Corruption and Climate Change

1. Corruption and Climate Change

2. Mafia control deters progress According to one whistleblower, as reported to Globe and Mail, the Montreal Mafia controls roughly 80 percent of the road contracts. Implications: This means that the improvement of roads, bridges, and canals for preventive measures for the challenges of climate change, are essentially in the hands of the mafia.

3. Allegations for Mafia Involvement • The alleged plans for fixing bids among Montreal construction companies known as the “Fabulous Fourteen” were passed along by telephone, often using a code based on golf. • Circumstantial evidence supports the allegation. Quebec road construction and maintenance is vastly more expensive than anywhere else in Canada, according to Transport Canada. • One kilometer of road costs 37 percent more to build in Quebec in 2008 than the average cost for the rest of the country, according to the study. Urban roads cost 46 percent more to build in Quebec, while rural roads cost 26 percent more. • The stakes are massive as Quebec continues a five-year, $42-billion program to rebuild roads, sewers and bridges.

4. The UN, Corruption, and Climate Change Corruption even lies embedded in the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization. Secretary General Michel Jarraud has been associated with embezzlement scandals that have cost the United Nations over half a million dollars in damages. Think of how this money could have been used towards the challenges of climate change.

5. Jarraud has been under investigation since the early 2000s. • A French native, he first won the election to become the secretary-general in 2003. Four months later, a confidential internal audit emerged, unearthing a major scandal that some of the $3.5 million stolen by a former employee was used to influence votes in the 2003 election. Jarraud was the agency’s deputy secretary-general at the time before the rigged election in 2003 and later became number one in the organization. • In November 2006 Jarraud fired the whistleblower, Maria Veiga, a Portuguese/Italian national who refused to discontinue her investigations into a cover-up of an embezzlement scheme. Whistleblowersreap the effect for standing up against corruption

6. Allegations from Veiga’s Report • The internal investigation started on 11 July 2003. The preliminary investigation has dealt with the allegation that Mr. Mohamed E. Hassan has mishandled WMO funds through inappropriate endorsements of checks drawn on WMO bank accounts and deposited in private bank accounts in Geneva. • The disappearance of the money was made public in 2003 when WMO handed the matter over to Swiss authorities. At the time Hassan, who by then had gone abroad, was suspected of having embezzled the money. • But according to the documents seen by the AP, most of funds were allegedly used to influence the votes of about 50 WMO member states during the May 2003 election of the agency's new secretary-general.

7. Aftermath After Ms. Veiga had challenged her dismissal through UN proceedings conducted by the International Labor Office (ILO) Administrative Tribunal, the WMO was ordered to pay nearly $500,000 in exemplary, material and moral damages, lost salary and allowances. The ILO also ruled that Ms. Veiga was harassed, defamed and was wrongfully terminated by Jarraud.

8. March 2013 Press Release • The most recent press release from the UN was released this month from Geneva, Switzerland • The meeting sought to develop and implement proactive drought policies in the hopes of avoiding future death, displacement, and destruction. • UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on drought prevention and responding to climate change obstacles: • “Prevention must be our priority. Nations need urgently to develop strategies for resilience — especially for the poor, who are always hit first and worst.”

9. March 2013 Press Release • Why are droughts an important topic to the UN? • Droughts have scarred human history since ancient times. While lacking the drama of earthquakes or hurricanes, droughts cause more deaths and displace more people than any other kind of natural disaster. During the past several years alone, they have struck such diverse places as Australia, Brazil, southeastern Europe, Mexico, Russia, Somalia, Spain and the United States. • Climate variability and change threaten to bring even higher temperatures, greater evaporation and altered rainfall patterns in the years to come. While rainfall and water supplies vary everywhere in the world, the countries most vulnerable to serious drought are in the world’s drylands, which since 1950 have increased by almost 2 percent per decade.