Mark Leon Goldberg's blog

Our friends at the Center for American Progress are seemingly trying to foment a taxpayer revolt against the war in Iraq. In a nifty new interactive graphic, users can scroll over their home state to see their burden of a $5 billion a month expense in Iraq. My homestate of connecticut for example, has ponied up a whopping $12,843,364,730 so far. That's amounts to about $3,700 per resident of the Nutmeg state.

Spending that kind of cash does not come without its trade-offs. To see what else could be done with the $520 billion we have already spent, check out the National Priorities Project.

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) announced today that it seeks to plant seven billion new trees by the time heads of state meet in Copenhagen in 2009 to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. That's about one tree per person on planet earth. If you think that's a tad ambitious, consider this: Since UNEP's Billion Trees Campaign began 18 months ago, some two billion trees have already been planted. Billion Trees received the sponsorship of some key stakeholders and funders, and has consequently been able to evolve into a true global movement. Consider this from today's announcement:

 Heads of State including the presidents of Indonesia, the Maldives, Mexico, Turkey and Turkmenistan as well as businesses; cities; faith, youth and community groups have enthusiastically taken part. Individuals have accounted for over half of all participants.

    *In a single day in Uttar Pradesh, India, 10.5 million trees were planted.

    *35 million young people in Turkey have been mobilized to plant trees.

    *500,000 schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa and the United Kingdom have become engaged.

 It has also attracted the support of multilateral organizations including the Convention on Biological Diversity whose new Green Wave initiative was launched in advance of its important conference being held in Bonn, Germany later this month, and which supports the Billion, now Seven Billion, Tree Campaign.

To learn more about this campaign, click here. Also check out the Green Belt Movement to see how planting trees promotes peace and justice in conflict prone regions.

An excellent explanation of the LEED certification process from our friends at Cubicles Film

The pressure group Investors Against Genocide just released an open letter to the United Nations Global Compact to press the Compact to press PetroChina to press the Chinese government to play a more constructive role in Darfur. Sure, this campaign requires a few steps, but it is a good start.

Of the steps in the chain, the Global Compact is certainly the most receptive to some sort of redress of public grievences. From the letter.

Three days before PetroChina’s annual meeting of shareholders, over 80 civil society organizations including human rights, corporate accountability, religious and anti-genocide groups from 17 countries have signed an open letter to the United Nations Global Compact. The letter calls upon the UN Global Compact to use its influence with PetroChina, a compact participant, to help bring an end to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. PetroChina, the listed arm of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Sudan's largest oil industry partner, is indisputably linked to the regime perpetuating the five-year humanitarian crisis in Darfur which many consider to be genocide.

[snip]

“The challenge for the UN Global Compact,” states Eric Cohen, chairperson of Investors Against Genocide, “is to take firm steps to ensure that its principles are upheld in the face of the most egregious human rights violations on the planet. We therefore respectfully request that the United Nations Global Compact use its own good offices to encourage PetroChina, in partnership with its closely related parent company, CPNC, to engage the Government of Sudan to help bring a swift end to the ongoing crisis in Sudan. We believe that such engagement by PetroChina and CNPC would have a dramatic impact on curtailing the gross violations of human rights that have been committed in Sudan for decades.”

For more on international corporate responsibility, check out the excellent IntLawGrrls blog

Protect. Respect. Remedy. Such is the framework proposed by John Ruggie, the United Nations' Special Representative on human rights, transnational corporations, and other business enterprises (and Harvard professor). After the Human Rights Commission rejected the Norms on Transnational Corporations that had been adopted by the Sub-commission on Human Rights in 2003, it asked then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint a Special Representative to identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility. In addition to examining the effects of stabilization clauses on human rights as Christiana Ochoa has posted, Ruggie has now released a report developing the framework based on 3 basic principles.

Read the rest.