by David Steven | Jun 12, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity
The Guardian headline was unequivocal: “The US will exempt China from binding greenhouse gas targets.”
Guardian environment correspondent, David Adam, had had a chat with Jonathan Pershing, who leads the American climate delegation, and Pershing had told him that only developed countries need take on binding targets to reduce emissions. “We’re saying that the actions of developing countries should be binding, not the outcomes of those actions.”
Now, that’s a big deal. After all, back in 1997, the US Senate made it crystal clear that it had no intention of ratifying Kyoto unless the agreement included “new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions” for all developing countries, and China, Mexico, India, Brazil, and South Korea in particular.
Now, you can argue the toss about the merits of the US position (my personal view is that China should bind itself at Copenhagen to an agreed date by which its emissions will peak), but for Obama’s team to say at this stage – do a bit more on energy efficiency and renewables, and we’ll give you a free pass on targets – would be astounding.
Turns out Der Spiegel has a more detailed and much clearer interview with Pershing.
SPIEGEL: But the Chinese don’t want to accept legally binding reduction targets for CO2. Does the US still insist on such a commitment?
Pershing: Yes, definitely. We are still asking them to commit to legally binding CO2 reductions as part of a Copenhagen agreement.
SPIEGEL: With only five months left until the Copenhagen summit, do you think such a compromise will be possible?
Pershing: We are working very hard to achieve a good solution. The US remains focused on a legally binding agreement and on concluding that agreement in Copenhagen. We expect all developed nations to commit to comparable reduction targets and we want more countries to belong to the group of industrialized countries than today, for example Korea. Major economies with large total emissions like China should take additional steps, including a quantitative and quantifiable set of actions with a legal requirement to implement those actions.
So what gives? A fine line between ‘reductions’ and ‘targets’? Pershing going off script? Or sloppy reporting from the Guardian’s journalist?
(Via @tancopsey on Twitter – follow me @davidsteven.)
Update – And we have our answer – sloppy Guardian reporting. Its original story went up online at 14.53 BST, but was extensively revised and corrected at 18:31 (the old version simply disappeared, but there’s a copy below).
The new headline: “US says it will not demand binding carbon cuts from China.” So targets are still on the table; immediate absolute reductions are not (and they never were – the idea is utterly implausible).
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Jun 12, 2009 | Economics and development
I’m at a Ditchley conference on aid effectiveness, where the most interesting thing I’ve learned so far is that Kiva now lends some $50 million a year.
Kiva, for those who don’t know it, is a web-based micro-credit platform. When you log on, you can go straight to a list of entrepreneurs looking for capital to borrow: entrepreneurs like Nguyen thi Dieu, who’s looking to borrow $1,125 over 13 months to invest in her beauty salon in Kim Dong, Vietnam (since you ask, she’s raised $350 so far; if you want to help out with the remaining $775, click here).
Recognition of micro-credit’s potential isn’t new – it’s three years since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. But what is new is that Kiva’s rapidly growing size means that the individuals that finance it have aggregated themselves into being a major player in the micro-credit sector.
After all, the largest bilateral aid agency in this field is USAID, which spends about $100m a year on micro-loans: given that Kiva’s only been running for four years, it shouldn’t be long before it overtakes USAID if current growth rates are sustained.
What makes Kiva’s approach so fascinating is that it’s an example of many-to-many network topology: aid can go directly from a miniscule aid donor (like me) to a miniscule recipient (like Nguyen thi Dieu) without having to pass through the giant cogs of the international aid bureaucracy. Kiva runs with just 15 staff, who are funded through a ‘tip-jar’ plus some cash from foundations.
At a point when the challenges involved in sustaining public support for aid spending are proliferating rapidly, Kiva’s approach also has the great value of being able to show real results in real people’s lives – but without falling back into the bad old days of small aid ‘projects’ that effectively undermine state capacity.
If the big story in the aid world over the last 5 or 10 years has been the emergence of large new donors like private foundations (like Gates) or vertical issue-specific funds (like the Global Fund on Aids, TB and Malaria), it’s entirely possible that one of the big stories of the next 5 or 10 will be about the growing importance of many-to-many aid programmes like Kiva’s. Aid 2.0 is already here…
Update (David): For those of you who are interested, the consultancy I work for has a thriving Kiva portfolio which you can view here (though many of our Kenyan loans went sour after last year’s political violence – something that gave a very direct insight into how conflict ruins lives). As an example, Gladys Ehichioya from Benin City, Nigeria borrowed $700 to buy more crayfish for her fish business. Her business seems to be doing well.
by Andrew Pickering | Jun 12, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, North America
In the world of Bretton Woods watchers such as myself (and what a world that is), all eyes are on the US Congress, where lawmakers are deciding on the fate of President Obama’s commitment at the G20 to boost the US’s contribution to the IMF by $108 billion. There is no doubt that the Fund needs that money (as part of an overall increase of its resources to £750 billion) but things are not going smoothly on the Hill.
Unfortunately, US politics being what it is, the increased funding is part of another bill… an Iraq war financing bill. Of course, this means that Congressmen and women can’t vote for IMF funds without also voting for war funds and can’t vote against war funds without also voting against IMF funds. (And vice versa.) According to Mark Weisbrot:
from the beginning, the administration has faced tremendous obstacles to getting a majority members of the House of Representatives to vote for the money in an up-or-down vote. This is because many members of both parties are afraid that it would be seen as another taxpayer bailout for the financial industry – and foreign banks at that.
So we are left with a state of affairs in which some Democrats are rebelling against the Bill for war reasons, and others because they want moves on IMF reform (particularly in terms of its dangerously austere lending conditions) in exchange for the increasing funding proposed. Few would argue that this is a sensible and eminently just request. However, the US Treasury (which of course has an enormous degree of sway over IMF policy) has refused to commit to this as a condition of the increased funds. Republicans, meanwhile, ostensibly just want the IMF money put to a separate vote. But (Weisbrot again):
Interestingly, the Republicans are not trying very hard to get the IMF money removed. They are not saying anything on television or in the media. This indicates that they may want this money to pass with only Democratic votes, so that they can attack the Dems – especially those in conservative districts – when the money ends up bailing out the European banks in eastern Europe.
Of course, that’s a solid criticism and no doubt it’d play very well. But at the end of the day, this is exactly what the IMF is meant to do, it’s part of what it was set up for and it’s certainly part of the job of a hegemonic country that claims to be ‘ready to lead once more‘.
by David Steven | Jun 11, 2009 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxvunbIWNyI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
by David Steven | Jun 10, 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
Granted “taking offense” has been turned into a competitive sport, but this takes the biscuit. Top story on Drudge – Barack Obama is said to have insulted Israel by chatting on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu with his feet on the table.
Drudge links to CBS which frets that that Obama was sending a ‘subliminal message’ to Israel. Apparently, “‘some Israelis…saw the incident as somewhat akin to an incident last year, when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush in Baghdad.” Somewhat akin! Can’t get worse than that.
Of course, it’s not Jews who have a thing about soles of shoes, it’s Arabs, but CBS has an answer for that. Apparently, “Israel feels enough a part of the Middle East after 60 years to be insulted too.” You really couldn’t make it up.
Probably not safe for work, but here’s a picture of the offending act.
(*I made the ‘feets smell’ bit up.)
Update: Note that Obama has still not got his shoes mended – compare this tatty pair he wore during his campaign…
