Manoj Basnyat: A story filled with mismanagement, staff resentment and ultimately financial corruption in Afghanistan

UNDP Bangladesh director quits following staff resentment

Submitted by admin4 on 11 April 2008 - 2:08pm
Muslim World News
By IANS

Dhaka : Manoj Basnyat, the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) country director to Bangladesh, has quit before the end of his tenure due to a vote of no-confidence from his staff after many of them were laid off.

"His departure comes hot on the heels of a vote of no confidence in him by his staff in a recent survey and several unofficial government complaints about his interference in development projects," The Daily Star newspaper said Friday.

The UNDP Global Staff Survey 2007 for Bangladesh obtained by the paper showed that "86 percent of international staff and 62 percent of local staff at UNDP Bangladesh had no confidence in their country director".

UN Resident Coordinator Renata Lok Dessallien told the paper that Basnyat was "simply being posted somewhere else because he is needed there".

The newspaper quoted unnamed sources to say that Bangladesh Foreign Adviser Iftekhar A. Chowdhury "informally discussed" the change of country director with Desallien during a meeting Monday.

A UNDP spokesperson said that the high disapproval rate for Basnyat was a direct result of a radical overhaul of the UNDP offices here, which included sacking or retrenchment of 45-50 percent of the staff.

The organisation undertook the massive changes after competency exams carried out by its New York headquarters found nearly half of the staff in Dhaka were not up to the mark, according to the spokesperson.

The laid-off staff, who had worked for the UNDP for more than five years, received golden handshakes.

Both the government and the UN, however, denied that Basnyat's departure was due to government pressure or the "survey fallout" within the UNDP.

Basnyat could not be contacted for comment.

Basnyat, currently on leave for three weeks, took up the post of country director of Bangladesh for UNDP in December 2006.

The UNDP spent $55 million in its development projects in Bangladesh last year.

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Did Helen Clark authorized the Manoj Basnyat's slush fund to pay cash bribes to Afghan Ministers that would favor UNDP initiatives ?

UNDP SCANDAL

Click here to read this article on Wall Street Journal page

U.N. Expands Its Probe Into Funding Oversight

By DION NISSENBAUM

WASHINGTON—The United Nations has expanded an internal examination into its largest global development program because of questions over the management of international aid funds in Afghanistan.

The U.N. Development Program's Afghanistan office used a recently established fund to hand out millions of dollars in donated money to Afghan ministries without proper oversight of how it was spent, according to a preliminary report by U.N. auditors.

In a majority of cases they examined, the auditors found "no evidence" that Afghan ministries receiving funds through the UNDP's so-called Policy Advisory and Development program spent the funds for the intended purpose. There were indications that ministry workers received excessive pay raises or double salaries, according to the report, which was completed in July and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The preliminary summary didn't include detailed allegations about the program, which was established to support special projects at Afghan ministries. But the questions it raised were echoed in recent months by several past and present UNDP employees who have alleged in interviews that the program was used to spread cash to win favor inside Afghan ministries for U.N. initiatives.
The U.N. said the document reflected initial findings that were undergoing further examination. In some cases, it said in a statement, further investigation determined that some of the concerns about misallocated funds and high pay raises were unfounded.

The program was created in 2009 under the UNDP's then-director in Afghanistan, Manoj Basnyat, a long-time U.N. official from Nepal. Soon after arriving in Kabul, Mr. Basnyat and the UNDP established the fund, which handed out about $1 million a year to Afghan ministries.

The U.N. hasn't accused Mr. Basnyat of wrongdoing, and he hasn't addressed any allegations publicly. The U.N. declined to make him available for an interview and said it couldn't comment on personnel matters. The U.N. said it encouraged anyone with allegations of wrongdoing to contact it directly and said it maintains a "zero tolerance" anticorruption policy.

The Kabul office is working to phase out the Policy Advisory and Development program in the wake of the auditing questions, a senior U.N. official there said.

"It is not a slush fund," said the official. "My feeling is that it is a project that was weak in terms of the planning and reporting."

The UNDP has been at the center of a multibillion dollar effort to reform the Afghan government and rebuild the battle-damaged country. In part, it is supposed to serve as a model to Afghan politicians of efficiency and transparency.

But the UNDP became the focus of scrutiny this year amid allegations—by U.N. workers as well as by an international monitoring group—of corruption at a fund it oversees, the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a $1.4 billion pool financed by international donors to pay the salaries of the 150,000-member Afghan police.

This summer, the European Union blocked the release of $37 million in funds until the allegations are resolved. In June, the program removed five staff members, including the program's assistant director in Afghanistan. The U.N. didn't say why the workers were dismissed or put on administrative leave. The workers declined to comment or couldn't be reached.

U.N. investigators returned to Kabul over the weekend to continue their examination of the UNDP office in Afghanistan, U.N. officials said.

In April, Mr. Basnyat was replaced after more than three years as country director in Afghanistan by Alvaro Rodriguez, a longtime UNDP employee who had previously held the same position in Pakistan and Somalia. The switch took place under a routine U.N. assignment rotation and wasn't a result of the audit, according to U.N. officials. He is currently on assignment in New York, the U.N. said.

Last year, the UNDP presented Mr. Basnyat with its Julia V. Taft Award, given each year to its most outstanding country office.

—Nathan Hodge in Kabul Afghanistan, contributed to this article.

  Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com
 

A version of this article appeared September 11, 2012, on page A9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: U.N. Expands Its Probe Into Funding Oversight.

Click here to read this article on Wall Street Journal page

BBCNEWS: - United Nations (UNDP) agency 'hacking attack' investigated

Click here for BBCNEWS Story

A group of hackers has posted more than 100 email addresses and login details which it claimed to have extracted from the United Nations.

Many of the emails involved appear to belong to members of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The group, which identified itself as Teampoison, attacked the UN's behaviour and called it a "fraud".

A spokeswoman for the UNDP said the agency believed "an old server which contains old data" had been targeted.

"The UNDP found [the] compromised server and took it offline," said Sausan Ghosheh.

"The server goes back to 2007. There are no active passwords listed for those accounts.

"Please note that UNDP.org was not compromised."

'Leak'

The details were posted on the website Pastebin under the Teampoison logo.

The message preceding the login details accused the UN of acting to "facilitate the introduction of a New World Order" and asked "United Nations, why didn't you expect us?"

Many of the email addresses given end in undp.org, but others appear to belong to members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The poster noted that several of the accounts had "no passwords".

The message ended with the taunt: "The question now is how? We will let the so called 'security experts' over at the UN figure that out... Have a Nice Day."

Credit card attacks

The security company Sophos noted that Teampoison hackers had previously attacked the maker of the Blackberry smartphone's website and had published private information about former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Teampoison recently announced they were joining forces with Anonymous on a new initiative dubbed 'Operation Robin Hood', targeting banks and financial institutions," the firm's senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley wrote on Sophos's blog.
The groups said at the time that their operation aimed to take money from credit cards and donate it to individuals and charities.

They said people would not be harmed as the banks had to refund fraudulent charges.

Teampoison added a "shoutout" to Anonymous in its UN attack posting, adding a link to a Youtube video with more information about its banking attack plan.

These latest moves serve as a reminder that so-called hacktivists are skilled and willing to collaborate to take down their targets, according to Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey's department of computing.

"One of the big problems is that there is so much data around that people forget about their older systems that still have valuable data on them," he said.

"The lesson here is that anything that holds any data of any value must be protected."

As Helen Clark "Opts Out" of UN Financial Disclosure, UNDP Brags About Its Own

By Matthew Russell Lee @Innercitypress.com

UNITED NATIONS, November 23 -- Weeks after the absence of UN Development Program Administrator Helen Clark from the UN's Public Financial Disclosure web site was raised without answer by Inner City Press, UNDP on November 23 issued a press release about online financial disclosure:

New York, 23 November 2011— Members of the public can now access financial data on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) development activities for the most recent fiscal period, thanks to a new open data portal... 'UNDP is committed to being transparent and to being accountable for all the contributions we receive,' UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said. 'Accountability ensures we can be more effective in our work.'

The questions about Ms. Clark's own financial disclosure, which even deputies of hers have made, cannot be unknown to UNDP. Back on November 8 at the UN's noon briefing Inner City Press asked:

Inner City Press: On public financial disclosure, what I wanted to ask you, I think earlier this year the Secretary-General said that 99 per cent of his officials had filed public financial disclosures in the system that he himself has filed in. And a more recent review shows that that’s not the case… Just as one example. Why is Helen Clark’s name not listed?

While the UN nine days later provided an answer about another official, nothing was provided about Ms. Clark.

(c) UN Photo
Helen Clark and former Gaddafi FM Treki, financial disclosure not shown




And so on November 22 Inner City Press asked again:

Inner City Press: I still remain curious why Helen Clark’s name doesn’t appear on the list of high UN officials. And then I thought maybe the answer is that UNDP doesn’t file with the Secretariat, but has its own system. But then, I see Rebecca Grynspan, who is a UNDP official, with her filing on the Secretary-General’s public financial-disclosure page. I am asking, since the Secretary-General maintains this page and has made various representations about it, why isn’t this second or third highest official in the UN at least listed, even if she chooses not to disclose?

Spokesperson: I’d have to check; I don’t know the answer to that, Matthew. But, as you pointed out, there are many officials who are listed there.

Question: There seemed to be 23 that weren’t, and now Mr. Orr is listed, so now we are down to 22. But, it does seem, I mean, it seems, at least in this case, she is a pretty high officials and my colleague was just asking about her.

Spokesperson: Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. I’ll see what I can find out.

No answer was provided later that day, then the next morning came UNDP's press release about financial disclosure online, even quoting the elusive Helen Clark -- but no answer. As one observer put it, it looks like Clark has unilaterally "opted out" of Ban's already weak public financial disclosure program.

Clark has refused repeated requests to hold a Q&A press conference at UN headquarters. Watch this site.

UNDP finally makes financial data available: fails to disclose details - major discrepancies between the database and UNDP CO website

United Nations Development Programme data.undp.org

Data includes expenditures for development activities and development coordination, as extracted from the UNDP general ledger, but due to the global nature of the organization and differences in reporting transactions, some...

Heather Simpson forced out of the shadow:- Officially the de-jure Chief of Staff

For those at UNDP who called Heather Simpson the machiavellian schemer who would always be careful NOT to take a picture with Helen Clark while traveling with her around the globe, now is the time to really sh** bricks.

HEATHER SIMPSON (H2)

IS

CHEF DE CABINET

OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATOR

@UNDP

Yes, you heard that well. After the direct threat to Helen Clark from a "powerful government" at the last Executive Board meeting, Uncle Helen could trust no one else at UNDP's cupola with the next move :

CHANGE UNDP

Only Heather Simpson can pull this off. Will she be able to navigate the corrupt waters of internal politics at UNDP... only time would tell. Eventhough, "time" is the only thing Uncle Helen doesn't have. She has a deadline to change UNDP forcefully by end of 31st December 2011.

How can you change a specialized professional network like UNDP, were most of current management has been trained and certified by top "capacity building companies" like MI6, GRU, ASIS, CSIS, FE, SUPO, DGSE, AIVD, ISI, SASS, SEBIN, etc??

Well only a NZSIS certified, who has also navigated the New Zealand politics for almost quarter century can do it.

One thing is for sure, Uncle Helen cannot return in New Zealand and the only way is to navigate her ship in the international waters for "awhile", thus brace up UNDP, you aint seen nothing yet!

‘N.K. military receives most aid’ - While United Nations lies on statistics and access to monitoring in the country

click here for story on www.koreaherald.com

North Korean government, administrative, military and related industry officials receive priority in food rations, according to media sources in the country, as a U.N. aid agency claims ordinary citizens are given less than a third of the recommended nutritional diet.

North Koreans were only given 200 grams of daily rations in July, according to the World Food Programme, as quoted by Voice of America.

“The WFP is constantly worried about the insufficient amount of rations given through the North’s distribution system,” said WFP Spokesperson Nanna Skau.

According to the WFP, July’s rations were half that of April, but an increase from the 190 grams given in May and the 150 grams given in June.

According to the U.N. food agency, a healthy adult requires about 700 grams of daily rations for a balanced diet.

“Recently the rations distributed in the North have been supplied by foreign grains,” said Skau.

“We believe that 100,000 tons of grain have been imported from China.”

However according to journalists within the reclusive nation, military, police, party, administrative officials and mine officials and personnel are given priority in rations.

According to the state-run think tank Sejong Institute, chief editor and publisher for the Asia Press Ishimaru Jiro presented information from the North during a policy symposium here.

“Kim Jung-il is pleading the international community for food aid because they lack the food to distribute to the more privileged classes, so if the international community were to deliver aid, the North Korean government would distribute rations to the priority classes first,” said an inside source as quoted by Ishimaru.

The Asia Press publishes the Rimjin-gang, a magazine on internal affairs of North Korea.

Ishimaru analysis suggests that the priority class makes up roughly 20 percent of the entire population.

UNDP SCANDAL: Official Credit Cards charges at UNDP reached $416 million at end of 2010

UNDP high level management, including Resident Representatives and Regional Directors whom have been given Corporate Credit Cards, have spent almost half a billion dollars in Credit Cards charges.

Internal communications at Office of Finance show that UNDP had major difficulties to closing its books for 2010 given the absence of satisfactory expenditure proof towards Credit Card charges by its high level managers thru-ought its the corporate organigrame. Many of these managers have claimed "approval thresholds rights" given to them by UNDP's Comptroller.

Many claimed representation expenses, office or travel related expenses, etc. But the fact is that much of the charges are not supported or substantiated by paper trail. 82% of the charges are less than $2,500 and thus very difficult to track.

One Finance staff said that many of the charges do not comply with UNDP's corporate regulations and instructions. The staff said that: "if UNDP would be asked by member states to provide a detailed expenditure breakdown of its Corporate Credit Cards usage it can only account for only about 16% of current half a billion accumulated bills".

The above credit card charges span in a period of two years. UNDP's Bureau of Management is refusing to publish a detailed expenditure list of Credit Cards thru out the organization, which means that Member states who fund the organization will never be able to scrutinize the usage of such "extra" expenditures by higher management at UNDP.

Would United Nations Member states ever know where all this money went?

U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee reacts on FOXNEWS story on UNDP's assistance to Syrian Dictator (BASHAR)

House Foreign Affairs Committee

U.S. House of Representatives

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman

CONTACT: Brad Goehner and Andeliz Castillo, (202) 225-5021, April 29, 2011Alex Cruz (South Florida press), (202) 225-8200

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov

For IMMEDIATE Release

Ros-Lehtinen Warns of ‘Bucks for Bashar’ Scandal, Calls for End to UN Development Program Aid for Syria

(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commented on the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) proposed 5-year, $38 million aid plan for Syria. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:

“Given UNDP’s track record of mismanagement, malfeasance, and diversion of funds in Afghanistan, Burma, and North Korea, I am deeply concerned that UNDP assistance to Syria could end up benefitting the Syrian regime. We’ve already had the ‘Cash for Kim’ scandal in North Korea. This aid plan must be terminated to avoid any potential ‘Bucks for Bashar’ scandal in Syria.

“UNDP’s proposed aid package for Syria is premised on the false belief that the murderous dictatorship in Damascus can be a legitimate partner for democratic governance, economic growth, and development. The program proposal itself notes that UNDP will ‘continue to work closely with the government of Syria,’ even as the world witnesses the regime’s escalation of violence and repression against the Syrian people.

“Other UN agencies have also engaged in questionable dealings with the regime. For example, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency banks with the regime-controlled Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been designated under U.S. law for terror financing and money laundering.

“UNDP simply cannot be trusted to behave in a transparent, accountable manner, particularly when it operates in areas governed by rogue regimes. As such, U.S. taxpayer funds must not be contributed to UNDP.”

UNDP's uncle Helen is aiding Syrian Dictator to crush peaceful protesters

A fox news story shows how UNDP continue to aid the Syrian Dictatorship despite democratic protests

-----

Amid Syrian Crackdown, U.N. Considering $38 Million Aid Plan for Government

By George Russell

Published April 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com

While Syria’s government is killing hundreds of pro-democracy protesters, the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP, is considering whether to approve a $38 million, five-year aid program for Damascus, to continue what it calls “a well-functioning partnership with the government.”

Approval of the plan is on the agenda for the next meeting of the development agency’s 36-member Executive Board, slated to begin on June 6.

The U.S. is among a dozen Western nations that are board members. Among other things, the program calls for UNDP to “continue to work closely with the government of Syria,” led by President Bashar Assad, while strengthening its collaboration with “NGOs [non-government organizations], the private sector, the donor community and local authorities”—all of which may be impossible to do amid the Assad regime’s ugly crackdown and its aftermath.

The proposal says little about political conditions under the Syrian dictatorship, except to note mildly that the country’s “democratic governance needs strengthening.”

When queried about whether the program would be approved as scheduled, a UNDP spokesman told Fox News that the question of whether to go ahead with the approval “is currently under discussion.”

Members of the U.N.’s on-the-ground country team in Syria, which is lead by UNDP, “will revert to us on their recommendations soon,” the spokesman added.

Draft documents outlining the Syrian program, along with those for a handful of other Arab nations currently facing political turmoil, are not available on the UNDP website, even though similar programs for countries ranging from Ethiopia to Honduras are already posted.

Fox News obtained a copy of the Syria document, which optimistically projects that by 2015, with UNDP “enabling” support worth about $12.4 million, the Assad regime will be embarked on a major administrative reform program, “and will ensure increased participation of civil society and the private sector in the reform process.”

The same document projects that by 2015, “the Government will have ensured food security for all, and will have elaborated adequate mechanisms for addressing the consequences of climate change.”

Click here to read the draft country program.

The UNDP program for Syria, like almost all of the development agency’s programs around the world, is “nationally executed”—meaning, it counts on the Syrian government itself to carry out the plan, with supervisory and technical assistance from the UNDP’s local team.

In fact, according to the UNDP’s draft country program, the U.N. group’s activity in Syria is “largely based” on the regime’s own, upcoming five-year plan for 2011-2015, and involves mostly carrying out the wishes of the government itself, through intertwining relationships with many of the key ministries that assure the regime’s control. Among them: Justice, Information, Communications, Social Affairs and Labor and Foreign Affairs, as well as Economy and Trade, Tourism, Transport, Electricity and Environment.

The UNDP document characterizes the Syrian national plan as “a vision of the country characterized by equitable and inclusive human, social and economic development and fuller regional integration.”

In the draft country document, UNDP emphasizes the positive elements in its “cooperation,” including “the simplification of government processes for greater accountability and transparency” in the judiciary and municipal government, as well as support for such new institutions as a “Young Journalist Network. It also calls for creation of a “Media Training Institute effectively implementing training for male and female journalists.”

This would not be UNDP’s first joint venture in journalism with the Assad regime. In 2008, the aid organization signed a five-year, $400,000 project to “provide an influential and widespread English-daily newspaper to English-speaking Syrians and foreigners seeking Syrian news.”

The newspaper, the Syrian Times, would have the “capability of giving the Syrian account of events and news to an international audience seeking the perspective and news from the local source.” UNDP’s task was to offer strategies to “improve the efficiency and intellectual potential of the newspaper,” as well as revamp its business model.

Click here for a copy of the 'Support to the Syrian Times Newspaper' project.

Whatever positive role UNDP lauds itself as playing, however, according to the U.S. State Department 2010 report on Syria, it hasn’t translated into less repression, more accountability, more democratic governance or much noteworthy efficiency.

Along with a lengthy list of brutalities committed by the Assad regime, the State Department notes that “the government imposed severe restrictions on civil liberties: freedoms of speech and press, including Internet and academic freedom; freedoms of assembly and of association, including severe restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and freedoms of religion and movement.”

In the most recent national and municipal elections in Syria, in 2007, the report notes that the balloting was “neither free nor fair,” and according to human rights advocates “served to reassert the primacy and political monopoly of power Assad and the Ba’ath Party apparatus wielded.” It adds that outside observers “uniformly” dismissed official voter statistics as “fraudulent and not representative of observed participation.”

The report also says that “the judiciary was not independent,” and that “approximately 95 percent of judges” were adherents or associates of the Ba’athist party. It notes that “an atmosphere of corruption pervaded the government.”

How UNDP will square those observations with its proposed new program of support for Syria, if and when it is discussed and voted on, remains to be seen. According to the UNDP spokesman, “the finalized program will reflect and depend on developments in Syria.”

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News

PricewaterhouseCoopers the darling of UN corrupt managers (how they cover up)

U.N. Deal With PwC Is Faulted In Audit

BY JOE LAURIA

United Nations officials made "serious breaches" of U.N. rules in awarding PricewaterhouseCoopers with a multimillion-dollar consultant contract on a project to overhaul the U.N.'s computer system, according to a U.N. audit reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The audit report from the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight Services contends there were numerous ways in which the U.N. procurement department and the U.N.'s project director skirted U.N. regulations to favor PwC over other bidders.

The report argues that PwC's approximately $16 million contract bid was nearly $11 ...

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THIS STORY ON WSJ.COM

The Role of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) for Climate Change Mitigation

Click here to view this on GLGROUP.COM

Summary

CCS could reconcile the continued use of fossil fuels over the medium to long term with the need for deep cuts in CO2 emissions. A demonstration program of commercial scale CCS projects would allow to prove the various CCS technologies at large scale, to identify risks and to achieve public and industry confidence in CCS. Regulatory issues, particularly around storage liability and the legality of storage will need to be resolved, and funding found to support the demonstration project phase.

Analysis

NOTE: I'm summarizing in a series of analysis the report I'll be presenting next week in Brussels at the the High-Level Workshop on Living in a Low-Carbon Society.

Differently from energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is the only technology whose only purpose for being deployed at large scale is dealing with reducing carbon emissions. The reason for the attention devoted to CCS is that no single technology or process alone will deliver the emission reductions needed to keep climate change within the 2ºC targeted limits. Hence, CCS could help reduce emissions from the flood of new coal-fired power stations planned over the next decades, especially in India and China.

CCS is a three-step process that includes capture and compression of CO2 from power plants or industrial sources; transport of the captured CO2 (usually in pipelines); and storage of that CO2 in geologic formations, such as deep saline formations, oil and gas reservoirs, and unmineable coal seams. Technologies exist for all three components of CCS, but “scaling up” these existing processes and integrating them with coal-based power generation poses technical, economic, and regulatory challenges. Research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) programs can help reduce project uncertainty and improve technology cost and performance. The focus of CCS RD&D is twofold:

1. to demonstrate the operation of current CCS technologies integrated at an appropriate scale to prove safe and reliable capture and storage; and

2. to develop improved CO2 capture component technologies and advanced power generation technologies to significantly reduce the cost of CCS, to facilitate widespread cost-effective deployment.

The IPCC Special Report Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (2005) suggests that it could provide between 15% and 55% of the cumulative mitigation effort until 2100.

The main benefit provided by CCS technologies is clear; their large-scale deployment could reconcile the continued use of fossil fuels over the medium to long term with the need for deep cuts in emissions. This is very important since, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2009, fossil fuels will remain the dominant sources of energy worldwide, accounting for 77% of the demand increase in 2007-2030. In this period, oil demand is expected to increase by 24%, demand for coal by 53%, and demand for natural gas by 42%. Hence, successfully stabilizing emissions without CCS technology would require dramatic growth in other low-carbon technologies, which would lead costs to grow also dramatically.

IEA modeling shows that, without CCS, CO2 marginal abatement costs would rise from $25 to $43 per ton in Europe, and from $25 to $40 per ton in China, while global emissions are10% to 14% higher. This highlights the crucial role CCS is expected to play, which in most scenario studies increases over the course of the century.

CCS can also be considered to contribute to energy security. This is because many major energy-using countries have abundant domestic coal supplies, and hence see coal as having an important role in enhancing energy security. Therefore, extensive deployment of CCS can reconcile the use of these coal supplies with the emission reductions necessary for stabilizing GHG in the atmosphere.

Although it is technically possible to capture emissions from almost any source, the economics of CCS favors capturing emissions from large sources producing concentrated CO2 emissions to capture scale economies, and where it is possible to store the CO2 close to the emission and capture point, to reduce transportation costs. Therefore, the ideal sites for CCS would be close to sources such as power stations, and cement, steel and petrochemical plants.

Employing CCS technology adds to the overall costs of power generation. But there is a wide range of estimates, partly reflecting the relatively untried nature of the technology and variety of possible methods and emission sources. The IPCC quotes a full range from zero to $270 per ton of CO2. A range of central estimates from the IPCC and other sources show the costs of coal-based CCS employment ranging from $19 to $49 per ton of CO2, with a range from $22 to $40 per ton if lower-carbon gas is used. The range of cost estimates will narrow when CCS technologies have been demonstrated but, until this occurs, the estimates remain speculative.

According to the IPCC Special Report on CCS, in most CCS systems, the cost of capture (including compression) is the largest cost component. Some of this cost could be offset by the use of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) for which there is an existing market, but EOR options may not be available for many projects. Since the 1970s, engineered injection of CO2 into geologic reservoirs has taken place for purposes of EOR, resulting in the development of many aspects of reservoir management and operation needed for safe large-scale injection and geologic storage of CO2. Costs for the various components of a CCS system vary widely, depending on the reference plant and the wide range in CO2 source, transport and storage situations. Over the next decade, the cost of capture could be reduced by 20–30%, and more should be achievable by new technologies that are still in the research or demonstration phase. The costs of transport and storage of CO2 could decrease slowly as the technology matures further and the scale increases.

Energy and economic models indicate that the CCS system’s major contribution to climate change mitigation would come from deployment in the electricity sector. Most modeling as assessed in the IPCC Special Report on CCS suggests that CCS systems begin to deploy at a significant level when CO2 prices begin to reach approximately 25–30 US$/tCO2. This means that when the market price for CO2 emissions, such as the price of the EU Emissions Trading System, reaches this level, CCS will become an economically viable option to abate CO2 emissions. As prices increase further, CCS projects will become increasingly attractive. In the meantime, it is essential to gain experience with real projects that bring the costs down through the learning curve. Early demonstration projects are expected to be costly (probably between 60-90 US$/tCO2), due to their small scale and efficiency.

A demonstration program of commercial scale, integrated CCS projects would allow to prove the various CCS technologies at large scale, to identify risks and to achieve public and industry confidence in CCS. A sufficient number of such projects would be required to test different capture technologies and different storage geologies across a range of fuel applications and geographies. The first commercial projects would have to be started shortly after the demonstration phase. Otherwise, CCS could struggle to reach large scale in 2030. Regulatory issues, particularly around storage liability and the legality of storage will need to be resolved, and funding solutions found to support the demonstration project phase. Finally, public awareness in and support for CCS must also be realized.

EXCLUSIVE: Report Slams $100M Aid Effort in Burma, But U.N. Plans to Keep Program Alive

George Russell

- FoxNews.com

- August 24, 2010

Despite an independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma that calls it “disappointing” and suggests that major portions be discontinued, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes.

An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it “disappointing,” and “unsatisfactory,” and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next year. Nonetheless, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes.

The assessment of the UNDP’s Human Development Initiative suggested there were “modest or only limited differences” between the Burmese villages that got UNDP support and those that didn’t.

Among the areas of negligible impact: health care, education and “food security,” meaning the vital business of whether the poorest were producing and saving enough food to eat in the military-controlled country also known as Myanmar.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ASSESSMENT REPORT

There will be no mention, however, of the wind-down suggestion in a condensed version of the assessment report that will be presented to UNDP’s 36-nation supervisory executive board when it holds a regularly scheduled session in New York City starting Aug. 30. (The U.S. is a board member.)

Instead, the head of UNDP, Helen Clark, suggests in her note to the board that the most criticized parts of the aid effort require a “revision of the program concept and design in order to enhance the impact on poverty.” Clark also holds out the possibility that the “strategic framework” of the programs might require only “modest changes” -- including closer cooperation with local elements of the brutal Burmese regime.

Clark recommends that the board give her the widest latitude to implement changes to the Human Development Initiative “as appropriate.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR’S NOTE

The issue of aid assistance to Burma -- which has largely cut itself off from the outside world -- is a hot-button issue, especially after the Obama Administration last week announced that it would support an international commission of inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese regime. (Among other things, the regime has kept its chief critic, opposition political leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest since 2003.)

At the same time, international concern has been growing about whether the regime has been developing a clandestine nuclear program along the lines of its ally, North Korea, even as international aid agencies of all kinds commit hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid to the country.

Making sure that UNDP’s funds stay out of government hands in military-dominated Burma was one of the strings attached from the virtual outset to the Human Development Initiative by UNDP’s executive board. Testifying to whether the arms-length distance has been kept is one of the annual tasks assigned to the independent assessors, who also take the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of UNDP efforts in the country.

For years, the assessors have given the program a clean bill of health on the issue of government involvement -- but they have also grown increasingly critical of the effectiveness of much of UNDP’s grass-roots “community development” programming, now under way in some 60 of Burma’s 325 townships -- in part precisely because it lacks greater government involvement.

Last year, the assessors told UNDP that it should be examining the relationship between the length of time the organization had been handing out aid and the impact of the assistance -- which led to this year’s unsettling conclusions that in many cases the impact had been less than significant.

The main focus of assessor skepticism is a double-barreled UNDP program known as the Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP) and a sister program, Community Development in Remote Townships (CDRT), which are administratively joined at the hip.

Ostensibly self-help programs, the community development initiatives have instead, the assessors say, become studies in mission-creep, in which aid-givers have grown their focus of assistance into primary health care, environmental concerns, HIV/AIDS relief, training and education and food security. The assessors quote one senior UNDP official as admitting that the Human Development Initiative is trying to do “everything under the sun.”

UNDP made matters worse, the report says, by expanding the program dramatically, adding to the resource stretch. Yet another complication was 2008’s Cyclone Nargis, which devastated coastal regions of Burma and further diverted aid efforts (though the report notes that with 500 people on the ground in its HDI programs, UNDP was in a good position to pitch in and help with Nargis). Finally, voluntary funding for the HDI effort has been tiling off, largely as a result of the increasingly hard-line behavior of the Burmese regime.

Even while admitting that Burma is a “difficult and unpredictable” environment for HDI, however, the assessors state firmly that UNDP’s own problems with community development programs are the most significant. Among them: lack of clear focus; inability to show that it has accomplished much beyond the delivery of tangible goods, such as fertilizer; lack of staff training; and perhaps most importantly of all, lack of any clear strategy to wean the people they are helping off continued outside assistance.

The U.N.’s fabled bureaucracy also takes a toll: the assessors note that an “inexplicable number” of reports are prepared by UNDP aid-givers each month at the local level, with some technical specialists estimating they spent 20 percent to 30 percent of their time creating paperwork.

Not much of it apparently has to do with how the aid beneficiaries themselves view things: as the assessors delicately put it, “There is presently no adequate mechanism for feedback from beneficiaries within any of the HDI structures.” UNDP, however, told the assessors it is currently working on a pilot project to do that.

Not all of the UNDP efforts in Burma are viewed as critically by the assessors as the organization’s community development work. Its micro-finance projects in Burma get good marks, though the assessors note that the country’s poorest residents are not benefiting.

The assessors also admitted that the UNDP “impact study” upon which its conclusions were based might itself be flawed, through lack of baseline data and other possible failings. But their report underlined that the survey methodology was considered “robust” by a specialist brought in to design the investigation.

In concluding, the independent experts acknowledge that UNDP itself is unlikely to make any changes before its current authorization for the aid program expires next year. But then it says, a “major revision” of the program is called for “to enhance impact on poverty.”

The experts also note, perhaps in tacit acknowledgment of a previous decade of unimpressive results, that UNDP itself “may come to a different conclusion.”

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.