by Jules Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
In the last few weeks, Japan has spent just under $1bn buying carbon emission rights from Ukraine and the Czech Republic, as it scrambles to meet its Kyoto obligations.
Japan agreed at Kyoto to cut its CO2 emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by 2013. Instead, its emissions are rising annually – they rose 2.3% in the year to March 2008.
It has now convened a board of scientists to suggest ways forward to prime minister Taro Aso. It has put forward five proposals, ranging from a 25% cut in 1990 levels by 2020, to a 4% increase.
Last week, the government also launched its own tentative efforts at an EU style cap and trade domestic market:
The market’s compliance participants include 202 major emitters such as utility and steel companies, a step forward from its smaller predecessor, called J-VETS market.
But a government survey of applicants showed only 20 percent of the respondents said they would take part in trading, with 40 percent saying they didn’t know. The remaining 40 percent said they had no immediate plan to trade any.
by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
Two days to go, and it’s probably time to start thinking through what to expect from the London Summit. (If you haven’t already seen it, check out our special page on the Summit – I’ll be there as one of the G20 Voice bloggers, so we’ll have updates throughout the day from the scene of the action).
By and large, expectations seem to be being managed downwards by the commentariat as well as in off the record briefings from officials. That’s what you’d expect at this stage, as then even modest progress looks like a triumph (in much the same way that Labour Party officials always brief journalists to expect an apocalyptic showdown with the unions in the days running up to the Party Conference every September). As the Wall Street Journal puts it,
It was supposed to be the inauguration of a Global New Deal, in the hopes of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a comprehensive policy response to the world economic crisis, a root-and-branch effort to reorder the way capitalism itself works. But by the time the much-heralded Group of 20 meeting of heads of government ends Thursday, it may be difficult to spot a new world order. It is already clear that the summit will mostly fall short of Mr. Brown’s original lofty goals.
Interestingly, though, one relatively upbeat note comes from Alastair Newton, who’s just published a Nomura briefing note on the summit – and who can claim rather more expertise on summits than most banker, having been head of G8 policy at 10 Downing Street from 1998 to 2000. Newton’s bottom line: while he doesn’t expect a ‘miracle cure’ turnaround in markets or the real economy, it’s nonetheless
“just possible that we may look back on the 2 April 2009 G20 Summit in due course and see it as ‘the end of the beginning’ of the current crisis.”
(more…)
by Richard Gowan | Mar 31, 2009 | Influence and networks, Off topic
So, Battlestar Galactica is over, at least on American screens. It was rather good. The UN came up with a sort-of-fun tribute:
To mark the show’s finale, its fans at the United Nations — people whose nonfictional jobs involve wrestling with similar issues day in and day out — invited the cast and producers to visit the U.N. for a two-hour panel discussion and talk-back.
On Tuesday, some 500 people took seats in the chamber, a stiff, formal space with miles of dull, blonde wood. Whoopi Goldberg, a UNICEF ambassador as well as an Oscar-winning actor, served as the panel’s moderator. U.N. representatives joined actors Edward James Olmos, who played the commander of the show’s title warship, and Mary McDonnell, who starred as President Laura Roslin, his civilian superior.
Let’s get something out of the way quickly. The average UN official does not wrestle with a job comparable to piloting a star cruiser carrying the last humans across space pursued by Cylon people-robots. On trips to the UN HQ canteen, I rarely spot anyone wrestling with anything (except a rubbery panini) but let’s go along with the spirit of the thing: UN officials do work for the good of humanity, and are duly in need of a bit of fun.
But that doesn’t mean you should let them do the entertaining. The UN-Battlestar convention seems to have gone a bit awry:
Dave Howe, the Sci Fi Channel’s president, declared that, like the U.N., “great science fiction forces us to look at who we are and ask the tough questions: Where are we going? . . . And what can we expect to find when we get there?” The U.N. officials were a little fuzzier on the analogy. One admitted to never having seen the show, and Radhika Coomaraswamy, the special representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said she had hastily watched a few episodes in preparation. (“It was really nice to see not just special effects,” she said.)
Genius. Just genius. If the UN arranged a day of celebration for The Joy of Sex, they’d probably manage to find a eunuch to give the key-note address.
by Richard Gowan | Mar 31, 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, North America, UK
Tid-bits for nostalgists from an excellent new piece by Seymour Hersh (still the greatest journalist ever) in the New Yorker on Israeli-Syrian relations:
As the Bush era wound down, U.S. allies were making their own openings to Syria. In mid-November, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, distressed the White House by flying to Damascus for a meeting with Assad. They agreed that Britain and Syria would establish a high-level exchange of intelligence. Vice-President Dick Cheney viewed the move by Britain—“perfidious Albion,” as he put it—as “a stab in the back,” according to a former senior intelligence official.
An excellent choice of phrase in dealing with Israeli security, of course. In insulting those nearer to home, the Veep stuck to baseball analogies during the last MidEast war of his time in office:
The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”).
You can say what you like about Cheney, but I miss that impish humor.
by Daniel Korski | Mar 30, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
Now that President Obama has laid down his AfPak strategy, it is time for European governments to follow suit. As I show in this new ECFR brief, they have not yet done enough to become full partners in NATO’s Afghan mission. In an excellent brief issued at the same time as mine, Shada Islam and Eva Gross, two European foreign policy wonks, make a similar case.
European governments have in particular failed to provide staff to civilian bodies like EUPOL, the office of the EU special representative to Afghanistan, or the NATO civilian representative’s office. And while many European governments have pushed for the UN to take on a stronger role in policy development and coordination, few have given the UN mission in Afghanistan and Kai Eide, The UN’s special representative, the necessary support, staff or resources, either in New York or Kabul.
European governments all talk about the “comprehensive approach” -– the need to mix civilian and military instruments — but in the north and central parts of the country, where I just visited (see my travel blog here), there is little evidence of such a policy. Despite the decision last year to bulk up the EUPOL mission to 400 people, actual staffing levels remain at less than half this figure, with many European countries having no personnel in the mission at all.
European governments must do better. In bullet form, they should help:
1. Safeguard the elections
2. Relaunch reconciliation
3. Improve security by training the army and police
4. Change the counter-narcotics policy
5. Target development
6. Support regional diplomacy
I develop each point in the brief with concrete ideas for European leaders to pick up.
The EU has underinvested in the Afghan mission for years. With the coming US surge, the Afghan elections looming, and failure in the region a real danger, it needs to change course. Not only is it in Afghanistan’s interest; it is also in Europe’s.
