by Charlie Edwards | Apr 29, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Global system, South Asia
What are the connections between climate change and migration? Not as obvious as one might think… one of the conversations we’ve been having in the coffee break is the lack of hard evidence when it comes to the relationship(s) between development, conflict, and climate change and the increasing difficulty to demonstrate cause and effect. Rhetorically making the connections between cause and effect (between climate change and migration) is pretty easy and serves a useful purpose – it highlights an issue and a set of tangible actions that the government can either deliver on or think further about. But there two things we need to take into account.
Firstly, everyone seems to agree there is a real dearth of evidence on the causal links between risks and issues. Much of what we know rests on stories, specific observations, estimates (or in some cases guesstimates) and anecdotes. All of these are time and context specific and yet they can have a major effect on the system often resulting in superficial and perverse actions. For one thing it is much easier for governments and international institutions to focus on ‘food bombing’, ‘blanket throwing’ and ‘water distribution’ than identifying and managing root causes which demands sophisticated, process driven approaches based on a shared awareness of the problem and a common agenda.
This leads to a second issue – that we don’t have a standard approach across the system to conflict or fragile and failing states and as we don’t always agree on the scale and nature of the problem we (government’s, international institutions and NGOs) end up taking quite differing approaches (so for example we focus on public education when we should be thinking of risk reduction)… this doesn’t mean we should be looking for a unified theory of development, as one NGO person scoffed at but it does mean evidence becomes a key factor in how we manage the problems in the future.
by Alex Evans | Apr 22, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
I’ve just published a new Chatham House paper on why food prices are rising and what it means for development: download it here.
One of the paper’s main arguments is that we need to make sure that the urgent doesn’t crowd out the essential in discussions of global food strategies: immediate action on humanitarian assistance needs to be matched by a sustained effort to invest in shared awareness between policymakers of what needs to be done to achieve “the feeding of the ten billion”. From the press release:
While the current focus on humanitarian aid is welcome, we need to be thinking now about the long term, too – especially how to grow food supply and make sure that the process benefits rural poor people. What we’re seeing now is just the start of a multi-decade challenge: feeding a global population set to approach ten billion by 2050, in the face of climate change, tighter energy supply, and growing competition for land and water resources.
How we frame and perceive the issue matters enormously. If the prevailing narrative is a Malthusian story of insufficiency, then the risk is of self-fulfilling prophecy – if for example fears that there isn’t enough to go around lead to countries panic-buying food for stockpiles, pushing prices up even more. Instead, we need to see this as a transition to a new stable state. Feeding a world population of ten billion people in 2050 won’t be easy, but it can be done with forethought, collective action and if we don’t panic.
Update: coverage on Associated Press, The Independent and Channel 4 News. One of the many pleasing aspects of publishing things through Chatham House is the general assumption that any of their authors will be as august as the Institute itself. Thus the Independent has kindly conferred upon me a doctorate that I’m fairly sure I do not have; more recently, El Pais has promoted me to Professor.
by Alex Evans | Apr 17, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Via Joshua Keating at ForeignPolicy.com, the news that German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel has issued a statement strongly criticising President Bush’s new climate change “policy” under the glorious headline,
Gabriel criticises Bush’s Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership.
As Joshua so rightly comments, “With a title like that, why even bother with a statement?”
by David Steven | Apr 17, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Influence and networks
Today, I gave the closing address at the RUSI conference, Protecting the Critical Infrastructure, in a session introduced by RUSI’s head of risk and resilience, Anthony McGee. From the introduction to the conference by RUSI’s head, Professor Michael Clarke:
Protecting the Critical National Infrastructure and ensuring the continuation of political, social and economic activity is vital to the UK. As a modern ‘just-in-time’ society is becoming increasingly dependent on goods and services distributed through critical infrastructure, so the potential consequences of disruption to that infrastructure become more serious.
However, the increasing importance of well protected, resilient infrastructure is matched by the growing complexities and interdependencies of a CNI which is spread across sectors and nation states. Relationships between stakeholders are somewhat disjointed, the ownership of risk is unclear and yet the consequences of failure are potentially catastrophic.
Most of the speakers got stuck into the nitty gritty of how infrastructure fails and why – with last summer’s catastrophic floods as exhibit A. My job, however, was to take a somewhat broader view of resilience at a time when the old ‘command and control’ paradigm is failing…
The talk draws heavily (of course) on my collaboration with Alex Evans, but also on work with the economist, David Bloom. Also there’s quite a overlap with these GD posts. Full text after the jump (or here as a pdf).
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by David Steven | Apr 10, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Middle East and North Africa, Off topic
Below the jump, Alex and my talk at last weekend’s Progressive Governance summit – it’s a four minute summary of our paper on multilateralism and global risks. (more…)
