The Middle East and North Africa region loses about $21 billion each year because of an inadequate supply of water and sanitation, the World Bank said Tuesday, warning that urgent action is needed to prevent ripple effects on stability and growth.

Poor management of water resources and sanitation in the world’s most water-scarce region costs about 1 percent of its annual gross domestic product, with conflict-hit states losing as much as 2 to 4 percent each year, the bank said in a report issued at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Deaths due to unsafe water and sanitation in some parts of the region, particularly countries affected by conflict, are higher than the global average, it added.

“As the current conflict and migration crisis unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa shows, failure to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people’s well-being and political stability,” the report said.

Peril in Yemen

In Yemen, which is reeling from more than two years of conflict, water supply networks serving its largest cities are at risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair, and about 15 million people have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation, the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) said in a separate statement Tuesday.

In Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, water has frequently been used as “a weapon of war,” with pumps deliberately destroyed and water sources contaminated, and about 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children, UNICEF said.

Overall, 183 million people lack access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world, it added.

Better management

With the urban population in the Middle East and North Africa expected to double by 2050 to nearly 400 million, a combination of policy, technology and water management tools should be used to improve the water situation, the World Bank report said.

“Water productivity — in other words, how much return you get for every drop of water used — in the Middle East in general is the lowest on average in the world,” said Anders Jägerskog, a specialist in water resources management at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.

Middle Eastern and North African countries are using far more water than can be replenished, said the report.

To reverse the trend, technology and innovation are “essential but not enough,” Jägerskog told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Water governance — in particular, water tariffs and subsidies — must also be addressed, he said.

The region has the world’s lowest water tariffs and spends the highest proportion of GDP on public water subsidies. Such policies lead to excessive use of already scarce water supplies and are not sustainable, said Jägerskog.

Untreated wastewater

Another challenge is that more than half of the wastewater collected in the region is fed back into the environment untreated.

“Along with better water management, there is room for increasing the supply through nonconventional methods such as desalination and recycling,” Guangzhe Chen, senior director of the World Bank’s global water practice, said in a statement.

Improved water management could bring considerable financial returns, the report noted.

Governments could gain $10 billion annually by improving the storage and delivery of irrigation water to users, while increasing agricultural production by up to 8 percent, the report said.

Egypt, Syria and Iran — which have the largest proportion of irrigated land in the region — are the countries that could benefit most.
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Mexico sees a serious risk the United States will withdraw from NAFTA and is preparing a plan for that eventuality, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Tuesday, calling talks to renegotiate the deal a “roller coaster.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened three times in the past week to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, revisiting his view that the United States would probably have to start the process of exiting the accord to reach a fair deal for his country.

Trump has vowed to get a better deal for American workers, and the lively rhetoric on both sides precedes a second round of talks starting on Friday in Mexico City to renegotiate the 1994 accord binding the United States, Mexico and Canada.

“This is not going to be easy,” Guajardo said at a meeting with senators in Mexico City. “The start of the talks is like a roller coaster.”

The need for a backup plan in case Trump shreds the deal underpinning a trillion dollars in annual trade in North America has been a long-standing position of Guajardo, who travels to Washington on Tuesday with foreign minister Luis Videgaray to meet senior White House and trade officials.

“We are also analyzing a scenario with no NAFTA,” Guajardo said.

In an interview published earlier on Tuesday in Mexican business daily El Economista, Guajardo said “there is a risk, and it’s high” that the Trump administration abandons NAFTA.

Responding to Guajardo’s comments, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would continue to work “seriously” to improve NAFTA.

What is ‘Plan B’?

Earlier this month, Guajardo told Reuters a “Plan B” meant being prepared to replace items such as the billions of dollars in grain Mexico imports from the United States annually.

To that end, and to seek openings in more markets, Mexico is hosting trade talks with Brazil this week. Trade officials are also discussing a possible replacement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that Trump ditched after taking office.

Overlapping with the NAFTA talks, Mexico will participate in separate trade meetings with Australia and New Zealand in Peru, and President Enrique Pena Nieto travels to China this weekend.

Still, attempts to diversify trade will not be easy. Some 80 percent of all Mexican exports go to the United States, and economies such as Brazil and China often compete with Mexico.

Guajardo also suggested World Trade Organization tariffs that would kick in if NAFTA crumbled would be more favorable for Mexico, a view held by many Mexican experts who think trade with the United States would survive the demise of the 1994 deal.

“I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference in terms of the trading relationship,” said Andres Rozental, a former Mexican deputy foreign minister. “If we have to go to WTO tariffs, for us it’s fairly straightforward.”

Guajardo’s and Videgaray’s trip to Washington was announced after Trump not only threatened to pull out of the trade deal, but again said that Mexico would end up paying for the wall he wants to build between the two countries.

Mexico has refused point blank to pay for a wall. In January, after similar comments led Mexico to scrap a summit with Trump, the two sides agreed not to talk in public about it.
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Brazil will seek China’s expertise and financing to complete its third nuclear power plant when President Michel Temer makes a state visit to Beijing on Friday, Brazilian government officials said Tuesday.

The Brazilian nuclear energy company Eletronuclear will sign a cooperation agreement with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), signaling their intent to establish a partnership to finish the Angra 3 plant, the officials said.

Construction of the 1,405-megawatt reactor on the coast south of Rio de Janeiro has dragged on for three decades and its completion is now scheduled for 2023, but Brazil does not have the estimated 16 billion reais ($5 billion) needed to finish the job.

Russia is also interested in completing Angra 3 and Eletronuclear, a subsidiary of state-run electric utility Eletrobras, has held talks with the Russian nuclear monopoly Rosatom.

The Chinese corporation is expected to have the advantage in terms of abundant financial resources.

The head of Eletronuclear, Bruno Barretto, signed an initial memorandum with CNNC on the Angra 3 completion in Beijing in December when he visited Chinese banks that are potential financiers, Eletronuclear said in a statement.

Temer’s government has announced plans to privatize Eletrobras, Latin America’s largest utility. But Eletronuclear will be split off and remain in state hands under Brazil’s Constitution, which establishes that nuclear facilities must be government controlled.

Temer said on Tuesday he expects China to be a major player in Brazil’s plans to modernize its ports, airports and other infrastructure projects that will be offered to investors in private concessions.

He also hopes China will finance energy projects.

“China could be one of the big investors in our plans for concessions,” he said in a video message released after he set off for Beijing, where he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the BRICS summit in Xiamen.
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Brazil’s government has revised a decree that stripped protections from a reserve in the Amazon after environmental groups criticized the original order.

The new decree announced late Monday still lifts the reserve designation from a gold- and copper-rich area larger than the Netherlands in two northern Brazilian states.

But President Michel Temer’s administration clarifies that mining will not be allowed in conservation or indigenous areas within the former reserve.

The government says the new decree will allow it to crack down on the illegal mining that was taking place in the reserve, while opening up legal mining.

The Brazilian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement that the new decree clarifies the need for protection, but the risk of environmental damage remains.
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In Cambodia, the issue of land rights is a constant source of tension. The country’s biggest dam to date is set to go online in just weeks, adding 400 megawatts of power to the country’s critically overstretched grid. But the social and environmental costs of the project are huge, especially for minority villagers facing displacement. In rural Stung Treng province, some members of an indigenous group are taking a stand. David Boyle has this report.
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Peru expects a “very ambitious” free trade deal with Australia that covers goods, services and investments to be implemented as early as next year, Peru’s deputy trade minister said on Monday.

The two countries resumed free trade talks in Australia on Monday following a first round of negotiations in July in which “a lot of progress was made,” said Deputy Trade Minister Edgar Vasquez.

“This is going to be an agreement that we should be able to implement as soon as possible, starting in 2018,” Vasquez said by telephone in Lima. “That’s what we’d like to happen and what we think is viable.”

Peru and Australia are important global producers of minerals and their bilateral trade is relatively small.

Forging a free trade deal so quickly would mark one of the first steps toward reducing trade barriers in the Pacific region after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which Australia and Peru had signed onto.

The remaining signatories to the TPP are in Australia this week discussing ways to salvage the deal. The 11 countries, which include Japan, Canada and Mexico, have a combined gross domestic product of $12.4 trillion.

Vasquez said the experience of negotiating the TPP had put Peru and Australia on solid footing for quickly hashing out a bilateral agreement.

“We also both have very open economies, so we’re really going to see a broad inclusion of sectors that will benefit from it – goods as well as services and investments,” Vasquez said.

Peru’s trade ministry said last month that rules of origin, migration and e-commerce were also under discussion and that Peru was eager to increase agricultural exports to Australia while spurring trade of mining and other professional services.

Australian trade officials were not immediately available for comment.

Peru’s exports to Australia amounted to $260 million last year, according to Peru’s trade ministry.
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Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto will travel to China next week to discuss trade and investment, as Mexico looks for ways to decrease its dependence on NAFTA, especially trade with neighboring United States.

He will hold a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and participate in a summit of the BRICS nations, a grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, on Sept. 4 and 5, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pena Nieto’s visit comes as U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators meet Sept. 1 to 5 in Mexico City for a round of talks to revamp the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico is trying to increase trade with Latin America and Asia, and on Monday took part in the first of three days of talks in Australia aimed at reviving the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, disrupted by the withdrawal of the United States.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat to scrap NAFTA, which he has cast as killing jobs and exacerbating the U.S. deficit, and ripped into trading partners Canada and Mexico.

Pena Nieto is scheduled to participate in a dialogue on emerging markets and a BRICS business forum, “where over 800 business leaders are expected to discuss opportunities for investment, trade, connectivity, financial cooperation, development and the blue economy, or sustainable use of marine resources,” said the ministry.

On Sept. 6, Pena Nieto will visit the offices of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s top e-commerce firm and one of Asia’s most valuable companies.

Mexico’s government is working to get Mexican products and services, especially from small- and medium-sized firms, onto Alibaba’s platform.
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The price of a pack of cigarettes has skyrocketed in New York City, while the number of places they are available for sale is set to fall.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday signed a sweeping series of anti-smoking bills, part of a comprehensive effort to help reduce the number of smokers in the city by nearly 200,000 over the next few years.

“We are sending a loud and clear message that we will not let their greed kill any more New Yorkers without a fight,” de Blasio said at a bill-signing ceremony at a Brooklyn hospital. “These new laws will not only help reduce the number of smokers in our city, but also save lives.”

The minimum price for a pack of cigarettes will jump from $10.50 to $13, the highest base price for cigarettes in the nation, de Blasio said.

New York health officials hope that with brands forced to charge at least $13 for the cheapest pack, premium brands will also raise their prices to maintain separation from lower-tier smokes.

The planned price hike is one of seven bills aimed at pressuring the city’s 900,000 estimated smokers to quit.

Another new rule will reduce by half the number of retailers licensed to sell tobacco products. About 8,300 businesses now have a license. The numbers will be reduced through attrition, officials said.

Philadelphia and San Francisco have similar licensing restrictions.

Other laws will ban the sale of all tobacco products in pharmacies, require licensing of e-cigarette retailers, and require all residential buildings to have smoking policies that are given to all current and prospective tenants. Some residential buildings will be required to ban smoking in common areas such as hallways.

Opponents of the price increase say it may push many smokers into buying untaxed, unregulated cigarettes on the black market.
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Kenya has become the latest African country to ban the use of polythene plastic bags, imposing stiff fines and even jail time for anyone found using, importing or manufacturing the bags.

In one of the biggest garbage dumping sites in Nairobi, it was business as usual Monday. Loads of plastic bags full of garbage were brought in, a testament to their widespread use in the capital.

But no more, says the government.

A new law went into effect Monday making the manufacture, sale and use of polythene plastic bags illegal. Offenders can get slapped with penalties up to a four-year jail term and a $40,000 fine.

The National Environment Management Authority, with the help security agencies, has been going around Nairobi to urge retailers and manufacturers to heed the new ban.

Geoffrey Wahungu is the director general of NEMA. He is promoting the “take-bag scheme,” basically calling on consumers to bring their own cloth bags or baskets from home.

“I hope soon we’ll start seeing people who are carrying out these recycling materials, or alternative bags, which are eco-friendly. All this is creating much more employment than is being lost,” he said.

Economic impact

Two plastic bag importers unsuccessfully challenged the ban before the High Court Friday. Kenya produces plastic bags for local use and export in the region. The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that the ban will cost more than 60,000 jobs and hurt more than 170 companies.

NEMA gave six months’ notice of the new ban, but it still appears to have taken many in Kenya by surprise.

Some large retailers have already switched to paper, but small traders are feeling the pinch.

Simon Njenga runs a grocery kiosk. He says he lost customers Monday.

He says “the ban pains me a lot because a customer wants to purchase vegetables, but he doesn’t have a bag and I can’t give him one, so they leave my kiosk without buying. The government has to bring back the plastic bags. My livelihood depends on it.”

Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Cameroon have announced similar bans on plastic bags, although the bans aren’t widely enforced. Rwanda is the only African country so far to both declare a ban and push people to follow the law.

Kenyan Environment Minister Judy Wakhungu told Reuters news agency that manufacturers and importers will be the ones initially targeted for enforcement of the ban.

Experts argue that polythene bags are bad for the environment and public health. The thin plastic bags have been blamed for polluting cities and shorelines and killing animals who eat them.

NEMA says the single-use polythene bags “never fully biodegrade, remaining in the environment as small or even microscopic particles, essentially forever.”

 
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Fall armyworm has spread to Cameroon.  The pest has attacked crops in at least 24 African countries.  In Cameroon, the Ministry of Agriculture says it is particularly concerned about the impact of the fall armyworm infestation in the north and the east of the country. 

Minister-delegate Ananga Messina says fall armyworm has infested six of the central African state’s 10 regions.

She says the armyworms have been a serious threat to food security in Cameroon because cereals like maize, sorghum, rice and legume plants like cow-pea, peanuts and beans are increasingly being attacked every day.  She says the situation is particularly worrisome on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria where the population and 100,000 Nigerian refugees are already suffering from food scarcity due to the Boko Haram conflict.

The Ministry of Agriculture says nearly two million people are currently in need of food assistance in northern Cameroon.

Messina told VOA about half of Cameroon’s 23 million inhabitants and millions of livestock risk hunger in the months ahead.  She said the armyworms have extended to Cameroon’s eastern border, putting neighboring Central African Republic at risk, a country gripped by a severe humanitarian crisis after years of conflict.  

Cameroon has launched a task force to manage the infestation.

Some farmers have been using chemicals to kill the pests, but agriculture technician Anicet Mvondo says that is not the best approach.

“The problem is that the insecticide is not good for the health of the farmer,” said Mvondo. “It is not good for the environment.  It kills other organisms in the environment.  Using insecticides is not a good way.  We should try to look for other solutions because these insects on the field are also eaten by other organisms.”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports fall armyworm was first detected in four countries in West Africa in early 2016.  It has since spread to at least 20 other countries. 

Experts say the fall armyworms can reproduce rapidly and can fly long distances in moth form, though it remains unknown how the pest spread to West Africa from South America.

The FAO is leading the regional response efforts in Africa, and it says it is drawing from lessons learned in the America’s on sustainable fall armyworm management.  FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, David Phiri says methods like regular monitoring and hand-picking of worm larvae can be effective.

“Fall armyworm has a lot of natural enemies and we should enhance their use to control the fall armyworm … So the message is that fall armyworm has come here to stay and also that use of chemical pesticides should be reduced to a minimum,” said Phiri.

Staple crops like maize, sorghum, rice and sugarcane have been hit hard in Africa, though the fall armyworm can ravage more than 80 other plant species.  Losses for Africa are estimated at at least $13 billion.
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Massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Texas’ refinery-rich coast could have long-standing and far-reaching consequences for the state’s oil and gas industry and the larger U.S. economy. The storm’s remnants left much of Houston underwater on Sunday, and the National Weather Service says it’s not over yet: Some parts of Houston and its suburbs could end up with as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.

With the heavy precipitation expected to last for days, it’s still unclear how bad the damage will be, but there is already evidence of widespread losses. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down, and flooding in the Houston and Beaumont areas could seriously pinch gasoline supplies. Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated drilling platforms and rigs, crimping the flow of oil and gas.

Experts believe gasoline prices could increase as much as 25 cents a gallon.

Harvey’s toll on air travel in the U.S. is set to extend into Monday, with the tracking service FlightAware.com reporting that more than 1,400 flights already have been canceled. That’s in addition to more than 2,000 canceled over the weekend.

Economy watchers were looking to oil futures markets Sunday night and stock trading in the U.S. Monday morning for further indications of fallout.

Here’s what was known as of Sunday night:

Refineries

Nearly a third of U.S. refining capacity sits in low-lying areas along the coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Beyond the shutdown of refineries at risk of a direct strike from high winds, there’s the threat of flooding and potential power outages for gasoline supplies.

Refinery outages continued to spread Sunday, with about 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity down or being brought down, according to analysts at S&P Global.

Valero Energy Corp., whose two big Corpus Christi refineries escaped damage, said it was working with federal and Texas agencies and its business partners to determine what infrastructure was needed to resume refinery operations.

Even before Harvey hit, the prospect of supply disruptions sent gasoline futures to $1.74 a gallon, their highest level since April, before they retreated to around $1.67 by Friday afternoon. At the pump, experts see gasoline increasing 10 cents to 25 cents a gallon.

Given the strictures faced by the refineries, “This is the dominoes starting to fall,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gas Buddy, said Sunday. “This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario.”

Oil and gas

Companies have evacuated workers from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Sunday that workers had been removed from 105 of the 737 manned platforms used to pump oil and gas from beneath the Gulf.

The agency estimated that platforms accounting for about 22 percent of oil production and 26 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf had been shut down.

“After the storm has passed, facilities will be inspected,” the agency said in a news release. “Once all standard checks have been completed, production from undamaged facilities will be brought back on line immediately. Facilities sustaining damage may take longer to bring back on line.”

Shipping

The shipping industry also is expected to be disrupted by the worst hurricane to hit the Texas coast in more than 50 years. Shipping terminals along the Texas coast shut down as the storm approached. Port operations in Corpus Christi and Galveston closed, and the port of Houston said container terminals and general cargo facilities closed around midday Friday. Rates increased for carrying freight between the Gulf and the U.S. East Coast.

Travel

More than 1,400 flight cancellations are reported for Monday, according to FlightAware.

Houston’s two airports were closed to all flights except those connected to relief efforts. Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport was not expected to reopen Monday until noon at the earliest. Houston International Airport was scheduled to remain closed until Wednesday morning.

Airlines were offering customers the chance to reschedule trips that would take them to Houston, San Antonio or Austin from Friday through the weekend.

Utilities

                   Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that the storm would knock out power for at least 1.25 million people in Texas. They said the hardest-hit areas will include Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, and San Antonio, which is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) inland.

Insurance

A firm that does forecasts for insurance companies expects wind-damage claims in the low billions of dollars, and possibly reaching as high as $6 billion.

Risk Management Solutions Inc. said storm surges and inland flooding could be an even bigger source of losses. If the firm is correct, that would put homeowners and the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program at risk.

The flood program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which owes the Treasury about $23 billion in funds borrowed to cover the cost of past disasters, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Homeowner policies offered by insurance companies typically don’t cover flood damage, yet a relatively small percentage of homeowners have flood insurance through the federal program.

Property data firm CoreLogic estimated that insured losses for home and commercial properties, as of Friday, would be $1 billion to $2 billion from wind and storm-surge damage.

 
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