Switchboard, from NRDC › Jacob Scherr's Blog

U.S.-India 3.0 - A New Opportunity for Cooperation on Climate and Energy

2009-06-18T23:07:52Z

Yesterday, at a U.S.-India Business Council Summit in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the start of U.S.-India 3.0 - a new era of "dramatic expansion of our common agenda." Emphasizing that U.S. trade with India has doubled since 2004, and that the two governments have to catch up to the already-existing fruitful partnerships amongst citizens, corporations, and universities, Clinton said, "We think there is great promise in a clean energy cooperation strategy focused on adopting low carbon technologies, improving energy efficiency, forestation, and water management. And these efforts should be supported by new and existing high-level dialogues between representatives of our governments."

What new collaborations could result from this new relationship and Secretary Clinton's planned trip to India next month?

Well, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) funds a Solar America Cities program, through which twenty-five American cities are working to make solar a viable option. And India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy recently launched its own initiative, which aims for at least sixty Indian solar cities by 2012. Connecting American cities with Indian solar sister cities is an exciting development that was discussed at an April meeting of the US-India Energy Dialogue in New Delhi. In March, the U.S. Department of Commerce led a solar trade mission to India. All of this bodes well for India's plans to become a solar leader.

At an April meeting in New Delhi, DoE also discussed cooperating with the Indian Ministry of Urban Development on a model Zero Energy Community - green buildings should be a key element.

Right now we are thinking about other areas where the U.S. and India should be cooperating on climate and clean energy. We would welcome your ideas.

If realized, a true partnership between the U.S. and India could provide a model and impetus for a global deal in Copenhagen this December.

U.S.-India 3.0, the climate talks are ready and waiting for you!

Co-authored by Bidisha Banerjee.

India Climate Change and Energy News

2009-06-15T23:36:09Z

Here is the latest from India on climate change and energy compiled by Bidisha Banerjee:

President Obama has extended an invitation to newly-reelected Prime Minister Singh to visit Washington. And Secretary Clinton may visit India late next month.

India is moving to establish an Environmental Protection Agency with authority to enforce environmental laws. Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of Environment and Forests, "pointed out that the EPA in the US had a staff of 18,000 and an annual budget of $7 billion, whereas India's Central Pollution Control Board had a staff of 150 and an annual budget of Rs.400 million. 'We're going to get our EPA that is professionally staffed and fully funded. It's going to be a professional, transparent, science-based regulatory system,'" Ramesh said.

At the just completed round of climate negotiations in Bonn, Adopt a Negotiator bloggers interviewed Indian negotiators Dr. Prodipto Ghosh and Mr. R.K. Sethi. As the talks wound up, Shyam Saran, the top Indian climate envoy, suggested that the talks did not progress satisfactorily because rich nations had failed to live up to their current commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to make commitments to deep further reductions. While Saran rejected the idea of a supra-national agency that would verify India's attempts to reduce its carbon emissions, he did announce that the Indian government will shortly publish details about the eight missions which fall under its National Climate Action Plan.

The draft strategy for India's solar mission - the most ambitious solar program in any nation so far, according to Greenpeace -- was recently leaked; the New York Times's Green Inc. blog takes a hard look at how much the solar plan would cost, and concludes that financial support from the industrialized world would play a key role. The Clinton Foundation is embarking on a 5,000 MW solar thermal power plant in Gujarat, where discussions about land acquisition for the project are underway.

A UN University representative noted that 25-50 million people will be displaced by next year due to climate change; North India will be one of the worst-affected areas.

News from India on Climate Change and Energy

2009-06-08T20:50:08Z

Here is the first edition of our news from India on climate change and energy which was compiled by Bidisha Banerjee:

The Hindu covers the leak of new Government of India draft strategy to advance solar as part of its National Climate Action plan. The targets are much more ambitious than previously outlined, and, if implemented, would be the largest solar program in any nation. Here's some more analysis of India's current solar policies, and some context about the leaked strategy. Within the Indian government, some are questioning whether large solar subsidies would weaken India's position at the climate talks in Copenhagen.

On a related note, investment in renewable energy outpaced investment in fossil fuels for the first time this year; while industrialized countries' investment in renewables declined, the UNEP estimates that there was a 27% rise in investments from industrializing countries like China, India, and Brazil. This article has more details about the growth in different renewable industries in India.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Ratan Tata announced plans to sell the Tata Nano in New York within two years. The $2,500 Nano, which will go on sale in India next month, is expected to run at 65 miles per gallon. Tata claimed he will start selling an electric Nano by September.

A new Greenpeace report, "Monsoon Wager: Climate Change and the Indian Monsoon," surveys the latest science and emphasizes that climate change will wreak havoc with the Indian monsoon.

Now that India's UPA government is back in power following the recent elections, Jairam Ramesh, who resigned as Union minister of state for commerce, industry and power in February to work on the elections, has been appointed the Minister of Environment and Forests. In an interview with LiveMint, he said that responding to climate change is a local issue, not just an international one. The most important responses according to him are: "How efficiently we are going to use coal, how quickly we are going to expand nuclear energy in our country, on the energy front and on the greening front, how quickly we can go from 23% to 33% forest and tree cover."

Here's an excellent article highlighting one of Ramesh's highest priorities - speeding up environmental clearances for polluting industries. "The environment ministry ... has been under tremendous pressure from infrastructure ministries - power and coal specifically - and industries demanding that the clearance process be made simpler and more 'industry-friendly.'" In a speech on June 4, President Patil signaled that speeding up the process is key.

Finally, here's an interview with the head of the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India. He has a very optimistic outlook on the prospects of generating 60,000 Mw of nuclear energy by 2035 nuclear since the UPA government is back in place; fuel extraction and financing of new plants, he suggests, won't be a problem.

Most of that energy is going to fuel India's rapidly growing cities. Urban India is trying to do its part to cope with environmental challenges. Chennai has a new master plan that aims to make it one of the five cleanest cities in India. The city is also looking at creating a "Green Army" of 10,000 volunteers.

Some Indians are connecting local environmental issues to global talks on climate change. The Indian Youth Climate Network was in the news on World Environment Day for its attempts to send representatives to Copenhagen and to influence negotiators. And an editorial in the Bangalore edition of the Times of India demands more action from India in advance of Copenhagen. Pointing out how much more China and Brazil are doing, the author calls for a deeper discussion about materialism and whether economic growth necessarily leads to happiness.

India, Poverty, and Climate Change

2009-06-04T20:42:41Z

"India Enlightened" - the cover story of just-released Summer 2009 edition of OnEarth magazine - puts human faces on the critical issues that are being debated now at the climate negotiations this week in Bonn. The author George Black and photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel make tangible key questions which will need to be resolved if we are to achieve a global deal on climate change at the end of the year in Copenhagen, including:

Will the U.S. and other industrialized countries recognize their historical obligation for the climate change that we are already experiencing and provide significant new financial and technical assistance to India and other more vulnerable countries to "adapt" to a changing climate?

Will India and other rapidly growing developing countries act to constrain their own rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions?

In his OnEarth article, George Black provocatively asks whether India can "raise a billion people out of poverty without wrecking the environment." A more nuanced, more accurate way to pose this fundamental question not only to India, but to all nations, would be: How can we improve the lives of billions of people worldwide and at the same time preserve the natural systems and services - including a stable climate - upon which we all depend? As noted by Lord Nicholas Stern, in his new book, The Global Deal, the problems of climate change and sustainable development are totally intertwined.

Black writes about meeting Indian famers already dealing with environmental stress. He questions the big dams and little cars which are symbols of India's current rush to develop. Black gains hope in encounters with entrepreneurs bringing solar lights and new water conservation technologies to villages. There is also a sidebar which describes our effort over the last several months to scope out an NRDC endeavor in India. We agree with OnEarth that we need more focus on India, which, like China, is critical to the future of the planet; and we are eager to see much expanded cooperation between the U.S. and India on climate change and energy.

In the future, I will be joined in this blog series by the newest member of our India team - Bidisha Banerjee, the Cameron Speth Fellow from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In January, Bidisha traveled 1,000 miles in Indian-made solar-electric cars with the India Climate Solutions Road Tour. Over the next days and weeks, we will be blogging about India and climate change.

BioGems 2.0: Saving Communities and Giving a Voice to People

2009-02-10T18:10:32Z

The BioGems Initiatve is not only about preserving the last remaining sanctuaries of wildlife. It's also about protecting and supporting the communities that are in these areas or surround them. Through BioGems, NRDC helps to assure that these people have a voice in decisions that will affect their livelihoods and well-being. Too often the concerns of traditional and indigenous communities are still being ignored.

For five years, we have worked to save the Peruvian Amazon where the rainforest and little contacted tribal peoples were under siege from illegal logging operations. Much of this wood was being exported to international markets. (For a blog post I wrote about this, click here.) This BioGem helped to stimulate a much needed debate over the larger question of what the U.S. should do to stop trade in illegal timber not only from Peru but worldwide. The illegal trade in wood and wood products is estimated to be as much as 15% of the total trade and undermines good governance, incurs huge economic losses, and imperils indigenous communities. NRDC and our partners achieved a major victory when the Congress amended the U.S. Lacey Act to ban the import of illegal logs and timber products. Also for the first time, the Peru-US trade agreement included an annex detailing measures that would be taken to halt illegal logging and exports.

Our experience in Peru is now informing our advocacy on national legislation and international negotiations on new measures and financial mechanisms to slow and then stop deforestation in tropical countries - of which Brazil and Indonesia are the most significant.

Among other the great forests we are fighting to save is the Heart of the Boreal where we have made real progress in supporting the Poplar River Nation in their quest to preserve and manage their ancestral forest homelands? In southeast United States Greater Cumberland Plateau, we have worked closely with the local communities and organizations that are fighting the destruction caused by mountain top removal. We have sought to make sure that their plight is known nationally and their concern to protect their homes and livelihoods is taken into account in Washington and New York.

A key element of our BioGem campaign in Baja California, Mexico is working with communities in the preservation of the region's critical marine habitat. We are working with local communities in the areas around Laguna San Ignacio - home to the most pristine gray whale nursery - and in the Upper Gulf of California - habitat for one of the world's most endangered small marine mammals - the vaquita marina. The engagement of local communities in the preservation of this critical marine habitat is essential. At Laguna San Ignacio, we are with support of our members and e-activists working for permanent protection of the area through the purchase of conservation easements. In the Upper Gulf, we have pushed for the involvement of local fishermen in the design and implementation of the program now being undertaken by the Mexican government to save the last 150 vaquita.

Through our new Save BioGems website, we are able to link you and hundreds of thousands of citizens from around the world with the people and community at the frontlines of our common endeavor to assure a livable planet for our children.

BioGems 2.0: If we can save these special places, we can save the planet

2009-02-06T16:44:04Z

Over the years, NRDC's BioGems have ranged in size from that of a small desert lagoon to vast expanses of forests, mountains, and wilderness. Each of these places is a true natural treasure worth saving on its own merit. Yet the BioGems also raise awareness and drive policy on the overarching environmental challenges we now face, including climate change and unsustainable energy development. However remote, the BioGems are on the frontline of our defense of the Earth.

Since the 1970s, NRDC has fought to protect America's Arctic - its greatest wilderness -from oil development. Over the last eight years, NRDC and our BioGems Defenders have fought against the push to lease and develop vast new areas in the Arctic. This includes the off-shore spots in what we call the "Polar Bear Seas". Now, global warming is threatening the very survival of the polar bear. This struggle has made millions around the world realize that climate change is real. I am sure many have wondered: "If we lose the polar bear, what will be next?" I certainly have.

Many of our other BioGems are threatened by plans made by the Bush Administration to lease vast areas of the western United States to energy companies who plan to replace sandstone arches and antelope with drill rigs and pipelines. We were very encouraged by Secretary of Interior Salazar's decision this week to revoke leases in our Utah's Redrock Wilderness BioGem. My colleague Sharon Buccino commented that this decision demonstrated that we "can have energy security without sacrificing the West's wild places."

We are now asking Secretary Salazar to revisit "the devastating Bush policies and reverse rules and agency directives that made oil and gas drilling and oil shale development the primary uses of our public lands and that weakened protections for endangered species" throughout the Greater Rockies. We are also calling upon the Congress to reverse Bush Administration rules which would relax restrictions on destructive mountain top removal to produce coal which is scarring the Greater Cumberland Plateau BioGem.

Similarly, two of our newest BioGems are threatened by unsustainable energy development - the Peace Athabasca Delta in Alberta Canada - and the Carrizo Plain National Monument in central California. The Delta wetlands - a refuge for birds and a tribal home - are now threatened by the rush to expand tars sands mining and processing in order to pipe "dirty fuels" to refineries in the U.S. The future of the Delta and the planet are linked. Ultimately to save the Delta, Canada and the U.S. will need to make decisions to move rapidly to a less-carbon intensive and more sustainable energy future. The Carrizo Plain's vast grasslands and endangered species face the possibility of destructive seismic exploration for oil - part of an energy strategy that is looking backwards rather than forwards and risking our country's natural heritage in the process.

Our third new BioGem is the entire nation of Costa Rica , which is home to extraordinary biodiversity. We are working with the Government there on measures to fulfill its commitment to become the world's first carbon neutral nation by 2021. Costa Rica can reaffirm its position as a global environmental leader and relieve the pressure on its natural areas.

This is the power of the BioGems: they can help us to drive policy towards a low carbon future. Each of these places is subject to threats from dirty, 20th century energy production. We need to reverse the misguided policies of the past, ease the dangers on these fragile ecosystems, and move into an era of clean energy . Indeed, if we can save these special places, we can save the planet.

BioGems 2.0

2009-02-03T15:37:21Z

Check out the new NRDC BioGems website at www.savebiogems.org.

It is a next step in the evolution of NRDC's advocacy.

In 1970, NRDC was founded as a public interest law firm; and over the last 38 years, we have continued to expand and refine our capacity to engage in the full range of arenas and fora necessary to achieve our mission of protecting the planet. One key challenge now is how can be most effective in a globalized world where we have little time left to preserve the natural world - essential to our own well-being and survival.

It was during the campaign to save Laguna San Ignacio in the late 1990s that NRDC really began to use the internet as an advocacy tool. Located on the Pacific coast of the Baja Peninsula of Mexico, the lagoon is the last pristine nursery of the gray whale and an internationally-recognized, legally-protected natural area. Yet in 1995, Mitsubishi announced plans to build the one of the world's largest industrial saltworks right on shores of the laguna.

Using our website, we were able to engage thousands of citizens to take action to stop Mitsubishi's plans. We made citizen electronic advocacy an important element of our multi-faceted effort. With the internet, we are also able to cooperate effectively with dozens of institutions, organizations and individuals in Mexico, U.S., Europe, and Japan in opposing the saltworks scheme.

The Japan Times called the campaign to save Laguna San Ignacio a glimpse of how environmental battles would be fought in the 21st century where through the use of the Internet all of us can become engaged. In the end, more than a million messages were sent to Mitsubishi; and Mexican President Zedillo canceled the project in March 2000. It was a victory for the whales and a demonstration of the new power of internet advocacy.

We decided to apply the lessons learned from this campaign to a dozen other special natural areas under threat in Americas where NRDC could make a difference - which we labeled "BioGems". In March 2001, the BioGems Initiative was launched with the savebiogems.org website and the recruitment of our electronic activists. Over the years, I have been delighted to meet many people around the country who tell me are "BioGem Defenders". There are now more than 400,000 of them; and they have sent more than 10 million messages to government leaders and corporate heads to protect more than 30 sites in the US, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America. Our timeline of victories to date is worth taking a look at.

Our new website reflects the changes we have been making in the Initiative over the last few years. We began to focus more actions on "featured creatures" or "special species" which were associated with our BioGems - like the polar bears of the Arctic or the wolves of Yellowstone. We have also begun to identify larger landscapes as "BioGems". Finally, we are addressing not only immediate threats, but working for permanent protection of our areas or other measures to reduce pressures on them.

Much thanks to all of the members of TeamBioGems from across NRDC, particularly our Web Department, who worked on the relaunch of the savebiogems website. The website is designed to make it both easier for e-activists to take action and to keep abreast of developments in our various campaigns. We hope you like it. Let us know what you think.

Tainted Wood: Illegal Logging is Pushing Tribes to Extinction

2008-06-27T16:44:30Z

Let me tell you a story about illegal logging pushing tribal families to extinction.

The story begins a few days ago, when a colleague emailed me a YouTube video documenting the discovery of the Tsohon-djapa, a previously uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Standing next to their grass huts, with bodies painted red and black in preparation for war, the Tsohon-djapa are shown shooting arrows up at the airplane, hoping to bring it down. As Jose Carlos Mireles, the one responsible for discovering the tribes, says, “They probably thought our plane was a giant bird.”

The futility of this effort brings home the point. When it comes to the mounting pressures of the industrialized world, these tribes have no defense.

With demand for luxury wood products in the United States on the rise, illegal loggers are pushing further and further into the rainforest in search of mahogany and cedar, and into the areas tribes like the Tsohon-djapa call home. The illegal loggers bring with them violent conflict, introduce deadly disease, and destroy the ecosystems upon which the tribes depend. In contrast, the plane that took these pictures is the least of their worries.

The Tsohon-djapa are but one story. There are many others. By some estimates, there are 100 such tribes left in the world, most of them in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. In the remote Peruvian rainforest alone, the last families of the Mascho Piro, Yora, Matsigenka, and Amahuaca are threatened.

When we talk about extinction, it’s often in the context of protecting an endangered species. But this is a story about endangered families. It reminded me – as I hope it does for you – of the need to protect human diversity.

In countries like Peru and Brazil, all of the market incentives reward deforestation. Increased consumer demand from the United Stated – the wood from one large mahogany tree alone is worth more than $100,000 when used in furniture and luxury wood products - has driven illegal loggers further into the rainforests, and the areas these tribes call home.

William Laurance, a tropical biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted on Dot Earth as saying: “The new roads open up the frontier for waves of unplanned and illegal logging, land colonization, and land speculation that is nearly impossible for the government to control... It’s a formula for environmental and social chaos.”

The problem of tropical deforestation has received increased attention recently. The cutting of forests in tropical countries accounts for about 15-25% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions. There are now discussions of how to use the emerging carbon market to slow deforestation. However, creating such a market for forest carbon is extraordinarily complicated and will take several years at best.

If we are to save these uncontacted peoples, we cannot afford to wait. We have to take steps now to curb illegal logging. The United States, which alone is responsible for more than 80% of the mahogany exports from Peru, can provide real leadership. Click here to help save the Tahuamanú Rainforest, an NRDC Biogem.

First, consumers here can educate themselves so they can make informed decisions about what wood products they purchase. Click here for a consumer wood guide we published.

Second, the United States Government should make sure that all of mahogany and other timber trade is legal and sustainable.

Finally, we need to step up our cooperation with Peru and Brazil and other key tropical countries to improve forest governance and to put an end to illegal logging.

Bali - The Difference a Decade Makes

2007-12-08T06:34:43Z

Thirty-five thousand feet above India on the way to Bali...

Exactly a decade ago, the nations of the world gathered in Kyoto, Japan and negotiated the first treaty with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I was in Kyoto with an NRDC delegation led by NRDC Founding Director John Adams. I remember vividly the speculation that went on for days about whether Vice President Gore would travel to the conference to try to break the deadlocked talks. It would be very unusual for a Vice President to show up at such multilateral negotiations, particularly where there is a high risk of failure.

Gore did decide to come to Kyoto. At the time, we saw it an act of political courage and a sign of the VP’s deep personal passion about curbing global warming. Gore’s twenty-four hour visit to Kyoto made a difference. The American negotiators led by Stuart Eisenstat finally hammered out a deal after a night without sleep for most of delegates and many of us observers.

It is clear now that the Federal Government then was ahead of the American people. The Clinton Administration had pushed forward with the negotiations even though the Kyoto Protocol would be dead on arrival in the Senate. President Clinton recognized that the U.S. public really did not appreciate nor understand the threat of global warming. Five months before the Kyoto talks, he called for public education, but the resulting efforts, including a day-long White House conference, were limited. The Kyoto conference and Gore’s bold intervention got a lot of attention in the media, but the interest in climate change then began to fade again.

Today we have the total opposite situation. Instead of being at the center of the negotiations in Bali, the United States is on the sidelines. The main worry is whether our government will attempt to block the rest of the international community from moving forward. The U.S. is even more isolated with the recent election of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Australia. One of Rudd’s first actions was to ratify Kyoto and to assert his leadership on climate change.

The U.S. Government has fallen way behind its own citizenry. Even three years ago, almost 90% of the public wanted the U.S. to ratify Kyoto. A recent poll found 76% favor a treaty that would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050. This public concern is already being translated into action at the municipal and state level. More than 600 mayors have pledged to meet the Kyoto targets in their own cities; and the states are taking action to reduce emissions and create carbon markets. U.S. business interests are increasingly demanding the government put into place economy-wide mandates.

Climate change is no longer an abstraction for Americans. At the time of Kyoto, it was for most people a distant threat. For me personally, “global warming” has gone from being a problem I took on for my grandchildren to one which could harm my own children within my own lifetime. We are now all seeing and feeling climate change. I was struck recently by an open letter from hunters and fishermen in Iowa who called upon the Presidential candidates to address global warming. They have seen the changes in duck migrations and trout streams. For millions of others, it was the photos of polar bears on melting ice floes. These could be some of the most important images of our times. They helped to connect people to the threat climate changes poses not only to the bears, but to all of us.

Al Gore will be coming to Bali next week. He will once again be at the high-level climate talks, not as a government official, but rather as a Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner. Gore has educated not only Americans, but people worldwide about what the scientists have been warning us now for almost two decades. We can only hope that his message on the need for rapid and dramatic action to combat global warming will be heard.

Bali Hopes

2007-11-30T19:03:48Z

I am really excited about traveling next Thursday to the Indonesian island of Bali with Frances Beinecke, NRDC's President. We will be joining the rest of the NRDC "delegation" at the annual conference of countries that are party to the UN global warming treaty.

National governments will be continuing the work started at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the Kyoto climate conference in 1997 They will be building the international superstructure for needed actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For two weeks, the ministers, officials, and diplomats will negotiate language in hundreds of pages of documents forming a roadmap for the next major phase of negotiations. The Bali meeting will also set the stage for the next President hopefully to reassert U.S. leadership in tackling what is perhaps the most serious threat to international security we now face.

Ten years ago, I organized the NRDC delegation to Kyoto, where the US Government delegation - which included my now-colleague David Doniger - shaped the first set of legally-binding promises to reduce global warming pollution. Unfortunately, the US has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol now due to expire in 2012. In this round, we hope the US will not only take the lead in crafting the next protocol - with new strong commitments by all governments - but also act quickly to ratify and implement it.

But Bali is much more that just an international conference - a meeting between national governmental representatives. It will be also "internet-al". Advocates and activists, legislators and lawyers, scientists and experts, industrialists and entrepreneurs, reporters and bloggers will far outnumber the official delegates. Every day I have been getting a stream of emails about various "side events". Some examples are mayors talking about actions they are taking at home and officials in Colombia and Indonesia describing plans to slow the destruction of their forests. There will be hundreds of workshops, panel discussions, and informal meetings which will stimulate, encourage, and inform needed actions around the world.

It will be as though the internet has come alive - and through the internet you will have a front-row seat.

Frances and I and the other members of our team hope that you follow our blogs as we chronicle and comment on our experiences at the Bali global gathering on global warming. We will continue our hard-hitting practical advocacy to strengthen the international legal regime on climate. We will be telling the world about all the promising efforts in the United States - in spite of the recalcitrance of the current Administration. We will be taking on the challenging issues of reducing tropical deforestation - which accounts for 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions - and helping poorer countries cope with the climate change now underway. We will be working with our colleagues in Canada to call attention to the importance of preserving the Boreal Forests and cooperating with our counterpart groups from around the globe.

NRDC will be contributing to the growing global debate, discussion, and dialogue on the overarching challenge of our time. There is no question that there has been progress in the last decade, but the pace of action must pick up. Many scientists suggest that we have only a decade more in which to reverse the current trends and to begin to reduce emissions. We know that it can be done. Now we need to create political will to do so at the international and every level of our internet-al, globalized world.