by Alex Evans | Jul 24, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
As a general rule of thumb, my starting assumption is that we need new multilateral agencies like we need a hole in the head. But if there’s an exception to that rule, then energy has a pretty good claim to be it. As I argue in Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity, there is no multilateral agency with a mandate to look at all aspects of the issue:
The International Energy Agency is supposed to represent major consumer countries, but its 27 members are all OECD countries – hence leaving out key emerging economies including China and India. Although the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is generally thought of as the major body representing producer states, in fact well over half of the world’s oil is produced by non-OPEC countries. Yet the most fundamental incoherence on energy is the obvious one: that with consumer and producer states represented by two different institutions in two different cities, it is wholly unclear where any discussions about a comprehensive approach encompassing both producer and consumer interests would take place.
Now, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has written a piece in the FT which starts from the same analysis, and goes on to argue that a new global energy organisation is indeed needed. What would it do?
“complement, not replace, bodies already active in the energy field … bring a vital inter-governmental perspective to bear on issues that cannot be left to market forces alone, such as the development of new energy technology, the role of nuclear power and renewables, and innovative solutions for reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions”;
“provide authoritative assessments of global energy demand and supply and bring under one roof energy data that are now dispersed and incomplete … speed the transfer of appropriate energy technology to poor countries and give them objective advice on an optimal energy mix that is safe, secure and environmentally sound”;
“develop a global mechanism to ensure energy supplies in crises and emergencies, and help countries run their energy services and even do it for them temporarily after a war or natural disaster … co-ordinate and fund research and development, especially for energy-poor countries whose needs are often overlooked by commercial R&D.”
He concludes, “the need for joint action to develop long-term solutions to the looming energy crisis is now undeniable. It is difficult to see how this can be done without an expert multinational body, underpinned perhaps by a global energy convention, with the authority to develop policies and practices to benefit rich and poor countries alike, equitably and fairly”.
So what to make of this call? A few thoughts.
First, I can’t see much in the first two paragraphs that isn’t already done by the IEA – with the possible exception of advising poor countries on their energy mix, which agencies including UNDP and the Bank already cover. True, most publicly available data on oil reserves is pretty suspect; but this new agency wouldn’t obviate that problem (which stems from internal machinations within OPEC).
The interesting element here is the idea of a global mechanism to ensure energy supplies in crises and emergencies (what could the head of the IAEA be thinking of?). When I was drafting Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity, this seemed to me one of the real gaps in current multilateral capacities – both for dealing with short term spikes (attack on Iran leads to $200 oil) and long term stresses (peak oil). In those conditions, a regime for sharing access to what supplies there are will be essential for reducing the risk of competition and friction, and for providing (at least a degree of) predictability, to reduce wild market swings as much as can be.
What I think is missing from ElBaradei’s proposal is a proper account of where food fits in. There are plenty of major reasons why food prices and energy prices are ever more closely in synch: biofuels, input costs (especially fertiliser), and the fuel used to cultivate land, harvest crops, process, refrigerate, ship and distribute them. If energy costs keep going up over the long term (as looks likely, recent sharp falls notwithstanding), then food prices will do the same – making it more important than ever to effect a far more integrated international approach.
by Richard Gowan | Jul 17, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Influence and networks
It’s ten days since seven UN troops were killed in Darfur – today, one more has been killed. In between, there have been a series of events that raise big questions about the UN’s future in Africa. First, there was the defeat of the US-UK effort to slap arms sanctions on Zimbabwe in the Security Council – notable less for China and Russia’s vetoes than the African Council members’ (pace Burkina Faso) rejection of the resolution. Then there was the ICC decision to charge Sudan’s President Bashir with genocide in Darfur – again, the most striking part of the international response has been the level of African opposition, with the AU’s “Panel of the Wise” announcing the charges could “lead to a lot of danger”.
The convergence of these events may mark a turning-point in how Africa fits into the international system. African leaders are setting limits on global governance.
For most of the last decade, the continent has been a laboratory for international institutions: it has hosted the bulk of UN peacekeepers; been the testing-ground of the Millennium Development Goals (and so the G8’s efforts to hang with Bono); and was the ICC’s focus even before the Bashir indictment. The AU has emerged as everyone’s favorite new regional institution, not least for taking on Darfur.
For quite a few commentators, myself included, it has been almost axiomatic over the last few years that better international institutions mean a better Africa. But we mostly missed the politics of institution-building: the interests and ideologies of African governments, and the limits on their desire to be subsumed into supranational organizations (hey there, EU specialists, does this ring a bell with you?). There’s been lots of talk of “African ownership” over all this institution-building, but it’s all too often hollow. In May, I was at a seminar in Berlin at which the African participants gave the phrase a kicking (check out the event report).
It was never going to be possible to keep on piling international institution on international institution in Africa. I wrote a short piece in October 2006 arguing that the UN might find itself “Out of Africa” sooner than expected – that looked silly as the Security Council went on to mandate blue helmets for Darfur, and mused about sending them to Somalia. But I may not have been so wrong. It’s too early to know whether July 2008 is a turning-point or a blip in international engagement (or interference, depending on your perspective) in Africa. But it should be the moment we start thinking what “African ownership” really means.
by Alex Evans | Jul 17, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Although plenty of people see the Guardian’s George Monbiot as an irritating gadfly (see also Gideon Rachman’s amusing account of what it’s like to work with him), I’ve long taken him seriously on climate and scarcity issues; his book The Age of Consent, in particular, contains a really excellent attempt to think through what will happen to world trade in conditions of resource scarcity.
So it was with interest that I saw on his blog that he’s officially Changed His Mind on post-Kyoto climate policy. Like me, George has for a long time been an advocate of C&C – under which countries agree a global ceiling on greenhouse gas concentrations (e.g. 350 parts per million of CO2), figure out the level of global emissions each year that will keep us below it, and then share out the tradable permits to that ’emissions budget’ on the basis of convergence to equal per capita rights by an agreed date, like 2050. But no longer. Here he is in the Guardian on 1 July:
After reading the proofs of a book by the independent thinker Oliver Tickell, to be published this month, I have changed my view. In Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse, Tickell slaughters my favourite ideas(8). He shows that there is no logical basis for dividing up the right to pollute among nation states. It gives them too much power over this commodity, and there is no guarantee that they would pass the pollution rights on to their citizens, or use the money they raised to green the economy…
Instead Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations – running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example – rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the world’s central banks. There’s a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesn’t fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesn’t cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years.
Tickell calculates that if the cap were set low enough to ensure that the world became carbon neutral by 2050, the total cost of permits would be about $1 trillion a year, or roughly 1.5% of the global economy. The money would be spent on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, paying countries to protect forests and other ecosystems, developing low-carbon farming, promoting energy efficiency and building renewable power plants.
In some ways, I can see the attraction too. For one thing, Oliver Tickell’s proposed approach (which you can read more about here) retains C&C’s most important attribute: it starts from where we’re trying to get to, through a quantified, binding ceiling on GHG concentrations. None of the usual crap about “aspirational long-term goals” here, then.
I suspect it’s also true that it would be methodologically far easier to cap the emissions of a few thousand refineries, cement works, coal mines or power stations – the ‘upstream’ end of the production life cycle, in other words – than it would be to cap national emissions, given that totalling an entire country’s emissions involves tracking hundreds of millions of different activities (e.g. the gas I’ve just used to cook my lunch).
But while the methodological / policy end of things does look easier under Oliver’s Kyoto 2 proposal, the politics look very much more difficult. For one thing, think of the developing country equity dimensions, which China and India showed so clearly at the G8. Oliver’s proposal effectively tells Chinese steel companies that they’ll have to compete against Japanese steel companies for emission permits in an open auction – a process that in effect takes no account of their developing status, and hence does away with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Good luck with securing agreement to that.
Secondly, allocating emission rights to states may indeed entail no guarantees that these states will then pass emission rights on to their citizens, it’s true. But the fact of the matter is that it’s those states that must negotiate any global deal – and those states that must enforce domestic level compliance with the global deal, even if the deal is done as Oliver wants it to be.
All in all, Oliver’s is a smart idea – especially its focus on a relatively small number of sites – but it’s hard to see it as feasible…
by Daniel Korski | Jul 17, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, North America
After several years, the U.S government finally unveiled a new personnel cadre – the Civilian Response Corps of the United States of America – who will deploy, alongside the U.S military, into post-conflict theatres. Readers will recall that Prime Minister Brown promised a British version when he launched the UK’s National Security Strategy (although nothing seems to have happened since).
Once the hoopla dies down, the Civilian Response Corps is actually a quite modest version of what was originally in President Bush’ 2007 State of the Union Address. Then he said he wanted to “establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps”, which would
function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.
The Address came after several years of trying to establish the State Department’s post-conflict office, but was probably motivated by the-then arrival of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad, both of whom wanted not only a surge of troops, but of civilians too.
However, the Civilian Response Corps consists of federal employees, not volunteers from the private sector, state and local governments. It is, in effect, bureaucratic fat built into the system so that the U.S government has the necessary in-house capacity to draw-on. This, of course, is good. But it is hardly an amazing breakthrough. The 250 posts it funds cannot even fill 300 Iraq jobs that are due to come up next year.
Verdict: A good move. One that should encourage others – like the Europeans – to set-up a civilian reserve, as I wrote here. But far from what is needed and what should be expected after several years of work.
by Alex Evans | Jul 9, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
Gideon Rachman’s feeling a bit down in the mouth. He had been planning, he says, to write his column this week on the obvious subject – the G8 – but then he had lunch with Alan Beattie, the FT’s world trade editor. As Gideon reports, Alan said “Let me guess, you will say…” – and then proceeded to forecast the entire planned column with uncanny accuracy.
Better yet, Alan then emailed Gideon with a standarised column on international institutions. It goes like this:
By reporters everywhere
An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.
“We are seriously concerned about this most serious outbreak of seriousness,” said the head of the institution, either a former minister from a developing country or a mid-level European or American bureaucrat. “This is a wake-up call to the world. They must take on board the vital message that my organisation exists.”
The director of the body, based in one of New York, Washington or an agreeable Western European city, was speaking at its annual conference, at which ministers from around the world gather to wring their hands impotently about the most fashionable issue of the day. The organisation has sought to justify its almost completely fruitless existence by joining its many fellow talking-shops in highlighting whatever crisis has recently gained most coverage in the global media.
“Governments around the world must come together to combat whatever this year’s worrying situation has turned out to be,” the director said. “It is not yet time to panic, but if it goes on much further without my institution gaining some credit for sounding off on the issue, we will be justified in labelling it a crisis.”
The organisation, whose existence the White House barely acknowledges and to which hardly any member government intends to give more money or extra powers, has long been fighting a war of attrition against its own irrelevance. By making a big deal out of the fact that the world’s most salient topical issue will be placed on its agenda and then issuing a largely derivative annual report on the subject, it hopes to convey the entirely erroneous impression that it has any influence whatsoever on the situation.
The intervention follows a resounding call to action in the communiqué of the Group of [number goes here] countries at their recent summit in a remote place no-one had previously heard of. The G[number goes here] meeting was preceded by the familiar interminable and inconclusive discussions about whether the G[number goes here] was sufficiently representative of the international community, or whether it should be expanded into a G[number plus 1, 2 or higher goes here] including China, India or any other scary emerging market country that attendees cared to name.
The story was given further padding by a study from an ambulance-chasing Washington think-tank, which warned that it would continue to convene media conference calls until its quixotic and politically suicidal plan to ameliorate whatever crisis was gathering had been given respectful though substantially undeserved attention.
Ends
