Less than three weeks to go before the Qatar World Cup kicks off. Krishna Timislina worked for several years at construction sites for the stadiums the conditions were “hell on earth”. Sometimes 18 hour working days in searing heat and powered by energy drinks), water of dubious quality, prefab housing without space or privacy, and people dying from accidents or exhaustion.

 He told French journalists Sébastian Castelier and Quentin Muller for their book “Les Esclaves de l’Homme Pétrole” (“The Oil Man’s Slaves”) that with “precarious living conditions, terrible water quality and interminable shifts, we know our health is being damaged – but do we have a choice?” He explained, “So much of Qatar is being built thanks to our work – stadiums, shopping malls, bridges and roads are being constructed – but we’re not invited to share in the dream.” 

 Qatar has used a massive influx of foreign workers to build the infrastructure for the footballing extravaganza – with migrants building roads, a new airport, a railway network and seven new stadiums. However, the human cost has been dreadful. 

In a report published in August 2022, Amnesty International said that more than 15,021 foreigners of all ages and occupations had died in Qatar between 2010 and 2019. A February 2021 investigation found that at least 6,751 migrant workers died in Qatar from 2010 to 2020. But Castelier noted the real number is likely much higher. “These figures mainly come from Asian embassies in Qatar; we don’t have the statistics for African workers there.”  That figure also does not take into account workers who die after returning home. They point out that many such untimely deaths are due to kidney problems following the consumption of unsafe water. An Amnesty International investigation found that at least 6,751 migrant workers died in Qatar from 2010 to 2020 from drinking homemade alcohol and energy drinks as they struggle to keep up with the frantic work pace.

Qatar’s climate has a lot to do with the high mortality rate. “It’s very hot in the summer,” Castelier said. “It’s just hell working in the construction industry. Qatar has banned working outdoors in the open from 10:30am to 3pm, but many violations have been reported.”

Lack of training can be another cause of death. “They put people who haven’t been trained on huge machines or on scaffolding, and they often have no idea about safety measures – so there are plenty of accidents,” Castelier said. Qatar knows all this makes for bad PR: “It’s perfectly aware that the stories about migrants workers are a problem; they’re constantly trying to put forward a narrative that they’re a modernising country.”

Qatar hosts nearly 400,000 migrant workers, often in conditions of modern-day slavery.

“It’s like a disposable workforce,” Castelier said. “That’s how migration to the Gulf states works. It’s impossible for an immigrant to obtain local citizenship. So when they’re no longer working, they have to leave.” Migrants arriving in Gulf states soon fall prey to an exploitative system, with “kafala” at the heart of it. In a widely used system in the Gulf, a sponsor (or “kafeel”) is assigned to each migrant, often his or her employer. The system puts migrants at the mercy of their employers, who often confiscate their passports upon arrival.

The kafala system “gives the employer a lot of power over the employee”, Castelier said. “Everything is OK if the employer respects the rules. But if not, the employee’s life can become a living hell.”

In a public relations attempt to improve its image, Qatar officially abolished the kafala system in 2016. Yet in reality, “many aspects of it are still in force”, Castelier said. “Most notably, an employer can say that a migrant working for them is a fugitive. So if a domestic worker, for example, wants to denounce abuses by their employer, the latter can easily say that they have absconded – and instead of looking into the worker’s complaints, the police will just return them to their employer.”

‘Just hell’: New book shines light on migrant deaths ahead of Qatar World Cup (france24.com)

 The Institute for Fiscal Studies said wealth had grown rapidly compared with earnings from work since the 2008 financial crisis, driven by a surge in house prices and financial assets – such as stocks and shares – at a time of flatlining progress for average wages. The IFS found wealth levels growing at much faster rates than income meant it was now harder for working families to enter the ranks of the rich in Britain through hard work alone.

Robert Joyce, the deputy director of the IFS, said: “A generation of Britons has ridden a wave of growing asset prices, pushing up the value of their houses and investments. Meanwhile, more than a decade of stagnant earnings has held back younger generations for whom earning their own economic success has become increasingly difficult.” He added,  “The fact that we can no longer be sure that the young will grow up with living standards that match their predecessors is a remarkable social change.”

It said the amount of time it would take to earn enough to move from the middle wealth bracket to the top had increased by almost six years compared with a decade ago. In 2008, it took 10 years’ worth of typical full-time gross earnings to move from the middle to the top wealth bracket. By 2018, this had increased to almost 16 years.

“…it is wealth that is increasingly at the heart of the most pressing economic inequalities today,” the report said.  Average wage growth has stalled over the past decade, with typical pay worth less today than in 2007 after inflation is taken into account.

The economics thinktank said the rapid increases for those who already owned wealth had coincided with a long-term stagnation in earnings. This meant younger adults in particular could “no longer expect to see greatly improving living standards as they age” compared with the faster pay rises and access to cheaper housing enjoyed by their parents’ generation.

 The IFS said only 36% of those born in the 1980s owned their own home by the age of 30, compared with 55% for those born in the 1970s and over 60% of those born in the 1950s and 1960s.  Inherited wealth was becoming more important for the lifetime economic resources of younger generations.

Rising asset wealth and falling real wages ‘drive inequality in Britain’ | Economics | The Guardian

 The chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA),  Andy Haldane,  has warned more than a century of progress on health and wellbeing was going into reverse, with a direct impact on the economy and the cost of living emergency. “We’re in a situation for the first time, probably since the Industrial Revolution, where health and wellbeing are in retreat,” he said. “Having been an accelerator of wellbeing for the last 200 years, health is now serving as a brake in the rise of growth and wellbeing of our citizens.”

Haldane said the economy was being held back after a sharp fall in the number of people in the British workforce since the onset of the Covid pandemic. However, the former chief economist at the Bank of England said the global health emergency had only served as a “tipping point”. “Spending on healthcare systems, at least by G7 comparisons, the UK sits towards the bottom of the pack,” he said. “It should come as no surprise that we therefore see macroeconomic headwinds such as a record number of unfilled vacancies. We haven’t got enough people.”

About 600,000 workers have dropped out of the workforce, including 200,000 out of work for five years or more due to ill health.  30,000 more people with long Covid and are unable to work. About 50,000 more people have retired early in the last two years, while the number of people who have never worked swelled by 250,000 with two-thirds of this group accounted for by students and a third by people with ill health or disabilities not being able to get into work rather than leaving it.

The situation is made worse by the baby boomer generation taking retirement and lower migration – “with half a million fewer non-UK born workers than there would have been on the pre-2016 trend”.

UK economy being held back by worsening health of British public, Andy Haldane warns | Economic growth (GDP) | The Guardian

The Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) launched by more than two dozen nations at the COP27 was denounced by Greenpeace as unlikely to stop deforestation. 

“…this partnership is nothing but a green light for eight more years of forest destruction, with little respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” Victorine Che Thōner of Greenpeace International said. According to Thōner, the alliance “gives polluters a license to do more business as usual through carbon trickery instead of advancing true climate action.”

Notably, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo are not part of the FCLP.

At last year’s COP26 meeting in Scotland, 145 governments signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” by the end of the decade. However, as the annual Forest Declaration Assessment showed two weeks ago, “not a single global indicator is on track to meet these 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation and restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape.” Only 22% of the $12 billion in public money pledged for forests by 2025, funds committed in Glasgow, had so far been disbursed. This sum pales in comparison to the $460 billion per year that is needed to protect, restore, and improve forests on a global scale.

26,000 square miles of forest—an area roughly equivalent to Ireland—were destroyed around the world in 2021, harming biodiverse ecosystems and releasing into the atmosphere 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution, or about as much as the European Union generates each year.

Scientists warned that averting the worst consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises hinges in part on putting an end to clear-cutting, which is being driven by corporations looking to make space for cattle ranching, monocropping, and other harmful practices.

Greenpeace said the new pact “was mainly a progress review from 2021 in support of carbon markets as a mechanism for funding investment in protecting existing carbon sinks.”

Thōner explained that “…we must look beyond the needs of greedy businesses to effectively deliver on non-market approaches for nature protection…Real commitments are needed now to protect and restore nature along with the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

Greenpeace Dismisses COP27 Deforestation Pact as ‘Carbon Trickery’ (commondreams.org)

 Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claimed.  Under the UN system, countries are responsible for reporting their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Trace, a project to measure at source the true levels of carbon dioxide and other global heating gases, published a new report on Wednesday showing that half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities.

Many are underreporting their emissions, and there are few means of calling them to account. Atmospheric levels of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have been rising strongly in recent years, but countries’ reported emissions of the gas have been found to be much lower than the reality.

 Under-reporting emissions, Al Gore, explained,  “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity.”

Saudi Arabia has reported its oil and gas production emissions. We have measured them empirically and we find a huge gap, that the emissions are larger than those that have been reported. When we look more carefully at the emissions we find from their refining centre, it turns out that the volume of emissions from their refining centre, that have not been reported, exactly match the amount by which their reported admissions are undercounted.

Oil and gas greenhouse emissions ‘three times higher’ than producers claim | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 “A growing number of governments and nonstate actors are pledging to be carbon-free—and obviously that’s good news,” Guterres said while introducing a report, entitled Integrity Matters: Net-Zero Commitments by Businesses, Financial Institutions, Cities, and Regions, “The problem is that the criteria and benchmarks for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of rigor and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through.”

“We must have zero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing,” he continued. “Today’s expert group report is a how-to guide to ensure credible, accountable net-zero pledges. Let’s tell it like it is. Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end. “

“We urgently need every business, investor, city, state, and region to walk the talk on their net-zero promises,” Guterres added. “We cannot afford slow movers, fake movers, or any form of greenwashing.”

“This analysis only scratches the surface of how deeply conflicted these ‘net-zero’ initiatives are,” Sara Shaw, climate justice and energy international program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, said in a statement. “It paints a picture of how this isn’t just about polluters trying to build ‘green credibility,’ but of how they position themselves to shape and obstruct policy progress.”

Climate Defenders Urge ‘Zero Tolerance for Net-Zero Greenwashing’ as UN Publishes New Report (commondreams.org)

 The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, according to the State of the Cryosphere report, a major new report, has warned.

Even if planet-heating emissions are radically cut, the world’s vast ice sheets at the poles will continue to melt away for hundreds of years, causing up to three metres of sea level rise that will imperil coastal cities, the report states. The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds. Disappearance of sea ice will open up the dark Arctic ocean, which will absorb – rather than reflect – heat, causing global heating to escalate further. It will also upend the region’s ecosystem, harming everything from algae to large animals such as seals and polar bears that need the sea ice for hunting.

“There’s nothing we can do about that now, we’ve just screwed up and let the system warm too much already,” said Julie Brigham-Grette, a scientist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and report co-author, about the sea ice. “That milestone has now past so the next thing we need to avoid is ice shelf collapses in Antarctica and the further breakdown of the ice systems in Greenland. We can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle once they are gone.” 

She continued,  “The costs to places like Florida and Bangladesh and the Nile delta are just enormous, it’s going to be a huge strain,” adding that the Arctic is now shifting towards a state not seen in 3 million years. “We can’t allow ourselves to get to such a place but what worries me is we won’t respond to this emergency until it is front of us.”

“It’s a terminal diagnosis and now we have to live with consequences,” said Robbie Mallett, a sea ice expert at University College London Earth Sciences. “It’s been quite emotional to think of a time by the end of my career when I will see an Arctic free of sea ice. It’s been a shocking few years in Greenland with ice disappearing before our eyes. We are driving a whole environment to extinction.”

The loss of Arctic sea ice is “not the only sign of growing cryosphere collapse”. In just the past year, researchers have been astonished by the sight of rain at the summit of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet for the first time on record, followed by rain, rather than snow, falling on east Antarctica in March amid startling heatwaves at both poles, with temperatures 40C (72F) above normal. The report documents shell damage to crustaceans in the Arctic Ocean, a sign that the seawater is acidifying due to greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of 5% of glacier ice in the Alps over a single summer and a record low sea ice extent around Antarctica, earlier this year.

A huge amount of sea level rise appears to be already locked in due to the rampant burning of fossil fuels, the report states, with sections of the west Antarctic ice sheet potentially collapsing even without any further emissions over the coming centuries, causing more than four metres of additional sea level rise. Greenland’s ice loss has already committed around 30cm to sea level rise.

The Arctic is heating up around four times as quickly as the global average, which, combined with record heatwaves in Antarctica, risks a rapid “meltwater pulse” not seen at any time in the past 130,000 years, during which time human civilization has developed. This surge in water could prove disastrous for coastal areas.

Meanwhile, glaciers in places such as the Himalayas and the Andes are winnowing away, risking the drinking water supplies of tens of millions of people and, conversely, raising the threat of disastrous flooding.

 Brigham-Grette said, “If we don’t accept that moral responsibility we aren’t going to be very good ancestors, we won’t be looked upon fondly. It will be a human tragedy.”

World faces ‘terminal’ loss of Arctic sea ice during summers, report warns | Climate crisis | The Guardian

Oil producers have cashed in on a period of geopolitical turmoil due to the conflict in Ukraine that has shaken up the global energy market and sent prices skyrocketing.

Aggregate net income for publicly listed oil and gas companies operating in the U.S. exceeded $200 billion for the second and third quarters of the year.

The $200 billion figure, which included super-majors, mid-sized integrated groups and smaller independent shale operators, marks the sector’s “most profitable six months on record and puts it on course for an unprecedented year,” the Financial Times wrote. “Operating cash flow will likely be record-breaking – or at least very close to it – by year’s end.” 

The bumper profits have been underpinned by soaring free cash flow, a key industry metric which is defined as cash flow from operations minus capital spending, the report explained. It also pointed out that benchmark Brent crude has averaged more than $105 a barrel over the second and third quarters – well above an average of around $70 per barrel over the past five years. Brent hit a high of almost $140 a barrel in early March.

Wall Street has reportedly demanded that companies prioritize shareholder returns over expensive drilling campaigns in pursuit of ever-greater output growth.

Capital spending by the world’s 50 biggest producers will be around $300 billion this year, roughly half of what it was in 2013, the last time prices were at a comparable level.

“Over the past five years, the industry has shifted from ‘drill, baby drill’ to focusing on what shareholders actually want, which is return of capital,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. “Dividends and share buybacks have never been as generous as they are now.” 

Russia and Iran have rapidly expanded their energy ties amid the Western sanctions imposed on both nations.

Iran expects to sign a $40 billion agreement with Russian energy major Gazprom in December, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari said. The National Iranian Oil Company and Gazprom agreed in July to cooperate in the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields in Iran. The document also includes swaps in natural gas and oil products, the implementation of LNG projects, and the construction of gas pipelines.  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced that Moscow and Tehran may agree to a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be completed by the end of the year. Novak noted that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”

Energy Around: U.S. Oil Producers Enjoy Most Profitable Six Months Ever| Countercurrents

The Hurun Rich list, which ranks China’s wealthiest people with a minimum net worth of 5 billion yuan ($690m), said only 1,305 people made the threshold this year, down 11% from last year. 

Their total wealth was $3.5tn, down 18% from last year.

The number of individuals with $10bn or more fell by 29, 

The number of billionaires, in US dollars, dropped by 239 this year

The global economic outlook has been heavily affected by the war in Ukraine and slowing economic growth in China, that has in turn been exacerbated by the country’s ultra-strict Covid policies and a prolonged property slump.

Zhong Shanshan, whose listed companies include water bottler Nongfu Spring and vaccine developer Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, took first place on the list for the second year running, with a fortune that grew 17% to $65bn.

The founder of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, Zhang Yiming, took second place, but saw his wealth fall 28% to $35bn due to a drop in ByteDance’s valuation. 

In third place was Zeng Yuqun, chairman of battery giant CATL.

Yang Huiyan, the businesswoman behind Country Garden Holdings, which like many other Chinese developers has been battling debt issues, saw her wealth fall by $15.7bn, the biggest drop on the 2022 list.

Tencent founder Pony Ma posted the second largest drop, falling $14.6bn amid sliding tech stock prices, to take fifth place on the list. 

Alibaba founder Jack Ma and his family tumbled four places to be ranked number nine.

A two-year regulatory crackdown has hit China’s biggest tech names such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

China’s super-rich see fortunes plunge as economy slows | China | The Guardian

  As the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh takes place,  Egypt’s authoritarian regime stands accused of human rights abuses. 

 Sahar Aziz, a professor at Rutgers University in the US, says “the Egyptian government has given summit access only to local governmental NGOs that support the regime”. The Egyptian regime, he points out, has treated civil society as “enemies of the state”.  Hosting the event seems like a political cover for its self-defeating repression of civil society, writes Aziz, author of ‘The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom’.

 Amnesty International (AI) said the arrest of hundreds of people in the past two weeks alone, in connection to calls for protests during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), is a reminder of the grim reality of Egypt’s policy of mass arbitrary detention to crush dissent.

At least 151 detainees are currently being investigated by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, while hundreds more have faced shorter arrests and questioning.

“The arrest of hundreds of people merely because they were suspected of supporting the call for peaceful protests raises serious concerns over how the authorities will respond to people wishing to protest during COP27 – an essential feature of any UN climate conference”.

“The Egyptian authorities must allow peaceful demonstrators to gather freely and refrain from using unlawful force or arbitrary arrests to deter protests,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director. “World leaders arriving in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27 must not be fooled by Egypt’s public relations (PR) campaign. Away from the dazzling resort hotels, thousands of individuals including human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters and members of the political opposition continue to be detained unjustly,”

“They must urge President Abdelfattah al-Sisi to release all those arbitrarily held for exercising their human rights. As a matter of urgency, this should include imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel Fattah…”

In the run up to the climate summit (6 November-18 November), Egyptian authorities released 766 prisoners following a decision by President al-Sisi to reactivate a Presidential Pardons Committee (PPC) in April, said Amnesty International.

Yet over the same period, Amnesty International has documented the arrest of double that number; 1,540 people who were questioned over the exercising of free speech and association.

In the past six months, Amnesty International has gathered data from dozens of lawyers who regularly attend interrogations and detention renewal hearings, reviewed court decisions and other official documents, and interviewed former prisoners as well as relatives of detainees. In recent weeks, security forces have arrested and detained hundreds of people in downtown Cairo and town squares across Egyptian cities over content on their phones — a tactic often employed by police ahead of expected protests. While most were released within hours or days, some were taken to prosecutors, while others remain subject to enforced disappearance according to lawyers

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, explained that hosting a global conference such as COP 27 places a special obligation on Egypt’s government to respect and enable the exercise of fundamental freedoms as per international law.

“The right to protest peacefully and the right against arbitrary detention are essential elements of international law. In the present instance, Egypt’s government can easily order the release of arbitrarily imprisoned prisoners of conscience and allow protests to take place without impediments as a sign of good faith,”

 Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities escalated the use of abusive Emergency State Security Courts to prosecute peaceful activists and critics who joined thousands of dissidents already in the country’s congested prisons. And Courts issued death sentences in mass trials, adding to the sharply escalating number of executions.

Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and Lidy Nacpil, Executive Director, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, write: climate conferences are increasingly becoming spaces for greenwashing of not just the big polluters’ crimes, but also of the regimes and presidencies hosting COP.

 The official COP app requires access to the user’s location, their email, and their photos. The wi-fi at COP is apparently restricting access to human rights organizations and some news organizations. According to the website of the Egyptian presidency for COP27, anyone wishing to organize protests in Sharm El-Sheikh must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance and show the organizers a COP27 badge. Protests will only be allowed between 10:00-17:00 in an area far from the conference and monitored by cameras. The authorities have also limited the content of protests to climate-related issues.

COP27: Egypt’s Repressive Regime Under Fire—While it Hosts a Key Climate Summit | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)