One sun declaration
- By trading energy from sun, wind and water across borders, we can deliver more than enough clean energy to meet the needs of everyone on earth. This trading is already beginning to happen through discrete bilateral and regional arrangements.
- But to meet the sheer scale of the challenge, these efforts need to be brought together and supplemented to create a more inter-connected global grid. We call this vision: One Sun One World One Grid.
- We need new transmission lines crossing frontiers and connecting different time zones, creating a global ecosystem of interconnected renewables that are shared for mutual benefit and global sustainability.
- This must be combined with expanded and modernized national and regional grids and complemented with the rapid scale-up of mini-grids and off-grid solar solutions.
- To help deliver the vision of One Sun One World One Grid, we have resolved to combine our efforts and create a more inter-connected global grid.
- Through working groups of interested governments, regulators, financiers, institutions, companies, legislators and researchers, we will seek to provide a common global framework for efforts on:
- Investing in solar, wind, storage and other renewable energy generation in locations endowed with renewable resources for supporting a global grid.
- Building long-distance cross-border transmission lines to connect renewable energy generators and demand centers across continents, underpinned by effective and mutually beneficial cross-border power trading arrangements.
- Developing and deploying cutting edge techniques and technologies to modernize power systems and support green grids which can integrate billions of rooftop solar panels, wind turbines and storage systems.
- Supporting the global transition to zero emission vehicles through incorporating the role of electric vehicles to help improve grid flexibility.
- Attracting investment into solar mini-grids and off-grid systems to help vulnerable communities gain access to clean, affordable, and reliable energy without grid-access in their own areas, enhancing socio-economic development and a resilient power supply for all.
- Developing innovative financial instruments, market structures, and facilitate financial and technical assistance to attract low-cost capital, including climate finance, for global solar grid infrastructure.
· Members of the Green Grids Initiative One Sun One World One Grid Steering Committee:
- Australia
- France
- India
- United States of America
- United Kingdom
THE HINDU
Pandemic and migrants women workers in GCC
- The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region it is now known as the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf that hosts about 23 million migrant workers (International Labor Organization, 2017) is riddled with problems that are particularly related to the discrimination of women migrant workers.
- Most of the migrant workforce which dominates the workspace of the GCC region accounting for about three-quarters of the workforce of the region (ILO, 2017) hails from the South Asian and South-east Asian countries, and are on temporary contracts and mostly engaged in low-wage occupations.
- Women account for 39% of migrant workers in the GCC (International Labor Organization, 2017) and the feminization’s of the workforce across multiple sectors of the economy demonstrates a growing trend.
- Women migrants, who are in the skilled category are mainly nurses in the organized health industry; those in the semi-skilled or unskilled category are domestic workers, care workers, cleaning crew, manufacturing workers, salon staff and salespersons.
- These workers are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation
- Many women working here, especially housemaids, do not have any medium for getting news about the current situation.
- Some do not even have [a] phone, while most have only basic phones.”
- Their communication to the outside world including family is restricted and it is difficult for an outsider to reach them,
- There was a woman who had emigrated on a child-care visa, but lost her job as her former employers were concerned about the safety of their child during COVID-19
THE HINDU
India and USA ties
- Relationship between India and USA may in fact depend substantially on how well they collaborate in two areas to which their joint attention is only belatedly turning climate and trade.
- The first presents an existential threat while the second is too often dismissed as a secondary consideration, even dispensable in the name of pursuing larger strategic interests
- China provide the U.S.-India partnership a much-needed impetus to overcome the awkward efforts for deeper collaboration
- Both countries are also taking leading roles, articulating their climate concerns and commitments
- Climate and trade are interrelated in many ways, from commercial dissemination of cutting-edge carbon mitigation and adaptation products and technologies to the carbon emissions that come with the transport of goods and humans from one country to another.
- If governments, such as India and the U.S., coordinate policies to incentivise sharing of climate-related technologies and align approaches for reducing emissions associated with trade, the climate trade inter-relationship can be a net positive one.
- The most immediate threat could be the possibility of new climate and trade tensions were India to insist that technology is transferred in ways that undermine incentives for innovation in both countries or if the U.S. decides that imports from India be subject to increased tariffs in the form of carbon border adjustment mechanisms or “CBAMs”.
- Climate-inspired trade tensions that might even lead to new trade wars can hardly bolster the strategic partnership
THE HINDU
COP 26
- Leaders at the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow have pledged to stop deforestation by the end of the decade and slash emissions of the greenhouse gas, methane, to help slow climate change.
- The inability of major powers so far to agree more broadly on rapid reductions in the use of fossil fuels, the main cause of man-made global warming, has upset the poorer, smaller countries likely to suffer its worst effects.
- Nearly 90 countries have joined a U.S. and EU-led effort to slash emissions of methane 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels
- The Global Methane Pledge, first announced in September, now covers emissions from two-thirds of the global economy,
- Among the signatories is Brazil one of the five biggest emitters of methane, which is generated in cows’ digestive systems, in landfill waste and in oil and gas production.
- Three others China, Russia and India have not signed up.
- In 2020, the world lost 2,58,000 sq. km of forests according to the Global Forest Watch.
- The conservation charity WWF estimates that 27 football fields of forest are lost every minute.
- Over 100 national leaders pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade, underpinned by $19 billion in public and private funds to invest in protecting and restoring forests.
- The agreement expands a commitment by 40 countries as part of the 2014 New York Declaration of Forests. COP26 aims to keep alive a receding target of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avert still greater damage from heatwaves, droughts, floods and coastal damage that climate change is already causing.
- Under the agreement, 12 countries pledged to provide $12 billion of public funding between 2021 and 2025 for developing countries to restore degraded land and tackle wildfires.
THE HINDU
IRIS
- India on Tuesday launched an ambitious initiative for developing the infrastructure of small island nations
- The launch of Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS
- The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face the biggest threat from climate change
- Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) for the initiative, saying for him the CDRI or IRIS is not just about infrastructure thing but it is part of a very sensitive responsibility of human welfare.
- Initiative, it will be easy for SIDS to mobilise technology, finance necessary information faster.
- “Promotion of quality infrastructure in Small Island States will benefit both lives and livelihoods there.
- THE HINDU
CARICOM countries
- The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is a grouping of twenty countries: fifteen Member States and five Associate Members.
- It is home to approximately sixteen million citizens, 60% of whom are under the age of 30 and from the main ethnic groups of Indigenous Peoples, Africans, Indians, Europeans, Chinese, Portuguese and Javanese.
- The Community is multi-lingual; with English as the major language complemented by French and Dutch and variations of these, as well as African and Asian expressions.
- Stretching from The Bahamas in the north to Suriname and Guyana in South America, CARICOM comprises states that are considered developing countries, and except for Belize, in Central America and Guyana and Suriname in South America, all Members and Associate Members are island
- While these states are all relatively small, both in terms of population and size, there is also great diversity with regards to geography and population as well as the levels of economic and social development.
- THE HINDU