country:canada

  • Le #HCR se félicite du soutien de 175 villes à travers le #monde entier en faveur des réfugiés

    A l’occasion de la Journée mondiale 2019 du réfugié, le HCR, l’Agence des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés, remercie les maires de dizaines de villes dans environ 50 pays d’avoir ajouté leur soutien à une déclaration mondiale d’accueil et d’inclusion pour les familles déracinées. Cette déclaration s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’initiative du HCR Cities#WithRefugees ou « Villes #Aveclesréfugiés », qui existe depuis un an et qui a été signée par près de 175 villes.

    Ce geste de #solidarité envers les réfugiés est d’autant plus important car, selon le rapport statistique annuel du HCR sur les Tendances mondiales publié hier, environ 61% des réfugiés et 80% des personnes déplacées internes vivent en milieu urbain. Les villes, les autorités locales et les municipalités jouent un rôle essentiel dans le soutien et l’accueil des réfugiés et d’autres personnes déplacées. Ils offrent la sécurité et un logement décent. Par ailleurs, ils peuvent permettre l’accès aux services locaux, à l’éducation et à des opportunités d’emploi.

    Dans l’ensemble, le rapport statistique annuel sur les Tendances mondiales montre que le nombre de personnes déracinées par la guerre, les conflits ou les persécutions a doublé ces 20 dernières années.

    Face à des niveaux toujours plus élevés de déplacement forcé - et parallèlement à des niveaux croissants de xénophobie dans le monde - des villes comme Paris en France, Montevideo en Uruguay, Lahore au Pakistan, Bucarest en Roumanie, Vancouver au Canada et Atlanta aux Etats-Unis appellent également d’autres maires et autorités locales à travers le monde à se joindre à eux dans leurs efforts concertés pour accueillir et inclure des réfugiés dans leurs communautés.

    « Les villes sont à l’avant-garde des nouvelles approches en matière d’accueil, d’inclusion et d’offre d’opportunités aux réfugiés », a déclaré Filippo Grandi, Haut Commissaire des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés. « J’ai une grande admiration pour ces maires, pour ces autorités locales et pour les habitants de ces villes qui oeuvrent en faveur de la solidarité. Nous attendons d’eux qu’ils défendent ces valeurs et qu’ils poursuivent cet important travail. »

    « Nous n’avons pas le luxe de faire de la politique car il nous faut que les choses fonctionnent, non seulement pour les nouveaux arrivants mais aussi pour les communautés établies dans nos villes. Ce que nous avons, c’est la capacité de réunir nos forces et des ressources différentes pour faire de l’inclusion une réalité – tout en mobilisant les contributions des secteurs public, privé et bénévole afin de trouver des solutions concrètes à nos défis les plus urgents », a déclaré Marvin Jonathan Rees, le maire de Bristol au Royaume-Uni et l’un des premiers signataires de l’initiative Cities #WithRefugees, pour décrire le rôle unique des dirigeants au niveau local.

    Au niveau mondial, le Pacte mondial sur les réfugiés, qui vise à mettre en œuvre une approche plus globale de la gestion des crises de réfugiés, reconnaît le rôle important des autorités locales en tant que premiers intervenants dans les situations de réfugiés à grande échelle. Le HCR organisera le tout premier Forum mondial sur les réfugiés en décembre 2019, qui sera l’occasion de catalyser des partenariats novateurs entre les secteurs et pour tous les acteurs concernés - gouvernements, société civile, secteur privé, organisations internationales et autres - afin de changer concrètement la vie des réfugiés et des communautés hôtes.

    https://www.unhcr.org/fr-fr/news/press/2019/6/5d0b8549a/hcr-felicite-soutien-175-villes-travers-monde-entier-faveur-refugies.html
    #villes-refuge #asile #migrations #réfugiés #accueil
    #Cities#WithRefugees

    Ajouté à la métaliste :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/759145

  • Canada : la banque Desjardins touchée par un vol de données massif, 2,9 millions de clients concernés
    https://cyberguerre.numerama.com/1495-canada-la-banque-desjardins-touchee-par-un-vol-de-donnees

    L’un des plus grands importants systèmes de caisses populaires du Canada, le Mouvement Desjardins, a fait l’objet d’une fuite de données sans précédent : 2,9 millions de clients ont été touchés. Des données sensibles, comme le numéro d’assistance sociale, ont par ailleurs été dérobées. Jamais l’établissement bancaire Desjardins n’avait subi une fuite de données aussi massive. Dans un billet publié sur son site, l’une des plus grandes coopératives d’épargne du Canada fait preuve de transparence à l’égard de ses (...)

    #BigData #hacking

    //c0.lestechnophiles.com/cyberguerre.numerama.com//content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/storm-203461_1920.jpg

    • Toujours dans cette optique d’apaisement, la banque affirme n’avoir observé aucune augmentation de cas de fraudes impliquant les comptes touchés au cours des derniers mois.

      Et quelle autorité les force à dire la vérité ? Quand un compte est « piraté » et qu’un bonze sort 800 ou 1000$ d’un compte, Desjardins, comme les autres, s.empresse de remettre les sous pour que les croquants ne s’alarment pas. « Tout est sous contrôle. »

      Ce que l’article manque de préciser, c’est quand dans la lettre adressée aux clients potentiellement touchés par la fuite de donnée, la banque Desjardins trouve tout de même moyen de placer un « faites attention à ne pas divulguer vos informations personnelles », et prêche qu’il faut être « vigilant ». Vigilant de quoi ? De leurs employé.e.s ? Apparemment, l’institution ne tient pas à révéler les caractéristiques du fautif.

  • Must we decolonise #Open_Access? Perspectives from Francophone Africa

    A long read featuring the recent work of Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou and Florence Piron, on how a truly open and inclusive ‘Open Access’ movement must include those at the periphery

    I recently watched the recording of the fantastic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion session at OpenCon, and I was struck by the general theme of how ‘openness’ isn’t necessarily the force for equality that we perhaps think it is, and how issues of power, exploitation, and hierarchy means that it should be understood differently according to the context in which it is applied. In the session, Denisse Albornoz used the expression of ‘situated openness’ to describe how our Northern conception of openness should not be forced on anyone or any group – it needs to be understood first in individual contexts of historical injustices and post-colonial power structures.

    What stood out for me most in this session, however, (because it related most to my work) was Cameroonian Thomas Mboa’s presentation, which talked about the ‘neo-colonial face of open access’. The presentation employed some very striking critical terms such as ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’ to Open Access.

    I’ve always known that the Open Access movement was far from perfect, but at least it’s moving global science publishing in the right direction, right? Can working towards free access and sharing of research really be ‘neo-colonial’ and lead to ‘alienation’ for users of research in the Global South? And if this really is the case, how can we ‘decolonise’ open access?

    Thomas didn’t get much time to expand on some of the themes he presented, so I got in contact to see if he had covered these ideas elsewhere, and fortunately he has, through his participation in ‘Projet SOHA’ . This is a research-action project that’s been working on open science, empowerment and cognitive justice in French-speaking Africa and Haiti from 2015-17. He provided me with links to four publications written in French by himself and his colleagues from the project – Florence Piron (Université Laval, Quebec, Canada), Antonin Benoît Diouf (Senegal), and Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba (Cameroon), and many others.

    These articles are a goldmine of provocative ideas and perspectives on Open Access from the Global South, which should challenge all of us in the English-speaking academic publishing community. Therefore, I decided to share some excerpts and extended quotes from these articles below, in amongst some general comments from my (admittedly limited) experience of working with researchers in the Global South.

    The quotes are taken from the following book and articles, which I recommend reading in full (these are easily translatable using the free tool Google Translate Web, which correctly translated around 95% of the text).

    Chapter 2 – ‘Les injustices cognitives en Afrique subsaharienne : réflexions sur les causes et les moyens de lutte’ – Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou (2016), in Piron, Dibounje Madiba et Regulus 2016 (below)
    Justice cognitive, libre accès et savoirs locaux – Collective book edited by Florence Piron, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba and Samuel Regulus (2016) (CC-BY) https://scienceetbiencommun.pressbooks.pub/justicecognitive1
    Qui sait ? Le libre accès en Afrique et en Haïti – Florence Piron (2017) (CC-BY) (Soon to be published in English in Forthcoming Open Divide. Critical Studies of Open Access (Herb & Schöpfel ed), Litwinbooks
    Le libre accès vu d’Afrique francophone subsaharienne – Florence Piron, Antonin Benoît Diouf, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, Zoé Aubierge Ouangré, Djossè Roméo Tessy, Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert, Anderson Pierre and Zakari Lire (2017) (CC-BY-NC-SA)
    Une autre science est possible. Récit d’une utopie concrète dans la Francophonie (le projet SOHA) – Revue Possibles, 2016 (CC-BY)

    Piron et al’s (2017) article starts with a stinging critique of those of us in our Northern scholarly publishing community cliques, and our never-ending open access debates over technicalities:

    “… there are many debates in this community, including on the place of open licenses in open access (is an article really in open access if it is not freely reusable in addition to being freely accessible?), on the legitimacy of the fees charged to authors by certain journals choosing open access, on the quality and evaluation of open access journals, on the very format of the journal as the main vehicle for the dissemination of scientific articles or on the type of documents to be included in institutional or thematic open archives (only peer-reviewed articles or any document related to scientific work?).

    Viewed from Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, these debates may seem very strange, if not incomprehensible. Above all, they appear very localized: they are debates of rich countries, of countries of the North, where basic questions such as the regular payment of a reasonable salary to academics, the existence of public funding for research, access to the web, electricity, well-stocked libraries and comfortable and safe workplaces have long been settled.” Piron et al. (2017)

    … and their critique gets more and more scathing from here for the Open Access movement. OA advocates – tighten your seatbelts – you are not going to find this a comfortable ride.

    “… a conception of open access that is limited to the legal and technical questions of the accessibility of science without thinking about the relationship between center and periphery can become a source of epistemic alienation and neocolonialism in the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

    “Is open access the solution to the documented shortcomings of these African universities and, in doing so, a crucial means of getting scientific research off the ground? I would like to show that this is not the case, and to suggest that open access can instead become a neo-colonial tool by reinforcing the cognitive injustices that prevent African researchers from fully deploying their research capacities in the service of the community and sustainable local development of their country.” Piron (2017)

    Ouch. To understand these concepts of ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’, it helps to understand this ‘world system’ and the power relationship between the centre and the periphery. This is based on Wallerstein’s (1996) model, which Thomas featured in his OpenCon slides:

    “… a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication circulating between many instances of high economic value, including universities, research centers, science policies, journals and an oligopoly of for-profit scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, 2015).” Piron et al. (2017)

    “… we believe that science, far from being universal, has been historically globalized. Inspiring us, like Keim (2010) and a few others (Polanco, 1990), from Wallerstein’s (1996) theory, we consider that it constitutes a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication. Produced mainly in the North, this merchandise obeys standards and practices that are defined by the ‘center’ of the system, namely the main commercial scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015), and their university partners are the US and British universities dominating the so-called world rankings. The semi-periphery is constituted by all the other countries of the North or emerging from the South which revolve around this center, adopting the English language in science and conforming to the model LMD (license, master, doctorate) imposed since the Bologna process to all the universities of the world with the aim of “normalizing” and standardizing the functioning of this world-system. The periphery then refers to all the countries that are excluded from this system, which produce no or very few scientific publications or whose research work is invisible, but to whom the LMD model has also been imposed (Charlier, Croché, & Ndoye 2009, Hountondji 2001)”. Piron et al. (2017)

    So, the continuing bias and global focus towards the powerful ‘center’ of the world-system leads to the epistemic alienation of those on the periphery, manifesting in a ‘spiritual colonisation’:

    “… this attitude that drives us to want to think about local problems with Western perspective is a colonial legacy to which many African citizens hang like a ball.” Mboa (2016).

    So where does Open Access fit in with this world-system?

    “… if open access is to facilitate and accelerate the access of scientists from the South to Northern science without looking into the visibility of knowledge of the South, it helps to redouble their alienation epistemic without contributing to their emancipation. Indeed, by making the work of the center of the world-system of science even more accessible, open access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies.” Piron et al. (2017)

    Rethinking Northern perspectives

    This should be an eye-opening analysis for those of us who assumed that access to research knowledge in the North could only be a good thing for the South. Perhaps we need to examine the arrogance behind our narrow worldview, and consider more deeply the power at the heart of such a one-way knowledge exchange. Many of us might find this difficult, as:

    “The idea that open access may have the effects of neocolonialism is incomprehensible to people blind to epistemological diversity, who reduce the proclaimed universalism of Western science to the impoverished model of the standards imposed by the Web of Science model. For these people, the invisibility of a publication in their numerical reference space (located in the center of the world-system) is equivalent to its non-existence. The idea that valid and relevant knowledge can exist in another form and independently of the world-system that fascinates them is unthinkable.” Piron et al. (2017)

    Having spent a little time at scholarly publishing events in the Global North, I can attest that the mindset described above is common. There are kind thoughts (and a few breadcrumbs thrown in the form of grants and fellowships) towards those on the periphery, but it is very much in the mindset of helping those from the Global South ‘catch up’. Our mindset is very much as Piron describes here:

    “If one sticks to the positivist view that “science” is universal – even if its “essence” is symbolized by the American magazine Science – then indeed African science, that is to say in Africa, is late, and we need to help it develop so that it looks more and more like the North”. Piron (2017)

    And whilst in the North we may have a lot of respect for different cultural perspectives, genuine reciprocal exchanges of research knowledge are rare. We are supremely confident that our highly-developed scientific publishing model deserves to be at the centre of our system. This can lead to selective blindness about the rigorousness of our science and our indexed journals, in spite of the steady drip drip drip of reports of biased peer review, data fraud and other ethical violations in ‘high-impact’ Northern journals, exposed in places like retraction watch.

    North/South research collaborations are rarely equitable – southern partners often complain of being used as data-gatherers rather than intellectual equals and partners in research projects, even when the research is being carried out in their own country.

    “These [Northern] partners inevitably guide the problems and the methodological and epistemological choices of African researchers towards the only model they know and value, the one born at the center of the world-system of science – without questioning whether this model is relevant to Africa and its challenges”. Piron et al (2017).

    These issues of inequity in collaborative relationships and publication practices seem inextricably linked, which is not surprising when the ultimate end goal of research is publishing papers in Northern journals, rather than actually solving Southern development challenges.

    “In this context, open access may appear as a neocolonial tool, as it facilitates access by Southern researchers to Northern science without ensuring reciprocity. In doing so, it redoubles the epistemic alienation of these researchers instead of contributing to the emancipation of the knowledge created in the universities of the South by releasing them from their extraversion. Indeed, by making the work produced in the center of the world-system even more accessible, free access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies, which generates situations absurd as, for example, the use of a theoretical framework related to wage labor in the Paris region to analyze the work of women in northern Mali” Piron (2017)

    “The resulting consequences are, in particular, the teachers of the Southern countries who quote and read only writers from the North and impose them on their students and the libraries of our universities who do everything to subscribe to Western scholarly journals while they do not deal with our problems. (Mboa Nkoudou, 2016 )”

    This is also a striking example:

    “It is very sad to note that geographers in Ouagadougou are more familiar with European work on the Sahel than those at the Higher Institute of Sahel in Maroua, Cameroon.” Piron (2017)

    The lack of equity in research knowledge exchange and collaboration is also caused by another one-way North to South flow: funding. Research in the South is often dependent on foreign funding. Big Northern donors and funders therefore set the standards and agendas in research, and in how the entire research funding system works. Southern partners rarely get to set the agenda, and researchers rarely get to develop the research questions that guide the research. They have to learn to jump through administrative hoops to become credible in the eyes of the Northern donor (for more information see ‘Who drives research in developing countries?‘).

    Southern institutions are also compelled, via league tables such as the World Unviersity Rankings, to play the same game as institutions in the North. Institutions are ranked against each other according to criteria set in the North, one of which is citations (of course, only citations between journals in the Web of Science or Scopus, which is overwhelmingly Northern). And so to stay ‘competitive’, Southern institutions need their researchers to publish in Northern journals with Northern language and agendas.
    Northern agendas and local innovation

    Whilst it is tempting to think that the issues and criticism described above is mostly a problem for the social sciences and humanities, there are also real issues in the ‘hard’ sciences – perhaps not so much in their epistemological foundations – but in very practical issues of Northern research agendas. For example, Northern research, being based in Europe and the US, is overwhelmingly biased towards white people, in diversity of leadership, diversity of researchers, and most importantly in the whiteness of clinical trial subjects. This is problematic because different ethnic populations have different genetic makeups and differences due to geography, that mean they respond differently to treatments (see here, here and here). Are African and Asian researchers informed of this when they read research from so-called ‘international’ journals?

    Furthermore, these Northern agendas can also mean that research focuses on drugs, equipment and treatments that are simply not suitable for developing country contexts. I was reminded of a discussion comment recently made by a Pakistani surgeon on the Northern bias of systematic reviews:

    “There is a definite bias in this approach as almost all of the guidelines and systematic reviews are based on the research carried out in high income countries and the findings and the recommendations have little relevance to the patients, health care system and many a time serve no purpose to the millions of patients based in low resourced countries. e.g. I routinely used Phenol blocks for spasticity management for my patients which were abandoned two decades ago in the West. Results are great, and the patients can afford this Rs 200 phenol instead of Rs 15,000 Botox vial. But, unfortunately, I am unable to locate a single systematic review on the efficacy of phenol as all published research in the last decade was only on the use of Botox in the management of spasticity.” Farooq Rathore (HIFA mailing list, 2016).

    Similarly, I’ve read research papers from the South that report on innovative approaches to medical treatments and other problems that utilise lower-cost equipment and methodologies (in fact, as is argued here, research in low-resource environments can often be more efficient and innovative, containing many lessons we, in the North, could learn from). This point is also made by Piron et al:

    “… the production of technical and social innovations is rich in Sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa, as evidenced by the high number of articles on this subject in the Sci-Dev magazine, specializing in science for development, or in the ecofin site, an economic information agency turned towards Africa. But these are mostly local innovations that mobilize local resources and often recycled materials to, for example, introduce electricity into a village, better irrigate fields or offer lighting after sunset. The aim of these innovations is to contribute to local development and not to the development of international markets, unlike innovations designed in the North which, while targeting the countries of the South, remain highly marketable – just think of milk powder or GMO seeds. The issue of open access to scientific publications is a very secondary issue for local innovators in such a context”. (Piron et al. 2016)

    These examples of innovation aside, there are many cases where the ‘epistemic alienation’ described above leads to ‘the exclusion or contempt of local knowledge’ (Mboa, 2016), even amongst researchers in the global South.

    “In fact, Western culture abundantly relayed in the media and textbooks is shown to be superior to other cultures. This situation is pushing Africans to multiply their efforts to reach the ideal of life of the “white”. This situation seems to block their ability to think locally, or even to be reactive. Thus, faced with a given situation specific to the African context, many are those who first draw on the resources of Western thinking to propose elements of answers.” Mboa (2016)

    Free and open access as ‘showcasing products’

    The Research4Life (R4L) programme also comes in for criticism from Piron et al. which will come as a shock to Northern publishing people who often use the ‘… but they’ve got Research4Life’ line when faced with evidence of global research inequalities.

    “… while pretending to charitably provide university libraries in the Global South with free access to pre-defined packages of paid journals from the North, this program, set up by for-profit scientific publishers, maintains the dependence of these libraries, limits their understanding of the true network of open access publications and, above all, improves the market for the products sold by these publishers.” Piron et al (2017)

    “… this program encourages the continued reliance of these libraries on an external program, designed in the North and showcasing Northern products, while it may disappear as soon as this philanthropic desire is exhausted or as soon as trading partners will not find any more benefits.”

    Whilst I still think R4L is a great initiative (I know many researchers in the Global South who are very appreciative of the programme), it’s difficult to disagree with the conclusion that:

    ‘… this program mainly improves the opportunities of Northern publishers without contributing to the sustainable empowerment of university libraries in the South … this charity seems very hypocritical, let alone arbitrary, since it can stop at any time.” Piron (2017)

    Of course, the same could be said of Article Processing Charge (APC) waivers for developing country authors. Waivers are currently offered by the majority of journals from the big publishers (provided according to the same HINARI list of countries provided by Research4Life), although sometimes you have to dig deep into the terms and conditions pages to find them. Waivers are good for publishers to showcase their corporate social responsibility and provide diversity of authorship. However, they are unsustainable – this charity is unlikely to last forever, especially as they rely on the pool of Southern authors being relatively limited. It should also be noted that developing countries with the most active, growing researcher communities such as Nigeria, South Africa and India do not qualify for either R4L access or APC waivers.

    Speaking of APCs, something I observe regularly amongst Southern researchers is a confusion over the ‘Gold’ OA author-pays model, and this too is noted:

    “In northern countries, many researchers, especially in STEM (Björk and Solomon, 2012) [ 7 ], believe (wrongly) that open access now means “publication fees charged to authors” … this commercial innovation appears to be paying off, as these costs appear to be natural to researchers.” Piron (2017)

    This also appears to be paying off in the Global South – authors seem resigned to pay some kind of charge to publish, and it is common to have to point out to authors that over two-thirds of OA journals and 99% of subscription journals do not charge to publish (although, the rise of ‘predatory’ journals may have magnified this misunderstanding that pay-to-publish is the norm).

    It may be tempting to think of these inequalities as an unfortunate historical accident, and that our attempts to help the Global South ‘catch up’ are just a little clumsy and patronising. However, Piron argues that this is no mere accident, but the result of colonial exploitation that still resonates in existing power structures today:

    “Open access is then easily seen as a means of catching up, at least filling gaps in libraries and often outdated teaching […] Africa is considered as lagging behind the modern world, which would explain its underdevelopment, to summarize this sadly hegemonic conception of north-south relations. By charity, Northern countries then feel obliged to help, which feeds the entire industry surrounding development aid [….] this model of delay, violently imposed by the West on the rest of the world through colonization, has been used to justify the economic and cognitive exploitation (Connell, 2014) of colonized continents without which modernity could not have prospered.” Piron (2017)

    To build the path or take the path?

    Of course, the authors do admit that access to Northern research has a role to play in the Global South, provided the access is situated in local contexts:

    “… African science should be an African knowledge, rooted in African contexts, that uses African epistemologies to answer African questions, while also using other knowledge from all over the world, including Western ones, if they are relevant locally.” Piron (2017)

    However, the practical reality of Open Access for Southern researchers is often overstated. There is a crucial distinction between making content ‘open’ and providing the means to access that content. As Piron et al. 2017 say:

    “To put a publication in open access: is it, to build the path (technical or legal) that leads to it, or is it to make it possible for people to take this path? This distinction is crucial to understand the difference in meaning of open access between the center and the periphery of the world-system of science, although only an awareness of the conditions of scientific research in the Southern countries makes it possible to visualize it, to perceive it.”

    This crucial difference between availability and accessibility has also been explained by Anne Powell on Scholarly Kitchen. There are many complex barriers to ‘free’ and ‘open’ content actually being accessed and used. The most obvious of these barriers is internet connectivity, but librarian training, language and digital literacy also feature significantly:

    “Finding relevant open access articles on the web requires digital skills that, as we have seen, are rare among Haitian and African students for whom the web sometimes comes via Facebook … Remember that it is almost always when they arrive at university that these students first touch a computer. The catching up is fast, but many reflexes acquired since the primary school in the countries of the North must be developed before even being able to imagine that there are open access scientific texts on the web to make up for the lack of documents in the libraries. In the words of the Haitian student Anderson Pierre, “a large part of the students do not know the existence of these resources or do not have the digital skills to access and exploit them in order to advance their research project”. Piron (2017)

    Barriers to local knowledge exchange

    Unfortunately, this is made even more difficult by resistance and misunderstanding of the internet and digital tools from senior leadership in Africa:

    “Social representations of the web, science and copyright also come into play, especially among older academics, a phenomenon that undermines the appropriation of digital technologies at the basis of open access in universities.” Piron et al. (2017)

    “To this idea that knowledge resides only in printed books is added a representation of the web which also has an impact on the local resistance to open access: our fieldwork has allowed us to understand that, for many African senior academics, the web is incompatible with science because it contains only documents or sites that are of low quality, frivolous or entertaining. These people infer that science in open access on the web is of lower quality than printed science and are very surprised when they learn that most of the journals of the world-system of science exist only in dematerialized format. … Unfortunately, these resistances slow down the digitization and the web dissemination of African scientific works, perpetuating these absurd situations where the researchers of the same field in neighboring universities do not know what each other is doing”. Piron et al. (2017)

    This complaint about in-country communication from researchers in the South can be common, but there are signs that open access can make a difference – as an example, in Sri Lanka, I’ve spoken to researchers who say that communicating research findings within the country has always been a problem, but the online portal Sri Lanka Journals Online (currently 77 open access Sri Lankan journals) has started to improve this situation. This project was many years in the making, and has involved training journal editors and librarians in loading online content and improving editorial practices for open access. The same, of course, could be said for African Journals Online, which has potential to facilitate sharing on a larger scale.

    Arguably, some forms of institutional resistance to openness in the Global South have a neocolonial influence – universities have largely borrowed and even intensified the Northern ‘publish or perish’ mantra which focuses the academic rewards system almost entirely on journal publications, often in northern-indexed journals, rather than on impact on real world development.

    “The system of higher education and research in force in many African countries remains a remnant of colonization, perpetuated by the reproduction, year after year, of the same ideals and principles. This reproduction is assured not by the old colonizers but by our own political leaders who are perpetuating a system structured according to a classical partitioning that slows down any possible communication between researchers within the country or with the outside world, even worse between the university and the immediate environment. For the ruling class, the changes taking place in the world and the society’s needs seem to have no direct link to the university.” Mboa (2016)

    Mboa calls this partitioning between researchers and outsiders as “a tight border between society and science”:

    “African researchers are so attached to the ideal of neutrality of science and concern of its ‘purity’ that they consider contacts with ordinary citizens as ‘risks’ or threats and that they prefer to evolve in their ‘ivory tower’. On the other hand, ordinary citizens feel so diminished compared to researchers that to talk to them about their eventual involvement in research is a taboo subject …” Mboa (2016)

    Uncolonising openness

    So what is the answer to all these problems? Is it in building the skills of researchers and institutions or a complete change of philosophy?

    “The colonial origin of African science (Mvé-Ondo, 2005) is certainly no stranger to this present subjugation of African science to northern research projects, nor to its tendency to imitate Western science without effort. Contextualization, particularly in the quasi-colonial structuring of sub-Saharan African universities (Fredua-Kwarteng, 2015) and in maintaining the use of a colonial language in university education. Considering this institutionalized epistemic alienation as yet another cognitive injustice, Mvé-Ondo wonders “how to move from a westernization of science to a truly shared science” (p.49) and calls for “epistemological mutation”, “rebirth”, modernizing “African science at the crossroads of local knowledge and northern science – perhaps echoing the call of Fanon (1962/2002) for a “new thinking” in the Third World countries, detached from European model, decolonized.” Piron et al. (2017)

    For this to happen, open access must be about more than just access – but something much more holistic and equitable:

    “Can decentralized, decolonised open access then contribute to creating more cognitive justice in global scientific production? Our answer is clear: yes, provided that it is not limited to the question of access for scientific and non-scientific readers to scientific publications. It must include the concern for origin, creation, local publishing and the desire to ensure equity between the accessibility of the publications of the center of the world system and that of knowledge from the periphery. It thus proposes to replace the normative universalism of globalized science with an inclusive universalism, open to the ecology of knowledges and capable of building an authentic knowledge commons (Gruson-Daniel, 2015; Le Crosnier, 2015), hospitable for the knowledge of the North and the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

    Mboa sees the solution to this multifaceted problem in ‘open science’:

    “[Cognitive injustice comes via] … endogenous causes (citizens and African leaders) and by exogenous causes (capitalism, colonization, the West). The knowledge of these causes allowed me to propose ways to prevent our downfall. Among these means, I convened open science as a tool available to our leaders and citizens for advancing cognitive justice. For although the causes are endogenous and exogenous, I believe that a wound heals from the inside outwards.” Mboa (2016).

    Mboa explains how open science approaches can overcome some of these problems in this book chapter, but here he provides a short summary of the advantages of open science for African research:

    “It’s a science that rejects the ivory tower and the separation between scientists and the rest of the population of the country. In short, it’s a science released from control by a universal capitalist standard, by hierarchical authority and by pre-established scientific classes. From this perspective, open science offers the following advantages:

    it brings science closer to society;
    it promotes fair and sustainable development;
    it allows the expression of minority and / or marginalized groups, as well as their knowledge;
    it promotes original, local and useful research in the country;
    it facilitates access to a variety of scientific and technical information;
    it is abundant, recent and up to date;
    it develops digital skills;
    it facilitates collaborative work;
    it gives a better visibility to research work.

    By aiming to benefit from these advantages, researchers and African students fight cognitive injustice. For this, open access science relies on open access, free licenses, free computing, and citizen science.” Mboa (2016).

    But in order for open science to succeed, digital literacy must be rapidly improved to empower students and researchers in the South:

    “Promoting inclusive access therefore requires engaging at the same time in a decolonial critique of the relationship between the center and the periphery and urging universities in the South to develop the digital literacy of their student or teacher members.” Piron et al. (2017)

    It also requires improving production of scientific works (‘grey’ literature, as well as peer-reviewed papers) in the South for a two-way North/South conversation:

    “Then, we propose to rethink the usual definition of open access to add the mandate to enhance the visibility of scientific work produced in universities in the South and thus contribute to greater cognitive justice in global scientific production.” Piron (2017)

    And providing open access needs to be understood in context:

    “… if we integrate the concern for the enhancement of the knowledge produced in the periphery and the awareness of all that hinders the creation of this knowledge, then open access can become a tool of cognitive justice at the service of the construction of an inclusive universalism peculiar to a just open science.” Piron, Diouf, Madiba (2017)

    In summary then, we need to rethink the way that the global North seeks to support the South – a realignment of this relationship from mere access to empowerment through sustainable capacity building:

    “Africa’s scientific development aid, if it is needed, should therefore be oriented much less towards immediate access to Northern publications and more to local development of tools and the strengthening of the digital skills of academics and librarians. These tools and skills would enable them not only to take advantage of open access databases, but also to digitize and put open access local scientific works in open archives, journals or research centers.” Piron (2017)

    So what next?

    Even if you disagree with many the above ideas, I hope that this has provided many of you with some food for thought. Open Access must surely be about more than just knowledge flow from North to South (or, for that matter the academy to the public, or well-funded researchers to poorly funded researchers). Those on the periphery must also be given a significant voice and a place at the table. For this to happen, many researchers (and their equivalents outside academia) need training and support in digital skills; some institutional barriers also need to be removed or overcome; and of course a few cherished, long-held ideas must be seriously challenged.

    “These injustices denote anything that diminishes the capacity of academics in these countries to deploy the full potential of their intellectual talents, their knowledge and their capacity for scientific research to serve their country’s sustainable local development”. Piron et al., (2016).

    What do you think…?

    http://journalologik.uk/?p=149
    #édition_scientifique #OA #open_access #Afrique #Afrique_francophone #décolonisation #post-colonialisme

  • ONE MILLION - ITEM 2361
    https://vimeo.com/332715618

    BELVEDERE MUSEUM VIENNA | CARLONE CONTEMPORARY
    ONE MILLION BY ULI AIGNER - ITEM 2361 - MONUMENTAL PORCELAIN VESSEL

    APRIL 12 - NOVEMBER 3, 2019

    belvedere.at/uli_aigner_en

    Porcelain is like a material memory that can endure for centuries. UIi Aigner uses this medium as a starting-point to transform loss into a material message about life and survival. Her monumental porcelain vessel is to be shown in the series Carlone Contemporary in which contemporary artworks are juxtaposed with the Baroque pictorial programme of the Carlone Hall.

    ONE MILLION – ITEM 2361 by Uli Aigner is based on a large colour pencil drawing by the artist. As part of her porcelain project ONE MILLION, she had this made into a large vessel in Jingdezhen, China, the ancient “world capital of porcelain” and painted it, working together with a porcelain painter.

    The universal subject of a sunset alludes to the harrowing experience of the suicide of a loved one. On the vessel’s body there is a depiction of a sunset in north-western Canada, the last before months without sunlight. At the top edge, the artist introduces an alternative depiction of the universe: the theory, supported by a mathematical formula, that the universe is a hologram. Aigner addresses both a physical presence in a real environment and a hypothetical model – two ways through which people can relate to the world.

    This exploration of light and shadow, of brightness and darkness in the cycle of life also appears in Carlo Innocenzo Carlone’s frescoes. These address the recurring alternation between day and night. Light is personified by Apollo as the leader of the Muses and has positive connotations, for it illuminates and exposes vices and drives them away.

    In the knowledge of the vast number of suicides worldwide, in this work Aigner is alluding to those who chose to leave us and paying tribute to those who “are still here in spite of everything”.

    Curated by Stella Rollig

    #art #porcelaine

  • La violence conjugale plus répandue chez les policiers ? | JDM
    https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/11/01/la-violence-conjugale-plus-repandue-chez-les-policiers

    La publication récente d’un livre prétendant qu’il y a une « épidémie secrète » de violence conjugale chez les policiers fait sursauter les forces de l’ordre québécoises.

    « Un nombre bouleversant de cas de violence conjugale se déroule derrière les murs des maisons de policiers alors que la plupart des services de police font très peu pour les contrer », écrit d’entrée de jeu l’auteur Alex Roslin dans son livre intitulé Police Wife, qu’il co-signe avec Susanna Hope.

    Pour appuyer son propos, l’auteur québécois cite deux études américaines datant du début des années 1990 montrant que 40 % des policiers auraient été violents avec leur conjointe au cours de l’année précédente.

    En entrevue avec Le Journal, Roslin avance que ses années de recherche sur le sujet lui permettent de conclure que les proportions et la « culture de police » sont les mêmes au Canada. Le fléau serait toutefois caché derrière un « mur bleu du silence ». Une affirmation qui ne trouve pas écho auprès des différents acteurs des milieux policier et sociocommunautaire québécois (voir autre article).

    15 fois plus élevé

    Trois causes expliqueraient ce taux de violence conjugale 15 fois plus élevé que celui de la population générale, d’après Roslin.

    Il y a d’abord le pouvoir et le contrôle. « Beaucoup entrent dans la police avec les meilleures intentions. [...] Mais certains peuvent être attirés pour d’autres raisons, parce qu’ils aiment le pouvoir que confère le fait d’avoir une arme, un badge et un uniforme, parce qu’ils sont insécures ou ont une rage d’être en contrôle », croit-il.

    Roslin évoque aussi une « attitude dérogatoire envers les femmes ». À titre d’exemple, un sondage réalisé auprès de 873 policiers américains en 2006 indiquerait que seulement 7,1 % acceptent que « les femmes sont aussi capables que les hommes de penser logiquement ».

    Enfin, « la troisième raison pour laquelle autant de policiers sont violents à la maison semble être simplement le fait qu’ils peuvent s’en tirer », note Roslin, prétendant que les agents se protègent entre eux lors d’une enquête.

    Criblée de balles

    L’auteur cite l’exemple de Jocelyn Hotte, un policier de la GRC qui a tué son ex-conjointe Lucie Gélinas sur une autoroute montréalaise en 2001. Cette dernière avait porté plainte à la police de Laval une semaine avant sa mort, une plainte qui avait été jugée infondée.

    « Ce n’est pas seulement la police de Laval et la GRC qui n’ont pas agi. [...] Aucun autre service de police ou gouvernement au Canada n’a tiré les leçons de cette tragédie, d’après ce que je peux voir », déplore-t-il, précisant qu’aucun policier n’est automatiquement congédié s’il est reconnu coupable de violence conjugale.

    Roslin va même jusqu’à dire que le Canada « traîne 20 ans derrière les États-Unis en laissant des armes dans les mains des abuseurs ».

    « Peut-être qu’il y aura un autre incident grave si rien ne change », a prévenu l’auteur en entrevue avec Le Journal.

    Une des raisons du grand nombre de féminicide et viol est peut être à chercher dans le fait que les policier sont environ 15 fois plus violents avec leurs conjoint·es que la moyenne.

    #violence_masculine #couple #police #féminicide #culture_du_viol #patriarcat

  • Hundreds of Uber Drivers in Toronto Are Joining a Union
    https://gizmodo.com/hundreds-of-uber-drivers-in-toronto-are-joining-a-union-1835878097

    In a growing number of cities where rideshare platforms operate, drivers are fed up with the low pay, long hours, and lack of basic worker protections that shlepping strangers around entails. In the U.S., this has led to large, coordinated protests and attempts to game the system to achieve a living wage. Canadian drivers, however, took a more traditional route: signing union cards.

    First announced on Monday, Uber drivers based in Toronto expressed their intention to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, a 250,000-strong trade union which operates in both Canada and the U.S. The actual number of drivers who had signed cards was not released, but during a press conference this afternoon, UFCW Canada staffer Pablo Godoy claimed their support had hit the “high hundreds” and were growing rapidly.

    As with grassroots groups like Rideshare Drivers United, the hope is to bring Uber’s work standards into closer parity with that of traditional cabs by upholding the regional minimum wage, sick day, vacation, and break standards, as well as an overhaul of the deactivation system that effectively allows Uber to fire drivers without recourse. “These are human rights, and all drivers deserve this basic level of respect,” Ejaz Butt, a local driver, said today.

    What makes Ontario an interesting test bed is that by signing with UFCW, drivers are effectively shooting first and asking questions later—which may end up being the wiser tactic. “Today is the beginning of a process that we’re embarking on. The first step of that process is to call Uber come to the table,” Godoy said, though he readily admits Uber has yet to offer a response. (For whatever it’s worth, Gizmodo also reached out to Uber for comment on Monday and has also not received a reply.) The same business model that allows Uber to consider its drivers independent contractors rather than employees exists in Canada just as it does in the U.S., and Uber is certain to defend its claim vociferously if it’s forced to acknowledge a threat to said claim at all.

    At the moment, the UFCW-signed drivers in Canada’s largest city are not certified as a union, and matters may be further complicated by the fact that most rideshare drivers operate on multiple platforms concurrently. “Having multiple employers does not mean that you’re not an employee of the company that you drive or work for,” Godoy stated, but it may still pose representation issues down the line.

    Currently, Toronto’s city government is weighing how to balance the interests of rideshare and cab companies—something New York already had a protracted fight over, eventually ruling in favor of drivers. Ultimately, Godoy told the press that “we believe Uber will listen to the concerns.”

    Toronto Uber drivers join the union - UFCW Canada – MEDIA CONFERENCE ALERT
    https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/06/24/1873334/0/en/Toronto-Uber-drivers-join-the-union-UFCW-Canada-MEDIA-CONFERENCE-ALER

    TORONTO, June 24, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hundreds of Uber drivers in Toronto have joined UFCW Canada (United Food and Commercial Workers union), the country’s leading private-sector union. On Wednesday, June 26, 2019 at 11 a.m., Uber drivers and their union will hold a media conference at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel to discuss the challenges Uber drivers face, and the redress they and their union are seeking from Uber. 

    Uber drivers don’t get paid sick days, vacation days or extended health coverage, and must cover their own fuel and repair costs. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute calculated that after costs, most Uber drivers earned less than $10 an hour. “Uber calls us partners, but we have absolutely no say about our working conditions, or even being able to take a bathroom break,” says Ejaz Butt, who works for Uber and helped start the union drive. “We know we make a lot of money for Uber but in return we get treated like we don’t matter.” Butt and other Uber drivers will be at the June 26th Toronto media conference.

    “Companies like UBER, who can hire and fire drivers and fully dictate the terms of employment should be held accountable for the well-being of their employees,” says Paul Meinema, the National President of UFCW Canada. “Uber is the employer. The drivers are employees. The technology is just a management tool and the company should adhere to the labour laws,” says the UFCW Canada leader, who will also be participating in the June 26th media conference in Toronto.

    About UFCW Canada: UFCW Canada represents more than 250,000 union members across the country working in food retail and processing, transportation, health, logistics, warehousing, agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing, security and professional sectors. UFCW Canada is the country’s most innovative organization dedicated to building fairness in workplaces and communities. UFCW Canada members are your neighbours who work at your local grocery stores, hotels, airport food courts, taxi firms, car rental agencies, nursing homes, restaurants, food processing plants and thousands of other locations across the country. To find out more about UFCW and its ground-breaking work, visit www.ufcw.ca.

    CONTACT:
    Pablo Godoy
    National Coordinator, Gig and Platform-Employer Initiatives
    416-675-1104, extension 2236
    pablo.godoy@ufcw.ca
    www.ufcw.ca

    #Kanada #Uber #Gewerkschaft

  • Beyond the Hype of Lab-Grown Diamonds
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/beyond-the-hype-of-lab-grown-diamonds-1834890351

    Billions of years ago when the world was still young, treasure began forming deep underground. As the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates plunged down into the upper mantle, bits of carbon, some likely hailing from long-dead life forms were melted and compressed into rigid lattices. Over millions of years, those lattices grew into the most durable, dazzling gems the planet had ever cooked up. And every so often, for reasons scientists still don’t fully understand, an eruption would send a stash of these stones rocketing to the surface inside a bubbly magma known as kimberlite.

    There, the diamonds would remain, nestled in the kimberlite volcanoes that delivered them from their fiery home, until humans evolved, learned of their existence, and began to dig them up.

    The epic origin of Earth’s diamonds has helped fuel a powerful marketing mythology around them: that they are objects of otherworldly strength and beauty; fitting symbols of eternal love. But while “diamonds are forever” may be the catchiest advertising slogan ever to bear some geologic truth, the supply of these stones in the Earth’s crust, in places we can readily reach them, is far from everlasting. And the scars we’ve inflicted on the land and ourselves in order to mine diamonds has cast a shadow that still lingers over the industry.

    Some diamond seekers, however, say we don’t need to scour the Earth any longer, because science now offers an alternative: diamonds grown in labs. These gems aren’t simulants or synthetic substitutes; they are optically, chemically, and physically identical to their Earth-mined counterparts. They’re also cheaper, and in theory, limitless. The arrival of lab-grown diamonds has rocked the jewelry world to its core and prompted fierce pushback from diamond miners. Claims abound on both sides.

    Growers often say that their diamonds are sustainable and ethical; miners and their industry allies counter that only gems plucked from the Earth can be considered “real” or “precious.” Some of these assertions are subjective, others are supported only by sparse, self-reported, or industry-backed data. But that’s not stopping everyone from making them.

    This is a fight over image, and when it comes to diamonds, image is everything.
    A variety of cut, polished Ada Diamonds created in a lab, including smaller melee stones and large center stones. 22.94 carats total. (2.60 ct. pear, 2.01 ct. asscher, 2.23 ct. cushion, 3.01 ct. radiant, 1.74 ct. princess, 2.11 ct. emerald, 3.11 ct. heart, 3.00 ct. oval, 3.13 ct. round.)
    Image: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Same, but different

    The dream of lab-grown diamond dates back over a century. In 1911, science fiction author H.G. Wells described what would essentially become one of the key methods for making diamond—recreating the conditions inside Earth’s mantle on its surface—in his short story The Diamond Maker. As the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) notes, there were a handful of dubious attempts to create diamonds in labs in the late 19th and early 20th century, but the first commercial diamond production wouldn’t emerge until the mid-1950s, when scientists with General Electric worked out a method for creating small, brown stones. Others, including De Beers, soon developed their own methods for synthesizing the gems, and use of the lab-created diamond in industrial applications, from cutting tools to high power electronics, took off.

    According to the GIA’s James Shigley, the first experimental production of gem-quality diamond occurred in 1970. Yet by the early 2000s, gem-quality stones were still small, and often tinted yellow with impurities. It was only in the last five or so years that methods for growing diamonds advanced to the point that producers began churning out large, colorless stones consistently. That’s when the jewelry sector began to take a real interest.

    Today, that sector is taking off. The International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA), a trade group formed in 2016 by a dozen lab diamond growers and sellers, now has about 50 members, according to IGDA secretary general Dick Garard. When the IGDA first formed, lab-grown diamonds were estimated to represent about 1 percent of a $14 billion rough diamond market. This year, industry analyst Paul Zimnisky estimates they account for 2-3 percent of the market.

    He expects that share will only continue to grow as factories in China that already produce millions of carats a year for industrial purposes start to see an opportunity in jewelry.
    “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not.”

    “This year some [factories] will come up from 100,000 gem-quality diamonds to one to two million,” Zimnisky said. “They already have the infrastructure and equipment in place” and are in the process of upgrading it. (About 150 million carats of diamonds were mined last year, according to a global analysis of the industry conducted by Bain & Company.)

    Production ramp-up aside, 2018 saw some other major developments across the industry. In the summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reversed decades of guidance when it expanded the definition of a diamond to include those created in labs and dropped ‘synthetic’ as a recommended descriptor for lab-grown stones. The decision came on the heels of the world’s top diamond producer, De Beers, announcing the launch of its own lab-grown diamond line, Lightbox, after having once vowed never to sell man-made stones as jewelry.

    “I would say shock,” Lightbox Chief Marketing Officer Sally Morrison told Earther when asked how the jewelry world responded to the company’s launch.

    While the majority of lab-grown diamonds on the market today are what’s known as melee (less than 0.18 carats), the tech for producing the biggest, most dazzling diamonds continues to improve. In 2016, lab-grown diamond company MiaDonna announced its partners had grown a 6.28 carat gem-quality diamond, claimed to be the largest created in the U.S. to that point. In 2017, a lab in Augsburg University, Germany that grows diamonds for industrial and scientific research applications produced what is thought to be the largest lab-grown diamond ever—a 155 carat behemoth that stretches nearly 4 inches across. Not gem quality, perhaps, but still impressive.

    “If you compare it with the Queen’s diamond, hers is four times heavier, it’s clearer” physicist Matthias Schreck, who leads the group that grew that beast of a jewel, told me. “But in area, our diamond is bigger. We were very proud of this.”

    Diamonds can be created in one of two ways: Similar to how they form inside the Earth, or similar to how scientists speculate they might form in outer space.

    The older, Earth-inspired method is known as “high temperature high pressure” (HPHT), and that’s exactly what it sounds like. A carbon source, like graphite, is placed in a giant, mechanical press where, in the presence of a catalyst, it’s subjected to temperatures of around 1,600 degrees Celsius and pressures of 5-6 Gigapascals in order to form diamond. (If you’re curious what that sort of pressure feels like, the GIA describes it as similar to the force exerted if you tried to balance a commercial jet on your fingertip.)

    The newer method, called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is more akin to how diamonds might form in interstellar gas clouds (for which we have indirect, spectroscopic evidence, according to Shigley). A hydrocarbon gas, like methane, is pumped into a low-pressure reactor vessel alongside hydrogen. While maintaining near-vacuum conditions, the gases are heated very hot—typically 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius, according to Lightbox CEO Steve Coe—causing carbon atoms to break free of their molecular bonds. Under the right conditions, those liberated bits of carbon will settle out onto a substrate—typically a flat, square plate of a synthetic diamond produced with the HPHT method—forming layer upon layer of diamond.

    “It’s like snow falling on a table on your back porch,” Jason Payne, the founder and CEO of lab-grown diamond jewelry company Ada Diamonds, told me.

    Scientists have been forging gem-quality diamonds with HPHT for longer, but today, CVD has become the method of choice for those selling larger bridal stones. That’s in part because it’s easier to control impurities and make diamonds with very high clarity, according to Coe. Still, each method has its advantages—Payne said that HPHT is faster and the diamonds typically have better color (which is to say, less of it)—and some companies, like Ada, purchase stones grown in both ways.

    However they’re made, lab-grown diamonds have the same exceptional hardness, stiffness, and thermal conductivity as their Earth-mined counterparts. Cut, they can dazzle with the same brilliance and fire—a technical term to describe how well the diamond scatters light like a prism. The GIA even grades them according to the same 4Cs—cut, clarity, color, and carat—that gemologists use to assess diamonds formed in the Earth, although it uses a slightly different terminology to report the color and clarity grades for lab-grown stones.

    They’re so similar, in fact, that lab-grown diamond entering the larger diamond supply without any disclosures has become a major concern across the jewelry industry, particularly when it comes to melee stones from Asia. It’s something major retailers are now investing thousands of dollars in sophisticated detection equipment to suss out by searching for minute differences in, say, their crystal shape or for impurities like nitrogen (much less common in lab-grown diamond, according to Shigley).

    Those differences may be a lifeline for retailers hoping to weed out lab-grown diamonds, but for companies focused on them, they can become another selling point. The lack of nitrogen in diamonds produced with the CVD method, for instance, gives them an exceptional chemical purity that allows them to be classified as type IIa; a rare and coveted breed that accounts for just 2 percent of those found in nature. Meanwhile, the ability to control everything about the growth process allows companies like Lightbox to adjust the formula and produce incredibly rare blue and pink diamonds as part of their standard product line. (In fact, these colored gemstones have made up over half of the company’s sales since launch, according to Coe.)

    And while lab-grown diamonds boast the same sparkle as their Earthly counterparts, they do so at a significant discount. Zimnisky said that today, your typical one carat, medium quality diamond grown in a lab will sell for about $3,600, compared with $6,100 for its Earth-mined counterpart—a discount of about 40 percent. Two years ago, that discount was only 18 percent. And while the price drop has “slightly tapered off” as Zimnisky put it, he expects it will fall further thanks in part to the aforementioned ramp up in Chinese production, as well as technological improvements. (The market is also shifting in response to Lightbox, which De Beers is using to position lab-grown diamonds as mass produced items for fashion jewelry, and which is selling its stones, ungraded, at the controversial low price of $800 per carat—a discount of nearly 90 percent.)

    Zimnisky said that if the price falls too fast, it could devalue lab-grown diamonds in the eyes of consumers. But for now, at least, paying less seems to be a selling point. A 2018 consumer research survey by MVI Marketing found that most of those polled would choose a larger lab-grown diamond over a smaller mined diamond of the same price.

    “The thing [consumers] seem most compelled by is the ability to trade up in size and quality at the same price,” Garard of IGDA said.

    Still, for buyers and sellers alike, price is only part of the story. Many in the lab-grown diamond world market their product as an ethical or eco-friendly alternative to mined diamonds.

    But those sales pitches aren’t without controversy.
    A variety of lab-grown diamond products arrayed on a desk at Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan. The stone in the upper left gets its blue color from boron. Diamonds tinted yellow (top center) usually get their color from small amounts of nitrogen.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Dazzling promises

    As Anna-Mieke Anderson tells it, she didn’t enter the diamond world to become a corporate tycoon. She did it to try and fix a mistake.

    In 1999, Anderson purchased herself a diamond. Some years later, in 2005, her father asked her where it came from. Nonplussed, she told him it came from the jewelry store. But that wasn’t what he was asking: He wanted to know where it really came from.

    “I actually had no idea,” Anderson told Earther. “That led me to do a mountain of research.”

    That research eventually led Anderson to conclude that she had likely bought a diamond mined under horrific conditions. She couldn’t be sure, because the certificate of purchase included no place of origin. But around the time of her purchase, civil wars funded by diamond mining were raging across Angola, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia, fueling “widespread devastation” as Global Witness put it in 2006. At the height of the diamond wars in the late ‘90s, the watchdog group estimates that as many as 15 percent of diamonds entering the market were conflict diamonds. Even those that weren’t actively fueling a war were often being mined in dirty, hazardous conditions; sometimes by children.

    “I couldn’t believe I’d bought into this,” Anderson said.

    To try and set things right, Anderson began sponsoring a boy living in a Liberian community impacted by the blood diamond trade. The experience was so eye-opening, she says, that she eventually felt compelled to sponsor more children. Selling conflict-free jewelry seemed like a fitting way to raise money to do so, but after a great deal more research, Anderson decided she couldn’t in good faith consider any diamond pulled from the Earth to be truly conflict-free in either the humanitarian or environmental sense. While diamond miners were, by the early 2000s, getting their gems certified “conflict free” according to the UN-backed Kimberley Process, the certification scheme’s definition of a conflict diamond—one sold by rebel groups to finance armed conflicts against governments—felt far too narrow.

    “That [conflict definition] eliminates anything to do with the environment, or eliminates a child mining it, or someone who was a slave, or beaten, or raped,” Anderson said.

    And so she started looking into science, and in 2007, launching MiaDonna as one of the world’s first lab-grown diamond jewelry companies. The business has been activism-oriented from the get-go, with at least five percent of its annual earnings—and more than 20 percent for the last three years—going into The Greener Diamond, Anderson’s charity foundation which has funded a wide range of projects, from training former child soldiers in Sierra Leone to grow food to sponsoring kids orphaned by the West African Ebola outbreak.

    MiaDonna isn’t the only company that positions itself as an ethical alternative to the traditional diamond industry. Brilliant Earth, which sells what it says are carefully-sourced mined and lab-created diamonds, also donates a small portion of its profits to supporting mining communities. Other lab-grown diamond companies market themselves as “ethical,” “conflict-free,” or “world positive.” Payne of Ada Diamonds sees, in lab-grown diamonds, not just shiny baubles, but a potential to improve medicine, clean up pollution, and advance society in countless other ways—and he thinks the growing interest in lab-grown diamond jewelry will help propel us toward that future.

    Others, however, say black-and-white characterizations when it comes to social impact of mined diamonds versus lab-grown stones are unfair. “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not,” Estelle Levin-Nally, founder and CEO of Levin Sources, which advocates for better governance in the mining sector, told Earther. “I think it’s always about your politics. And ethics are subjective.”

    Saleem Ali, an environmental researcher at the University of Delaware who serves on the board of the Diamonds and Development Initiative, agrees. He says the mining industry has, on the whole, worked hard to turn itself around since the height of the diamond wars and that governance is “much better today” than it used to be. Human rights watchdog Global Witness also says that “significant progress” has been made to curb the conflict diamond trade, although as Alice Harle, Senior Campaigner with Global Witness told Earther via email, diamonds do still fuel conflict, particularly in the Central African Republic and Zimbabwe.

    Most industry observers seems to agree that the Kimberley Process is outdated and inadequate, and that more work is needed to stamp out other abuses, including child labor and forced labor, in the artisanal and small-scale diamond mining sector. Today, large-scale mining operations don’t tend to see these kinds of problems, according to Julianne Kippenberg, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, but she notes that there may be other community impacts surrounding land rights and forced resettlement.

    The flip side, Ali and Levin-Nally say, is that well-regulated mining operations can be an important source of economic development and livelihood. Ali cites Botswana and Russia as prime examples of places where large-scale mining operations have become “major contributors to the economy.” Dmitry Amelkin, head of strategic projects and analytics for Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa, echoed that sentiment in an email to Earther, noting that diamonds transformed Botswana “from one of the poorest [countries] in the world to a middle-income country” with revenues from mining representing almost a third of its GDP.

    In May, a report commissioned by the Diamond Producers Association (DPA), a trade organization representing the world’s largest diamond mining companies, estimated that worldwide, its members generate nearly $4 billion in direct revenue for employees and contractors, along with another $6.8 billion in benefits via “local procurement of goods and services.” DPA CEO Jean-Marc Lieberherr said this was a story diamond miners need to do a better job telling.

    “The industry has undergone such changes since the Blood Diamond movie,” he said, referring to the blockbuster 2006 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that drew global attention to the problem of conflict diamonds. “And yet people’s’ perceptions haven’t evolved. I think the main reason is we have not had a voice, we haven’t communicated.”

    But conflict and human rights abuses aren’t the only issues that have plagued the diamond industry. There’s also the lasting environmental impact of the mining itself. In the case of large-scale commercial mines, this typically entails using heavy machinery and explosives to bore deep into those kimberlite tubes in search of precious stones.

    Some, like Maya Koplyova, a geologist at the University of British Columbia who studies diamonds and the rocks they’re found in, see this as far better than many other forms of mining. “The environmental footprint is the fThere’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.” ootprint of digging the hole in the ground and crushing [the rock],” Koplyova said, noting that there’s no need to add strong acids or heavy metals like arsenic (used in gold mining) to liberate the gems.

    Still, those holes can be enormous. The Mir Mine, a now-abandoned open pit mine in Eastern Siberia, is so large—reportedly stretching 3,900 feet across and 1,700 feet deep—that the Russian government has declared it a no-fly zone owing to the pit’s ability to create dangerous air currents. It’s visible from space.

    While companies will often rehabilitate other land to offset the impact of mines, kimberlite mining itself typically leaves “a permanent dent in the earth’s surface,” as a 2014 report by market research company Frost & Sullivan put it.

    “It’s a huge impact as far as I’m concerned,” said Kevin Krajick, senior editor for science news at Columbia University’s Earth Institute who wrote a book on the discovery of diamonds in far northern Canada. Krajick noted that in remote mines, like those of the far north, it’s not just the physical hole to consider, but all the development required to reach a previously-untouched area, including roads and airstrips, roaring jets and diesel-powered trucks.

    Diamonds grown in factories clearly have a smaller physical footprint. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, they also use less water and create less waste. It’s for these reasons that Ali thinks diamond mining “will never be able to compete” with lab-grown diamonds from an environmental perspective.

    “The mining industry should not even by trying to do that,” he said.

    Of course, this is capitalism, so try to compete is exactly what the DPA is now doing. That same recent report that touted the mining industry’s economic benefits also asserts that mined diamonds have a carbon footprint three times lower than that of lab-grown diamonds, on average. The numbers behind that conclusion, however, don’t tell the full story.

    Growing diamonds does take considerable energy. The exact amount can vary greatly, however, depending on the specific nature of the growth process. These are details manufacturers are typically loathe to disclose, but Payne of Ada Diamonds says he estimates the most efficient players in the game today use about 250 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity per cut, polished carat of diamond; roughly what a U.S. household consumes in 9 days. Other estimates run higher. Citing unnamed sources, industry publication JCK Online reported that a modern HPHT run can use up to 700 kWh per carat, while CVD production can clock in north of 1,000 kWh per carat.

    Pulling these and several other public-record estimates, along with information on where in the world today’s lab diamonds are being grown and the energy mix powering the producer nations’ electric grids, the DPA-commissioned study estimated that your typical lab-grown diamond results in some 511 kg of carbon emissions per cut, polished carat. Using information provided by mining companies on fuel and electricity consumption, along with other greenhouse gas sources on the mine site, it found that the average mined carat was responsible for just 160 kg of carbon emissions.

    One limitation here is that the carbon footprint estimate for mining focused only on diamond production, not the years of work entailed in developing a mine. As Ali noted, developing a mine can take a lot of energy, particularly for those sited in remote locales where equipment needs to be hauled long distances by trucks or aircraft.

    There’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.”

    #dimants #Afrique #technologie #capitalisme

  • Libre-échange ou écologie !
    https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2019/07/HALIMI/60058

    En remportant 10 % des sièges lors de l’élection du Parlement européen, les écologistes ont réveillé un vieux débat sur le positionnement politique de leur mouvement. Est-il plutôt de gauche, comme le suggèrent la plupart des alliances qu’il a nouées jusqu’ici, ou plutôt libéral, comme l’indiquent à la fois le ralliement à M. Emmanuel Macron de plusieurs anciens dirigeants écologistes (MM. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Pascal Canfin, Pascal Durand) et certaines coalitions qui, en Allemagne, incluent déjà la droite et les Verts ?

    A priori, libéralisme et protection de l’environnement devraient former un couple explosif. En 2003, un théoricien libéral aussi essentiel que Milton Friedman concluait en effet : « L’environnement est un problème largement surestimé. (…) Nous polluons dès lors que nous respirons. On ne va pas fermer les usines sous prétexte d’éliminer tous les rejets d’oxyde de carbone dans l’atmosphère. Autant se pendre tout de suite (1) ! » Et dix ans avant lui, Gary Becker, autre pourfendeur de ce qu’on n’appelait pas encore l’« écologie punitive », « Nobel d’économie » lui aussi, avait jugé que « le droit du travail et la protection de l’environnement sont devenus excessifs dans la plupart des pays développés ». Mais déjà il espérait : « Le libre-échange va réprimer certains de ces excès en obligeant chacun à rester concurrentiel face aux importations des pays en développement » (2).

    On comprend par conséquent que les angoisses relatives à l’avenir de la planète aient réhabilité le terme longtemps honni de « protectionnisme ». En France, lors d’un débat de la campagne des élections européennes, les têtes de liste socialiste et écologiste ont même réclamé, presque dans les mêmes termes que Mme Marine Le Pen, « un protectionnisme aux frontières de l’Union européenne (3) ». On mesure les conséquences éventuelles d’un tel changement de cap dès lors que le libre-échange constitue le principe historique fondateur de l’Union, en même temps qu’il est le moteur économique de son État le plus puissant, l’Allemagne.

    Dorénavant, chacun sait que l’éloge, devenu consensuel, des producteurs locaux, des circuits courts, du retraitement sur place des déchets est incompatible avec un mode de production et d’échange qui multiplie les « chaînes de valeur », c’est-à-dire organise la noria des porte-conteneurs sur lesquels les composants d’un même produit « traverseront trois ou quatre fois le Pacifique avant qu’il n’arrive dans les rayons d’un magasin (4) ».

    Les occasions de confirmer dans les faits son refus d’un libre-échange écologiquement destructeur ne vont pas manquer dans les prochaines semaines. Les parlementaires de l’Union européenne devront en effet ratifier — ou plutôt, espérons-le, rejeter — un accord de libéralisation commerciale avec quatre États d’Amérique latine, dont le Brésil et l’Argentine (UE-Mercosur), un autre avec le Canada (CETA), un troisième avec la Tunisie (Aleca). On verra alors si une « vague verte » a vraiment déferlé sur le Vieux Continent.

    Serge Halimi

  • How owning an Instagram-famous pet changes your politics.
    https://www.salon.com/2019/06/23/how-owning-an-instagram-famous-pet-changes-your-politics

    Ici on apprend que...
    – l’acquisition de followers instagram est big business
    – il faut une équipe composé de la star, du talent pour dessiner, photogrphier, écrire, entretenir des relations, gérer les finances ...
    – une mission et un message clair qui touchent un naximum d’intéressés
    – ne pas souffrir d’une allergie contre toute forme de commercialisation.

    –> les petits enfants et les animaux domestiques ou vivant en groupes familiales constituent le contenu de base idéal.
    #fcknstgrm #seenthis-pour-les-nuls

    Owners of social media–famous animals say the experience has shaped their politics and beliefs

    Matthew Rozsa, June 23, 2019 11:30PM (UTC)

    I must begin this article with a confession: If it weren’t for my fiancee, I never would have gotten so deep into the world of Instagram-famous pets.

    To say that they give her joy is an understatement. Many restful slumbers have been disrupted by her random exclamations of unbridled happiness, followed by her pressing an iPhone against my face while cooing, “Look at the adorable dog!” or “Isn’t this the most beautiful pig in the world?”

    At first I affectionately teased her for her obsession, but then I began to dig a little deeper. What I soon learned — first from a trip to Canada last year to visit the famous Esther the Wonder Pig and then from my own research — is that animal social media stars are more than just cute pets. They are at the vanguard of a new way of viewing humanity’s relationship with other species — one that has left a positive impact on the larger world.

    “We raise awareness for the Toronto Humane Society and the Basset Hound Rescue of Ontario on our social media platforms through posts and live broadcasts,” Nathan Sidon, who along with Carly Bright co-owns Dean the Basset, told Salon by email. Incidentally, Dean the Basset has over 400,000 followers across social media platforms.

    “We also donate a significant portion of the account’s profits to these charities (over $5,000 in the last 12 months),” Sidon adds. “It’s hard to follow Dean’s account and not see how much love, attention and care he’s showered with daily.... It’s my hope that our greatest contribution to this cause is by setting an example to all pet owners and anyone considering getting a pet of how to be the best pet-owner you can be.”

    According to Sidon, he and Bright believe that “pets are a privilege and that animals in your care should be made a top priority.” He added, though, that “in our case we’ve gone so far that whether or not we’ve become Dean’s slaves is a legitimate question. I think this really shines through on Dean’s account. He’s calling the shots!”

    Salon also emailed Gemma Gené, whose social media presence includes not only pictures of her beloved pug Mochi, but also a comic series that colorfully depicts his ebullient personality.

    “I was working as an architect in my first big job in New York,” Gené recalled when asked about how she met Mochi. “It was my dream job at the time but unfortunately the hours were crazy. I used to finish work at night every day and I had to work most weekends. I missed my dog Mochi so much during work. I always liked comics and used comic as a journal. I started drawing little stories about Mochi on my subway commutes. I posted them on Instagram and eventually they become big enough that I was able to focus on my art work.”

    Now she says that she has 250,000 followers on Instagram, over 50,000 on Facebook and over a 100,000 visits every day.

    “We have participated in several campaigns,” Gené told Salon when asked about her animal rights work. “We were part of Susie’s Senior Dogs and Foster dogs NYC #famousfosters campaign where they pair people who have big audiences with a senior dog to foster. This is a great way to show how important fostering is. We fostered a little senior that we renamed Dorito and was adopted after a very few days.”

    Gené says that she donates her artwork to raise money for dog rescues — including pug rescues.

    “A cause that is very dear to our hearts is the ’Animals are not property’ petition the Animal Legal Defense Fund is working on,” Gené explained. “We try to use our influence to share this message to help change the laws on animals so they stop being considered an object and start having rights.”

    “A big part of our work presents Mochi as a little character with a big personality, much closer to a human than what most people think of dogs. We are trying to show the world that animals are much more than objects and that have many more similarities to us than what we think,” she adds.

    Salon also reached out to Steve Jenkins, who, along with Derek Walter, co-owns Esther the Wonder Pig. They told Salon that their various social media pages have roughly 2,000,000 followers and garner around 450,000 interactions every week.

    “Esther was supposed to be a mini-pig, we never had any intention of anything else,” Jenkins wrote to Salon. “By the time we realized Esther wasn’t what we thought she was, and that she would in fact be many hundreds of pounds, we had fallen in love with her and weren’t willing to give up. Technically having a family member like Esther was illegal where we lived, so we kept it quiet and opted to make a ’little Facebook page’ to show our more removed friends and family what was happening. The page went viral somehow, and all of a sudden we had thousands of people checking in every day to see what she was up to.”

    Their ownership of Esther soon caused them to become full-time animal rights activists, eventually purchasing a farm where they keep pigs, dogs, turkeys, horses and at least one (literally) strutting peacock.

    “We have been able to establish the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary, where we rescue abused and abandoned farm animals,” Jenkins explained. “We donated the largest CT scanner in the world to our local veterinary hospital. Until then, the didn’t have equipment large enough to properly get proper diagnostic images for an animal Esther’s size. We also established a fund called ’Esther Shares’ that we use to pay the medical bills for other sanctuaries and rescue organization. Last but not least, we use our pages to help people build a relationship with Esther, something that can have a deep and lasting impact on the person’s life because of their newfound love and respect for pigs.”

    Jenkins, like Gené and Sidon, also told Salon that he began to reevaluate how human beings view their relationship with animals.

    “We think everybody has a connection with animals, but we learn over time to love some animals differently than others,” Jenkins explained. “Esther really leveled that playing field in our mind, and elevated farm animals to the position we previously reserved for companion animals like cats and dogs. She ignited a passion within us that we didn’t know we had. It became a mission of our to help others see Esther the way did, and to bring her larger than life personality across in a way that people could relate to.”

    These arguments are what makes the social media movements so powerful — and why, I suspect, my fiancee is so enamored with them. It is easy to objectify animals, to view them as vessels for whatever immediate function they can provide human beings (food, clothing, recreation). Yet by presenting their animals online as hilarious personalities, with quirks and stories of their own worth following, these sites help us see animals as more than just tools of human beings. They become individuals — and, like all individuals, worthy of not just affection, but respect.

    Gené, Jenkins and Sidon also had heartwarming stories about how their social media work had improved the lives of the two-legged animals who visit them.

    “Through photos and videos requested by fans, Dean has helped a teenager ask a girl to prom, surprised a bride on her wedding day, been the theme of a 90 year old woman’s [birthday] party, and the list goes on,” Sidon told Salon. “We’ve also received hundreds of very personal messages from fans around the world telling us that Dean’s account has provided them with a much needed daily dose of positivity that’s helped them when they’re going through difficult times in their life. Suffice to say that Dean gets a lot of love from around the world and he hopes to give the love back!”

    Jenkins had a similar story about Esther.

    “My favorite message ever came from a young mother in the southern United States,” Jenkins recalled. “She was having a rough time emotionally, and found Esther’s page was becoming a bit of a crutch for her. She would check every day to see what we were up to, and engage with our posts as a way to take her mind off stuff. One day she sent a message to let us know that we had been the source of most of her smiles lately. She wanted to thank us for helping keep a positive attitude, and for helping her show her two small boys that it was ok to have two dads [Jenkins is in a same-sex relationship with Walter] and a turkey for a brother. A family is a family no matter what it looks like, and I still well up when I think about her message.”

    Gené discussed how lucky she is to “have a very loving audience,” telling Salon that “we get hundreds of messages a day telling us the impact our comic has on people and they really fuel us to keep going. Some of them particularly warm my heart like when people say that our comics make them smile when they are going through a difficult time, or when they bring back sweet memories of an animal they loved that passed away.”

    She added, “If one day we don’t post anything, we get messages of people checking up on us. That made us realize we have a community that look forward to our posts daily.”

    I should add, on a final personal note, that I do not write this article from a position of presumed moral superiority. Despite vowing to eliminate my meat consumption since I visited the Esther farm last year, I have only been able to somewhat reduce it, and aside from writing pieces like this I can’t claim to have done very much to advance the cause of animal rights in my own life. Sometimes I suspect the plaque which clogs my arteries is karmic, a punishment for sustaining my own life at the expense of those animals who have given theirs, and one that will likely shorten my own time in this world.

    The goal here is not to shame those who eat meat, or search for a firm distinction between companion animals and farm animals. The point is that social media’s animals stars have made more people think of animals as individuals — to start to see them as living souls. That isn’t enough to solve the problems facing our world today, but it’s the only place where we can start.

    #animaux #business #politique #morale #affaires #instagram #médias

  • Commerce : le sulfureux Ceta arrive en débat à l’Assemblée nationale
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/economie/230619/commerce-le-sulfureux-ceta-arrive-en-debat-l-assemblee-nationale

    Le traité de libre-échange conclu entre l’Union européenne (UE) et le Canada, le Ceta, doit être examiné en conseil des ministres le 3 juillet, ouvrant la voie à un débat à l’Assemblée dans le courant du même mois. Alors que le dossier continue d’inquiéter, Mediapart a organisé un débat entre Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, secrétaire d’État au commerce, Édouard Bourcieu, de la Commission européenne, et Lora Verheecke, activiste anti-Ceta.

    #EUROPE #libre-échange,_CETA,_commerce,_UE

  • La loi sur la laïcité divise la province du Québec
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/220619/la-loi-sur-la-laicite-divise-la-province-du-quebec

    Les députés québécois ont adopté une loi sur la laïcité de l’État qui interdit à certains agents le port de signes religieux. Élue à la tête de la province en octobre dernier, la Coalition Avenir Québec espère clore un débat qui secoue la société québécoise depuis dix ans. Les contestations se multiplient.

    #Amérique_du_Nord #Canada,_laïcité,_Québec

  • Au Canada, des femmes autochtones sont tuées dans l’indifférence quasi générale | Slate.fr
    http://www.slate.fr/story/178647/canada-rapport-genocide-femmes-autochtones-assassinats-disparitions

    Dès sa publication, le rapport, intitulé Réclamer notre pouvoir et notre place, a suscité une vague de polémiques. En cause, l’utilisation par le document du terme « #génocide », martelé 122 fois aux côtés des mots « #colonisation », « #meurtre » et « #viol ». « Exclure ces mots crus du rapport équivaut à nier les vérités des familles, des survivantes, des travailleurs de première ligne et des responsables d’organisations locales », assure la Commissaire en chef de l’enquête, Marion Buller.

    Le Premier ministre canadien, Justin Trudeau, s’est montré frileux à l’idée de reprendre ce terme à son compte, préférant plutôt parler de « #génocide_culturel ». Pour Renée Dupuis, sénatrice indépendante et avocate qui a présidé la Commission des revendications particulières des Indiens de 2003 à 2009, « il ne faut pas utiliser ce terme pour éviter de lire le rapport ».

    Pourtant, la tentation est grande pour certaines personnes, tant la question autochtone provoque de longue date des crispations dans le pays –passé colonial oblige. Selon l’enquête, c’est justement dans ce passé qu’il faut rechercher les causes des violences faites aux #femmes.

    #femmes_autochtones #Canada

  • Le pergélisol au Canada fond 70 ans plus tôt que prévu
    https://hitek.fr/actualite/pergelisol-canada-fond-70-ans-plus-tot-que-prevu_19816

    Il y a deux jours, on apprenait que le Groenland avait perdu 2 milliards de tonnes de glace en une journée. Aujourd’hui, c’est le pergélisol du Canada qui contredit les estimations des scientifiques. 70 ans plus tôt qu’anticipé, il commence déjà à fondre.

    (...)

    Les chercheurs avaient anticipé cette fonte, mais leur modélisation l’anticipait aux alentours de 2090, soit dans 70 ans. Les dernières trouvailles du Permafrost Laboratory, à l’University of Alaska Fairbanks suggère fortement que le climat s’aggrave à une vitesse encore jamais vue.

  • Trump’s Global Gag Rule Is Killing Women, Report Says – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/19/how-trumps-global-gag-rule-is-killing-women-colombia


    A mobile health brigade in an indigenous community in La Guajira, Colombia.
    PHOTO : MARTA ROYO/PROFAMILIA.

    The administration’s hard-line anti-abortion stance is undermining women’s rights and U.S. development aid around the world, critics say.
    […]
    Profamilia lost U.S. funds it used to run its clinics after the Trump administration brought back and expanded a Ronald Reagan-era policy—formally known as the Mexico City policy, but often called the “global gag rule” by critics—that prohibits U.S. health-related aid to foreign non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion. The rule has such far-reaching impacts that, beyond limiting abortion access, it has also decreased access to contraception and treatment for illnesses such as HIV and tuberculosis, as organizations that have lost funding roll back or close services.

    Scrambling, Profamilia tried to replace the closed clinics with mobile teams—called mobile health brigades—that set up pop-up clinics in communities for two to three days at a time for “the most basic, basic needs,” explained Royo. But it was a poor substitute: The clinics had offered extensive services, including free counseling for adolescents, and educational workshops about sexual health and reproductive rights. Teens in these communities, where teen pregnancy rates are as high as 49 percent, desperately need this information, Royo said. Otherwise, unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions could rise.

    Globally, the Trump administration’s policy is contributing to a backlash against women’s and girl’s rights, according to women’s rights advocates, including Royo, and political leaders from around the world who attended Women Deliver, the world’s largest conference on gender equality, in Vancouver in early June.

    We’re seeing a pushback against women’s rights, whether it is attacks on a woman’s fundamental right to choose or violence against indigenous women and girls,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a press conference at Women Deliver, where he pledged $525 million annually for global sexual and reproductive health rights, including abortion.

  • #Canada. Un #oléoduc pour financer la #transition_énergétique : Trudeau joue les équilibristes

    Le Premier ministre canadien a relancé le projet d’expansion de l’oléoduc #Trans_Mountain, visant à exporter le pétrole des #sables_bitumineux de l’#Alberta. Tout en affirmant que les revenus générés serviraient à financer la transition énergétique. Un discours qui ne convainc pas tout le monde.

    https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/canada-un-oleoduc-pour-financer-la-transition-energetique-tru
    #énergie #extractivisme #pétrole

    ping @reka

  • L’appel de 70 médecins, #élus, #économistes : « Pourquoi nous voulons légaliser le #cannabis »
    https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20190619.OBS14590/l-appel-de-70-medecins-elus-economistes-pourquoi-nous-voulons-legaliser-l

    #legalisation

    Il faut en finir avec le statu quo. La France doit légaliser le cannabis, qu’il soit utilisé à des fins thérapeutiques comme récréatives, pour les consommateurs de plus de 18 ans. Alors que ses voisins (Belgique, Allemagne, Espagne, Portugal, Pays-Bas…) ont tous assoupli leur législation, que le Canada, l’Uruguay et plusieurs Etats américains ont légalisé la substance, la France est à la traîne. Elle s’arc-boute sur une loi répressive datant de 1970, totalement inefficace puisque nous sommes le pays de l’Union européenne où la consommation est la plus élevée. De 18 à 64 ans, un Français sur deux a déjà expérimenté le cannabis, et un adulte sur neuf est un usager régulier. A 17 ans, 48 % des jeunes en ont déjà pris. Au même âge, presque un sur dix en est un usager régulier et un sur douze est estimé dépendant ou souffrant d’un usage problématique (1).

    D’un point de vue de santé publique, cette interdiction semble difficile à justifier. alors que le cannabis est moins dangereux, une fois le cerveau formé (2), que l’alcool, qui tue prématurément 41 000 personnes chaque année et le tabac, 73 000 (3). Nous savons que ce n’est pas un produit neutre, mais c’est précisément parce qu’il est nocif pour la santé, particulièrement celle des mineurs, qu’il faut en contrôler la production et la distribution.

    La prohibition contribue à engorger inutilement l’activité des magistrats et des policiers : plus de 130 000 personnes sont interpellées chaque année pour en avoir consommé (4).

    Aux Etats-Unis, la légalisation dans plusieurs Etats a fait chuter la criminalité le long de la frontière mexicaine (5). Quand la France acceptera-t-elle de regarder la réalité en face, de faire preuve de pragmatisme, face à cette impasse ? Les pouvoirs publics doivent agir. Et vite.

    (1) Chiffres clés de l’#Observatoire_français_des_Drogues et des Toxicomanies 2017.

    (2) Rapport de Bernard Roques, directeur de recherche à l’Inserm, sur la classification des psychotropes (1998).

    (3) Christophe Bonaldi (Santé publique France), Catherine Hill (épidémiologie Gustave-Roussy).

    (4) Office central pour la Répression du #Trafic_illicite des #Stupéfiants.

    et un papier d’économie :

    (5) « Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations ? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime », « The Economic Journal ».

  • Inde : des travailleuses des champs privées de leur utérus « pour améliorer leur rendement »
    RTBF, le 18 juin 2019
    https://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_inde-des-travailleuses-des-champs-privees-de-leur-uterus-pour-ameliorer-

    Beed : High hysterectomy rate among sugarcane cutters signals unethical medical practices, poor work conditions
    Meena Menon, First Post, le 16 juin 2019
    https://www.firstpost.com/india/beed-high-hysterectomy-rate-among-sugarcane-cutters-signals-unethical-med

    Voir des histoires analogues de par le monde sexiste ici :
    #contraception_forcée

    #Inde #femmes #pauvres #stérilisation #hystérectomie #utérus #discriminations #sexisme #classisme #capitalisme

  • A Toronto, la « ville Google » en quête d’une gouvernance de ses données numériques
    https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/06/14/a-toronto-la-ville-google-en-quete-d-une-gouvernance-de-ses-donnees-numeriqu

    Ce devait être le laboratoire de la smart city futuriste et résiliente, truffée de capteurs et pilotée à l’aide des données numériques de ses habitants. Mais, depuis quelques mois, la ville de #Toronto, capitale de l’Ontario (Canada), s’est plutôt muée en une arène où s’affrontent des visions radicalement opposées de la gouvernance des données urbaines et des choix démocratiques qui en découlent.

    Les premières esquisses, présentées en août 2018 par #Sidewalk_Labs, société sœur de Google, qui a remporté l’appel d’offres, ont pourtant tout pour séduire. Le projet d’aménagement du quartier en friche de #Quayside, sur les bords du lac Ontario, se présente comme une vitrine mondiale des innovations les plus audacieuses : rues chauffantes pour profiter de l’espace public au cœur de l’hiver canadien, immeubles modulables en bois, abris capables de se déployer automatiquement en cas d’intempéries, voirie partagée où les couloirs réservés aux différents modes de transport peuvent changer en fonction du trafic…

    Mais ces derniers mois ont aussi vu monter d’un cran la défiance des habitants et des élus. Au sein de Waterfront Toronto, l’organisme public qui regroupe la province, la ville et le gouvernement canadien, les démissions se sont enchaînées. En cause, la gouvernance de l’infrastructure numérique qui prévoit un maillage serré d’une vingtaine de types de capteurs, collectant données publiques et privées, nécessaires au fonctionnement de la ville.
    […]
    Fin avril, la société a également présenté un nouveau dispositif de signalisation urbaine, conçu pour informer les habitants de l’usage qui est fait de leurs données personnelles. […] Le programme, baptisé « Transparence numérique dans le domaine public », prévoit l’affichage dans les rues d’icônes colorées en forme d’hexagone : jaune quand la donnée permet l’identification de la personne, bleu lorsqu’elle est anonymisée. Les panneaux précisent aussi les objectifs de la collecte : les données sont-elles utilisées pour la sécurité, la recherche, la planification urbaine ? Collectées par la ville ou bien des entreprises privées ? Un système de QR code renvoie vers des informations plus précises sur la technologie utilisée, le lieu et la durée de stockage des données.

  • Peste porcine en Chine : au fait, de quoi parle-t-on et quels sont les risques ?
    http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/peste-porcine-en-chine-au-fait-de-quoi-parle-t-on-et-quels-sont-les-risques

    Cette maladie a déjà entraîné la mort de plus d’un million de porcs dans le pays. L’équivalent de la production européenne pourrait disparaître d’ici la fin de l’année, déstabilisant les échanges mondiaux. La France n’est pas touchée mais vit dans la crainte de la contagion.

    C’est une maladie qui fait des ravages en Chine. La peste porcine africaine (PPA) décime depuis l’été 2018 les élevages de porcs dans le pays, premier producteur et consommateur de cette viande au monde. Difficile à contrôler, elle se propage à une vitesse inquiétante et fait craindre le pire en Europe. Explications.

    • Qu’est-ce que la peste porcine africaine ?

    Découverte sur le continent africain, la PPA est une maladie contagieuse qui touche les cochons. Elle n’est pas dangereuse pour l’homme mais est souvent fatale pour les animaux touchés. Elle se manifeste par de la fièvre, de la perte d’appétit ou encore des hémorragies interne. Les porcs sont contaminés lorsqu’ils sont en contact direct avec d’autres animaux malades. Les tiques mais aussi le matériel agricole peuvent véhiculer le virus. Très résistant, ce dernier se propage rapidement. Problème : il n’existe aucun vaccin ni traitement efficace pour le contenir. Le seul moyen de stopper la propagation est d’abattre les bêtes dans les zones infectées et mettre en place des mesures de prévention pour éviter la contamination.

     » LIRE AUSSI - La peste porcine aux portes de la France

    • Dans quelle mesure la Chine est-elle touchée ?

    La PPA est apparue dans le pays en août 2018. Depuis, la maladie ne cesse de se répandre. Selon les derniers chiffres officiels, 136 foyers sont recensés dans 32 provinces. À ce stade, 1,2 million de bêtes sont mortes ou ont été abattues. Le pays, premier producteur et consommateur, est d’autant plus vulnérable qu’il héberge 700 millions de porcs. Les animaux sont pour la plupart élevés dans des fermes familiales où ils sont nourris avec des restes alimentaires, vecteurs importants de maladie. Les mesures de prévention et de contrôle sont aussi coûteuses et compliquées à mettre à place par les petits éleveurs. D’où la propagation rapide. Les experts de Rabobank estiment que d’ici la fin de l’année, la maladie pourrait décimer 150 à 200 millions de porcs, soit l’équivalent de la production annuelle européenne.

    • D’autres pays sont-ils touchés ?

    La PPA a malheureusement déjà dépassé les frontières chinoises. Des foyers ont été détectés au Vietnam, en Corée du Nord, en Mongolie et au Cambodge. « De plus, des aliments contaminés ont été détectés dans plusieurs pays de la zone Asie-Pacifique : Australie, Corée du Sud, Thaïlande, Taïwan et Japon. Si la PPA se concentre essentiellement en Chine, elle commence donc à dangereusement se propager dans l’espace et sur des distances considérables », souligne dans une note Sébastien Abis, chercheur à l’Iris. L’Europe n’est pas épargnée. « La maladie est endémique dans certaines régions d’Europe de l’Est, telles que les États Baltes et certaines régions de Pologne et de Russie. Des foyers de peste porcine africaine ont été enregistrés dans plusieurs autres pays, notamment la Belgique, en septembre 2018 », précise les analystes de Rabobank. Chez nos voisins belges, 700 sangliers ont été contrôlés positifs à cette maladie. De quoi pousser Matthew Stone, directeur général adjoint de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé animale (OIE), à prévenir : « tous les pays doivent renforcer leur sécurité biologique, tous les pays doivent réfléchir sérieusement à leur chaîne d’approvisionnement et à la gestion de la sécurité biologique ».

    • La France est-elle touchée ?

    À ce stade, non, car la France a mis en place des mesures de prévention. Une « ligne Maginot » a été dressée sur plus de 110 kilomètres entre la Belgique et la France. Onze kilomètres sont encore à clôturer à cette frontière franco-belge, entre la Meuse et les Ardennes. Coût de l’opération : 5,3 millions d’euros. Grâce à cette clôture, une zone blanche a été délimitée dans laquelle tous les sangliers sont abattus. « Il ne faut pas baisser la garde, et aujourd’hui on baisse trop la garde. La garde, les Belges la baissent. Les sangliers se rapprochent et on doit remobiliser nos amis chasseurs en Meurthe-et-Moselle », a indiqué le ministre de l’Agriculture, Didier Guillaume. Prudent, ce dernier estime que « cette guerre n’est pas gagnée » et que les éleveurs français vivent avec une épée de Damoclès au-dessus de la tête. L’apparition d’un seul cas priverait le pays de son « statut indemne », ce qui empêcherait quasi-automatiquement l’exportation de viande de porc. Une catastrophe pour la filière.

    • Quelle conséquence cette crise entraîne-t-elle sur le commerce mondial de porc ?

    L’épidémie a des conséquences très visibles sur les marchés mondiaux. La Chine, qui doit faire face à sa demande intérieure (plus de 30 kilos de porcs consommés par habitant et par an), a relevé ses importations. L’Union européenne en profite : ses exportations vers la Chine ont bondi de 20 à 30%. Canada et Brésil se frottent aussi les mains. Les États-Unis un peu moins : la viande exportée vers Pékin est en effet taxée à hauteur de 62% dans le cadre du conflit commercial qui oppose les deux pays. Cette forte demande chinoise fait en tout cas flamber les prix. En France, le cours du porc a pris 35 centimes en deux mois. « Du jamais vu », selon Paul Auffray, président de la Fédération nationale porcine (FNP), qui appelle les éleveurs à se saisir de cette opportunité qui pourrait durer. Il faudra en effet plusieurs années à la Chine pour se relever de cette crise sanitaire. La situation fait en revanche grimacer les fabricants de produits à base de porc, comme les charcutiers, qui font face à une hausse du prix de leur matière première. À terme, les consommateurs pourraient aussi en subir les conséquences dans les rayons.

    • D’autres filières sont-elles impactées ?

    À court et moyen terme, de nombreuses filières risquent d’être déstabilisés par cette crise qui entraînera un report de la consommation chinoise vers d’autres viandes. « Une évolution séculaire vers une consommation de porc chinoise plus faible soutiendra la demande accrue de volaille, de bœuf, de fruits de mer et de protéines alternatives qui façonnera les tendances de la production mondiale », estiment ainsi les experts de la Rabobank. Ces derniers s’attendent entre-temps à « une volatilité des marchés à court terme qui se traduira par une hausse des prix mondiaux des protéines ». Même avis pour Sébastien Abis, selon qui la filière volaille sera particulièrement concernée : « le département américain de l’Agriculture anticipe une hausse des importations chinoises de poulet de 70% en 2019. L’augmentation des prix n’est pas près de s’arrêter : le pic devrait être atteint entre le dernier trimestre 2019 et début 2020, une fois que les réserves de viande seront épuisées ». Autre filière touchée : celle su soja. La Chine est le premier importateur mondial de cette légumineuse (environ 100 millions de tonnes par an, soit 70% des achats de la planète). La moitié est utilisée par les éleveurs de porcs. « Dans une moindre mesure, les marchés du maïs et du lait en poudre seront aussi touchés, ces deux éléments faisant partie du régime alimentaire des porcs », juge le chercheur de l’Iris.

    #nos_ennemis_les_bêtes #peste_porcine #épidémie #élevage #viande #agriculture #chine #hommerie #carnisme

    • Une « ligne Maginot » a été dressée sur plus de 110 kilomètres entre la Belgique et la France. Onze kilomètres sont encore à clôturer à cette frontière franco-belge, entre la Meuse et les Ardennes.

      La comparaison historique est moyennement rassurante…
      • la ligne Maginot n’a pas été construite entre la France et la Belgique et
      • c’est par les Ardennes qu’est passée l’invasion allemande…

    • Bien vu @simplicissimus j’avais pas relevé cette histoire de ligne Maginot, ca ressemble au contournement des frontières française par le nuage de Tchernobyl. Je voie pas comment cette ligne bloquerait les sangliers et il me semble que cette « peste » ne les épargne pas.

  • L’entreprise Asco paralysée par une cyberattaque, les activités mondiales à l’arrêt - Belga - 11 Juin 2019 - RTBF
    https://www.rtbf.be/info/economie/detail_l-entreprise-asco-paralysee-par-une-cyberattaque-les-activites-mondiales

    La production de l’équipementier aéronautique Asco est à l’arrêt jusqu’à mercredi soir en raison d’un problème informatique consécutif à un piratage subi vendredi. Sur le site de Zaventem, plus de 1000 travailleurs se retrouvent ainsi en chômage technique tandis que les activités des autres sites du groupe, notamment aux Etats-Unis, au Canada et en Allemagne, sont également à l’arrêt, a-t-on appris mardi de source syndicale.

    Pendant les deux jours de chômage technique, les travailleurs belges toucheront des indemnités de chômage. « Quand les problèmes techniques seront résolus, nous voulons regarder avec la direction si elle ne peut pas octroyer un supplémentent pour compenser la perte de revenus des travailleurs », indique Jan Baetens, du syndicat chrétien ACV-CSC Metea.

    De son côté, l’entreprise a assuré avoir informé toutes les autorités compétentes de cette cyberattaque et fait appel à des experts externes pour résoudre le problème. « Nous travaillons actuellement d’arrache-pied », affirme Vicky Welvaert, directrice des ressources humaines, qui ne souhaite pas préciser si la situation est maintenant sous contrôle ou quand l’activité sera redémarrée.

     #sécurité_informatique #piratage_informatique #cyberguerre #piratage de grande ampleur #Belgique

  • Les Africains qui migrent viennent de moins en moins en #France

    Selon la dernière note de l’#OCDE consacrée aux migrations africaines vers les pays développés entre 2001 et 2016, l’attractivité de l’Hexagone décroît sensiblement.

    Les tenants de la théorie du grand remplacement ou les agitateurs du spectre de la ruée africaine – vers l’Europe en général et la France en particulier – n’apprécieront sans doute pas la lecture de la dernière note de l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE) consacrée aux évolutions des migrations africaines vers les pays développés entre 2001 et 2016.

    On y lit en effet que « représentant un immigré sur dix, la migration africaine vers les pays de l’OCDE a vu son poids légèrement augmenter au cours des dernières années ; elle demeure toutefois faible par rapport à la part de l’Afrique dans la population mondiale […]. La France est toujours la principale destination, mais sa part se réduit. »

    Ces conclusions découlent de la dernière actualisation de la base de données développée depuis plusieurs années par l’OCDE, en coopération avec l’Agence française de développement (AFD), sur les immigrés dans les pays développés. Celle-ci compile des statistiques, par pays de naissance, des migrants internationaux, « définis comme les personnes [âgées de plus de 15 ans] résidant dans un pays autre que celui de leur naissance » sans tenir compte de leur « statut légal ou de la catégorie de migration. »
    « Pas de raz-de-marée annoncé »

    Ces données couvrent non seulement les effectifs d’immigrés par âge, sexe et niveau d’éducation, mais également des variables clés de l’analyse des migrations internationales et de l’intégration comme la nationalité, la durée de séjour, le statut dans l’emploi et la profession.

    Passées ces quelques précisions d’ordre méthodologique, il ressort de cette étude que « la part de la population originaire d’Afrique vivant dans un pays de l’OCDE a augmenté au cours des quinze dernières années, mais reste très modeste ». Le nombre de migrants africains y est en effet passé de 7,2 millions en 2000 à 12,5 millions en 2016. Mais ils ne représentent encore que 10,4 % des 121 millions de migrants répertoriés dans les pays développés, contre 9,2 % en 2000. A titre de comparaison, le nombre total de migrants venus du Mexique – pays classé en tête de liste des pays d’origine devant l’Inde et la Chine – s’établissait à 11,7 millions en 2016.

    L’OCDE remarque ainsi que « la croissance démographique africaine est encore loin de se traduire en un accroissement équivalent de la migration vers les pays de l’OCDE. » En marge de la polémique née de la publication en 2018 du livre de Stephen Smith – La Ruée vers l’Europe (éd. Grasset) –, le démographe François Héran remarquait également que « les projections démographiques de l’ONU actualisées tous les deux ans ont beau annoncer un peu plus qu’un doublement de la population subsaharienne d’ici à 2050 (elle passerait de 900 millions à 2,2 milliards dans le scénario médian), cela ne suffira pas à déclencher le raz-de-marée annoncé ». « Il n’existe pas de lien mécanique entre la croissance démographique et celle du taux de migration », ajoute Jean-Christophe Dumont, chef du département des migrations internationales à l’OCDE.

    #Féminisation et hausse du niveau d’éducation

    Et si la France demeure le principal pays de destination, « sa part s’est considérablement réduite, passant de 38 % des migrants africains installés dans les pays de l’OCDE en 2001 à 30 % en 2016 ». La part des immigrés dans la population totale (14 %), toutes origines confondues, a légèrement augmenté sur cette même période (environ 2 %), est supérieure à la moyenne des pays de l’OCDE (12 %), mais demeure très inférieure à celle de pays comme la Suède, l’Irlande ou l’Autriche (20 %).

    La « préférence » française s’explique en partie par l’origine géographique des migrants africains. En effet, 54 % d’entre eux provenaient d’un pays francophone, notent les auteurs, or « les liens historiques et linguistiques restent des déterminants clés des migrations africaines ». Dans cet espace continental, les pays d’Afrique du Nord demeurent, de loin, les premiers pays d’origine (46 % de l’ensemble des migrants africains en 2016 contre 54 % en 2000). Le Maroc devançant tous les autres, étant « le pays de naissance de près d’un migrant africain sur quatre, devant l’Algérie (1 sur 8) ». Si la part de la France demeure prééminente, la surprise vient des Etats-Unis, dont la part est « en forte augmentation » avec l’accueil de 16 % des migrants africains en 2016 – notamment éthiopiens et nigérians – contre 12 % seize ans plus tôt. Les Etats-unis sont ainsi la deuxième destination devant le Royaume-Uni, l’Espagne, l’Italie, le Canada et l’Allemagne.

    Si la jeunesse des migrants africains par rapport aux autres continents d’origine demeure une constante, les évolutions de deux autres données sont plus notables : la féminisation et le niveau d’éducation. Concernant ce dernier point, plus de 60 % des migrants ont au moins un niveau de 2e cycle du secondaire (lycée), dont la moitié (30 %) sont diplômés de l’enseignement supérieur (contre 24 % en 2000). « Cette évolution s’explique en partie par la conjugaison de deux facteurs, note Jean-Christophe Dumont. D’une part, la compétition entre pays de l’OCDE pour attirer les talents. D’autre part, la baisse des besoins de main-d’œuvre non qualifiée dans les économies des pays développées ».

    La part des femmes augmente également sensiblement. Alors que celles-ci représentaient 46,7 % des migrants africains en 2000, elles étaient 48,2 % en 2016. « Dans des pays comme le Royaume-Uni, la France, l’Irlande, le Portugal, Israël, le Luxembourg ou encore l’Australie, les femmes sont même devenues majoritaires dans les diasporas africaines », note l’OCDE.

    Enfin, si la recherche d’un emploi et d’une vie meilleure figure parmi les motivations des candidats à l’émigration, cette quête s’avère difficile. « Sur le marché de l’emploi des pays de l’OCDE, les migrants africains sont fortement touchés par le chômage (13 %) et l’inactivité (28 %). » Surtout, une grande part de ceux qui trouvent un emploi doivent accepter une forme de relégation par rapport à leur niveau d’études. Le taux de déclassement professionnel était ainsi de 35 % en 2016. Concernant les raisons, l’OCDE se montre prudente : « Cette situation peut être due à une discrimination sur le marché du travail, mais aussi à des questions de qualité et de reconnaissance des diplômes. »

    https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/06/11/les-africains-qui-migrent-viennent-de-moins-en-moins-en-france_5474740_3212.
    #attractivité #Afrique #migrations #réfugiés #préjugés #grand_remplacement #statistiques #chiffres #femmes #ruée #ruée_vers_l'Europe

    Ajouté à la métaliste autour du #livre de #Stephen_Smith, La ruée vers l’Afrique :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/673774

  • La ’increíble’ medida en Finlandia para reducir el número de personas sin techo: darles un techo

    #Helsinki puso en marcha con éxito el programa ’Vivienda primero’, que consiste en dar pisos a personas sin hogar de manera permanente y con contrato de alquiler.
    A través del proyecto se ha creado vivienda pública y se han reformado edificios más antiguos. Ya solo hace falta un hostal para personas sin techo, con 50 camas.
    Autoridades y activistas destacan la importancia de la vivienda pública para erradicar los problemas relacionados y evitar la segregación por barrios.


    https://www.eldiario.es/theguardian/milagro-solucion-radical-Helsinki-mundo_0_906410053.html
    #Finlande #SDF #sans-abri

    • Programme #Housing_first :

      The Guide is a resource about Housing First in Europe. It has been designed to explain what Housing First is and how it actually works in a range of European contexts. It sets out the core principles of Housing First and shows how these are implemented in different settings.

      The Guide is the first European resource of its kind. As Housing First has taken off in Europe, a growing demand has emerged for knowledge and expertise. Until now, much of the available material has come from North America. There was a need for practical guidance bringing together existing knowledge and experience on doing Housing First in European contexts. That’s why we created this Guide. It complements similar manuals developed in the US (Tsemberis 2010) and Canada (Canadian Housing First Toolkit).


      http://housingfirstguide.eu/website

    • Finland’s Zero Homeless Strategy: Lessons from a Success Story

      Following a period when homelessness rose in many countries, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments across the OECD area to provide unprecedented public support – including to the homeless. In the United Kingdom, for instance, people who had been living on the streets or in shelters were housed in individual accommodations in a matter of days. And in cities and towns across the OECD, public authorities worked closely with service providers and other partners to provide support to the homeless that had previously been considered impossible.

      How can countries build on this momentum and ensure more durable outcomes? The experience of Finland over the past several decades – during which the country has nearly eradicated homelessness – provides a glimpse of what can be possible with a sustained national strategy and enduring political will.

      The number of homeless people in Finland has continuously decreased over the past three decades from over 16 000 in 1989 to around 4 000, or 0.08% of the population (Figure 1). This is a very low number, especially considering that Finland uses a relatively broad definition of homelessness, whereby in particular it includes people temporarily living with friends and relatives in its official homelessness count. In 2020, practically no-one was sleeping rough on a given night in Finland.

      This is undoubtedly a remarkable success, even if comparing homelessness statistics across countries is fraught with difficulties (OECD, 2020). Many homeless people live precariously, with the implication that statistical tools such as household surveys typically fail to accurately measure their living conditions. Furthermore, countries define homelessness very differently, for instance counting people who temporarily live with friends or relatives as homeless (as Finland does) or excluding them from homelessness statistics. While there is no OECD-wide average against which to compare Finland’s homeless rate of 0.08%, other countries with similarly broad definitions of homelessness provide points of reference, such as neighbouring Sweden (0.33%) or the Netherlands (0.23%).1

      Finland’s success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of “quick fixes.” Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020). A key pillar of this effort has been to combine emergency assistance with the supply of rentals to host previously homeless people, either by converting some existing shelters into residential buildings with independent apartments (Kaakinen, 2019) or by building new flats by a government agency (ARA, 2021). Building flats is key: otherwise, especially if housing supply is particularly rigid, the funding of rentals can risk driving up rents (OECD, 2021a), thus reducing the “bang for the buck” of public spending.

      The Finnish experience demonstrates the effectiveness of tackling homelessness through a combination of financial assistance, integrated and targeted support services and more supply: using just one of these levers is unlikely to work. Financial assistance comes from the social benefits systems, which includes a housing allowance for low-income people (mostly jobless persons with no or low unemployment benefits) covering about 80% of housing costs (Kangas and Kalliomaa-Puha, 2019). Emergency social assistance funding can complement the housing allowance if it is insufficient. Social services provide housing before other interventions that are targeted to beneficiaries’ needs (such as, to pick one example, providing health services to help overcome substance abuse). These efforts require dwellings: investment grants by Finland’s Housing Finance and Development Centre financed the construction of 2 200 flats over 2016-19 for long-term homeless people (ARA, 2021). Indeed, investing in housing development should be a priority for OECD governments as they navigate the recovery from the crisis: over the past two decades, public investment in housing development has dropped to just 0.06% of GDP across the OECD on average (OECD, 2021b).

      Another important driver of Finland’s success is the integration of efforts to fight homelessness with other parts of the social safety net. When a housing need is identified in any part of the social service system, housing is provided first, to provide a solid basis for employment, long-term health and/or family assistance (OECD, 2020). This integrated approach avoids the pitfalls that can arise, for instance, when benefits are preconditioned on having an address, or when obtaining a flat requires a minimum income. There are indications that, by facilitating the integration of previously homeless people in society, the upfront Finnish investment that provides people with housing first, pays off by reducing subsequent costs incurred by social services. Evaluations point to annual savings in public expenditure in the range of EUR 9 600-15 000 per person who had previously experienced homelessness (Y-Foundation, 2017; Ministry of the Environment, 2011).

      Overall, Finland’s achievements illustrate the benefits of integration, balance and continuity in policies to tackle homelessness: integration across housing and social assistance programmes, balance between demand and supply, and political continuity over time have helped to maximise the results of the country’s investment to end homelessness. Not only has this approach resulted in a steady decline in homelessness, but it has also made the system more resilient to shocks, including the COVID-19 crisis. Indeed, the pandemic was less of a strain to Finland’s homeless support system compared to other countries, given that many vulnerable people were already housed and supported in individual flats (Fondation Abbé Pierre – FEANTSA, 2021).

      These lessons can be transposed to other OECD countries as they look to build on the momentum and lessons learned from the COVID crisis.

      References

      ARA (2021), Report 2021: Homelessness in Finland 2020, The Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland (ARA). Fondation Abbé Pierre – FEANTSA (2021), Sixth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe, FEANTSA – Abbé Pierre.

      Kaakinen, J. (2019), “Time to act: Let’s end homelessness for good,” OECD Forum Network Series on the New Societal Contract.

      Kangas, O. and L. Kalliomaa-Puha(2019), “ESPN Thematic Report on National Strategies to Fight Homelessness and Housing Exclusion: Finland”, European Social Policy Network (ESPN), European Commission, Brussels.

      Ministry of the Environment (2011), Asunnottomuuden vähentämisen taloudelliset [Economic effects of reducing homelessness], Ympäristöministeriön.

      OECD (2020), “Better data and policies to fight homelessness in the OECD”, Policy Brief on Affordable Housing, OECD, Paris, http://oe.cd/homelessness-2020.

      OECD (2021a), Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies, OECD, Paris.

      OECD (2021b), OECD Affordable Housing Database, indicator PH1.1, OECD, Paris.

      Pleace, N. et al. (2021), European Homelessness and COVID 19, European Observatory on Homelessness.

      https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-strategy-lessons-from-a-success-story

  • Sorting through the many threats to monarch butterflies
    https://massivesci.com/notes/monarch-butterflies-migration-climate-change-mexico-threats

    Every year monarch butterflies in southern Canada and the north-central United States travel over 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) southward. Triggered by cool weather and the slow death of their host plant, milkweed, monarchs make their long journeys to...

  • Why a #hipster, #vegan, #green_tech economy is #not_sustainable | Canada | #Al_Jazeera
    https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/hipster-vegan-green-tech-economy-sustainable-190605105120654.html

    morceaux choisis:

    The illusion of ’#sustainable_development'

    When capitalism teams up with growth-oriented efficiency improvements, one result is the fabulous #hipsterised “green tech” enclaves we see emerging in cities around the world, including #Montreal.

    In recent years, veganism has also been sucked into the #profit-making “green” economy. Its rising popularity is indeed quite mind-boggling. What was traditionally seen as a subversive and anti-establishment form of resistance to the global food industry and its horrific abuse of animals has increasingly become a “cash cow”.

    In the process, the implicit socio-economic violence behind #gentrification will be invariably “greenwashed” and presented as development that would make the area more “sustainable”, “beautiful” and “modern”.

    Unfortunately, creation by destruction is what #capitalism does best, and its damaging practices are anything but green. This #market-driven#sustainable” vision of economic activity, #ecological-conscious diets and “hipness” within modern capitalism reinforce inequality and still hurt the environment.

    On a global scale, capitalism is most certainly not “cool”… it is literally #burning_our_planet. An aloof, detached, apolitical coolness which centres on individuality and imagery is simply not going to cut it any more.
    Such lifestyles may appear marginally efficient, but they are, by and large, a convenient by-product of shifting social and ecological costs to those less privileged both locally and global