by Charlie Edwards | Jan 29, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
I’m at a conference in The Hague on National Safety and Security. The conference has just been opened by Guusje ter Horst, the Minister of the Interior & Kingdom Relations, in the Netherlands. It’s a good speech and I’m chuffed when she begins to talk about how important it is that we move away from the traditional ‘need to know’ approach and begin to think about the ‘need to share’ on issues of national security (they really buy into the report we launched last year).
Last night I managed to sit next to Peter Schwartz, the former Head of Scenario Planning at Shell, who was asked a question about climate change. He pauses (for effect), looks at the guy and says… ‘of course climate change is a big risk but there is something bigger round the corner.’ I drop my fork (for effect).
Last point (before Guido Bertolaso finishes his talk on international cooperation). No one I’ve spoken to can remember when ‘National Security’ became a conference topic. Sure, there have been lots of conferences on aspects of national security but none that have focused on ‘national security’. One interesting trend I’ve noticed recently is the number of governments pursuing their own national security strategies at a time when the discourse is focused on ‘global risks’, and ‘international cooperation’. The Dutch Government, Norwegian Government, and Canadian Government have all published one in the last few years. The Australian and French Governments are about to start (they’re all here too); and of course the UK Government is about to publish their strategy imminently. I have my own ideas but I think I’m going to ask our speakers… they must know the answer.
by Alex Evans | Jan 29, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
Last year’s big issue at Davos was climate change – unsurprisingly, given that it was the first time the WEF crowd had convened since the Stern Review was published and An Inconvenient Truth was released. This year, for all the worry about meltdown in financial markets, the big issue was by all accounts scarcity.
Gideon Rachman, writing his weekly column in yesterday’s FT, agrees:
Without a big short-term crisis to distract them, the international politics crowd were able to look at longer-term trends. They too are trying to understand the consequences of globalisation. But while the bankers grapple with the top end of the process – the movement of billions of dollars around the world financial system – the political analysts are increasingly preoccupied by the way globalisation is affecting people at the bottom of the pile. The costs of food and energy are rising fast. The availability of water is also becoming an issue, from Australia to Africa. The struggle for these three basic commodities – food, energy and water – came up repeatedly in Davos.
And he’s not only worried about the problem. Just as much of a concern is whether the world’s institutions and policy elites have the capacity to manage it:
Soccer crowds in England like to abuse match referees by chanting: “You don’t know what you’re doing.” If protesters had been able to get near the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, they could justifiably have aimed the same chant at the world leaders who assembled in the Alps.
These people are meant to be the “masters of the universe”: presidents, prime ministers, bankers, billionaires. If anybody can make sense of world events, it should be them. But the air of confusion in Davos was both palpable and alarming.
Update: rising food prices also got a mention in President Bush’s State of the Union yesterday…
