For building new homes, certain regulations were introduced to include affordable housing. This proved a problem for the up-market property developers aiming to attract the wealthy buyers who did not wish to mingle with the less affluent. 

So the solution was to design apartment blocks in a way that the rich and the poor were segregated. What has been termed “poor doors” and “poor floors” have been introduced and facilities such as courtyards, communal lounges and roof gardens divided. Separate entrances,  lifts and stairs were installed to keep the wealthier and the less wealthy residents apart. Technology allows developers to control which parts of new buildings people have access to. In many tenure-split blocks, access to certain floors is via a key-code, which prevents movement between levels.

  One  vast £1bn Convoys Wharf development in Deptford, south-east London, will have different entrances for residents paying London affordable rents – those on social housing waiting lists – and for slightly better-off households buying into shared ownership. The most common form of segregation, however, is the tenure-specific block. West London’s Ealing council, with Malaysian developer EcoWorld, is planning six towers with nearly 200 affordable homes confined to two blocks.

‘Poor floors’: anger over new plans to segregate tower block residents | Housing | The Guardian

 Climate change alone cannot be blamed for the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011. However, neither can it be ignored as a reason the once blossoming country became a parched, war-torn place

“Syria serves as prime example for the impact of climate change on pre-existing issues such as political instability, poverty and scarce resources,” Jamal Saghir, Professor at the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill University, told DW.

“Climate disruption was an amplifier and multiplier of the political crisis that was building up in Syria,” as Staffan de Mistura, former UN Special Envoy for Syria between 2014 and 2018, explained. “A toxic cocktail started to turn into an explosive mixture with the ingredients of the Arab Spring, the anger of losing jobs, migration to cities, as well as the purchasing power decline and the anger against the very tough and very cruel reactions by the government,” de Mistura said.

In the past, Syria’s farmers have benefited from relatively fertile and productive lands, as well as the state’s promotion of staple crop production between the 1970s and 1990s. The country of around 17 million people has been hit by three droughts since the 1980s. The most recent stretched from 2006 to 2010, and was recorded as the worst multiyear drought in around 900 years.

Decreased precipitation combined with rising temperatures resulted in desertification and devastation of agricultural land, particularly in eastern Syria. Along with this, 800,000 people lost their income and 85% of the country’s livestock died.

Since crop yields had also plummeted by up to two-thirds, the country had to start importing large quantities of grain. Consequently, food prices doubled. “But the drought still continued and people were hopeless,” Saghir said, thus explaining why 1.5 million rural workers headed to the cities for work. Those who stayed were mainly impoverished farmers who became easy targets for terrorist recruiters from groups like the so-called Islamic State (IS).

The crisis was aggravated by Bashar Assad’s decisions to reduce fuel, water and food subsidies over the years. In addition to water scarcity in rural areas, tensions rose between Kurds, Arabs, Alawites and Sunnis.

Geopolitically, the situation didn’t become any easier with ongoing competition over Syria between archenemies Iran and Saudi Arabia. “We started seeing horrible medieval sieges around many cities or villages when people were cut off from food and water, like in Homs or Aleppo,” de Mistura remembered.

Vast parts of the country have been devastated by war, water remains scarce and infrastructure is in dire need repair across almost the entire country.

“Assad has almost won the territorial war but is still very far from winning peace,” said de Mistura.

Jamal Saghir agrees: “For peace, you need reconstruction,” he said.

But with economic sanctions still imposed  and Assad’s allies reluctant to invest the future is far from promising. 

How climate change paved the way to war in Syria | NRS-Import | DW | 26.02.2021

 $50 trillion , that is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades, according to a new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation.

Had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.

Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for the US four-decade-long inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. 

 America’s inequality is old news. Many other studies have documented this trend. The RAND report brings the inequality price tag directly home by denominating it in dollars—not just the aggregate $50 trillion figure, but in granular demographic detail.

For example, are you a typical Black man earning $35,000 a year? You are being paid at least $26,000 a year less than you would have had income distributions held constant. 

Are you a college-educated, prime-aged, full-time worker earning $72,000? Depending on the inflation index used (PCE or CPI, respectively), rising inequality is costing you between $48,000 and $63,000 a year. 

At every income level up to the 90th percentile, wage earners are now being paid a fraction of what they would have had inequality held constant. 

According to Oren Cass, executive director of the conservative think tank American Compass, the median male worker needed 30 weeks of income in 1985 to pay for housing, healthcare, transportation, and education for his family. By 2018, that “Cost of Thriving Index” had increased to 53 weeks (more weeks than in an actual year). But the counterfactual reveals an even starker picture: In 2018, the combined income of married households with two full-time workers was barely more than what the income of a single-earner household would have earned had inequality held constant. Two-income families are now working twice the hours to maintain a shrinking share of the pie, while struggling to pay housing, healthcare, education, childcare, and transportations costs that have grown at two to three times the rate of inflation.

America’s 1% Has Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% | Time

 In the war against poverty, the Chinese government claims success.

 Over an eight-year period, nearly 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty, 832 poverty-stricken counties as well as 128,000 villages have been removed from the poverty list.

 Elizabeth Campbell, the leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC)  has said sorry for putting profits before people in a series of deals that leased out public property for commercial gain.

It related to the sale of leases on a public library, a teacher training centre used by council staff working in family, children and educational services, and a building housing a Citizens Advice bureau, to private school operators including Notting Hill preparatory school, which charges £21,000 a year per pupil. The assets were all in the more deprived north of the borough and part of a wider property strategy for the area aimed partly at boosting revenues to the council.

“Before 2017 the council did not find the right balance between financial benefits, and social benefits,” Campbell said. “Too often the council put the narrow goal of generating commercial income above the broader aim of delivering benefits to our wider community We fell below the bar on consultation, transparency, scrutiny, and policy. We cannot say hand on heart that residents were involved every step of the way, or that the council put their interests first and foremost, and for that we apologise.”

Ed Daffarn, a Grenfell survivor who questioned several of the property deals before the fire, said, “This report goes some way in capturing the culture of a local authority that had metamorphosed into an agent for property development; an organisation that treated the North Kensington community with contempt while playing it’s perverse game of monopoly with our public assets. “

The council’s chief executive, Barry Quirk, set the council’s failures in the context of the 2010 austerity policies of David Cameron’s coalition government, which required local authorities across the country to find new ways of raising funds.

“The period from 2010 established new orthodoxies in local government as the then government’s approach to fiscal consolidation led to substantial reductions in central government or national taxpayer-financed support for local government,” he wrote. “In the period from 2010 to 2017, councils’ ‘core spending power’ was dramatically reduced. Across London, the ‘spending power’ of councils was reduced by an average of 32%.”

Grenfell Tower council apologises for putting profits before people in borough | Grenfell Tower fire | The Guardian

 Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to that of the climate crisis.

“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” she writes in Count Down.

Sperm counts in the west had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011. Now, Swan says, following current projections, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in 2045. 

 Such is the gravity of the threats they pose, she argues, that humans could become an endangered species. “Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered,” Swan writes, “only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.”

Between 1964 and 2018 the global fertility rate fell from 5.06 births per woman to 2.4. Now approximately half the world’s countries have fertility rates below 2.1, the population replacement level.

Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival’, expert warns | US news | The Guardian

 Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to that of the climate crisis.

“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” she writes in Count Down.

Sperm counts in the west had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011. Now, Swan says, following current projections, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in 2045. 

 Such is the gravity of the threats they pose, she argues, that humans could become an endangered species. “Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered,” Swan writes, “only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.”

Between 1964 and 2018 the global fertility rate fell from 5.06 births per woman to 2.4. Now approximately half the world’s countries have fertility rates below 2.1, the population replacement level.

Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival’, expert warns | US news | The Guardian

 Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, warns that the impending fertility crisis poses a global threat comparable to that of the climate crisis.

“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” she writes in Count Down.

Sperm counts in the west had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011. Now, Swan says, following current projections, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in 2045. 

 Such is the gravity of the threats they pose, she argues, that humans could become an endangered species. “Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered,” Swan writes, “only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.”

Between 1964 and 2018 the global fertility rate fell from 5.06 births per woman to 2.4. Now approximately half the world’s countries have fertility rates below 2.1, the population replacement level.

Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival’, expert warns | US news | The Guardian

 The motives for the Myanmar military coup so far has been far from clear but this report from Al Jazeera may help to enlighten us. 

 Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, are fully integrated into the country’s economy. The key to their wealth are Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) through which the military has been able to gain a monopolistic control over core sectors of the economy, including some of the country’s most lucrative industries. Their influence and holdings represented an elaborate system of patronage that the army generals uses to maintain power. When privatisation of nationalised businesses happened with the asset sales in 2011  senior generals and their families were able to take advantage of the opening of the economy to secure ownership over many of Myanmar’s companies. The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, set up in the wake of the Rohingya crackdown, detailed the military’s business interests in a 110-page report that was published in August 2019. The report laid bare the extent of the armed forces’ involvement in the economy – exposing 106 MEHL and MEC-owned businesses as well as 27 close affiliates to the military – and the armed forces’ domination of Myanmar’s natural resources, including jade mining.

The Tatmadaw’s web of commercial interests enabled it to “insulate itself from accountability and oversight,” the UN said. “Through controlling its own business empire, the Tatmadaw can evade the accountability and oversight that normally arise from civilian oversight of military budgets.”

“During the NLD period, the military’s businesses empowered them and enabled their campaign of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The military is able to use funds from business to support military units, including those committing atrocity crimes, and it meant they were not reliant on the defence budget allocation from parliament.” explained Justice for Myanmar, an activist group.

However, in 2019, the NLD managed to secure civilian control of the general administrative department, which oversees key bureaucratic appointments, and had also introduced changes to the law on gemstones and jade. The military had been forced to relinquish much of their control.

Htwe Htwe Thein, an associate professor at Australia’s Curtin University, said, “It was a sign of the weakening grip of the military over the government administration and patronage – which had been at the heart of its ability to accumulate and protect its wealth.”

“The military’s tentacles spread across the board,” said Montse Ferrer, the business and human rights adviser at Amnesty International, which published a report last year estimating the military enjoyed dividends from MEHL alone of some $18bn  in the 20 years until 2011.

The Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, which tracks transparency and standards of corporate governance in Myanmar through its annual Pwint Thit Sa report described MEC as a “military owned enterprise controlled by the Tatmadaw”, subject neither to civilian control, or the oversight. MEHL had seven directors, and one alternate director, all of whom were active or retired military personnel. About one third of shares were held by battalions, with individuals owning the rest. The company’s constitution, it noted, also showed the existence of a “Guiding Board” – to oversee the Board – headed by Min Aung Hlaing.

 Anna Roberts, executive director of the Burma Campaign UK, pointed out that concerning some sanctions upon individual generals, “Min Aung Hlaing led a genocide against the Rohingya and the international response has been almost nothing really. He’s probably calculated that there will be a small response, but that it will be a price worth paying.” Roberts continued, “He feels he will get away with it. That’s why the international response needs to be strong; stronger than he was calculating.”

 For foreign governments, it is time to get tough with Min Aung Hlaing and his generals.  Campaigners say efforts to identify military revenues – from legal and illicit sources – and investigate the way in which the military’s money passes through the global financial system must be stepped up in order for sanctions to work effectively.

“What we’re calling for in parallel with targeted sanctions is an effort by the countries imposing sanctions to investigate the revenue flows to the military and uncover the identities of unknown shareholders and the banks that have their money,” said  Clare Hammond, Global Witness’ London-based researcher on Myanma. “That’s pretty crucial because we need to understand exactly where the military is making and keeping their money to effectively put pressure on those sources of funding.”

Others have suggested targeting the military’s banking and financial links. In a recent report on how the world should respond to the coup, Crisis Group stressed there could also be pressure on the military’s preferred financial centres in the Asian region “notably Singapore” including asset freezes and denying the generals’ financial services.

 Billions of people around the world are being trapped in poverty by systemic tax abuses, corruption and money laundering, according to the UN panel on financial integrity for sustainable development.

It said up to 10% of the world’s wealth could be hidden offshore. Illicit financial flows (IFFs) — from tax abuse, cross-border corruption, and transnational financial crime — drain resources from sustainable development. They worsen inequalities, fuel instability, undermine governance, and damage public trust. Ultimately, they contribute to States not being able to fulfil their human rights obligations.

The Facti report says recovering losses to tax avoidance and evasion could help countries such as Bangladesh expand its social safety net to 9 million more elderly, in Chad it could pay for 38,000 classrooms, and in Germany it could build 8,000 wind turbines.

The panel of world leaders, central bank governors and business and civil society representatives said criminals were laundering assets worth as much as 2.7% of global GDP each year.

The UK has steadily cut the rate of corporation tax to 19%, among the lowest in the advanced world. However, the government is thought to be considering raising the tax rate. Ireland’s corporate tax rate is 12.5%. Several UK overseas territories and crown dependencies, including the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, have a zero corporation tax rate.

602e91032a209d0601ed4a2c_FACTI_Panel_Report.pdf (webflow.com)

Tax abuse and money laundering is trapping billions in poverty, says UN | Banking reform | The Guardian