by Mark Weston | Jul 23, 2008 | Africa, Economics and development
I was doing a little research for my upcoming book on West Africa yesterday, and came up with the following factoid: since 1960, the top five countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (that is, the countries with the best quality of life in the world – Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland) have had 44 changes of government following peaceful democratic elections. The total for the bottom five countries? Two. Yes, in a total of two hundred and forty years, there have been just two peaceful handovers of power that have respected the will of the people. One in Sierra Leone, one in Mali. Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Niger have had none. Doubters of the economic value of democracy, take note.
by David Steven | Jul 8, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, North America
Like Alex, I spoke at the United Nations University symposium on climate change and innovation on Friday – and one notable theme was the ferocious kicking that Kyoto received from some of the speakers.
Leading the onslaught were Ted Nordhaus, author of The Death of Environmentalism, and Gwyn Prins, who runs the LSE Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events.
Nordhaus, writing with Michael Shellenberger, has called for Kyoto to be scrapped in the current issue of Democracy. “Kyoto is dead,” they write, “and that’s a good thing. In its place, we need massive global investment in new clean energy technology.”
Gwyn Prins takes a similar line, an argument he set out in a pamphlet written with Steve Rayner, and subsequent op-ed for Nature (which he says received a bigger response than anything the journal has previously published).
On Friday, both attempted to bang a few nails into Kyoto’s coffin. Gwyn, in particular, was adamant that the protocol had long been dead. Only a few diehards – emotionally incapable of accepting they are wrong – had failed to admit its passing:
We have to find a way, diplomatically, for the Europeans to join in [to a new approach to climate control] without losing face. You don’t get progress if you tell people that they must admit they made a mistake. Most of us don’t like to admit that we have made mistakes.
Prins and Nordhaus agree on a great deal. On Kyoto, they argue that:
- Its targets have had no impact on those countries that adopted them – not even slowing the rate of increase in their emissions.
- In Europe, any emissions reductions that have occurred are due to factors that precede the implementation of the Kyoto protocol.
- European emissions are rising faster than American ones (a ‘hard fact’ that embarrasses European politicians who relish looking down on ‘ugly Americans’ as Gwyn put it).
On a future climate regime, they contend that:
- Kyoto’s failure means that the Copenhagen agreement should exclude binding targets.
- Instead, a ‘bottom-up’ approach should be adopted, with investment in technology at its heart. This will reduce emissions more effectively than binding targets.
- Leadership on climate is shifting away from Europe and towards the United States.
I am going to leave future frameworks to another post. In this one – and below the jump – I look at Kyoto’s impact on Europe. There’s a lot of detail in the main post, so here are the key conclusions:
- It’s too early to say whether Kyoto has worked as advertised in Europe – but the evidence suggests that Europe as a whole will meet, or even exceed its targets.
- Later reductions in emissions seem likely to be due to policy responses to Kyoto. Governments are reacting to the pressure that a binding target applies.
- It’s likely that Europe would be emitting more if Kyoto had never been ratified – and it’s a real stretch to argue that the US is doing better than the EU on emissions.
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by David Steven | Jun 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America
I have nothing against John McCain. The man is a war hero. He has carved out a distinctive career as a political maverick. And his support for the surge in Iraq showed a willingness to stake out a position that, at the time, seemed politically suicidal.
But McCain keeps saying stupid things. In March, he wasn’t clear whether condoms prevent HIV (they don’t – but that’s another story), while ten days ago, when Obama finally slayed Grendel’s wife, he gave the worst speech I have ever seen. (Fox’s reaction was priceless, while you can watch McCain’s ‘lime green’ speech here if you missed it.)
This week, McCain has been in trouble for his assertion that bringing American troops home from Iraq was “not too important.” Here’s the full quote:
Interviewer: And a lot of people say the surge is now working.
McCain: Anybody who knows the facts on the ground will say that.
Interviewer: If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCain: No. (Shrug.) But that’s not too important. What’s important are the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.
All this echoes his remarks from January, when in response to a question, he advocated keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years if casualties could be eliminated – a way of controlling “a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training and equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day.”
Again, McCain took US troop presence in Korea and Japan as yardstick for what the US could achieve in Iraq, echoing the Bush administration’s desire for a network of permanent bases in the country.
What’s the problem with this vision? Apart from its improbability, there’s the evidence that suggests that an enduring US presence would be highly likely to provoke an equally enduring campaign of suicide bombing.
Someone should therefore ask McCain – how many suicide attacks does he want?
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by David Steven | Jun 12, 2008 | Global system, South Asia
Last week, I gave a talk at the Defence Academy on the new public diplomacy, focusing in particular on its implications for Afghanistan.
The full text is after the jump or read it as a pdf.
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by Mark Weston | Jun 9, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia
Turkey’s government – its most successful in decades – is on its way out. Last week, the Constitutional Court overturned the recent lifting of the ban on headscarves in universities. Female students are once again being told what to wear by the secular establishment.
More importantly, this means the Court is almost certain to kick the AK Party out of government and ban its leaders from politics for five years. The country’s chief prosecutor, backed by the army, opposition parties and the liberal intelligentsia (all of whom are miffed about losing their long grip on power), filed a petition to ban the party in March, on the flimsy grounds that relaxing the headscarf ban showed that Tayyip Erdo?an and his colleagues wanted to turn Turkey into an Islamic theocracy. This despite Turkey looking more like a modern, thriving democracy now than it ever has; the AK Party’s time in power has coincided with rapid economic growth, growing proximity to the European Union and significant progress in improving human rights. AK’s predecessors achieved none of this.
The secular fundamentalists accuse the government of attempting to take Turkey back to the past. Such an accusation could at least as justifiably be levelled at them. The EU has warned that banning the government, which was re-elected with an overwhelming majority this spring, will jeopardise the country’s membership prospects. The economy is going backwards as the government diverts all its attention to fighting the court action. And if AK is closed, Turks will again be saddled with the ineffective, corrupt secular parties they were so keen to get rid of. A return to the dark ages indeed.
