US welcomes Arab League backing of no-fly zone

Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa
© AFP Aris Messinis

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States welcomed Arab League support for a no-fly zone over Libya on Saturday, saying it signaled "unified" international pressure on Moamer Kadhafi's regime to halt the violence.

It stressed it would maintain its posture of support for the Libyan opposition, and that Washington was preparing for "all contingencies" in the North African nation where rebels have been battling regime forces for weeks.

"We welcome this important step by the Arab League, which strengthens the international pressure on Kadhafi and support for the Libyan people," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

"The international community is unified in sending a clear message that the violence in Libya must stop, and that the Kadhafi regime must be held accountable."

After crisis talks in Cairo the Arab League urged the United Nations to slap a no-fly zone on Libya and said Kadhafi's regime had "lost legitimacy," in a boost for rebels fighting to unseat the strongman. Washington joined Britain in welcoming the 22-member League's support.


US President Barack Obama warned on Friday that the world is "tightening the noose" on Kadhafi, but admitted he is concerned the Libyan strongman's forces could thwart rebels battling to oust him.

"The United States will continue to advance our efforts to pressure Kadhafi, to support the Libyan opposition, and to prepare for all contingencies, in close coordination with our international partners," Carney said in his statement.

US posture on a no-fly zone over Libya has been far from unanimous.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday that the US military and other allies could impose such a zone but it remains unclear if it would be a "wise" move.

"This is not a question of whether we or our allies can do this. We can do it," Gates told reporters aboard his plane after a visit to Bahrain.

"The question is whether it's a wise thing to do and that's the discussion that's going on at a political level," he said.



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Confronting the Global Water Crisis

Further to Christina Madden's Policy Innovations article "Managing Water Well," Peter Rogers recommends some technical and managerial adaptations in Project Syndicate this week:

- Trade virtual water—the amount of water that is embodied in producing a product (usually food) and shipping it somewhere else to be used. This saves the recipient from using his own water, which can be saved for higher-value activities;

- Conserve irrigation water. Because agriculture routinely accounts for 75 to 90 percent of all water consumed in a country, a 10 percent efficiency gain would save as much water as all the water used by the country's municipalities and industry. Another way of improving irrigation efficiency is by developing crops that produce more food with the same, or less, water. Research on such genetically modified (GM) foods is well advanced in several of the largest water-scarce countries, such as China and India;

- Exploit advanced desalination. Modern developments in desalination have brought the cost per unit of desalinated seawater to levels comparable to obtaining fresh water from natural sources (approximately $0.05 per cubic meter).

- Expand wastewater recycling. Urban areas typically dispose of about 85 percent of their fresh-water intake as wastewater, often in neighboring water bodies. The wastes could be treated and used to replenish groundwater. Emerging low-water-using sanitation technologies such as urine-separating dry-composting toilets could also significantly reduce urban water demands if properly developed;

- Develop creative pricing policies for urban water and wastewater. Protecting human and ecosystem health are difficult to price, because they form part of the pervasive externalities associated with water use. Nevertheless, many water uses would respond well to more efficient prices.

Although avoiding a global water crisis will not be easy, we have at hand policies and technologies that, if properly applied, could see us safely through the next several decades, even in the face of increasing—and increasingly wealthy—populations.

Nigerian Elections, Property Rights, and the Resource Curse

Fears of violence and fraud again surround elections in Nigeria. A tanker truck attempted to destroy the Independent National Election Commission and an opposition party claimed that it captured a truckload of rigged ballots. Such unrest is symptomatic of the resource curse, wherein extreme wealth from natural resources often harms political stability, equitable prosperity, and economic growth in developing nations. As the New York Times reports:

By all accounts, petroleum profits have brought huge benefits to this country's rulers, but few to its people. Oil companies typically keep 7 percent of the profits from oil sales; the government gets 93 percent.

Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption group; 70 percent of the country’s population lives on $1 a day or less. Life expectancy is 47 years.

Between 1960 and 1999, more than $380 billion was stolen or wasted, according to Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria's top anti-corruption official. In that period, the country produced over $400 billion worth of oil.

In an effort to redistribute wealth, the government now gives 13 percent of the proceeds from oil sales to the producing states but there is little accountability of how these funds are spent. Much of it simply disappears, wasted by inefficient or corrupt local officials, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

University of Sheffield philosopher Leif Wenar has been rethinking how property rights law can be used as an antidote to the resource curse. He starts with some basic assumptions from international and commercial law—resources belong to all people of a country not just the mightiest minority, the people must assent to the sale of those resources, and if they haven't assented then the resources can be considered stolen and therefore not valid for trade. Wenar then builds the case for new legal and trade practices to ensure that such stolen resources do not reach the market or that their value is delivered to the peoples who truly own them.

Wenar works through a number of interesting objections to his proposal. Primary among them is finding a means to circumvent the case where, for example, China continues to buy oil from Sudan and the United States continues to buy goods from China. He advocates opening a Clean Hands Trust for the people of Sudan, generated by tariffs on Chinese goods and delivered to the Sudanese once the country has obtained levels of governance that would allow it to validly sell its resources.

Fortunately, the United States already employs the Freedom House standards in its Millennium Challenge Account program, thus establishing bright lines for determining whether resources from a particular country are valid for trade. Countries falling below certain levels of political rights and civil liberties would be disqualified.

"According to the US government's own standards," writes Wenar, "American corporations are buying resources from regimes that could not possibly have the right to sell them. Any consistent pro-market government should prohibit these transactions explicitly."