by Alex Evans | Feb 5, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Further to David’s previous posts on this, John Robb is working the problem too. Three observations from him:
Vulnerability. All of the same network vulnerabilities we see other infrastructures are in force with the Internet’s long haul systems (the network analysis of systempunkts applies). If this was a real attack rather than a series of accidents (the geographical concentration is interesting in this regard), then this was likely a capabilities test that yielded data on response times, impact, and duration.
Means. Attacks on undersea cables are within the capacity of small groups to accomplish. With precise mapping (these cables take very circuitous routes), a cable could be cut with as little as an anchor. However, nation-states are the most capable in this sphere (including, a growing number of micropowers). Why would a nation-state do this? Deterrence. Disconnection from the global communications grid is very likely become a form of economic/social coercion in the future (for standard national security reasons all the way down to an inability/unwillingness to crack down on rampant Internet crime, which is growing into a HUGE global problem).
Precision. It’s very hard to precisely target an attack’s damage. Regional impacts are unavoidable (collective punishment for everyone that connects to the target country?). Here’s a final point to consider: closed systems like China’s that route traffic through firewall choke-points, or other closely held infrastructure, are likely very vulnerable to an attack of this type.
Also: Valdis Krebs offers a pre-9/11 take on how social network analysis can be applied to computer networks to make them more resilient…
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 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
And so to a new report on soft (i.e. agricultural) commodities from Bidwells, the agribusiness property consultancy, noteworthy for its observations about water scarcity and the need for productivity on existing agricultural land to rise by as much as 50 per cent (!) by 2050 if we’re to feed 9 billion.
In particular, though, note this interesting remark in the context of a discussion of how to invest in agricultural land profitably:
Logistics need consideration. The distances to market will impact on the options available and can be vital in cost sensitive commodities where transport costs can easily make up 20% of their total value. Cheap land a long way from markets and infrastructure may only be profitably farmed at very high prices.
Translated: before we see serious investment in increasing available acreage, investors will want assurance that prices for crops are going to remain high, in order to avoid being stranded with massive sunk costs. Sound familiar? Why yes! It’s the same with oil: no-one’s going to invest in hugely expensive, infrastucture-intensive exploration and production in the middle of nowhere (probably in temperatures of -30 degrees C on a warm day) without assurance of the oil price remaining high.
Problem is, while confidence is rising that the long term trend in oil and crops is upwards, short run trends are likely to be notable primarily for their volatility. Until a few weeks ago, lots of investors were confident that demand in China, India and other emerging economies would hold things up – but the balance of consensus seems to be tipping towards Nouriel Roubini‘s much more bearish view, which says that emerging economies absolutely remain coupled to industrialised countries’ fortunes.
by Alex Evans | Jan 27, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Yale and Columbia universities have just published their 2008 Environmental Performance Index, which grades 149 countries on their sustainability. Here’s the press release and the summary for policymakers. According to the Index, the most environmentally sustainable country in the world is – ready? – Switzerland. Then Sweden, Norway and Finland. The United States comes in at number 39. China is at number 105; India even lower, at 120.
Now when you stop and actually think about these “data”, you begin to experience a creeping sense that something strange is going on here. Start from the recognition that climate change is far and away the most significant global issue that the Index looks at, and then ask yourself: how can the United States be 66 places above China – when US emissions are 19.5 tons of CO2 per person compared to less than 4 tons per capita in China (source: WRI EarthTrends)? How can China score so much better than India, when Indian per capita emissions are between a third and a quarter of those of China? And what is Finland doing in the top four countries with per capita CO2 emissions of more than 14 tons per person? What on earth is going on here? Were the researchers drunk?
Dan Esty, were he here, would presumably point out in a tone of hurt sincerity that his Index aggregates numerous indicators other than per capita emissions. Indoor air pollution, irrigation stress, pesticide regulation, access to sanitation, habitat protection and many others are all part of the mix. Plus there are other climate indicators besides emissions per capita; industrial carbon intensity and emissions per unit of electricity generated are also used to gauge climate friendliness.
But that’s exactly why this “Index” is so pernicious – and deserves to be roundly derided as the crude exercise in bullshit that it is. The point about Esty’s indicator set is that countries score badly for being poor. Notice anything about the bottom 20 countries on the index? How about the fact that 16 of them are in Africa?
Of course if you’re poor, you’re more likely to lack access to sanitation, suffer from poor indoor air quality or struggle in combating infectious disease (another metric used by the Index). But much more significant is the fact that the world’s poorest people and countries are those that tread lightest on the planet in terms of their consumption and carbon footprints. If anything, they deserve to be consuming more of the earth’s resources, including atmospheric space.
Yet what Esty’s extraordinarily misleading Index does is to convey the opposite message: that’s it’s the poor who are most at fault in driving environmental unsustainability. Words fail me.
by Alex Evans | Jan 26, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
The FT’s consumer industries correspondent, Jenny Wiggins – who along with commodities correspondent Javier Blas deserves a medal (or at the very least a rise) for excellence in covering the food prices story over the last year – is looking at changing patterns of food consumption in India in the paper’s Saturday magazine today. The whole story is a terrific piece of feature journalism, but it was this passage towards the end that got me thinking in particular:
India, which is still trying to lift millions of people out of poverty, is having problems satisfying its appetites. One of the reasons the Punjabi dairy farmers are doing so well is that demand for milk, and milk-derived products, is increasing so quickly that farmers can’t keep up. India, despite being the world’s largest producer of milk, temporarily halted exports of milk powder last summer to try and stop domestic milk prices from rising too fast after some dairy farmers were tempted by record high global prices and sold their product to exporters rather than local food producers.
Milk isn’t the only hot commodity. After restarting wheat imports in 2006, for the first time since the late 1990s, India banned wheat exports last year. The country can, of course, try and produce more food. But Ajay Shankar, a government secretary in the ministry of commerce and industry, says that while India wants to increase its agricultural yields (which are low compared with the rest of the world), expanding the amount of land farmed is difficult in a country already struggling to support more than one billion people. In Punjab, the state that produces a hefty chunk of India’s wheat, rice and milk, decades of intensive farming and heavy fertiliser use have taken a heavy toll on the land, and water tables are falling sharply.
Although India’s economy is expanding at about 9 per cent a year, its agricultural sector is slowing, with growth declining from 4.7 per cent between 1992-1997 to just 1.5 per cent between 2002-2006. If India can’t produce enough of its own food, it will have to import more. Shankar says it is unclear how much more food India will need, but acknowledges that significant increases in imports would affect the global economy. ”If we become a major importer of food grains as some fear, clearly it will have an impact on global prices,” he says over tea in his Delhi office.
And India is not the only country expected to import more food in coming years. Over the next decade, per capita income in China is expected to triple, which means the Chinese will be eating more – and better. They are already each eating twice as much meat as they were in 1990 and the country now accounts for one third of all meat eaten in the world, according to research by Goldman Sachs.
Now as Wiggins explains earlier in the article, it’s changing consumption in the BRIC countries, more than falling grain stocks or increasing government support for biofuels, that’s really been driving rising food prices. But if the two most populous of those four nations, India and China, are having to import more and more of their food, that raises the question: who’s going to be growing the supply to meet all this extra demand?
And the thing that struck me, as I pondered this, was that if there’s one region that by rights out to be making a mint out of rising food prices, it’s Africa. Africa, after all, is the continent that the green revolution forgot. While productivity was going through the roof in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, African agriculture remains stubbornly unproductive. Now that agricultural commodities appear finally to be heading out of their interminable slump, there’s a powerful case for investors to tackle the productivity gap, you’d think. So is lady luck finally smiling on Africa’s people?
Well, a big part of the answer to that question depends on whether you’re looking at those of her people in her mushrooming cities, or alternatively those of her people still working the land. If you look at the global statistics on hungry people, most of them are in rural areas. Fully 50 per cent of the world’s undernourished people (400 million souls) are in low income farm households. Another 22 per cent, 176 million people, are rural landless and low income non-farm households; and a further 8 per cent, 64 million people, are poor herders, fishers or forest people dependent on community or public resources.
In fact, only 20 per cent of the world’s undernourished people are in low income urban households – 176 million people – and a great many of them are to be found in China and India rather than Africa. [All stats from John Shaw’s masterly World Food Security: a history since 1945.] So presumably, rising prices for agricultural goods ought to spell good news for all those rural poor in Africa, especially if rising prices also incentivise investment in improving productivity – right?
As I blogged back in October last year, development economist legend Dani Rodrik’s answer is that it depends – but that “it depends in predictable ways on household and country characteristics”:
…it depends on whether a poor household is a net seller or buyer of food (that is, whether it grows more or less food than it consumes). This means that the rural poor generally tends to benefit from higher food prices, whereas the urban poor generally get hurt. How large the impact is depends, in turn, on the size of the food account as a share of total expenditures or income of a household. And whether the change is good or bad for a nation’s poor as a whole depends on the geography of poverty in a country.
But there’s a factor that Rodrik overlooked: climate change. While northern latitude global breadbaskets like Canada and Russia stand to be net beneficiaries from climate change in the short to medium term, the outlook for Africa is not good at all. Falling yields as a result of climate impacts risk increasing Africa’s needs for imported food, rather than its opportunities to export food. For countries already dependent on imported oil – which, as I noted in December, have already seen all their increases in aid and debt relief from the last three years wiped out by higher fuel import costs – it’s a vicious spiral, especially given that biofuels mean that energy and food prices are now linked.
The irony and injustice here is heartbreaking. Just when one major global trend – rising food prices – looks set finally to offer Africa some kind of a break, we find that in fact other trends – climate change and energy scarcity – may convert higher food prices instead into yet another problem, that despite being created elsewhere, somehow ends up in Africa’s lap.
(For more on the international implications of rising food prices, see my briefing note from December last year.)
Update: see also
– On collision course: scarcity and African patronage systems – 5 March 2008
– Food prices: where to get briefed – 2 March 2008
– Third world debt (the sequel) – 1 March 2008
