I began writing this in a small restaurant in H.C. Andersen Boulevard, in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. In December, the city welcomes the Climate Summit for Mayors where politicians will present case studies regarding future developments in urban recycling.
The initiative will precede the all-important Climate Change Conference organised by the United Nations and hosted by this same city.
In 2012, the Kyoto Protocol, that aspired to be the landmark for combatting climate change, will expire. The Copenhagen conference is seen as the last chance for a new global treaty to preserve the world’s environment.
Therefore, it’s no wonder that Project Syndicate has chosen Copenhagen as the venue to organise the Global Editor’s Forum, where over 400 editors from the four corners of the world will meet international personalities such as former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, to discuss the challenges we face towards drastically cutting back carbon emissions and afford a little more life to a badly treated planet.
Project Syndycate is a member-based institution that brings, in partnership with over 430 leading newspapers in 150 countries, some of the world’s most distinguished voices to local audiences. In Macau, this magazine was the first member, more than four years ago, followed recently by Macau Daily Times.
The reinvention of the world’s energy sector couldn’t be more challenging and the December meeting faces a worrying deadlock. European Commission president, JosÈ Manuel Dur„o Barroso is not very confident and the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen is even more pessimistic.
The problem is easy to spot: what will the price be to pay for the emissions? Who will control those payments and how will the commitment be of the countries that pollute more?
Also, will developed countries support the bill of those less developed in order to use more promising alternatives to fossil fuels and to explore alternative energy resources?
The problem couldn’t be more complex and yet, the Danish example seems to be a very good one to follow. After the 1970’s oil crisis the country decide to transform its energy sector. Within a few years, according to giant multinational DONG CEO, Anders Aldrup, everything changed, and now Denmark is a world leader in offshore wind power and its Co2 emissions are to be reduced by 50 percent in 2020 and by 85 percent in 2040, in the production of heat and power.
When the reality settles in, we will look at Macau and realise that we still don’t understand – and in this we are not alone – how our city’s energy businesses work.
The natural gas story – on the cover of this edition – looks like a good business, although nearly all of us were caught out by the few stories that were slowly fed to the public, with many changes in the project and the main characters involved.
The business looks good but the way it happened leaves us with many doubts. We believe such an important process should have been explained in detail, in public, in order to avoid any suspicion that may hurt the people behind it and, naturally, the government officials that sponsored the deal.
We won’t even mention other businesses that we’ve been writing about -from the strange changes in certain concessions, to the impossible to understand amount of energy imports that no-one seems able to explain. Apparently, there’s no-one out there with the guts to investigate if everything is being done with the best interests of the public in mind.
When, oh when, will we get it into our thick skulls that business secrets have their limits and that transparency is fundamental to prevent further cases that ruin Macau’s image?

Lost opportunity II

Excuse me if i take this moment of public outrage to appeal to the good sense of the top officials in public works – from the secretary, to the director and his aides.
Over the decades, public distrust (ironically) in public works has been growing. A litany of major mistakes have been made where morals and ethics were the main losers in complex games of influence. This is the reason why even the best intentions from the department are met with skepticism and sideways looks.
Readers with less than a decade of Macau under their belts may not be aware of the case of the “bag man” which inspired a book a few years back. They may also ignore countless accusations – never proven – that land deals led to many cheques being written which were used to finance political campaigns in Portugal, when the Portuguese ruled Macau.
It’s not hard to fathom that the disease remained behind after the handover. Who can blame us for thinking the worst about a portfolio that saw its head public servent sent to jail on corruption charges? Not to mention the businessmen than manage to escape justice and a few other who has kept very quiet, surely fearing that one day the criminal investigation will come knocking at their doors.
Now that Ao Man Long is in jail, have things changed that much? We’d like to believe that corruption is gone and we now have completely transparent and legal administrative procedures.
Even if that was the case – something important is missing: planning and execution according to the territory’s best and inalienable interests. In this area, it’s far easier to prove that nonsense is still rampant.
To be quite honest, it’s no longer important to find the culprit who allowed all the digging in Coloane and a quarry to appear. Indignation from some architects – which we reported in our last edition – is such that we hardly remember that the airport was built on reclaimed land rather than on piles.
The decision was an extraordinary coincidence that put a lot of money into the pockets of some of our Chinese neighbours. Why not follow on the same path? Instead of attacking what little is left of our green lungs, why not just buy land from across the border?
Even worse is what the public works department offered as an excuse for the disastrous use of the quarry. Since the hole has been dug, let’s take the opportunity and build a community centre big enough to house 60 thousand people, with four lane roads in each direction and ensuring the further destruction of what should have been an important meeting point between nature and the population. What’s that they say about keeping digging when you are in a hole?
In a city which, according to legislator Leong Iok Wa, lost 252,000 square-metres of green space in a short period of time, we feel it is shameful to build over a further 300,000 square meters, instead of finding a way to get some of that green space back.
Instead of coming up with projects such as this one for Seac Pai Van, it would be better and of greater impact, for the responsible people to acknowledge that they lack the conditions to find better solutions and that they should come up with an international contest of ideas.
Hopefully good ideas, after all, we’ve had our share of bad ones throughout these long and painful years.

by Paulo A. Azevedo