The Big Carrot
NEED TO KNOW
The Big Carrot
SURINAME
The World Bank considers the South American country and former Dutch colony of Suriname to be an “upper middle-income” country due to its rich natural resources. But it noted that the country’s mining and other revenues declined in 2015, sparking a fiscal crisis that grew worse when the coronavirus pandemic struck. As a result, more than 17 percent of the country’s citizens lived in poverty in 2022.
A year later, tensions in the country exploded over the economic situation: In February 2023, protesters broke into the country’s legislature in the capital of Paramaribo after President Chan Santokhi agreed to implement austerity measures such as an end to fuel subsidies and tax hikes to comply with an International Monetary Fund loan agreement, World Politics Review explained.
Now new oil money might change that trajectory.
French oil giant TotalEnergies recently announced $3 billion in engineering contracts for the GranMorgu offshore drilling project that could tap more than 700 million barrels of oil with production scheduled from 2028, reported Reuters. These investments were part of TotalEnergies and American exploration firm APA’s $10.5 billion offshore drilling plan for GranMorgu, Suriname’s first such project.
In the local language Sranan Tongo, “GranMorgu” means “new dawn” and “Goliath grouper,” noted TotalEnergies in a statement that also promised a total of 6,000 new jobs for a country of about 600,000 people.
“Today is a historic day for Suriname,” said Chan in early October when the project was announced, the Associated Press reported. “This is a game-changer.”
Now the pressure is on the oil industry and Chan to demonstrate how regular people will benefit.
Suriname has around 2.4 billion barrels in reserves, noted OilPrice.com, leading observers to believe that the country can expect a windfall of cash like neighboring Guyana did after opening up oil fields to international drillers. Ratings agency Moody’s agreed, boosting Suriname’s credit rating on the promise of oil revenues, Bloomberg wrote.
The reality might not be so great, however. Analyst John Gerdes of Gerdes Energy Research told Barron’s that Suriname might have only a third as much oil production potential as Guyana, for example.
Some constituencies in Suriname also believe they are not set to benefit. For example, Suriname has one of the largest untouched rainforests in the world and is also the planet’s most densely forested country. But the country is the only one in South America that hasn’t recognized the land rights of Indigenous communities that want to protect the forest amid a logging boom, Mongabay reported.
How Chan distributes the new capital will be key. Meanwhile, some believe that while the Indigenous peoples of the country may not benefit from the oil boom, the forest actually might, wrote the Financial Times.
Officials in the country say the oil boom, ironically, presents an opportunity to jump-start demand for Suriname’s fledgling sovereign carbon credits scheme, which to date hasn’t been very successful, mainly because there aren’t many international companies operating in the country – yet.
The idea, possibly to be voted on in the legislature this fall, is to require all companies operating in Suriname to purchase its sovereign carbon credits so as to offset their in-country emissions. That money would go to its climate fund, mainly to protect its forest.
“We are following this mechanism in which we can receive climate finance through carbon credits – OK, we’re doing that, but it’s still not working,” Suriname’s minister of the environment, Marciano Dasai, told the newspaper. “But now, we have oil and gas.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Staying Together
NEW ZEALAND
More than 40,000 people protested in New Zealand’s capital Tuesday against a bill that would reinterpret the country’s founding document, signed in 1840, between the British Crown and Māori chiefs, with critics saying it would erode the rights of the Indigenous community, Al Jazeera reported.
The demonstrators marched in Wellington, dressed in traditional attire and carrying traditional Māori weapons and the Indigenous group’s national flag.
Tuesday’s demonstrations follow a nine-day march that began last week in the country’s far north in opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill introduced earlier this month by the libertarian ACT New Zealand party.
The draft law stipulates that New Zealand should reinterpret and legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. This foundational agreement grants Māori tribes broad rights to keep their lands and still guides legislation and policy today.
Decades of rulings by courts and a separate Māori tribunal have tended to expand the rights and privileges of the Indigenous group, which makes up around 20 percent of New Zealand’s population of 5.3 million people, the BBC added.
But the ACT party – a partner in New Zealand’s coalition – said the treaty’s core values have led to racial divisions, not unity.
Critics, including New Zealand’s former leaders and Indigenous rights groups, feared that the bill would take rights away from the Māori. Others also expressed concern that the proposed legislation would reverse years of policies aimed at empowering the community, which has higher rates of poverty and incarceration and poorer health outcomes than the broader population.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party), told the BBC that the governing coalition is trying “to divide an otherwise progressive country and it’s really embarrassing.”
While ACT’s two coalition partners have said they will support the bill in its first three readings, they will not pass it into law.
Among them was Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who said, “We don’t think through the stroke of a pen you go rewrite 184 years of debate and discussion.”
A Landscape of Desperation
ISRAEL/ WEST BANK & GAZA STRIP
Organized armed gangs in the Gaza Strip are looting humanitarian aid meant for two million displaced people, hijacking convoys and reselling stolen goods on the black market, even as hunger reaches “catastrophic levels,” according to aid workers, transport companies and United Nations officials, the Washington Post reported this week.
The gangs – often tied to local crime families – have violently disrupted relief efforts, leaving much of the limited aid that enters the Palestinian enclave unusable for its intended recipients. For example, nearly 100 of 109 trucks carrying UN food aid were ransacked Saturday, with drivers injured and vehicles damaged, according to the Times of Israel.
The looting comes amid the ongoing Gaza war, which began after Hamas-led fighters launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. Israel’s military response has devastated Gaza, killing at least 43,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials, and displacing 1.9 million. Gaza’s pre-war population was 2.1 million.
Concentrated in southern Gaza near the Kerem Shalom crossing controlled by Israel, the theft has transformed from desperate acts by civilians to a coordinated criminal enterprise, the Post wrote. The gangs are known to use weapons to hijack aid trucks, while operating openly in areas within sight of Israeli military posts.
UN officials alleged that some gangs receive tacit approval or even protection from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with one gang leader reportedly establishing a “military-like compound” in an area patrolled by Israeli troops, the Post wrote, citing UN memos.
The IDF denied these accusations, saying it has taken “targeted countermeasures” to protect aid deliveries. Israel told the UN Security Council last week that there was no risk of famine in Gaza.
Meanwhile, tobacco smuggling has fueled the rise of these criminal networks. Cigarettes – banned from entry into Gaza during the war – are trafficked through Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and sold at $1,000 a pack, while becoming a form of currency.
UN agencies estimate $25.5 million worth of humanitarian supplies have been lost to looting over the summer alone.
In response to public outrage, Hamas has formed a new anti-looting force, named the “Popular and Revolutionary Committees,” Reuters added.
The group has killed more than 20 gang members in operations this month, aiming to restore order and secure aid distribution.
While critics of Hamas accuse the group of exploiting aid for its own purposes, observers note that its efforts have quelled looting in areas under its control. However, gangs remain active in Israeli-patrolled zones, with Hamas accusing Israel of deliberately fostering chaos by targeting Gaza’s civilian police.
Meanwhile, aid groups say the looting crisis has exacerbated Gaza’s dire humanitarian situation, with flour prices soaring to $100 per sack and widespread hunger gripping the population. The UN called the hunger situation unprecedented and warned of widespread famine.
Humanitarian officials have called on Israel to allow greater volumes of aid to enter the enclave, emphasizing that increased supplies could stabilize prices and reduce incentives for theft.
Playing Hardball
MALI
Australian goldmining company Resolute Mining agreed to pay Mali’s military government $160 million to settle tax and customs disputes, part of a campaign undertaken by the country’s ruling junta to tighten control over the nation’s lucrative gold mining sector, the Associated Press reported.
The settlement comes nearly two weeks after Malian authorities detained three of the company’s British employees, including its CEO, in the capital Bamako, after meeting with government officials to discuss the disputes.
On Monday, the mining firm confirmed that the detainees are “safe and well” and are receiving support from UK consular officials. Resolute has paid the first $80 million of the settlement from its $157 million cash reserves, with another $80 million due in the coming months.
The agreement resolves all claims by Malian authorities, including those involving taxes, customs levies, and offshore account management.
Resolute has been working for years in Mali and holds an 80 percent stake at the Syama gold mine in the southwest, while the government holds 20 percent. That is a situation the government wants to change.
Meanwhile, the arrests of Resolute’s staff are part of a broader trend: In September, Mali detained four employees of Canada’s Barrick Gold, with analysts describing the detainment as “hostage taking,” the Guardian noted.
Gold is Mali’s biggest export and the West African country is one of Africa’s top five gold producers.
But the country has been plagued by a years-long insurgency fueled by jihadist groups, Tuareg rebels and political instability. In 2021, it saw its third military coup in a decade.
The current junta has imposed stricter policies on foreign mining firms. In 2022, the government revised mining laws to increase its mandatory ownership stake in mining projects from 20 percent to 30 percent and required companies to sell an additional five percent stake to Malian investors.
In October, the junta nationalized the dormant Yatela mine, previously held by AngloGold Ashanti and Iamgold.
Observers said the government is relying heavily on mining revenues, especially as international donors and NGOs have withdrawn because of Mali’s growing ties with Russia and its use of Russian mercenaries.
They cautioned that the policies could deter future investments.
DISCOVERIES
Lost in the Jungle
Stumbling upon an undiscovered ancient city full of gold is usually the hallmark of great action films. But in real life, it is rare to find a lost city – especially by accident.
However, that is exactly what happened when a doctoral student in anthropology was analyzing publicly available drone data of Mexico and stumbled across a huge ancient Mayan city buried beneath a dense jungle canopy.
Archeologist Luke Auld-Thomas of Tulane University in New Orleans discovered the city while surfing the internet and examining data from modern aerial mapping technology known as LiDAR (light detection and ranging).
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Auld-Thomas told the BBC.
Auld-Thomas and co-author Marcello Canuto, in a new study, surveyed three different sites in the jungle and found 6,674 structures – essentially a huge ancient city that may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 CE, more than the population of the area today.
The city, which was about 16.6 square kilometers (6.4 square miles), had two major centers with large buildings around 1.2 miles apart, linked by dense houses and causeways, according to the study. It had two plazas with temple pyramids, where Maya people would have worshipped, hidden treasures like jade masks and buried their dead.
It also had a court where people would have played an ancient ball game and possibly a reservoir, indicating that people used the landscape to support a large population.
The team named the city “Valeriana” after a nearby lagoon and said it has the “hallmarks of a capital city,” was second only to the density of the Calakmul site of the Mayans, which is about 62 miles away.
The research team also believes that the city probably collapsed between 800 and 1,000 CE, due to issues such as climate variability and adaptation struggles because of the city’s density. At the same time, warfare with other cities and the conquest of the region by Spanish invaders in the 16th century also contributed to the eradication of Maya city-states, the BBC wrote.
This study is the first to reveal Maya structures in the east-central Campeche region that runs from southeastern Mexico to Belize which the Maya inhabited from about 1000 BCE to 1500 CE. But with new technology such as laser and drone mapping, archeologists are finding more instances of ancient human activity.
Now the team has emphasized the need for more field research along with drone usage to map the region. The problem is, added Auld-Thomas, there’s much more to find and too little time.
“One of the downsides of discovering lots of new Maya cities in the era of Lidar is that there are more of them than we can ever hope to study,” he said.