by Alex Evans | May 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
The FT has a long analysis piece this morning on how the political salience of environmental issues is faring in Britain as the economy nosedives. The news ain’t good:
At a time of falling house prices and rising household costs, people are telling pollsters that they are no longer quite so interested in saving the planet. Ipsos Mori has found that environmental concerns reached a pinnacle in January 2007, when 19 per cent of people, unprompted, named the environment as one of the biggest issues facing Britain today, compared with just a few per cent several years earlier. But by January 2008, that figure had fallen to 8 per cent, while the economy was rated a top concern by one in five. One very senior member of the shadow cabinet put it more strongly: “People hate this green stuff.”
But on the other hand, CNN has this:
At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate. The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.
Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.”
The question, then: as far as climate change is concerned, does a drop in public concern for the environment actually matter, as long as the oil price keeps on rising? Answer: yes, because there’s absolutely no law to say that pursuing enery independence is necessarily green.
Exhibit A: corn-based ethanol. Pointless as a climate mitigation measure (and seriously harmful on the food security front). As an energy security measure, unfortunately, rather effective.
Exhibit B: liquid fuels from coal. The US National Association of Mining is already out there making the arguments. Also rather effective from an energy security point of view, but not good at all for the climate.
All this adds up to a pretty good case for policymakers to focus heavy fire on unlocking electric cars, it seems to me, given how far away hydrogen still looks.
by Alex Evans | May 28, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post noting that the global food prices debate was hallmarked by three competing schools of thought on trade contesting food as a key battleground. One schools thinks liberalisation is the answer (think World Bank). A second reckons self-sufficiency is the way forward (think 1970s import substitution). A third likes long-term bilateral contracts (think of China’s approach to securing energy food supplies). But as I wrote at the time, it seemed to me that the none of these three approaches really offered a complete answer.
Talking to friends at NGOs recently, it seems they think so too. But that’s not to say that they’ve got a fully worked-up narrative yet either.
Back in 2005, during the heyday of Make Poverty History and the One Campaign, the mainstay of development NGOs’ policy agenda on trade was something called “policy space“. In a nutshell, policy space was an argument that developing countries should have the freedom to set their own trade rules rather than have liberalisation, or any other standardised approach, forced upon them: they should have the ‘space’ to determine their own policy in other words.
Fast forward to today, though, and the policy space narrative is starting to look in need of renewal – for three reasons.
The first is that arguments about policy space are fighting the last war. NGO activists love to saddle up to fight the evil Washington Consensus, with its dark plans of forcing privatisation, liberalisation and other ills on hapless low income countries. Just one problem: the Washington Consensus ended 15 years ago. Today, the idea that NGOs did so much to champion back then – that there are no one-size-fits-all answers in development – has gone mainstream.
Secondly, the policy space argument is silent about the trade issue that is at the top of developing country governments’ in-tray: security of supply. On food, energy and other commodities, the big worry this year is about scarcity of strategic resources – and as the Philippines discovered this year when its rice supply chains sputtered, all the policy space in the world is no use if the goods you need aren’t for sale.
Finally, arguments in favour of policy space rest on the problematic assumption that if only developing countries were free to take their own decisions, everything would be fine. But what about when developing countries use their policy space to take decisions that are extremely problematic for other poor countries – for instance when Argentina, Kazakhstan, Vietnam or India decide to reduce or suspend exports, leaving other countries (like the Philippines) in the lurch? Policy space has lots to say about developing countries’ rights, in other words – but what about their responsibilities?
While there’s no shortage of specific ideas and policy proposals in the trade context that can help to move things forward on the food prices agenda, what’s still lacking is a narrative that set out the basic approach.
by Charlie Edwards | May 23, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security
Richard mentioned Mike Davis’ compelling book Planet of the Slums a while back and I’ve recently finished it, coincidentally it seems, just at the point when shanty towns and squatter camps in and around Jo’berg have erupted into violence. As Davis argues in his book
the contemporary mega-slum poses unique problems of imperial order and social control that conventional geopolitics has barely begun to register. If the aim of the “war on terrorism” is to pursue the erstwhile enemy into his sociological and cultural labyrinth, then the poor peripheries of developing cities will be the permanent battlefields of the twenty-first century.
In Jo’berg attacks have taken place in Alexandra, Reiger Park, Diepsloot, and Primrose. Estimates of the numbers of immigrants chased from their homes range from 13,000 to 20,000 with police patrolling the streets and the army called in to quell the violence – the first time they have been on the streets since the end of apartheid.
The wave of violence against foreigners in South Africa has now spread to Cape Town where Somalis and Zimbabweans have been attacked by mobs who have looted their homes and shops overnight. The cause of the outbreak is down to rapidly escalating food and fuel prices mixed with a healthy dose of xenophobia with South Africans accusing foreigners of increasing crime and taking jobs.
by Alex Evans | May 22, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Influence and networks
Not long ago, readers will recall, Richard wrote a downcast post explaining why think tank reports are often condemned to live out their lives in a dusty cupboard, unwanted and unread. So it’s a pleasant duty to report a happy tale of think tank research having a genuinely decisive and traceable global impact – within 10 days of publication.
With the prospect of a good northern hemisphere wheat harvest getting ever more probable, the really big outstanding worry on food prices in the immediate term has been rice prices (which have trebled just this year) – especially since cyclone Nargis hasn’t done Burma’s production figures any good whatsoever.
But as Tom Slayton and Peter Timmer of the Center for Global Development pointed out in a briefing paper published on 9 May, there was also a potential solution: export some of Japan’s 1.5 million tons of surplus rice. Problem was, they explained, Japan couldn’t do this without permission from the US (the original source of much of the rice) – and without that permission, the rice would be fed to pigs and chickens in Japan.
Fast forward to ten days later – and Japan’s vice minister for agriculture was announcing plans to export 200,000 tons of rice to the Philipinnes, one of the most over-stretched rice importers, "as fast as possible", with US officials having worked flat out to make it happen (when they could have used WTO rules to block the move). While much more will need to be done, the impact is already clear, as the authors explain in a CGD blog post :
Before we released our CGD Note last week, world rice prices were hovering above $1,000 per ton (the FOB price for Thai 100% B, a widely accepted market marker). Word that Japan might unload its surplus contributed to subsequent price declines in both Bangkok and Chicago. We hope that today’s news — and subsequent announcements by other countries in a position to export surplus rice in the days and weeks ahead — will lead to further declines that will help to lower world rice prices closer to levels that are affordable to the world’s poor.
The post explains more about how the process happened so fast, including tracing how the story retained momentum through op-ed pieces and well-timed Congressional testimony. As the authors say, "Japan and the U.S. should take a deserved bow for their quick actions ". But it’s Slayton and Timmer themselves who really deserve the curtain call here. Bravo.
by David Steven | May 21, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America, UK
I am at the New America Foundation this morning, where David Miliband is due to ‘discuss the challenge of promoting Western style liberalism, democracy, civil society development in a world that in some corners views the word “democracy” suspiciously.’ The event will be streamed live here.
This is Miliband’s opportunity to connect with a younger audience in Washington. The meeting has been set up by the British Council, as part of its TN2020 network. I moderated the network’s first event in Berlin just before Easter, while Alex and I wrote an essay on climate for the TN2020 book. The intro:
The climate problem is now urgent enough to be a major determinant of the transatlantic relationship. In the wake of Bali, we are promised summits and shindigs galore as the world struggles to agree a global deal to replace Kyoto. This will keep climate at the top of the political and news agenda.
But if a global deal is signed in 2009, the fun will only just have started. Greenhouse gas emissions will need to be slashed by at least half, and probably much more, by 2050. Rich countries will be expected to make deep cuts almost immediately. A colossal and unprecedented economic realignment will therefore be needed. It’s a huge task. So how will Europe and the US fare on this shifting terrain?
The warm-up act is Andrew Sullivan, über-blogger and hawk turned hardcore Obamafan, and absolutely charming in person. He’s talking about the way that – in the new media age – the British and American media audience are merging, with southern England a centre left or centre right ‘blue state’. “I often feel my blog is better understood in London than it is in certain parts of the United States,” he says.
But then Miliband arrives and Sullivan is shuffled off the stage. Introduced by the Washington Note’s Steve Clemons (and our host) as ‘primarily a blogger’, Miliband sits on the table and talks without notes.
He starts with the much-stated, but seldom practised, point that the new diplomacy needs to meld state-to-state relations, economic integration, and the ‘new public diplomacy’ – the mobilisation of non-state audiences.
The great causes in international relations are far from dead, he says, focusing on four challenges. Can we build strong communities across race and religion? Can we take on the conflicts that blight people’s lives? Can we stabilise the global climate? And can we build stronger and more effective international institutions?
Miliband argues that the problems of globalization will be solved by extending globalization. The world needs to tackle its problems through more internationalism not less.
I suggest that the major challenge for globalisation is the combination of rising expectations with limits to strategic resources (food, energy, emissions etc – it’s now a familiar list). What impact will the politics of scarcity have on the international system?
Miliband’s response (with apologies for the paraphrase – hard to type while nodding attentively):
We are living through an unprecedented triple crunch of credit, food and fuel. The common denominator is between food and fuel is carbon dependence. Climate change closes the circle. The key question is whether we can get on a lower carbon trajectory or not. If we don’t, the conflicts that people fear are a real danger.
So, yes, we share an analysis – but I suspect that, collectively, the world is far from having the answers…
