by David Steven | Jul 30, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
Over at The Interpreter, Sam Roggeveen picks up on Alex’s post on Doha to wonder whether a concern for resilience automatically leads to protectionism:
On one level, it makes sense. If the aim of resilience is to build the capability for society to ‘take a punch’ and rebound, whether from a terrorist attack, natural disaster or even a global economic calamity that restricts food imports, it makes sense to have the capacity for local subsistence.
But following that logic to its end would justify continued and even expanded protection of any industry that can be defined as ‘strategic’. Or at a further extreme, it would put you in the company of the survivalist subculture that stockpiles food in the mountains in preparation for the crumbling of civilisation.
I doubt Alex is in favour of such things, but I’d be interested to know how his resilience doctrine escapes that logic.
Let me chip in with two points. First, I really don’t like the ‘bounce back-ability’ definition of resilience (though it’s a term I often slip into using). The aim is to navigate from one ‘solution’ another, not to stick firmly to where you are.
As Alex and I put it in a forthcoming article for Renewal:
In formal terms, resilience is defined as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks.” (Walker et al 2004). Perhaps the best practical definition we’ve come across is the one offered by the Harvard Business Review. It states that resilience results from being able to face up to reality, improvise in the face of unfamiliar challenges, while finding a source of ‘meaning’ that encourages long-term thinking (Coutu 2002).
Both definitions emphasize the need to change while maintaining a coherent identity. Systems that are brittle, that try to remain static at all costs, are precisely the ones that are most vulnerable to collapse. On the other hand, systems that are flexible, adaptable, that deal with crisis through renewal are the ones that will tend to survive. This is, in other words, a classic collective action problem. The central determinant of a system’s resilience is the ability to act collectively, coherently, and with the right balance between short and long-term interests.
In a high resilience system, risk – and response to that risk – is distributed throughout the system. Individuals and their groups see their interests as compatible with the collective. They have a common understanding of the challenges a society faces and take decisions accordingly, but this understanding is not a straitjacket. Different actors play to the strengths. There is a balance between initiative and co-ordination. In a low resilience system, on the other hand, risks are felt disproportionately by some groups and responses are thus over-centralized. Individuals pursue narrow self-interest; conflict between groups intensifies; and key institutions are increasingly seen as failing to ‘deliver’.
And from this comes my second point. Resilience of what? My starting point would be that the only way of providing any kind of decent life to 6, 7, 8 or 9 billion people is through an interdependent global system. That means building resilience into the international system, and then nesting it into all systems that sit below.
For me, that should rule out protectionism – though not attempts to hedge against a breakdown at the international level. But of course, it won’t. And that’s a problem. Indeed, collapse has been persuasively described by Joseph Tainter as a loss of complexity and retreat into constituent parts.
The process of collapse…is a matter of a substantial decline in an established level of complexity. A society that has collapsed is suddenly smaller, less differentiated and heterogeneous, and characterized by fewer specialized parts; it displays less social differentiation; and it is able to exercise control over the behaviour of its members.
It is able at the same time to command smaller surpluses, to offer fewer benefits and inducements to membership; and it is less capable of providing subsistence and defensive security for a regional population. It may decompose to some of the constituent building blocks…out of which it was created.
by Alex Evans | Jul 29, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Global system
No-one quite wants to pronounce the patient dead just yet (US Trade Representative Susan Schwab: “This is not the time to talk about collapse … the US commitments remain on the table”; unnamed EU source: “It’s clearly not a success. But no one will want to say that it’s the end of the round”) – but it’s hard to see much sign of life either, especially after all of Pascal Lamy’s talk of this being the final, final, final deadline.
It’s ironic that at a point when all the talk is of how high food prices are, the issue on which the talks foundered was a mechanism designed to protect developing countries from low food prices. ICTSD explains:
The ’special safeguard mechanism’ would allow developing countries to raise tariffs beyond bound levels, in principle to stall inflows of cheap imports that could displace farmers. The issue neatly splits the interests of import-sensitive developing countries and competitive farm exporters, including those in the developing world: the former want to have recourse to protection, the latter want predictable access to overseas markets.
One of the main sticking points has been whether, and by how much, countries should be allowed under the SSM to impose safeguard duties in excess of current (i.e., pre-Doha) tariff ceilings. The G-33 bloc of developing countries, which includes China, India, and Indonesia, insists that this may sometimes be necessary for safeguard duties to have the desired effect, i.e., protecting farmers.
Or there’s the pithier version from another unnamed official, this time in the IHT:
It risks becoming a totemic issue: subsistence farming versus commodity exports.
That is, in some ways, the long and the short of the issue that led to the talks’ collapse, though needless to say there were many other sticking points too – and it’s another illustration of how debates over agricultural trade are increasingly split into divergent schools of thought. For fans of liberalisation – like the US – the logic is straightforward. With food prices as high as they are, there’s never been a better time to get rid of import tariffs – so why the hell should China and India want to be able to raise them even higher than they were before Doha?
China’s approach, on the other hand, is rooted in concerns about resilience and security of supply in a period of volatility and turbulence: hence its desire to maximise access to imports while at the same time protecting its internal agricultural sector, in which smaller farmers predominate. (While smallholders are inevitably at risk from dumping, they can also be extremely productive in the right circumstances: IFAD cites the example of Vietnam, which has gone from being a food-deficit country to being the world’s second largest exporter of rice – largely thanks to development of the country’s smallholder sector.)
It looks like there will be no further talks until towards the middle of next year, after elections in the US and India – even then, things are likely to be tougher than now given rising protectionist sentiment around the world. Also worth noting that the collapse of the talks – and in particular the acrimony between the US and the two key emerging economies – doesn’t exactly augur well for progress in climate talks.
If you want the full play-by-play, Alan Beattie’s post-mortem is where to go, and ICTSD will have the full details up on their site tomorrow.
by Charlie Edwards | Jul 23, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Influence and networks, UK
A propos my post below – Brown has said that the NSF core group will be made up of 12 men and women. But who could they be? Join in the fun and send us your thoughts.
Some help: Brown suggested that the 12 publicly appointed members would reflect the broad range of the subject areas in the national security strategy. Taking into account the fact that Brown will nominate a Chair that leaves 11 places.
My national security top trumps below:
Chair: (Most likely to be a retired or serving senior civil servant – possibly in the resilience space?)
1. International terrorism Baroness Manningham-Buller of Northampton
2. Weapons of mass destruction Paul Cornish
3. Conflicts and failed states Clare Lockhart
4. Pandemics – Professor Lindsey Davies
5. Trans-national crime – Misha Glenny
6. Climate change – Nick Stern
7. Competition for energy – Nick Butler
8. Poverty & Governance – Paul Collier
9. Defence & Armed forces – General Sir Rupert Smith
10. Demographic changes – Adair Turner
11. Globalisation David Held
by Charlie Edwards | Jul 23, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, UK
Tucked away in a Written Ministerial Statement yesterday comes news of progress on the UK’s national security forum:
Core group: The forum will have a core group of 12 publicly appointed members reflecting the broad range of the subject areas in the national security strategy. It is likely to include people with a range of experience and expertise in these issues (see below);
A register of associates: and in addition to this core group the Government will create a register of up to 100 expert associates will be who could be called upon to provide advice in specific areas.
Purpose: The purpose of the forum will be to provide expert advice to the National Security Committee (Cabinet Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID)).
Interestingly the NSF will be set up as a non-departmental public body, for the moment however, the Government will be establishing an interim forum in the early Autumn with members appointed on advice from the Cabinet Office. The Chair of the interim body will be announced shortly.
Role: The forum will be invited to focus on the published strategy to inform the annual updates, although it will be able to commission its own research subject to agreement of its programme by NSID.
The national security forum will be supported by a new national security secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
Alongside that, a horizon scanning unit will be established which will co-ordinate the security-related horizon scanning currently undertaken in a number of Government Departments, with the intention of giving it an overarching framework and a more coherent output.
The Government will also create (in consultation with select committees) a Joint Committee on the national security strategy comprising the Chairs of the key departmental Select Committees with an interest in national security, and other Members of Parliament and Peers with particular interests or experience.
The National Risk Register will be published shortly – its purpose will be to:
give the public information about risks to the UK from natural disasters, accidents and malicious threats over the next five years so that those who wish to can prepare for the consequences.
And there’s more after the jump.
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Jul 22, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
I’m currently immersed in writing the main pamphlet for my project on food prices with Chatham House (hence not much posting for the last few days) – but I have to take ten minutes out to sing the praises of the gorgeous piece of writing I’ve been immersed in for the past couple of hours.
The paper in question is Escaping Poverty Traps: the Chronic Poverty report 2008-09, from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. The title, admittedly, makes it sound like any other international development report of the sort that fill cardboard boxfiles in great reams of unread worthiness in people’s offices around the world. But don’t be fooled. This is an edgy, push-the-envelope, fundamentally political piece of work.
What makes it so, above all, is its understanding of what poverty actually is. The report brushes aside the dry platitudes about the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, and brings the reader face to face with the nature of social exclusion. In particular, it explores five kinds of poverty trap:
– Insecurity, including conflict and violence, but also economic crises and natural hazards;
– Limited citizenship, where the report bluntly calls for us all to “move beyond the good governance agenda, and purely technocratic interventions around ‘getting institutions right’ or ‘strengthening civil society'”, and focusing instead on “individuals’ engagement in the political sphere”;
– Spatial disadvantage, through four overlapping dimensions, including remoteness, natural resource endowments, political disadvantage and weak integration;
– Social discrimination, including social relationships of power, patronage and competition that entrap people in exploitative relationships; and
– Poor work opportunities, caused by low or non-existent growth, or by growth happening only in enclaves.
As this kind of analysis makes clear, this is anything but a technical agenda. It also underscores commonalities across different kinds of countries: so while the report’s clear about the particular challenges of working in ‘chronically deprived countries’, it also stresses that these traps can and do afflict poor people in much higher income countries too.
So what should donors do about all this? One of the approaches that the report’s keenest on is social protection systems (which I’ve written about here before, and which will be the focus of one of the main parts of my food pamphlet). These can take many forms – food vouchers, pensions, payment for public works, conditional cash transfers, skills training and so on – but in all cases the key is that the assistance is targeted at society’s most vulnerable people, with a view to helping them manage, prevent and ultimately overcome their vulnerability.
As that objective implies, social protection’s an agenda that’s very much about promoting grassroots resilience (something we could do with more of here in Britain as well). But the authors of the Chronic Poverty report think it can help to produce something else as well: durable social compacts between states and their citizens, that in turn point directly towards effective, legitimate, responsive and accountable states.
This kind of approach to development is exciting. It’s practical, tangible, full of ideas you can see working in practice; but it’s also about real world politics, where there are vested interests, obstacles to change, coalitions that need to be built and sustained. As the consensus on international development that was put together in 2005 starts to come due for renewal, this is the direction in which the development agenda needs to head.
