EthicalInvesting, Divestment, and EnergyPositiveHomes. Anatomy of Action Challenge by Sofonie Dala - Angola. Day 10

Ethical Investing, Divestment, and Energy Positive Homes

Dearest in Mind, welcome to the tenth day of our program!

We went through FOOD, STUFF and MOVE domains. So far, the #AnatomyofAction has reached 8.3 million people worldwide! From today, we are all invited to use our MONEY more consciously. This will enable us to employ higher awareness when deciding which businesses, banking institutions, or energy providers we use.

Ethical investing is a strategy where an investor chooses investments based on a personal ethical code.

Ethical investing is a way to grow your savings without compromising on your values. As with all investing, it involves risks. Traditionally, ethical investment products, such as funds, enabled you to avoid investing in companies or sectors you disagree with. This is known as divestment.

Ethical investing is an umbrella term for all approaches to investing that consider values as well as returns. 

WHY INVEST IN ANGOLA?

1. Investing in Angola is investing in a country with over 3 million hectares of arable land and over 1,650 kilometers of coastline;
2. An African country with enormous potential in mineral and natural resources such as oil, natural gas, diamonds, iron, gold and more;
3. Angola has a privileged hydrographic basin that represents 12% of the water tables of Africa;
4. Investing in Angola is investing in a growing African country with numerous business opportunities in sectors ranging from Agriculture, Fisheries, Agriculture, Health, Transport, Manufacturing Industry, Mining, Energy and others;
5. A country with economic and political-social stability, with a favorable business environment and bilateral agreements to promote and protect investment.

Ethical investments have a positive impact on the world while also aiming to make a profit. It means you get a financial return without sacrificing your social, moral or religious principles. Green investing refers to investing activities aligned with environmentally-friendly business practices and the conservation of natural resources.

What are ethical investments?

Ethical (as applied to funds)   Applying negative and/or positive ethical or ‘values-based’ screens to help sift investments. 

Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI)/Socially Responsible   A wide range of investment strategies that focus on ethical, social and environmental issues.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing   Strategies that take into account environmental, social and governance related risks and opportunities, often to help reduce risk.

Impact investing   Investing in a way that delivers measurable social and/or societal effects and benefits as well as financial returns. 

Dark green investing   A strictly screened approach, avoiding any company or industry that does not meet its criteria. 

 Light green investing   Seeks out companies that are doing good as opposed to excluding companies that are considered to cause harm.

 Sustainable investing   Focuses on environmental and social sustainability issues to help deliver strong investment returns and address issues such as climate change.

Mango sales are a new source of livelihood for many families in Luanda

The sale of mangoes has become the livelihood of many families in Luanda, at taxi stops, public roads or even inside the taxi, mangoes are sold at a price accessible to all budgets.

In addition, hunger forces 124 families to feed on green mangoes in the Country. Old ladies, children and young people find their livelihood in this business. Mango is one of the most popular fruits in the market, not only for being cheap but also for being very delicious. 

Over the next three days, we will understand what Ethical Investing, Divestment, and Energy Positive Homes mean; we do not need to have a bank account to start learning about green finance, pensions funds, and resource-efficiency. For instance, did you know that just 100 companies, all in the oil and gas industry, are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions? We need to take action to ensure we support those that enable SDG 12 (sustainable consumption and production).

These facts provide you with some food for thought and information to explain why it is fundamental to participate in this domain of the challenge: 

Financial institutions provide the capital funding over-exploitation of lands and seas, positioning biodiversity in free-fall. However, global inflows into sustainable funds are increasing, making ethical investing easier for everyone.

In the last 30 years, urban areas have doubled at the expense of forests, wetlands and grasslands! We should always keep in mind that how the construction sector uses natural resources has a huge impact on ecosystems and biodiversity. 

#AnatomyOfAction 

#ActNow 

#GlobalGoals 

#ShareYourRide 

Zitouna TV: Tunisian station shut down after host reads anti-dictator poem

Tunisian authorities have shut down a television station after one of its hosts read an anti-dictatorship poem.

Amer Ayad – a Zitouna TV talk show host – has been arrested and accused of “undermining the security of the state”.

Zitouna has been critical of President Kais Saied’s recent suspension of parliament, and his assumption of almost complete control of the country.

State officials said the channel had been broadcasting illegally.

On Sunday, Ayad read out The Ruler by Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar on air. Matar is famous for his satirical and critical poems about dictators from the Arab world. Ayad was arrested soon after.

His detention is the latest in a series of arrests that have targeted journalists and lawmakers who had expressed their opposition to the president’s measures.

On Wednesday, Zitouna posted on Facebook that security forces had stormed its studios and began damaging equipment.

“Zitouna has been broadcasting illegally for years,” Nouri Lajmi, president of the Independent High Authority for Audio-Visual Communication, told the AFP news agency.

• Tunisia crisis: Democrats, despots and the fight for power

Zitouna started broadcasting in 2012, following the fall of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in an uprising. This triggered a wave of similar uprisings across the Arab world.

In 2015, some of the channel’s equipment was seized but it continued operating.

In July, President Kais Saied stunned many in the country and abroad by announcing the suspension of parliament, the sacking of the cabinet and assuming emergency powers – citing an imminent threat to the Tunisian state.

Critics of the president may argue that this move against Zitouna is an attempt to undermine freedom of the press.

It comes after police closed the office of Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera in the capital Tunis in July, without giving reasons.

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EU indecision ‘jeopardising’ its position in Balkans – Von der Leyen

The EU is like playing in the Champions League, one official in Brussels said recently. Not, they claimed pointedly, a more minor domestic competition.

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The message being that it isn’t easy to win membership.

For years Western Balkans states have tried to climb the accession ladder into the EU.

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen conceded at a summit in Slovenia on Wednesday that the long wait was causing “impatience” and “frustration”.

The lack of a decision on even opening negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania was “jeopardising our standing and leverage in the region”, she warned.

She was at pains to stress: “We want the Western Balkans in the European Union.”

The Slovenian gathering involved family photos, lunch and all the usual pageantry, where EU leaders met their counterparts from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia and Kosovo.

But it wasn’t a decision summit on enlargement, rather a “reaffirmation” of ties.

Mrs von der Leyen said that, while there had been progress by Balkan states, there was more to do on fighting corruption and economic reforms.

European Council President Charles Michel conceded it was no secret that the 27 member states weren’t in agreement about the bloc’s capacity to take on new members.

Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia all have “candidate status”, although some nations are more advanced in the process than others. Bosnia is still a potential candidate, while Kosovo is not even recognised as a state by some EU members.

Countries are tested on their ability to align with a large body of rules and standards, divided into 35 chapters. It’s never a simple process.

But these four candidates have formed a queue that now dates back to the early noughties.

One of the most recent stumbling blocks: a language dispute between EU member state Bulgaria and North Macedonia.

University of Oxford EU politics lecturer Eli Gateva says the accession process can be “held hostage to domestic politics”.

Following previous rapid expansions, enlargement has in some cases, she says, become “another word for immigration – and this can be fuel for far-right parties”.

France and the Netherlands are often named as among the most cautious EU member states when it comes to enlargement.

The EU is, after all, already wrestling with serious issues among existing member states, principally Poland and Hungary, on the all-important “rule of law”.

So the case is made that the EU needs to sort out the structural issues within its own house before building on that extension.

Wednesday’s summit statement went no further than “reconfirming” the bloc’s commitment to enlargement, and even that took some haggling.

However, the Commission president was keen to point out that those words had made it into paragraph one of the declaration.

While the political process may appear painfully slow, money is fast being poured into the region with billions in grant funding.

Andi Hoxhaj, a scholar in EU Law at the University of Warwick, calls it an “economy first” approach. The idea being that if you integrate countries economically, the politics may follow.

Mrs von der Leyen already spent last week love-bombing the region, covering six countries in three days.

IMAGE SOURCE,EPA

Image caption,Bridge to the future: The European Commission chief (C) opened a crossing between Croatia and Bosnia last week

Following a phone call between the Commission chief and the US President this week, Joe Biden also expressed “strong support for continuing the accession process with countries in this region”.

That is because the Western Balkans, which suffered so much in the bloody wars of the 1990s, are strategically important to the European Union.

“It’s not our backyard, it’s our front yard,” one EU diplomat told me: and you want your front yard “clean and neat”.

“If we are not going to be in the region, someone else will fill the void.”

Eli Gateva agrees: “We have other foreign actors trying to vie for influence in this region such as China, Russia and Turkey.”

Ask around and there can be huge reticence to name a date as to when the candidate countries might finally get an official seat around the EU table.

Slovenia, which holds the European Council presidency, reportedly (and unsuccessfully) urged the EU to commit to admitting the Western Balkan states by 2030.

IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS

Image caption,Relations between Serbia and Kosovo are tense and a two-week border row ended only days ago

The Slovenians believe there needs to be a strong political message to reassure the region that enlargement is still a priority; they see hopes of accession as a vital spur for candidate countries to tackle corruption and pursue judicial reforms.

An EU official remarked this week that the door wasn’t “closed”, but it certainly isn’t gaping open either.

The danger is those countries in the waiting room start to look at other options, and the European Union’s quest to project power fades.

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Texas abortion: Judge temporarily blocks enforcement of law

A US judge has temporarily blocked a new law in Texas that effectively bans women from having an abortion.

District Judge Robert Pitman granted a request by the Biden administration to prevent any enforcement of the law while its legality is being challenged.

The law, which prohibits women in Texas from obtaining an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, was drafted and approved by Republican politicians.

The White House praised the latest ruling as an important step.

“The fight has only just begun, both in Texas and in many states across this country where women’s rights are currently under attack,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Texan officials immediately appealed the ruling, setting the stage for further court battles.

Judge Pitman, of Austin, wrote in an 113-page opinion that, from the moment the law came into effect on 1 September, “women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution”.

“This court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right,” he said on Wednesday.

Whole Woman’s Health, which runs a number of clinics in Texas, said it was making plans to resume abortions “as soon as possible”.

But the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, accused judges of “catering to the abortion industry” and called for a “fair hearing” at the next stage.

This is the first legal setback for Texas since the law was implemented.

President Joe Biden’s administration took legal action after the conservative-majority Supreme Court declined to prevent Texas from enacting the law. The justice department filed an emergency motion to block enforcement of the law while it pursues legal action.

Mr Biden, a Democrat, has described the law as an “unprecedented assault” on women’s rights, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott has defended it, saying: “The most precious freedom is life itself.”

• VOICES: What Texas women make of abortion law
• ANALYSIS: The implications of Supreme Court’s abortion ruling

The “Heartbeat Act” bans terminations after the detection of what anti-abortion campaigners call a foetal heartbeat, something medical authorities say is misleading. This effectively bans abortions from as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, at a time when most women will not be aware they are pregnant.

It is enforced by giving any individual – from Texas or elsewhere – the right to sue doctors who perform an abortion past the six-week point. However, it does not allow the women who get the procedure to be sued.

One doctor who admitted breaking the state’s new abortion legislation has already been sued.

Writing for the Washington Post, Dr Alan Braid said he “acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care”.

Despite the injunction, some clinics remain hesitant to resume procedures as there is some uncertainty over whether they could be sued retroactively during the ban.

The law itself includes a provision that stipulates clinics and doctors may still be liable for abortions carried out while an emergency injunction is in place, legal experts say.

But whether that provision will be enforceable is unclear, and Judge Pitman said in his ruling that it was “of questionable legality”.

“The threat of being sued retroactively will not be completely gone until [the law] is struck down for good,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

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China-Taiwan military tensions ‘worst in 40 years’

Tensions with China are at their worst in 40 years, Taiwan’s defence minister has said, warning of the risk of an accidental strike between the two.

Chiu Kuo-cheng’s comments came after China sent a “record number” of military jets into Taiwan’s air defence zone for four consecutive days.

Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. China, however, views Taiwan as a breakaway province.

It has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve unification.

While Chinese jets have not been flown all the way to the island, Mr Chiu warned that there was a risk of a “misfire”.

Taiwan’s air defence zone, which it monitors for threats, extends over an area that covers the Taiwan Strait and a large swathe of the Chinese mainland. They consider jets crossing an unofficial line between China and Taiwan as an incursion.

Mr Chiu also warned China would be capable of mounting a full-scale invasion of the island by 2025.

He was speaking as a parliamentary committee in Taipei considered a multi-billion-dollar defence spending bill to build missiles and warships.

Acknowledging that China already has the capacity to invade, he said such a move would get easier in coming years, though he did not elaborate.

Taiwan broke away from the mainland as communists seized power in 1949.

Analysts have warned that Beijing is becoming increasingly concerned that Taiwan’s government is moving the island towards a formal declaration of independence and wants to deter its President Tsai Ing-wen from taking any steps in that direction.

A number of Western allies of Taiwan have expressed concern at China’s open display of military might recently.

• What is the ‘One China’ policy?
• What’s behind the China-Taiwan divide?
• US approves $1.8bn weapons sale to Taiwan

However, US President Joe Biden said his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had agreed to abide by the “Taiwan agreement”.

Mr Biden appeared to be referring to Washington’s longstanding “one China” policy under which it recognises China rather than Taiwan.

However, this agreement also allows Washington to maintains a “robust unofficial” relationship with Taiwan. The US sells arms to Taiwan as part of Washington’s Taiwan Relations Act, which states that the US must help Taiwan defend itself.

The “One China” policy, which Mr Biden and Mr Xi are believed to have referred to, is a key cornerstone of Sino-US relations but is distinct from the One China principle, whereby China insists Taiwan is an inalienable part of one China to be reunified one day.

“I’ve spoken with [Mr] Xi about Taiwan. We agree … we’ll abide by the Taiwan agreement,” said President Biden. “We made it clear that I don’t think he should be doing anything other than abiding by the agreement.

Despite the heightened tensions, relations between China and Taiwan have not deteriorated to levels last seen in 1996 when China tried to disrupt presidential elections with missile tests and the US dispatched aircraft carriers to the region to dissuade them.

Close to conflict? Maybe not

At one level you might expect Taiwan’s defence minister to be sounding the alarm like this, speaking at a hearing into whether military spending should be increased.

The same thing happens around the world.

However, he is not alone in warning that tensions between Taiwan and mainland China have been increasing quite seriously.

This all still seems like we are a long way from war but Chiu Kuo-cheng is also not the only person to have warned of the potential for accidental shooting at a time of high pressure.

Every time dozens of mainland fighter jets and bombers fly into Taiwan’s air defence zone, Taipei scrambles its own aircraft. It is not hard to imagine a scenario whereby a misunderstood signal or action could lead to a deadly incident.

There is considerable debate amongst analysts as to whether Beijing might be building towards a move to retake Taiwan by force.

Each time a Chinese government official or a senior party member threatens to do this it fuels fears that this could come sooner rather than later.

And such threats have been coming thick and fast recently: here is an example from this week.

There have even been concerns that the spate of patriotic military movies being released here could be designed to soften the public up about the need for war as a national duty.

Many people, especially those living in Taiwan, will be hoping that Xi Jinping did make commitments to Joe Biden in the way that the US president reported he did – and that a bloody cross-Strait solution is not being considered as a serious option.

China and Taiwan: The basics

• Why do China and Taiwan have poor relations? China and Taiwan were divided during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing insists the island will be reclaimed at some point, by force if necessary

• How is Taiwan governed? The island has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and about 300,000 active troops in its armed forces

• Who recognises Taiwan? Only a few countries recognise Taiwan. Most recognise the Chinese government in Beijing instead. The US has no official ties with Taiwan but does have a law which requires it to provide the island with the means to defend itself

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