by Alex Evans | Mar 12, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Our friends at Avaaz have a new campaign on biofuels (full text below the fold). Biofuels are already absorbing 20 per cent of the US corn crop, and that figure’s expected to rise to 32 per cent by 2016. As Avaaz’s email puts it,
Each day, 820 million people in the developing world do not have enough food to eat. Food prices around the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico to Morocco. And the World Food Program warned last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the world’s worst-off. How are the wealthiest countries responding? They’re burning food.
Go sign the petition to G20 leaders in advance of this weekend’s summit…
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Global system
The BBC and Globescan have just published another of their epic, 34 country opinion polls, this time looking at perceptions of economic globalisation. They found that majorities (of an average of 64%) in 27 out of 34 countries agreed that the benefits and burdens of “the economic developments of the last few years” have not been shared fairly.
Intriguingly, though, if you agree with that statement, your analysis of whether that unfairness results from globalisation proceeding too quickly or too slowly is likely to depend on whether you live in a developed or a developing country:
In developed countries, those who have this view of unfairness are more likely to say that globalization is growing too quickly – especially in France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Japan, and Germany (and to a lesser extent Britain and the US). In contrast, in some developing countries, those who perceive such unfairness are more likely to say globalization is proceeding too slowly. These include Turkey, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, Mexico and the countries of Central America.
The survey adds that “the view that globalization is growing too quickly is especially widespread in Egypt (77%), UAE (77%), Australia (73%), China (72%), Spain (68%), and France (64%)”. Here’s the full report.
by Alex Evans | Feb 2, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia
I did a straw poll this morning of the 70 or so participants at Wilton Park’s European Security in 2020 conference (mainly policymakers from foreign and defence ministries, and researchers at think tanks and universities – drawn from a good 20 or so mainly European countries). The questions asked went like this:
1. If you could assemble a group of world leaders of your choice, and get them to make a global deal on one issue, what would that issue be?
2. Which countries / blocs (min. 2, max. 20) would be needed in order to forge that deal?
3. Which international institution or forum could best host such a negotiation? If none, which is currently closest to what we would need?
4. Which country or region will be Europe’s single most important bilateral relationship in 2020?
5. What will be the three most important subjects of discussion in that relationship?
6. What does that country / region want from us?
7. What will be Europe’s three biggest vulnerabilities in 2020?
8. What are the 3 key steps Europe could take now to reduce those vulnerabilities?
9. If the biggest unexpected shocks of the last 20 years were (for example) the fall of the Iron Curtain or 9/11, what do you imagine might be the biggest in the next 20?
The results were pretty interesting (click here for a pdf with graphs showing all answers to each of these questions).
Participants overwhelmingly saw climate change as the most important issue for a global deal (34% of responses, compared to 13% for the next highest priority). Surprisingly, though, the impacts of climate change did not figure heavily in perceptions of key European vulnerabilities: only 3% of votes cast were for climate impacts, placing the issue outside of the top ten vulnerabilities.
In terms of the countries needed to make the key global deal, the US and China shared joint first place, with 20 votes each out of a total of 131 (participants were allowed to name up to 20 countries or blocs). The EU itself was next, with 19 votes, followed by a fairly tight cluster of India, Russia and Brazil all of which scored more than 10 votes. After these countries, there was a significant drop-off; Japan, the next country to figure on the list, scored only 4 votes.
There was also an overwhelming consensus on the UN as the key forum for negotiating the global deal deemed to be most important: it scored 57% of the votes, though many of those included the caveat “with significant reform”. The G8 was next, with 21%; other forums cited tended to be issue specific, e.g. the NPT or UNFCCC.
Over 50% of participants saw the US remaining firmly in the top spot as Europe’s key bilateral partner in 2020. Interestingly, Russia – rather than China – came second, by a decisive margin: 22% voted for Russia as opposed to only 10% for China, although a further 8% of participants also voted for “Asia” as the key bilateral relationship.
Which issues would matter in the key bilateral relationship? Trade and economic relations came out decisively in front, with 22% of votes – followed by energy (16%), security / defence (13%), resource security (11%), climate change (8%) and crisis management / peacekeeping (7%).
By and large, perceptions of what Europe’s key partner would want from the EU were as could be expected: trade and market access and “a trusted partner” were the two most popular answers. Participants who cited Russia as Europe’s key partner tended to cite a desire for respect and geopolitical status as a particular consideration for Russia; this issue did not arise for any other countries cited as Europe’s key relationship. Where the US was cited, a willingness to use force or shoulder international responsibilities also scored significantly.
One of the surprises in the poll was the great diversity of responses on Europe’s key vulnerabilities in 2020. Energy dependency was the clear front runner – 17% of votes cast compared to 11% for immigration, the second highest – but the main story here was the ‘long tail’ of vulnerabilities identified by just one or two people, leading to 27 separate vulnerabilities being cited in total. Demographic issues in Europe, especially its ageing population, were the third highest scoring issue with 9% of votes.
Participants felt that the most important thing Europe could do to reduce its vulnerabilities was to invest in energy efficiency or alternative energy (14%). Immigration accounted for both the second and third highest scorers, but with an interesting nuance: better integration of immigrants came second (10%), while limiting immigration came third (8%). Investing in stability in Europe’s near neighbourhood also scored highly.
Finally, there was, predictably, a great range of ideas for unexpected wild card events between now and 2020. The most widely predicted shock was a nuclear exchange between states, followed by two different scenarios of Chinese collapse. (See the full results for the complete list of wild cards imagined.) Overall, participants proved rather pessimistic: 88% of ideas were gloomy rather than upbeat. Two participants imagined a democratic China, however – and one cheery colleague wondered whether we might witness the outbreak of world peace.
by Alex Evans | Jan 21, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, UK
Adam Boulton at Sky News, travelling with the PM in India, gives us a heads-up of another speech on multilateral reform:
The Prime Minister believes that the world has changed so much since then that we need to rewrite the rules. He is particularly interested in the growing might of the so-called BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – the last two of which he is visiting on this tour. Mr Brown cheered his hosts by repeating Britain’s longstanding view that India should join Britain, France, the US, Russia and China with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. But in return he wants India to do more in the global conflict against fundamentalist terrorism. The Prime Minister also wants the UN to establish a standing rapid response team of judges, police, and civilian experts who can be deployed immediately to stabilize countries immediately following violent conflicts.
He seems to have the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the knock on collapse of Northern Rock on his mind in his ideas for the IMF. Mr Brown says it shoud become the “early warning system for financial turbulence”, with the powers to intervene as soon as potential financial crisis are identified. He wants the World Bank to focust on the environment as well as it’s existing mission of poverty reduction. He wants to set up a global climate change fund (Britain has already earmarked $1.6 billion for a similar project). This would be the carrot for poor countries to do something about their carbon emissions complementing the stick of rich nation threats.
Hang on, you say, isn’t there a slight sense of deja vu here? Why yes: it’s the same as his last speech on multilateral reform – and as I observed at the time, that speech in turn read like a re-run of the 2004 UN High Level Panel on threats, challenges and change. To be fair, it’s hard to find fault with the content. But it would be welcome to hear more about how the PM plans to achieve all this, given the snail’s pace of multilateral reform discussions over the last few years.
by Alex Evans | Jan 16, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific
The FT reports on friction over rising soyabean prices in Indonesia this morning, in what it’s calling “the biggest food-related protests since last year’s Mexican tortilla crisis”:
Indonesia was yesterday forced to take emergency action to calm street protests over record soyabean prices triggered by US farmers reducing the crop to grow more corn for biofuel. Rising Chinese demand for soyabeans and bad harvests in Argentina and Brazil have also contributed to the jump…
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, was forced to announce measures to boost local soyabean supply. The move came a day after 10,000 people took to the streets in Jakarta to complain about the rising cost of one of the country’s staple foods. The government had already responded to the protests by lifting import controls on a commodity that hit an all-time global high of $13.20 a bushel this week, an increase of almost 90 per cent on last year’s level. Indonesian prices have risen even higher. Henry Saragih, the head of the Indonesian farmers’ union, warned: “I think the social situation with soyabeans will probably get worse before it gets better.”
Indonesia, which imports two-thirds of its soyabeans, has suffered from the impact of rising shipping costs and the long-term neglect of its agriculture sector. Meanwhile, many Indonesian farmers have switched to corn cultivation and other more lucrative crops.
Incidentally, the FT’s coverage of the food prices issue continues to be streets ahead of any other international news outlet: the only other newspapers even to cover the protests in Jakarta were local, if Google News is to be believed. This is entirely consistent with other recent food stories. Accept no substitute…
