MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Latinamerica needs to create 126 million jobs

Facing an employment deficit of 126 million jobs in the coming decade, Latin America must not only increase its business competitiveness, but also move towards more “employment-rich” growth of the economy, the head of the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) said Wednesday.

"We have to respond to our citizens' aspirations to decent work for all with specific measures, because that is what they express in every election and expect from democracy," ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said before the opening of the Sixteenth American Regional Meeting Brasilia, Brazil's capital.

According to recent ILO reports, 23 million people face open unemployment and 103 million work in the informal sector in Latin America, creating an employment deficit in the formal sector of 126 million jobs. This is more than half of the 239 million people who make up the economically active population in the region.

A report submitted to the meeting, entitled "Decent work in the Americas: An Agenda for the Hemisphere, 2006-2015," warns that this formal work deficit could increase to 158 million by 2015 unless the necessary steps are taken to generate more and better jobs.

That Agenda lists four main challenges to increased employment: ensuring that economic growth promotes employment for all; guaranteeing that labour rights are effectively upheld and respected; adopting new social protection mechanisms suited to current conditions; and using these procedures to combat social exclusion.

The report stresses that labour markets are not at present benefiting as much as was expected from economic growth, saying: "We cannot simply depend on growth to generate employment for those most in need of it and to reduce extreme poverty in the region."

For that reason, Mr. Somavia argued that "the objective of creating decent work should be explicitly incorporated into national development strategies", including the generation of specific labour policies. Gold symposium in Peru The shimmering gold that was the symbol Inca kings power and glory, and brought razing Spanish conquistadores still abounds in Peru and continues to attract investors. The strength of that attraction is evident in the 7th International Gold Symposium held in Lima. Peru is the world's fifth-leading producer of gold, a rank it wrested last year from Russia. Furthermore, gold reached this week a new quarter century record, 679 US dollars an ounce, a 23% increase since last January given ongoing tensions in Middle East and international volatility.

Under the banner, "Gold Opportunities in Peru and Latin America," the former director of the World Trade Organization, New Zealand's Mike Moore has also joined top international mining executives and other industry figures for three days of discussions.

Peru extracted 206 tons of gold last year, up 20% over 2004, according to figures from the Gold Committee of the National Society of Mining, Oil and Energy.

Peru earned 3 billion US dollars from gold exports in 2005 showing the continued vitality of a trade that dates back to the 16th century, when the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Central America heard that there was abundant gold for the taking in a land then known as Viru or Piru.

Conquistador Francisco Pizarro led the expedition, quickly capturing the Inca emperor Atahualpa, for whose safe return the invaders demanded a quantity of gold, silver and precious stones that came to fill three large rooms of the palace where he was held prisoner.

Despite the Inca's payment of the vast ransom, Pizarro had the Inca leader executed by strangulation in 1533. The episode unfolded in Cajamarca, still the site of an important working mine and the place where the oldest carved piece of gold in the Americas was discovered 16 years ago.

Also located in northern Peru is Latin America's largest deposit of gold: the Yanacocha mine, which is mostly owned by U.S.-based Newmont Mining. The Peruvian firm Buenaventura holds 43.6% of the operation, with another 5% percent in the hands of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation.

Peruvian gold is not only plentiful, but of high quality, as pointed out by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), the son of an Indian princess and a Spanish conquistador whose writings were long the only source on the history of pre-Columbian Peru.

The chronicler said that most of Peru's gold was of between 18 and 20 karats in purity, and that the mines of Callauaya, in the southeast, yielded 24-karat nuggets.

Yet foreign firms remain nervous about investing in Peru, mainly because the country still lacks a stable, predictable legal system and is unable to guarantee security in some of the remote rural areas where gold deposits are found.

At the same time Indian rights activists pressure mining companies to show more social responsibility when operating near indigenous communities, while labour unions demand more workers' safety.

Another player in the industry, environmentalists point to the danger that water and soil will be contaminated by toxic substances used in gold mining and processing such as mercury and cyanide.

All Peru's "official" gold mines output is exported. The country's tiny, low-tech domestic jewellery industry works with the precious metal from unregistered mines and gold-panning sites, many of them located in jungle regions.

Some 30,000 families are employed in such wildcat mining operations, authorities say, underlining that child labour and other forms of exploitation practices are common in the informal "gold industry" sector. 16.119 species listed "threatened with extinction" The total number of species declared officially Extinct is 784 and a further 65 are only found in captivity or cultivation. Of the 40,177 species assessed using The World Conservation Union, (IUCN) Red List criteria, 16,119 are now listed as threatened with extinction. This includes one in three amphibians and a quarter of the world's coniferous trees, on top of the one in eight birds and one in four mammals known to be in jeopardy. The 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species brings into sharp focus the ongoing decline of the earth's biodiversity and the impact mankind is having upon life on earth. Widely recognized as the most authoritative assessment of the global status of plants and animals, it provides an accurate measure of progress, or lack of it, in achieving the globally agreed target to significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

"The 2006 IUCN Red List shows a clear trend: biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down," said Achim Steiner, Director General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). "The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching. Reversing this trend is possible, as numerous conservation success stories have proven. To succeed on a global scale, we need new alliances across all sectors of society. Biodiversity cannot be saved by environmentalists alone ? it must become the responsibility of everyone with the power and resources to act," he added.

Melting icecaps ?

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are set to become one of the most notable casualties of global warming. The impact of climate change is increasingly felt in polar regions, where summer sea ice is expected to decrease by 50-100% over the next 50-100 years. Dependent upon Arctic ice-floes for hunting seals and highly specialized for life in the Arctic marine environment, polar bears are predicted to suffer more than a 30% population decline in the next 45 years. Previously listed by IUCN as a conservation dependent species, the polar bear moves into the threatened categories and has been classified as Vulnerable.

? dying deserts ?

Humankind's global footprint on the planet extends even to regions that would appear to be far removed from human influence. Deserts and dry-lands may appear relatively untouched, but their specially adapted animals and plants are also some of the rarest and most threatened. Slowly but surely deserts are being emptied of their diverse and specialized wildlife, almost unnoticed.

The main threat to desert wildlife is unregulated hunting followed by habitat degradation. The dama gazelle (Gazella dama) of the Sahara, already listed as Endangered in 2004, has suffered an 80% crash in numbers over the past 10 years because of uncontrolled hunting parties, and has been upgraded to Critically Endangered. Other Saharan gazelle species are also threatened and they seem destined to suffer the fate of the scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) and become Extinctin the Wild.

Asian antelopes face similar pressures. The goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) is widespread across the deserts and semi-deserts of central Asia and the Middle East and until a few years ago had substantial populations in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Both countries have seen sharp declines because of habitat loss and illegal hunting for meat. The gazelle has been reclassified from Near Threatened to Vulnerable.

? and empty oceans

A key addition to the 2006 Red List of Threatened Species is the first comprehensive regional assessment of selected marine groups.

Sharks and rays are among the first marine groups to be systematically assessed, and of the 547 species listed, 20% are threatened with extinction. This confirms suspicions that these mainly slow-growing species are exceptionally susceptible to over-fishing and are disappearing at an unprecedented rate across the globe.

The plight of the angel shark (Squatina squatina) and common skate (Dipturus batis), once familiar sights in European fish-markets, illustrates dramatically the recent rapid deterioration of many sharks and rays. They have all but disappeared from sale. The angel shark (upgraded from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered) has been declared extinct in the North Sea and the common skate (upgraded from Endangered to Critically Endangered) is now very scarce in the Irish Sea and southern North Sea.

As fisheries extend into ever deeper waters, the deep bottom-dwelling gulper shark (Centrophorus granulosus) is listed as Vulnerable with local population declines of up to 95%. This fishing pressure, for its meat and rich liver oil, is well beyond their reproductive capacity and sustainable fishing. Populations are destined to decline in the absence of international catch limits.

"Marine species are proving to be just as much at risk of extinction as their land-based counterparts: the desperate situation of many sharks and rays is just the tip of the iceberg," said Craig Hilton-Taylor of the IUCN Red List Unit. "It is critical that urgent action to greatly improve management practices and implement conservation measures, such as agreed non-fishing areas, enforced mesh-size regulations and international catch limits, is taken before it is too late".