"Red mud" catastrophe in Hungary On 4 October 2010, just a few minutes after noon, in Ajkas' alumina factory, the red mud broke through a dam and, liberated from the reservoir, proceeded through the Torna Brook Valley. It inundated three villages – Kolontár, Devecser and Somlóvásárhely – in less than 40 minutes. The reservoir holding the red mud was 40 metres higher than the surrounding countryside, so the wave of red mud was still two metres high when it reached houses in Devecser, five kilometres from the reservoir. The catastrophe was unexpected.
"Eastern Partnership: Towards Civil Society Forum" The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative is off to a bad start. Presented by Sweden and Poland with much fanfare in 2008 as a new forum for the EU to engage the eastern neighbourhood, its recent launch in Prague proved, on the contrary, to be a major disappointment. The list of EU leaders that decided the summit wasn’t worth their time was embarrassingly long interest and political will are clearly lacking in this new initiative. As such, the chances that the European Union will sooner or later consign the EaP to the same historical dustbin as its predecessors are high. But so are the EU’s stakes in the region.
Beyond zero-sum thinking in the EU’s Eastern Partnership The European Union’s energy security has been severely tested over the past year. August’s Georgian conflict underlined the possible dangers of diversification into the post-Soviet space, with bombs landing in the vicinity of several crucial gas and oil pipelines including South Caucasus and Baku-Supsa, while the Russian-Ukrainian gas stand-off sent shivers across Europe in January.
Fairness in Global Climate Change Finance It is now well established that action to avoid dangerous climate change must take place according to the principles of ‘responsibility and capability’, and the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) subscribes to this view. Morally and in political terms developed countries should lead global mitigation by making significant domestic emissions reductions. But in a world of limited finance, reductions arguably be undertaken wherever they can be made for the lowest cost. Since emissions reductions in developed countries are insufficient to resolve the climate problem and are often more expensive to make than in developing countries, the principles of responsibility and capability might more productively be applied to the financing of global reductions: this would mean that the higher a country’s level of responsibility and capability, the greater its share of global climate finance. Technically, developed countries are already obliged to transfer finance to developing countries, under the UNFCCC, which states that ‘agreed full incremental’ costs in developing countries should be met by finance and technology from developed countries (Article 4.3).
Bonn conference starts final phase of climate negotiations The last Sunday in March will see the start of a two-week meeting of the UNFCCC in Bonn. This is the negotiators’ first meeting this year, meant to present a final agreement on establishing a global regime to replace the Kyoto Protocol. If everything goes smoothly, the many weeks of marathon negotiations will end in Copenhagen this December.
Dealing with the Financial and Climate Crises The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has, together with other factors, plunged the world into financial chaos. Bank lending has dropped to a minimum as financial institutions scramble to procure desperately needed liquidity. Western governments have swiftly responded, turning taxpayers’ monies into ‘rescue packages’ that amount to several hundred billion euros.