(November 30, 2009) The World Trade Organisation (WTO) begins its first ministerial meeting in four years Monday aimed at reviewing the work of the 153-member group.
While trade negotiations are not on the agenda of the three-day gathering in Geneva, the stalled global trade round is likely to play a major role, following a call by world leaders for an agreement on the issue by the end of 2010.
Instead of considering a trade deal, WTO chief Pascal Lamy sees the meeting as providing “a platform for ministers to review the functioning of this house”.
Security barriers have been erected around the conference venue and police reinforcements have been called in from other parts of Switzerland amid concerns about demonstrators attempting to disrupt the meeting.
An anti-capitalist protest in Geneva Saturday erupted into violence, with cars set alight and shop windows smashed.
The meeting in Switzerland comes a decade after a WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle aimed at driving forward global free trade was engulfed by violent protests.
This week’s conference is being held amid signs that global trade is recovering from its biggest contraction since the Great Depression.
The WTO member states represent about 95 percent of total global trade. Ministers last met 2005 in Hong Kong. A gathering scheduled for 2007 was postponed because of lack of progress on the trade round launched in Doha in 2001.
(November 24, Bloomberg) Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected and the future rise in sea level will be “much higher” than previously forecast, a group of 26 climate scientists said in a report today.
The rise in global sea level since 1995 has been 3.4 millimeters a year (0.13 inches), 80 percent greater than past predictions, said Richard Somerville, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and a contributor to today’s report. Sea levels may rise 1 meter by 2100, double earlier forecasts, according to the report.
About half of the authors took part in a United Nations panel that in 2007 warned warming will cause water shortages to spread and droughts and floods to become more frequent. Today’s report includes three years of new observations, and fills in missing data such as the contribution of melting ice in Greenland and the Antarctic.
“Climate change is accelerating,” Somerville said in an interview. “It’s more severe than anticipated, and it’s occurring more rapidly than anticipated.”
The 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is “very likely” caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels. It said the earth has warmed by 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.37 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, and will rise by an additional 1.1 to 6.4 degrees this century.
Some questions remain unresolved, such as warming’s impact on the strength and frequency of hurricanes, said Somerville, a lead author of the 2007 study. At the same time, “we didn’t find holes” in that report, he said.
Treaty Prospects
More than 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18 in an effort to agree on international limits on emissions that contribute to global warming. World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have said a treaty won’t be completed in Copenhagen, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he’s hoping for agreement next year.
Today’s report was caught up in the long-running dispute between scientists who study global warming and skeptics who question the extent of human contributions to the phenomenon.
Private e-mails among scientists, including several of those who contributed to today’s report, were disclosed last week. Skeptics said the exchanges showed efforts to stifle opposing viewpoints and to overstate the case for the human role in global warming. The e-mails were obtained from a computer at the University of East Anglia in the U.K.
‘Scary Predictions’
Marc Morano, a skeptic who is editor of a Web site on the issue, said today’s report “is nothing more than an if-maybe- could-possibly-happen in the future. It’s really a bunch of scary predictions timed for a UN political meeting.”
The researchers prepared the report in part to answer challenges to the scientific consensus, Somerville said.
“There’s been an active campaign of disinformation that tends to make the issue seem confusing and to make the science community seem conflicted,” he said.
Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, the main man- made greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, increased to record concentrations in the atmosphere last year, the UN said today in a separate report. Carbon dioxide, produced from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, rose to 385.2 parts per million, or molecules per million molecules of dry air. That’s 2 ppm higher than a year earlier.
The G-8 group of nations has agreed to a proposal to keep the increase in global temperatures to within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial times, a target that would avert the worst effects of climate change. Even if emissions rates stabilize at current levels, there’s a 25 percent chance that warming will exceed the 2 degree target, according to today’s report.
Exceeding Safe Levels
“We have already almost exceeded the safe level of emissions that would ensure a reasonably secure climate future,” Matthew England, joint director of the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of New South Wales, Australia, said in a statement. “Within just a decade global emissions need to be declining rapidly.”
Today’s report also found that summer melting of Arctic sea ice is happening faster than expected and that there has been “no significant changes” in the rate of global temperature rise.
(November 13, 2009) The cabinet of Sri Lanka has approved a proposal to import seeds of oil palm for the cultivation in estate lands managed by the plantation companies.
Under the programme, it is expected to cultivate palm oil in 5000 hectares..
Oil palm cultivation by the estates is criticized by some of the residents in the adjacent villages due to the trees' high consumption of water that cause the water resources to dry out.
[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 November 2009, 02:34 GMT] News reports from Colombo indicate Sri Lanka government is planning to revise the Theasa Vazhamai law of Tamils, which is a constituent legal code, ever since the formulation of the island’s current legal system by the Dutch. The urgency of the Sri Lanka state at this juncture is not social reformation but grabbing the lands of Tamils without legal hurdles, besides removing last vestiges of Tamil sovereignty in the state apparatus, Tamil legal circles said.
The very word ‘Theasa Vazhamai’ means the conventions of the nation or country.
This is a civil legal code applicable to the people of the Jaffna Peninsula and was codified by the Dutch in early 18th century, by compiling the traditional laws of the times of Tamil sovereignty before the advent of colonialism.
The legal code was a result of a consensus between the Dutch administration and the chieftains of Jaffna. Earlier, at the fall of the kingdom of Jaffna, the chieftains had a convention on such matters with the Portuguese. The details of this convention, mentioned by historians, are said to be available in the archives of Goa, but are yet to be translated.
The nomenclature Theasa Vazhamai implies that the Tamils had a Theasam (country) in the island and the incorporation of it as an identifiable legal code in the Roman-Dutch legal basis of the island by the Dutch indicates that separate sovereignty of Tamils in the island was acknowledged in matters of civil law. The territories of the kingdom of Jaffna were a separate unit called Jaffna Patnam under the colonial administrations of the Portuguese and the Dutch.
A Tamil coastal community of the eastern and western parts of the island also had a similar code compiled by the Dutch, but it became obsolete and removed in British times. When the British conquered Kandy in 1815, as a consequence of a convention between the British and the chieftains, the Kandyan Sinhalese received a similar legal code, which is still recognised as Kandyan Law.
The most conspicuous part of Theasa Vazhamai is its property and inheritance laws, which strike a balance between patriarchy and matriarchy, in differentiating Muthusam, property that comes in father’s line from Seethanam, property that comes in mother’s line.
Unlike the Tamil Nadu custom of Vara-thadcha’nai, which in etymology and in practice means donation to the bridegroom, the Seethanam of Jaffna means woman’s property and in practice also go in female line. Husbands live in wives houses and sons will not get the property when there are daughters.
British colonialism lenient to patriarchy, as seen with the case of the abolition of Marumakka’l Thaayam (a matrilineal practice among the Naayar community) in the princely state of Trivancore, brought in changes twice in Theasa Vazhamai too, according to which the husband has to countersign when a woman transacts her property.
The British version of Theasa Vazhamai, before changes, is available in the form of palm leaf manuscripts in London. Prof. S. Pathmanathan has reproduced some of them a couple of years ago in his book in Tamil on Theasa Vazhamai.
According to legal circles, what the Sri Lankan state eyeing now in the guise of social reform is erasing an important element in the property laws, called Earvai that prevents selling a land to others, when neighbours are prepared to pay the same money.
The law was a reason for strong ‘village identities’ among Tamils but at the same time also contributed to caste segregation of settlements.
Migration to foreign countries, displacement and the drastic conditions faced by Tamils are in many ways changing the social picture today in which diaspora remittance determines land transactions among castes, but yet as a social consensus, land is retained within Tamils and has not gone to non-Tamils.
The idea of the Sri Lankan state is to break the identity of Tamils with their land in their heartland on one hand, and on the other, to pave way for the purchase of Tamil lands by the new economic forces dominated by Sinhalese, said an academic in Jaffna, adding that once practical applicability is invalidated, Theasa Vazhamai, the symbol of a separate identity and the last vestige of legal sovereignty of Tamils in the island will become obsolete.
Some LTTE circles also, when there was a de facto state, thought of revising Theasa Vazhamai, but for social reasons. This is different from what the Sri Lanka government aims now without exclusive consent of the people concerned. This is a matter for Tamils to decide under their own sovereignty, the academic said.
The Sri Lankan state could have easily achieved multi-ethnic land ownership in any part of the island had it conceded the rights of Tamil nation in the island and had eliminated fear of genocide. But the state now tries to achieve it as a part of a systematic structural genocide after militarily crushing the balance of Tamils and some greedy powers are assisting to this process, the academic further said.
By Lakmal Sooriyagoda (Daily Mirror)
Ministry of Justice and Law Reform has taken measures to amend the Thesawalame law with necessary changes in line with the present requirements. The Ministry has appointed a committee headed by Justice Siri Pawan to look into the new provisions of the Thesawalame law. The Media Secretary to the ministry of Justice and law Reform Gamini Sarath Godakanda told the Daily Mirror.
Thesawalame law is applied to inhabitants of Tamils in the Northern Province and has been subjected to many controversies. According to this law, property can be divided into three categories, such as inherited property of the man from his parents; inherited property of the wife from her parents and the acquired property of the man and wife during their lifetime together.
According to this law, daughters inherit the property of the mother and sons inherit the property of the father. The acquired property is divided equally among the sons and daughters.
Critics say that some provisions of the Thesawalame law have not been able to evolve with time and social changes in society.
The Media Secretary said that the recommendations of the committee into the amendment of Thesawalame law had not still been received. He further said that Ministry had also appointed a committee to replace the archaic Prisons Ordinance and to introduce a new act to suit the present requirement. It is aimed at rehabilitating prisoners and to bring a more efficient prison administration structure.
Thesawalame is a territorial customary law of Sri Lanka. Thesawalame, in Tamil literally mean the customs of the land. It is ancient in its origin and has prevailed in Northern Sri Lanka.
Because of its popularity among local inhabitants, the Dutch first codified it in 1706 and the British gave it legal validity by the Thesawalame Regulation No 18 of 1806, Ordinance No 5 of 1869 and the Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance Ordinance of 1911.
The Thesawalame Pre-emption Ordinance of 1948 amended and consolidated the law of Pre-emption relating to the lands affected by the Thesawalame.
This is widely spoken for its recognition to the necessity of women’s ownership to land property for the security of their future.
Thesawalame is still a customary among a good proportion of the Jaffna Tamils.
Fact box
* Thesawalame is a territorial customary law of Sri Lanka.
* Thesawalame, in Tamil literally mean the customs of the land. It is ancient in its origin and has prevailed in Northern Sri Lanka
* The Dutch first codified it in 1706 and the British gave it legal validity by the Thesawalame Regulation No 18 of 1806, Ordinance No 5 of 1869 and the Matrimonial Rights and Inheritance Ordinance of 1911.
* The Thesawalame Pre-emption Ordinance of 1948 amended and consolidated the law of Pre-emption relating to the lands affected by the Thesawalame.
(November 03, 2009) Sri Lanka's major opposition United National Party (UNP) yesterday charged that the coconut industry in the country was in serious trouble with 60 percent of coconut mills in the North Western province alone having been closed down.
Opposition Leader of the North Western Province Shamal Senarath told a news conference yesterday that the coconut industry is in dire state because the excessive importation of palm oil to the country. He alleged that the import duty on palm oil had been reduced to 5 percent from 28 percent in order to satisfy a few businessmen who import palm oil and have state patronage.
The government had not taken meaningful measures to revive the coconut industry despite Minister of Nation Building Salinda Dissanayake who is in charge of the subject threatening to submit his resignation if no effective steps are taken to revive the dying industry, he said.
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