* The U.S. priorities: geopolitical interests over humanitarian causes.
* From fighting climate change to development aid, the Global South has received too many unfulfilled promises and false hopes.
BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden on Oct. 18 announced 100 million U.S. dollars in humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians during his visit to Israel. Two days later, the White House asked Congress for 106 billion dollars of military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and other purposes.
The 1,000-time aid difference speaks clearly of the U.S. priorities: geopolitical interests over humanitarian causes.
Civilians in humanitarian crises are not the only victims of Western hypocrisy. From fighting climate change to development aid, the Global South has received too many unfulfilled promises and false hopes.
The White House is shrouded in haze in Washington, D.C., the United States, on June 29, 2023. (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Xinhua)
LET IT BURN
Today, the United States is the world's largest oil producer and consumer, and the second-largest transregional exporter of crude oil. It accounts for more than a third of the world's planned increase in fossil fuel capacity by 2050, according to research by climate action group Oil Change International.
However, in regard to dealing with climate change and promoting emissions reduction, the United States has been inconsistent in words and deeds and has been repeatedly called "the No. 1 planet destroyer" by the media.
At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, the United States and other developed countries pledged to provide at least 100 billion dollars a year to developing countries to fight climate change before 2020 and then maintain it through 2025.
According to an Oxfam analysis in May 2023 based on relative accumulated emissions and relative gross national income (GNI), G7 countries should be responsible for 84 percent of the financing. Yet in 2020 alone G7 countries made an 18-billion-dollar shortfall. Assuming this situation has continued since 2020, it is multiplied by 4 to bring it up to 2023 as a 72 billion dollar shortfall.
In September 2021 Biden pledged 11.4 billion dollars every year to developing countries for clean energy transition and climate adaptation. In the following two years, U.S. Congress approved less than 1 billion dollars for each -- short of one-tenth of the promised.
According to CarbonBrief research, based on its historical share of carbon emissions, the United States should provide 39.9 billion dollars in climate aid annually, but in 2020 it only contributed 7.6 billion dollars, only 19 percent of its share, making it the biggest laggard among the 23 wealthiest countries analyzed.
"How long can America's climate hypocrisy last?" asked David Wallis-Wells, an American journalist and author of The Unlivable Earth.
Climate activists take part in a protest in New York, the United States, on Oct. 29, 2022. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
AID: WAIT, WAIT
According to the Oxfam analysis, G7 countries pledged to spend 0.7 percent of their GNI on official development assistance (ODA) in 1970, yet the real number has been 0.27 percent based on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over the past half-century. This means that from 1970 to 2022, the amount of aid provided is less than half of that pledged, with the gap accumulated at nearly 4.5 trillion dollars.
In September 2022, the first U.S.-Pacific Island Leaders' Meeting was held in Washington, at which Biden made a high-profile pledge to provide more than 800 million dollars in aid to the 14 island countries. However, as revealed by many media outlets, over the past year, most of the funding aid pledged has not been approved by Congress, making most of the proposed projects impossible to implement.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May, during a visit to the region, proposed to allocate 7.2 billion dollars over 20 years to the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia, but so far the United States has not made clear whether this aid has been included in the new fiscal year budget.
On the other side of the Atlantic, America's European allies are also used to offering pie in the sky to developing countries. In December 2021, the European Union (EU) launched the Global Gateway initiative targeting global infrastructure investment, yet it has been criticized as "old wine in new bottles" and was questioned in terms of transparency and financial sustainability.
In November 2022, Vincent Grimaud, an acting director in the European Commission's Department for International Partnerships, admitted at a hearing that there are no additional funds at the EU level for the Global Gateway initiative. The investment commitment of 300 billion euros (about 318 billion U.S. dollars) from 2021 to 2027 is in fact a repackaging of existing projects. In March 2023, the EU announced 87 Global Gateway initiative flagship projects, but did not announce its selection criteria and was vague on the financial status of the projects or financing mechanisms to prevent "debt traps."
"Old money, old projects, and old ideas: So what's new about the EU's Global Gateway?" asked an article on the European Network on Debt and Development.
Trucks wait to load containers at the port of Los Angeles, California, the United States, Oct. 22, 2021. (Xinhua)
REASONS BEHIND BROKEN PROMISES
There are three major reasons behind the failed promises of the United States and other Western countries.
First, self-interest. U.S. humanitarian and development aid are always secondary to their domestic priorities.
Consider American food aids. The United States Department of Agriculture, which spends more than 2 billion dollars a year on food aid, is bound by the Cargo Preference Act, which requires that half the tonnage of government-financed cargo must ship on U.S.-flagged vessels, increasing the shipping cost by an average of 31 percent, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office study.
The U.S. food aid programs have also undercut the recipient countries' grain production. A 2017 study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on 118 U.S. food aid recipient countries over the years found that a doubling of U.S. food aid reduced grain production by 1.5 percent, which has been particularly noticeable in sub-Saharan and low-income countries.
Analysts point out that the United States keeps such counterproductive policies in place because of strong lobby interests. American agricultural companies, the military, and the shipping industry all believe that food aid from the United States should create jobs for Americans and protect American interests.
Second, strategic considerations always outweigh humanitarian concerns. Although the United States and Western countries claim democracy and human rights, it is still difficult for them to escape the mindset of great power competition, and many aid projects serve their strategic interests.
This photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 shows the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
In April last year, China and the Solomon Islands announced the signing of a framework agreement on bilateral security cooperation, which hit a nerve in the United States for it to start paying attention to the region it had neglected for decades. A Wall Street Journal article commented that the fundamental purpose of U.S. aid to the Pacific Island countries is to strengthen its influence in the Pacific region to counter China.
In the past two years, the EU declared an agreement with Namibia to build a green hydrogen project in the Zio-Keib National Park and pledged an investment of 5 million euros (5.3 million dollars) to develop mining and infrastructure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These two projects are both located in Africa's rare earth resources corridor region, and the EU's approach has also been seen as a resource grab in the name of developing Africa.
Third, the deadly bureaucracy. The electoral system in Western politics and the wrestling among different agencies often make policies unstable and unpredictable, undercutting the credibility of the government. Countless promises made by the White House are delayed or opposed by the increasingly divided Congress.
In addition, the U.S. government departments are overstaffed, and poor communication also hinders the aid program. In 2022 alone, Power Africa, a U.S. government entity that aims to boost electricity investment in Africa, involved 11 government agencies, while communication among them cost high.
If such broken promises continue to accumulate, confidence of the international community in the U.S. and other Western governments will inevitably wane.
(Video reporters: Yang Shilong, Hu Yousong, Xiong Maoling; Video editors: Yang Zhixiang, Luo Hui, Zheng Xin)■
