by Alex Evans | Feb 4, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity, Latin America and the Caribbean
That’s the gist of a new paper in Science, reported in the Guardian yesterday:
Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.
The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world’s atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.
“Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world’s largest forest,” said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.
“We can’t just wait and see because there is no going back,” he said. “We won’t know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late.”
If we are in positive feedback territory on climate change, then all bets really are off.
by Alex Evans | Feb 3, 2011 | Economics and development
Edward Carr has an arresting thought on the impact of high food prices in developing countries (which hit yet another new record on yesterday’s monthly FAO food price index data, by the way): it may be richer consumers in poor countries who are most exposed to price volatility, whereas poor people may by contrast enjoy a higher degree of resilience.
This, Carr argues, is because richer people tend to live in urban areas, have diets richer in processed foods, and “typically [have] the most limited options when food prices begin to get unstable”. Poor people, on the other hand, are more concentrated in rural areas, and “have the ability to effect a temporary partial, or even complete, disengagement from the global market”.
So in both Ghana and Ethiopia, he continues, there seems to be evidence that
…temporary deglobalization is a coping strategy that at least some people … use to guard against the vagaries of markets. Ironically, those best positioned to effect such a strategy are the poorest, and therefore they are better able to manage the impact of price instability on food markets
And if you really want a counter-intuitive extrapolation of this argument, try this excerpt that Carr lifts from a recent paper on Ethiopia by Marc Bellemare, Chris Barrett and David Just:
…contrary to conventional wisdom, the welfare gains from eliminating price volatility would be concentrated in the upper 40 percent of the income distribution, making food price stabilization a distributionally regressive policy in this context.
Read the whole post, especially for the excellent synthesis discussion on the role of speculation; see also Carr’s new book. (H/t Geoff Dabelko at New Security Beat.)
by Richard Gowan | Feb 3, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, North America, Off topic
The Ottawa Citizen counts the costs of Canada’s 2010 run for the Security Council:
The Harper government spent nearly $1 million ferrying diplomats around the world in an unsuccessful bid to shore up support for a Canadian seat on the United Nations Security Council, newly released documents show.
Foreign Affairs officials travelled from the Polynesian island of Tuvalu to the Solomon Islands and dozens of other destinations in an attempt to win backing for membership in the world’s most exclusive club.
And then there were a few trips up to the Bronx…
The documents show thousands of dollars were spent entertaining foreign diplomats and U.S. officials, including a visit to a New York Yankees game with Cuban, Thai, Bosnian, Sri Lankan and Cambodian representatives. Canada also picked up tickets to take officials from Oman, Brunei, the Philippines and Italy to see the Cirque du Soleil.
I’d love to be the official who sits down and decides that the Sri Lankan ambassador is clearly going to trade their vote for an evening’s baseball whereas the Omani is more into acrobatics… Anyway, I’m sure that Mets and Red Sox fans will be delighted with this extra evidence that the Yankees suck.
by Jules Evans | Feb 3, 2011 | Economics and development, Global system, Influence and networks
Here’s a brief video of an event I attended yesterday, held by the Franco-British Council, about new French and British government initiatives to measure well-being.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN9Jtea1Hfs[/youtube]
by Alex Evans | Feb 3, 2011 | Middle East and North Africa
As the protesters battle it out against the hired thugs in Tahir Square, it’s worth keeping half an eye on the rapid deterioration of the Egyptian economy, too. This from a Nomura report on the situation published yesterday:
Banks will remain closed for the remainder of the work week … Cash is becoming scarce, particularly as many workers have not been able to collect their salaries from the end of January, and concerns are growing about access to food supply in certain areas.
The extended bank closure has begun to raise concerns about deposit runs and extensive demand for foreign exchange, once they do eventually open. And the risk of imposition of capital controls, at least temporarily, has increased. Regular government financing operations have also been interrupted, with the cancellation of a regularly-scheduled treasury-bill yesterday.
