by Alex Evans | Oct 26, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity
Brand identity is important for a high-profile global agency. Your logo tells your stakeholders who you are, what you stand for, and where you’re going. It’s about your values. Your story. Your people.
So it’s unfortunate that the new brand for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – launched yesterday amid much fanfare, and with just over a month to go until the Durban climate summit…
…bears a remarkable similarity to that of … er … Comedy Central.
D’oh! (H/t Jeff Hatcher.)
by Richard Gowan | Oct 24, 2011 | Global system, Off topic
It’s UN day! I always forget it. Ban Ki-moon remembered and celebrated by giving a speech to a group of ninth-graders at a school in New York. He got off to a flying start:
I heard the last time you were all here was for Movie Night. I hope I am not quite as scary as “Night of the Living Dead.”
Nobody would accuse the Secretary-General of being scary. But he can do corny:
The UN is 4 U – and you can be 4 the UN.
Indeed.
by Richard Gowan | Oct 24, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system
At a time when many European governments insist in avoiding major economic reforms, the Vatican has bigger ideas:
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.
It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.
“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.
It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.
Sort of like… the Catholic Church.
by Claire Melamed | Oct 24, 2011 | Economics and development, Global system, Latin America and the Caribbean, UK
Whatever else the Occupy protests (over 900 at the last count), have done, they have propelled the issue of inequality on to the front pages and into the political mainstream. The idea of the ‘99%’ is brilliantly simple, pulling together every group and every person who has a nagging sense that they are losing out in the global economic race while others pull ahead out of sight.
The case the protestors are putting basically an ethical one. A world where the majority of the benefits of growth go to the few while the costs of failure, whether in the form of bank bailouts, of redundancies, or of cuts to public services are borne by the many is not, it seems, one that an increasing number of people want to live in any more.
If that fails to convince, there are other more prosaic reasons to care about inequality too. Inequality, at least at high levels, does matter to growth, to poverty, and to stability. Here are five good reasons, drawing from recent economic research, for politicians to care about – and act on – inequality.
One, inequality contributed to the financial crisis. Debate rages about how much. But it does seem clear that when real wages for the middle and working classes aren’t rising, as they weren’t in America for much of the 1980s and 1990s, and when aspirations are rising rapidly, partly because of the impact of the lifestyles of the super-rich whose incomes are heading North at a rapid rate, and when credit is cheap (thanks to the mega-profits being made in China due partly to low wages and growing inequality there), then an unsustainable credit bubble is only the click of a Wall Street button away.
Two, (some) inequality is bad for economic growth. This is one that economists have been arguing about for years. But it’s clear that some inequalities – in access to education, to credit, to land in agricultural societies – are bad for growth, since they mean that the skills, energy and ideas of a large part of the population are being underused. As growth becomes more about human capital and less about land and machines, this will only become truer. Inequality can also make growth less sustainable (in an economic sense), and make episodes of growth shorter than in more equal societies. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Oct 23, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Influence and networks
Oh dear. From today’s Observer (for non-Brits, that’s the Sunday edition of the Guardian):
The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates, the Observer can reveal.
That figure is likely to shock many experts as it is far higher than many current estimates. A previous UN estimate had expected the world to have more than 10 billion people by 2100; currently, there are nearly 7 billion.
Yeah, yeah. Actually, the forthcoming UNFPA State of World Population report that’s cited in the article simply uses the 2010 revision of the main UN population database (which you can find here). The 2100 figure of 15bn (actually, 16 bn if you did maths GCSE and know how to round 15.8bn to the nearest billion) is the top end estimate.
The medium variant? You guessed it, 10 billion: in other words, the “previous UN estimate” referred to in the Guardian piece. Nothing that a 5 minute fact check wouldn’t immediately have revealed, but hey, let’s not let details get in the way of a good headline.
Always amazes me that a paper with such outstanding foreign affairs coverage is so bad on environment – John Vidal’s dreadful Copenhagen reporting being the example par excellence.
