The earthquake jokes keep coming. Bob Parker, the mayor of Christchurch, quips that the tourism industry’s recovery is aided by visitors who come because they want to experience aftershocks – of which there have been many. Even a quake that killed 185 people, triggering shock and grief, hasn’t been able to de­stroy the locals’ whimsical humour. 

“People say you’re the only person smiling in Christchurch,” a supporter tells Paul Lonsdale, a business leader who has spearheaded the city’s Re:START recov­ery project. But Lonsdale counters that he isn’t unique. He points to an upbeat mood on the streets combining a posi­tive attitude with gritty determination to rebuild this beautiful city, which, with a population of 350,000, is the largest on New Zealand’s South Island. Lonsdale, bubbly and energetic, argues the alterna­tive to grinning is glumness. “You could stay in bed or you could try to make a difference,” he says. 

The earthquake (6.3 on the Richter scale) that struck on 22 February last year was among the worst natural dis­asters ever to hit the so-called ‘shaky isles’. Aside from the large number of fa­talities, the financial impact of the earth­quake was devastating. The loss to the economy is estimated to be NZD20 bil­lion ($15.5 billion) and economists raise the possibility of higher rates of interest and inflation nationwide, as a result of Christchurch’s reconstruction. Fortu­nately, public opinion overwhelmingly supports this expenditure. Local offi­cials forecast completion by the end of next year. Recovery has been slowed by greatly toughened building regulations and engineer-recommended delays until aftershocks are more widely spaced. 

Re:START’s highest-profile initiative is the pop-up City Mall – a complex of 27 garishly painted shipping containers in downtown Christchurch. The area has itself become a tourist attraction, along with a colourful, but temporary, events centre for concerts and exhibitions in the central Hagley Park. 

Christchurch Square remains off-lim­its because of a danger that abandoned buildings could collapse. Nearby his­toric monuments were destroyed and the square’s now-forlorn landmark cathedral lost a spire. Restoring this iconic build­ing, estimated at NZD50 million, has been deemed too costly, so the cathedral will be dismantled down to a shell three metres tall. The modern-style Grand Chancellor Hotel – downtown’s tallest building – tilts precariously and engi­neers determined that it too could not be saved. Instead, it’s being carefully demolished. 

Tourism is the area’s main economic activity, followed by sheep farming (wool and meat production), cattle rear­ing and wine production in the Canter­bury region’s rolling countryside. And still-pretty Christchurch continues to call itself the “most English city outside England.” It’s difficult to argue with this moniker while sitting beneath the wil­lows on the grassy banks of the city’s winding Avon watching students punt by with tourists aboard their gondolas (an activity that has now resumed).  

Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism chief executive, Tim Hunter, reveals that 47 percent of New Zealand’s visitors in the year to last September 30 spent a night in Christchurch or elsewhere in the Canterbury region, a drop of only 9 per­cent on the previous year. Economically vital tourism has been affected less than officials feared. 

Several hotels have recently reopened, pushing available beds (6,500 pre-quake; 2,260 post-tragedy) to near 4,000. The high-profile Latimer Hotel, damaged and demolished, is being rebuilt, while the opulent and antique-filled Otahuna Lodge, just beyond the city’s edge, used modest damage as a chance to restore this historic former homestead. 

A bullish mood is most evident at the international airport where extensions and improvements – scheduled to fin­ish by the end of the year – weren’t jet­tisoned. “We’re taking steps forward all the time,” says Mayor Parker, echoing Hunter’s description of the post-quake city as “dynamic and vibrant.”

In January 2011, shortly after the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, first revealed his list of six prominent Kenyans whom he intended to charge with crimes against humanity, Kenya’s vice-president, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, was dispatched on a mission across Africa to rescue the Kenyan elite from international justice.

The specific aim of this shuttle diplomacy was to convince influential African Union (AU) member states to support a yearlong deferral of the Kenyan cases at The Hague. But Musyoka’s mission was essentially driven by panic among the country’s elite. After two years of dithering over the establishment of a local tribunal that would investigate and charge individuals for their role in the 2008 post-election violence, the government was facing an unprecedented situation. For the first time in Kenyan post-independence history, the country’s 50-year-old culture of impunity was on trial, and in the court of international opinion.

The erosion and manipulation of the Kenyan justice system by well-connected elites had long been a fact of daily life. A chronic case backlog sometimes stretching back decades, corruption of judicial officers, the disappearance of case files and other acts that ensured the powerful never faced justice were common factors of Kenyan power and influence. Indeed, the lack of faith in the Kenyan judiciary even led to the descent into widespread violence after the bitterly disputed December 2007 elections. But finally, to quote a Nairobi wag, the ICC has stepped forward as a court whose judges “could not be bribed, adjourned or made to disappear.”

Musyoka’s strategy aimed to rally opinion against the Kenya cases within the AU, the ICC’s single-biggest block of signatories, so that the continental body could push the UN Security Council into a favourable recommendation to defer the cases. His main argument was that Kenya had sufficiently recovered from its ‘moment of madness’. With a new constitution in place – hailed by some as the most innovative on the continent – the country was now able to deal with its demons. An equally persuasive argument was that, considering the still-delicate political state of the country, and with the possibility of another election around the corner, it was not in the interests of peace and reconciliation to reopen old wounds.

Crucially, Musyoka hoped to tap into a growing feeling among the AU’s 32 signatories to the Rome Statute that the ICC was unfairly targeting weak African states. But the shuttle diplomacy ended in failure. Today, four of the six indicted Kenyans have had their charges confirmed by the ICC. A deeply ingrained reluctance by the political elite to prosecute its leading lights at home has led the politicians into scoring a classic own goal.

For the survivors of Kenya’s violence, this was a comic drama of such breathtaking political incompetence that it would have left many rolling in the grass with hilarity if their neglected circumstances in camps littered across the country were not so desperate. There was at least a sense of poetic justice.

And yet the ICC also faces questions about its record. Across Africa, it has for the most part been African governments themselves that have invited international justice within their individual borders, but the ICC is nevertheless widely seen as using vulnerable African states to shore up its credibility. Of the 25 cases pending at The Hague, all are from the continent. A motley crew of warlords, rogue state presidents and rebel leaders are currently awaiting their date with international justice.

For some time, murmurs of discontent have been voiced around the continent; an AU review of the ICC in June 2010 resolved not to effect the warrant of arrest against the Sudanese president, Omar al Bashir. More recently, there has been growing unease that the ICC represents victor’s justice, and that self-interested Western interventions have increasingly been justified by the investigations and indictments taking place at The Hague. The new Ivory Coast government, although not fully signed up to the Rome Statute, accepted ICC jurisdiction to investigate and charge deposed former President Laurent Gbagbo and his associates with war crimes. There are also currently ongoing preliminary investigations of human rights violations in Guinea and Nigeria.

The ICC’s almost instinctive willingness to vindicate Western interventions in Ivory Coast and Libya is much commented upon. And there are disturbing questions about the Office of the Prosecutor’s ability to carry out effective investigations. On numerous occasions, documented and anecdotal complaints have been raised about evidence gaps, witness protection and, as seen in one of the Sudan cases, the prosecution’s judgement.

The ICC cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim to pursue justice on behalf of the victims, regardless of the political consequences (Sudan/Darfur) in some cases, while consciously building cases that, to quote Moreno-Ocampo in the Kenya situation, would “serve as an example” – shorthand for politically motivated cases.

In his critique of the international justice system in general and the ICC in particular, Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani pointed to the need to distinguish victor’s justice from survivors’ justice. In avoiding the pitfalls of Nuremberg, in beginning to establish a credible regime of international justice, the ICC must decide whether it is truly the court of last resort, or a court that resorts to the whims of the powerful.

Although the end of the Cold War did bring about a significant scaling back of military expenditures throughout the 1990s, old habits have died hard and the world is again witnessing a clear and persistent rise in spending on defence – including national armed forces and military hardware and software. Worldwide, in 2011, some $1,630 billion – which works out at $4.5 billion a day – was spent on defence, with the clear leaders in the race being the USA and China.

While America tries to cut back, China is increasing its spending at about 12 percent a year, much faster than any other large nation. But it is in the Middle East where defence has taken on a distorted dominance over other budgetary concerns – most significantly in Saudi Arabia and Israel – and where expenditure regularly represents more than 4 percent of total national GDP; this year, Israel plans to increase its military budget by 6 percent to about $14 billion.

Closing the power gap, by connecting the remaining 2 billion people who do not have regular electricity to a reliable source of supply, is an important goal, with significant health, environmental and economic benefits. This is the message of new research conducted for the Worldwatch Institute.

The large number of people who lack access to modern fuels for cooking and heating are at risk from harmful indoor air pollutants, which cause nearly 2 million premature deaths worldwide each year, says the report by Michael Renner and Matthew Lucky. Traditional energy usage also contributes to forest and woodland degradation, soil erosion and black carbon emissions. Improved cooking stoves can play an important role in reducing energy poverty, enabling people to access more modern fuels and to use traditional fuels more efficiently, the report adds.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that between 2010 and 2030, an average of $14 billion will be spent annually, mostly on urban grid connections. But this projected funding will likely still leave 1 billion people, largely those who live in the most remote areas of developing countries, without electricity. Average annual investments will need to rise to $48 billion to provide universal modern energy access, the IEA reports.

The largest populations without access to electricity are in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Combined, these two regions account for more than 80 percent of all people worldwide lacking electricity supplies. To date, 68 developing country governments have adopted formal targets for improving access to electricity.

Kenya’s geothermal boom

The national power company KenGen is hoping to raise $12 billion in investment in six geothermal power plants that could be generating 585 MW of power from 2016. With its access to steam energy from the Rift Valley, Kenya is the first African country to start tapping geothermal power on a large scale, with good prospects for exporting electricity to neighbouring countries. KenGen says it hopes to push for further development to generate 5,000 MW by 2030. At present, national peak electricity demand stands at only 1,200 MW.

Renewable investment rolls on

According to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a 5 percent rise in renewable energy investment in 2011 has been attributed to a surge in solar energy development and by increased spending taking place in the USA. Last year, spending on solar energy jumped by 36 percent to $137 billion. The rise in photovoltaic installations in the USA and Europe was accompanied by a drop in the price of units and modules. Falling prices have made more development possible.

In Europe, clean energy investment rose by 3 percent to $12 billion, driven by new solar installations in Germany and Italy and offshore wind projects in the North Sea. Around the world, India recorded the biggest growth, with investment levels increasing by 52 percent to $10 billion.

Global wind capture still rising

Wind power generating capacity around the world increased by 40.5 GW between 2010 and 2011, reports the EurObserv’ER grouping of renewable energy institutes. This brought the total installed capacity around the world to 238.5 GW.

Of the major world regions, Asia saw the biggest growth. Although Europe still has the greatest share of installed wind capacity of 94.1 GW, it now accounts for less than a quarter of the new installations. The North American region is also seeing renewed growth, and is projected to have 125 GW installed capacity by 2017.

China, the biggest single national market for wind power, continued its expansion in 2011, with 18 GW newly installed. The government has established a target of 15 GW annually, with a view to having wind turbine capacity of 200 GW by 2020. The USA connected 6.8 GW of wind power to the grid in 2011, bringing total capacity to 46.9 GW. There is ongoing construction of a further 8.3 GW. India stands in third place as a major market, having installed a further 3.0 GW to bring its total capacity to 16.1 GW.

UK more active offshore

There is an ongoing surge in the construction of offshore wind farms around the UK, according to the wind energy association RenewableUK. At the beginning of 2012, seven new farms were under construction, with a combined capacity of 2.6 GW, and a further six projects have been authorised and should start construction soon, with the potential to bring national offshore capacity to 8 GW by 2016. While the UK still has ambitious targets, the government has been working on changes to the incentive framework that will apply also to nuclear and coal generation plants that are fitted with carbon capture and sequestration systems.

Japan tests the breeze

A year on from the tsunami that wrecked Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the government in Tokyo is backing an effort to install an experimental floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Fukushima. The project is intended to stimulate the growth of the renewable energy sector and also to provide jobs in the devastated part of the country.

Grants for plug-in vans

Electric vans emitting less than 75 grams of CO² per km can now qualify for a discount of £8,000 per vehicle under the UK government’s plan to stimulate the market for ultra-low carbon commercial vehicles. The vans must also be able to travel at least 96 km between charges (or 16 km in electric mode for hybrid fuel/electric vans) and be capable of reaching speeds of more than 80 km per hour. The government has already approved certain models produced by Mercedes Benz, Renault, Smith Electric and Azure Dynamics.

Portia Simpson Miller (“Sista P” to her supporters) led the People’s National Party (PNP) to a landslide victory in elections on 29 December, securing 42 of the 63 parliamentary seats. Miller returns to the office she held briefl y in 2006/7. She defeated Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s youngest ever prime minister, following his snap decision to hold a ballot just two months after he succeeded Bruce Golding as head of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party in October. The economy and unemployment dominated the campaign. And with the national debt currently standing at 130 percent of GDP and joblessness running at around 13 percent, the PNP government’s room for manoeuvre will be severely restricted. In a change from previous elections that have been marred by violence and vote tampering, monitors said that polling was mainly smooth and peaceful.

Taiwan

In Taiwan’s fifth direct presidential election, Ma Ying-jeou was reelected to a second four-year term in office. His main opponent was Tsai Ing-wen, the island’s first female presidential candidate. While she failed to unseat Ma, she reduced his share of the vote to 51.5 percent, down from 58 percent in 2008. Ma’s party, the Kuomintang, also saw its parliament majority cut, winning just 64 of the legislature’s 113 seats, compared to 81 last time round. Around 74 percent of Taiwan’s 18 million eligible voters turned out on 14 January. Ma’s victory was welcomed by both Beijing and Washington, because he favours closer ties with China, unlike Tsai who, it was feared, might lead the country closer to formal independence.

Russia

Vladimir Putin was reelected to a third term as president, winning – according to the official result – with 64 percent of the vote. In a victory speech in front of the Kremlin, to a crowd of around 100,000 people, Putin said, “We won in an open and honest battle.” But international monitors declared that the ballot was neither open nor honest, concluding that the elections were “clearly skewed” in Putin’s favour. According to some estimates, vote-rigging increased Putin’s tally by at least 10 percentage points, enough to ensure that he exceeded the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a second round run-off. In Moscow, Putin received less than half the votes with more than 20 percent going to Mikhail Prokhorov, a liberal business tycoon. On the night of the elections, 4 March, at least 120 people, including opposition leaders Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, were arrested at anti-Putin rallies across the country.

Belize

In elections on 7 March, the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) narrowly held on to its majority. The UDP, led by Prime Minister Dean Barrow, took 17 seats (down from 25) in the 31-member parliament, to the opposition People’s United Party’s 14. Internal leadership quarrels in the lead-up to the ballot may have lost the UDP some support. Belize is one of the world’s most indebted countries, and Barrow promised before the election to renegotiate the terms of a $550 million bond.

Slovakia

For the first time in its 18-year history, a single party will hold a parliamentary majority in Slovakia. In elections on 10 March, Robert Fico’s social-democratic party, Smer, won 45 percent of the vote, giving it 83 seats in the 150-member assembly. Turnout was the highest in a decade, at almost 60 percent. Fico’s impressive victory refl ects public outrage at a corruption scandal alleging that senior right-wing politicians may have received millions of euros in illegal payments in exchange for public contracts and rigged privatisation sales. The elections came two years early following the collapse, last autumn, of a four-party coalition due to quarrels over a euro bailout scheme. The government will have to find savings worth $2.42 billion if it is to reduce the budget deficit to below 3 percent of GDP, as required by the latest EU fiscal compact.

El Salvador

The leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), led by President Mauricio Funes, suffered a bruising defeat in legislative elections held on March 11. The right-wing Arena party, with 33 seats, is now a bigger force than the FMLN, which dropped to 31 seats from 35. Funes will be dependent on the support of the third-place party, the Great Alliance for National Unity, made up of dissidents from Arena, if he is to push through his social programme. Commentators said that Arena’s promise to increase security in El Salvador, which is plagued by gang violence, appealed to voters. The president, however, is still popular – his approval rating is 65 percent, one of the highest in Latin America.

Senegal

Less than three hours after the polls closed on 25 March, President Abdoulaye Wade telephoned his rival, Macky Sall, to concede defeat in the presidential run-off. Wade, who came to power in elections in 2000, was widely praised for this action by the international community. Sall’s victory was conclusive, however – he won 66 percent of the vote. Disillusionment with Wade had been growing in recent years as a result of soaring food prices and constant power cuts. His bid for a third term in office sparked violent protests – six people died in rioting that began on 27 January following the constitutional court’s decisions that the two-term limit did not apply to Wade because it was introduced after his first election victory in 2000. The election, which was described as “credible” by external observers, came just days after a military coup in neighbouring Mali.

Ugandan government spokesmen cautiously welcomed the video while pointing out that Kony would continue to remain difficult to catch as long as he was roaming the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. Fred Opolot of the government’s media centre said, “People who are thinking it’s taking long to eradicate the LRA menace need to appreciate the overwhelming geopolitical complexities involved in the hunt for these guys.” 

An analyst at the International Crisis Group, Ned Dalby, agreed that geographical, logistical and political realities severely complicated the hunt for Kony. The armies of DRC, CAR and South Sudan lacked professionalism and while the US-supported Ugandan army units spearheading the hunt for the fugitive LRA leader were more professional, they were not being allowed to enter Congolese territory, Dalby said. 

The international impact of the video, however, drew much media comment. In The Guardian, John Naughton noted that the video had “gone viral” by successfully exploiting the potential of YouTube, operating “outside the control of conventional gatekeepers and editorial sieves”. He said it had the potential to increase pressure on Western leaders. 

Despite criticism of the simplistic nature of their message, the video’s makers – a San Diego-based activist group called Invisible Children – stepped up their campaign with plans for a worldwide ‘cover the night’ protest on 20 April. They also appeared to be gaining support from congressmen and senators of both the main US parties. 

Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University cautioned against the influence of “millions of well-meaning and well-intentioned but ill-informed people”. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire commented in a YouTube response: “The war is much more complex than just one man named Joseph Kony… This is another video where I see an outsider trying to be a hero by rescuing African children.”

GDP growth fell from 7.5 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent last year, as the industrial sector suffered from falling demand for its exports, but the agriculture sector remained healthy and expanded by 8.4 percent.

Unemployment is at its lowest levels on record, and standards of living have improved markedly. Over the year, family consumption expanded by 4.1 percent and government consumption by 1.9 percent. 

For the long term, there is great hope of developing Brazil’s huge offshore oil reserves, which have been roughly estimated to exceed 100 billion barrels. With such reserves, Brazil could become a major world supplier. Current output of 2.8 million barrels a day (including ethanol) only allows Brazil to satisfy its own needs. More than 90 percent of Brazil’s oil production is offshore in very deep water. 

A consortium of the state oil company Petrobras, BG Group and Petrogal discovered the Tupi field in 2007, which contains substantial reserves in a geological ‘presalt’ zone 5,500 m below the ocean surface under a thick layer of salt. Since then, several more pre-salt finds have been made, although there are significant engineering challenges to overcome. However, Brazil already has a substantial industrial infrastructure, and Petrobras is developing its own expertise in the offshore oil industry, with the recent development of a $1 billion research centre in Rio de Janeiro. 

The country is also a leader in the development of hydropower, and companies in the industry are busy establishing technology centres to develop environmentally friendly power turbines. Recent projects have included ‘run-of-river’ plants, which require no dam, reservoir or flooding to generate electricity. 

Much of this kind of technical innovation is expected to be on show at the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development in June this year.

Wen’s international press conference, held at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, called specifically for “reform of the party and the mechanism of the leadership.” Experienced commentators said this view did not, however, appear to accord with those generally expressed by the Communist Party leadership.

 After also warning against a repeat of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Wen expressed optimism that the democratic system would move forward in keeping with “national conditions.”

In support of the UNHRC resolution, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, said that “accountability and reconciliation” would be in Sri Lanka’s best interests if it is to avoid new violence. He commented that, while new roads and infrastructure had been built in the north since the end of the war, many Tamils felt they remained under “military occupation.” 

An Amnesty International report issued on 14 March claimed that dozens of people had been abducted and tortured by the security forces since 2009, and that hundreds were being held in illegal detention. 

The head of Sri Lanka’s army, Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, said that a documentary film was being made to give the government’s side of the story. It would shed light on the final battle with the Tamil Tigers in 2009, he said, and would include testimony from frontline troops.