Read this innovative Helo Magazine interview. As a crisis journalism magazine, we were interviewed via a skype roundtable chat session:

Part of the intro states:

Can Pacific peoples bridge the world’s chasm between understanding cause and effect of climate change as well as coconut colonialism? Paradise, blue water, blue skies, abundant marine life, smiling faces, bible harmonies, simple lives, and resorts for cashed-up suburbanites. Or abject poverty, menacing kava stares, razor wire, machete-wielding youth, laplap dictatorships, tribal violence and raskol gangs running amok.

We jump into the interview:

Karl: My answer is to use the language of the corridors of power to fight back:  Use economic lingo to protect the earth, the community. Also, foreign aid has to be carefully looked at. Throughout Melanesia, aid has built ring roads around islands and new wharfs so the Multi-National Corporation’s (MNC’s) can rip out the resources quickly. Thirteen such projects by the Millennium Development Corp in Vanuatu. [For example] the ring road is almost finished on the main island of Efate.

Daniel J Gerstle, HELO Editor:  Forgive me, but given that foreign aid development may need to be done with more fairness, particularly in terms of MNC, does it really follow that you consider those ring roads and development unhelpful to the indigenous people in other ways, in terms of infrastructure, healthcare logistics, and markets?

Karl: More resource-based greed is showing through in the carbon cowboys scouring Papua New Guinea (PNG), and I bet other Pacifica islands. Check the comments re: Kirk Roberts.

The roads do improve life in the short run—less dust for local communities, quicker travel times – are dwarfed by the motivations these improved services provide to land sharks. Land becomes hugely valuable when you can fly into an airstrip in the north of Efate, one of the 13 infrastructure projects being built in Vanuatu, and zip off to the coastal mansion you have. All with little interaction with the locals, missing the urban drift in Vila. When this happens the local fisheries are fenced off by these essentially gated communities and the locals can no longer live off the land.

They have to head into town to work for the man. This form of dispossession has racked all developing countries where land scarcity delivers more workers to the smokestack MNC’s, and thus cheap labour. Check out the land speculators paradise: They have the cheek to call it barrier beach! To turn it into a marketing ploy when the locals can’t fish there no more!!! This site is in Santo, the 2nd biggest island in Vanuatu. 

Elite property investors are attracted to this slick site. Check it out and invest with a click of a button, with no thought of the impact on the local community. The Washington consensus has been aiming for this, for the flexibility of capital to swoop into a country and buy up a prime location, sell it a year later to make a killing. This is happening to all of the world’s most beautiful areas, particularly those like in the pacific where private land title is barely thirty years old.

Read more at HELO

photo credit: NomadicLass

Renegade Economists Podcast 131

As broadcast on Wed March 10th, 2010 on 3CR
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Show Notes:
The Communication in Commons: Natalie Pang, Visiting Research Fellow, Nanyang Technology Co Uni (Singapore) discusses the evolution of the digital commons and what access issues we must be aware of.

Read more of her excellent work:
Wiki on the Knowledge Commons
On Bounded Rationality
Thesis

On Nauru (re DJ Spooky interview last week):
6 Principles for Resource Wealthy countries:

1. Transparency – all royalty revenues must be documented either on a public website, and/ or on a Council noticeboard in the city square etc.
2. A Permanent Trust Fund must be set up, following the same rules of transparency. The Alaska Permanent Trust Fund is the benchmark, where only the interest earnt is paid out as a Citizen’s Dividend.
3. Participatory Democracy – all citizens vote on their priorities for proposed budgetary expenditures
4. An environmental bond of $1million must be placed in a holding trust on condition that certain environmental standards are met throughout the operation and at the closure of the mine.
5. Royalties – charged at a minimum of 30% at the ‘farm gate’ price (30% of the market value as it leaves the mine/ farm). No fixed price to be agreed upon in contractual negotiations.
6. Beware of the resource wealth cascading into higher land prices (and thus mortgaged costs AKA bank profits). This brings into play the bigger issue of genuine land reform.

Music

Suzanne Kraft – Lovely
Entertainment for the Braindead – Pirates
Misanthrop – Commercialism

photo credit: waferboard

Land in Short Supply in Perth

The Urban Development Institute says there are currently fewer than 1400 blocks of land for sale in Perth.
..
But, the Real Estate Institute believes there are a lot of speculators sitting on land waiting for prices to improve before releasing them for sale.

The UDIA is concerned that with 1200 migrants visiting Perth each week, the 1400 blocks of land for sale is insufficient to address affordability.

With only 7 auctions last weekend and 20 on Feb 21, for example, it seems that the property downturn in Perth is still in effect. How many other blocks are being withheld and aren’t up for ransom at present?

With higher populations, the demand for land will rise. The REI rightly states that many speculators are sitting on idle blocks waiting for money to grow on trees.

Higher populations should encourage development upwards, not outward. Prime locations become more valuable, ensuring that owners have to make their land more productive to warrant the investment.

The issue is that with more and more builders turning to land banking as a means to an ends – free skiing in Aspen funded by you the taxpayer, you the worker – there is less motivation to build upwards.

This trend will hit the Rudd Government this election year. The rush to remove democratic rights of appeal for local communities in a bid to counter the private sector’s preference for land banking, may well cost some Victorian ALP members their seats.

When will government’s of all persuasions look lobbyists in the eyes and tell them to disappear? Land banking is not only forcing our mortgage costs through the roof, but it is robbing communities of our best and brightest people. How many GP’s have given up their practice for such speculative activity?

Renegade Economists Podcast 130

As broadcast on the mighty 3CR – Wed March 03, 2010
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Show Notes – ‘All Puns Intended’
Internationally acclaimed multimedia artist Paul Millar (DJ Spooky) discusses his Nauru Elegies project. Hear with interest how Nauru, the modern day equivalent of Easter Island, has overexploited its resource base.

Neo-colonial resource stripping amidst poor economic policy have much to answer for.

The multimedia show touring the globe highlights: “Polyphonic issues including matters of ecology and raw material (phosphate), geo-political history, virtual-banking and economic corruption, global climate issues and information networks.

The interview, recorded on the Yarra River, features music from DJ Spooky’s new album, the Secret Song.

Download the interview (30mins)