics to highlight particular areas of emphasis. The wording is otherwise unchanged.]
In response to the health and social harms of illegal drugs, a large international drug prohibition regime has been developed under the umbrella of the United Nations.(1) Decades of research provide a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the global “War on Drugs” and, in the wake of the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, the international scientific community calls for an acknowledgement of the limits and harms of drug prohibition, and for drug policy reform to remove barriers to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care.
The evidence that law enforcement has failed to prevent the availability of illegal drugs, in communities where there is demand, is now unambiguous.(2),(3) Over the last several decades, national and international drug surveillance systems have demonstrated a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity—despite massive investments in drug law enforcement.(4),(5)
Furthermore, there is no evidence that increasing the ferocity of law enforcement meaningfully reduces the prevalence of drug use.(6) The data also clearly demonstrate that the number of countries in which people inject illegal drugs is growing, with women and children becoming increasingly affected.(7) Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV.(8),(9) In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, HIV prevalence can be as high as 70% among people who inject drugs, and in some areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are among this group.(10)
In the context of overwhelming evidence that drug law enforcement has failed to achieve its stated objectives, it is important that its harmful consequences be acknowledged and addressed. These consequences include but are not limited to:
• HIV epidemics fuelled by the criminalisation of people who use illicit drugs and by prohibitions on the provision of sterile needles and opioid substitution treatment.(11), (12)
• HIV outbreaks among incarcerated and institutionalised drug users as a result of punitive laws and policies and a lack of HIV prevention services in these settings.(13),(14),(15)
• The undermining of public health systems when law enforcement drives drug users away from prevention and care services and into environments where the risk of infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis C & B, and tuberculosis) and other harms is increased.(16),(17),(18)
• A crisis in criminal justice systems as a result of record incarceration rates in a number of nations.(19),(20) This has negatively affected the social functioning of entire communities. While racial disparities in incarceration rates for drug offences are evident in countries all over the world, the impact has been particularly severe in the US, where approximately one in nine African-American males in the age group 20 to 34 is incarcerated on any given day, primarily as a result of drug law enforcement.(21)
• Stigma towards people who use illicit drugs, which reinforces the political popularity of criminalising drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts.(22),(23)
• Severe human rights violations, including torture, forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, and execution of drug offenders in a number of countries.(24),(25)
• A massive illicit market worth an estimated annual value of US$320 billion.(26) These profits remain entirely outside the control of government. They fuel crime, violence and corruption in countless urban communities and have destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan.(27)
• Billions of tax dollars wasted on a “War on Drugs” approach to drug control that does not achieve its stated objectives and, instead, directly or indirectly contributes to the above harms.(28)
Unfortunately, evidence of the failure of drug prohibition to achieve its stated goals, as well as the severe negative consequences of these policies, is often denied by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.(29) This has created confusion among the public and has cost countless lives.
Governments and international organisations have ethical and legal obligations to respond to this crisis and must seek to enact alternative evidence-based strategies that can effectively reduce the harms of drugs without creating harms of their own.
We, the undersigned, call on governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, to:
• Undertake a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies.
• Implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the individual and community harms stemming from illicit drug use.
• Decriminalise drug users, scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options and abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.(30)
• Unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the implementation of the comprehensive package of HIV interventions spelled out in the WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS Target Setting Guide.(31)
• Meaningfully involve members of the affected community in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives.
Basing drug policies on scientific evidence will not eliminate drug use or the problems stemming from drug injecting. However, reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfill human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.
References
1. William B McAllister. Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century: an international history. Routledge, New York, 2000. [↩]
2. Reuter P. Ten years after the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals. Addiction 2009;104:510-7. [↩]
3. United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs: 1981 through the Second Quarter of 2003. Executive Office of the President; Washington, DC, 2004. [↩]
4. United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs: 1981 through the Second Quarter of 2003. Executive Office of the President; Washington, DC, 2004. [↩]
5. World Drug Report 2005. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; 2005. [↩]
6. Degenhardt L, Chiu W-T, Sampson N, et al. Toward a global view of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. PLOS Medicine 2008;5:1053-67. [↩]
7. Mathers BM, Degenhardt L, Phillips B, et al. Global epidemiology of injecting drug use and HIV among people who inject drugs: A systematic review. Lancet 2008;372:1733-45. [↩]
8. Wolfe D, Malinowska-Sempruch K. Illicit drug policies and the global HIV epidemic: Effects of UN and national government approaches. New York: Open Society Institute; 2004. [↩]
9. 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; Geneva, 2008. [↩]
10. Wolfe D, Malinowska-Sempruch K. Illicit drug policies and the global HIV epidemic: Effects of UN and national government approaches. New York: Open Society Institute; 2004. [↩]
11. Lurie P, Drucker E. An opportunity lost: HIV infections associated with lack of a national needle-exchange programme in the USA. Lancet 1997;349:604. [↩]
12. Rhodes T, Lowndes C, Judd A, et al. Explosive spread and high prevalence of HIV infection among injecting drug users in Togliatti City, Russia. AIDS 2002;16:F25. [↩]
13. Taylor A, Goldberg D, Emslie J, et al. Outbreak of HIV infection in a Scottish prison. British Medical Journal 1995;310:289. [↩]
14. Sarang A, Rhodes T, Platt L, et al. Drug injecting and syringe use in the HIV risk environment of Russian penitentiary institutions: qualitative study. Addiction 2006;101:1787. [↩]
15. Jurgens R, Ball A, Verster A. Interventions to reduce HIV transmission related to injecting drug use in prison. Lancet Infectious Disease 2009;9:57-66. [↩]
16. Davis C, Burris S, Metzger D, Becher J, Lynch K. Effects of an intensive street-level police intervention on syringe exchange program utilization: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. American Journal of Public Health 2005;95:233. [↩]
17. Bluthenthal RN, Kral AH, Lorvick J, Watters JK. Impact of law enforcement on syringe exchange programs: A look at Oakland and San Francisco. Medical Anthropology 1997;18:61. [↩]
18. Rhodes T, Mikhailova L, Sarang A, et al. Situational factors influencing drug injecting, risk reduction and syringe exchange in Togliatti City, Russian Federation: a qualitative study of micro risk environment. Social Science & Medicine 2003;57:39. [↩]
19. Fellner J, Vinck P. Targeting blacks: Drug law enforcement and race in the United States. New York: Human Rights Watch; 2008. [↩]
20. Drucker E. Population impact under New York’s Rockefeller drug laws: An analysis of life years lost. Journal of Urban Health 2002;79:434-44. [↩]
21. Warren J, Gelb A, Horowitz J, Riordan J. One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008. The Pew Center on the States Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts 2008. [↩]
22. Rhodes T, Singer M, Bourgois P, Friedman SR, Strathdee SA. The social structural production of HIV risk among injecting drug users. Social Science & Medicine 2005;61:1026. [↩]
23. Ahern J, Stuber J, Galea S. Stigma, discrimination and the health of illicit drug users. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2007;88:188. [↩]
24. Elliott R, Csete J, Palepu A, Kerr T. Reason and rights in global drug control policy. Canadian Medical Association Journal 2005;172:655-6. [↩]
25. Edwards G, Babor T, Darke S, et al. Drug trafficking: time to abolish the death penalty. Addiction 2009;104:3. [↩]
26. ref:3 [↩]
27. ref:3 [↩]
28. The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (2001). Shoveling up: The impact of substance abuse on State budgets. [↩]
29. Wood E, Montaner JS, Kerr T. Illicit drug addiction, infectious disease spread, and the need for an evidence-based response. Lancet Infectious Diseases 2008;8:142-3. [↩]
30. Klag S, O’Callaghan F, Creed P. The use of legal coercion in the treatment of substance abusers: An overview and critical analysis of thirty years of research. Substance Use & Misuse 2005;40:1777. [↩]
31. WHO, UNODC, UNAIDS 2009. Technical Guide for countries to set targets for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care for injection drug users. [↩]
SOURCE: http://www.viennadeclaration.com:80/the-declaration/
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