More subversion and mayhem from everyone’s favourite enfants terribles of the international civil society scene, Avaaz.org: here’s the full page advert (big version) that will be appearing in tomorrow’s FT (and getting delivered to every G8 delegate’s hotel room door).
Yes, that’s Yasuo Fukuda, Stephen Harper and George Bush modelling the cutesy clothes. Go sign the petition.
The privatization of diplomacy is nothing new. Large lobbying firms function in many respects like diplomatic services. Hill and Knowlton, for example, represent Republika Srpska, a province in Bosnia, in ways that a traditional diplomatic service might do – by arranging visits by key officials, lobbying for Republika Srpska’s views with other diplomats etc.
In the non-for-profit world, Independent Diplomat is an organisation set up by former British diplomat Carne Ross to work for those polities that may not be recognized internationally or have the wherewithal to conduct their own diplomacy.
Even governmental diplomacy has privatized elements of its operation, for example IT, visa services or language training. In their 2007 report on the FCO, Alex and David suggest opening up all recruitment in the FCO to outsiders. Chatting to the FCO’s head of HR, I know that the FCO is trying to show greater appreciation of personnel who have spent time outside the diplomatic service, for example in think-tanks or private companies.
But why not take a step further? Why not privatize a whole embassy? That’s right, tender a contract for a company or consortium to run, say, the British embassy in Mongolia for two years, including consular, press, political reporting and diplomatic representation. Let’s see if the private sector can run it more efficiently and cheaper than the government. At the end, ask the NAO for an evaluation after three years. In fact, ask NAO to compare the “private” embassy and a government-run one.
Naturally, the FCO would have to stipulate in the contract a whole series of conditions, including the qualifications of the ambassador, experience and security clearance of staff etc.
But this is nothing new. DfiD outsources an entire department – CHAsE OT, the department’s humanitarian operations coordination team – to a private company, Crown Agents, which to all intents and purposes acts like any other department inside DfiD. In the tender process, DfiD evaluates bids in part on who will lead CHAsE OT department. As it happens, most CHAsE OT heads have had governmental experience. In other words, the requirement for HMA Ulan Bator may be former ambassadorial experience.
What would the advantages be? To start off, to earn a profit a private company may ensure tighter budget control, try to import IT solutions from its other businesses, use up-to-date management techniques etc. etc. Perhaps it will not produce anything better or cheaper, but why not try it. Come on David Miliband and Peter Ricketts, I dare you.
Gordon Brown’s blunt call on Brits to stop wasting food marks an interesting moment in the food prices debate.
So far, policymakers have concentrated almost entirely on the supply side – specifically, with the need to increase food production by 50 per cent by 2030, in line with World Bank demand forecasts. (I worry that too much focus on the overall quantum of food produced risks obscuring the equally fundamental issue of who has access to it – but let’s leave that aside for now.)
What Brown’s emphasis on waste does is to give the demand side of the equation equal billing – a position it’s deserved all along, but hasn’t received from policymakers, presumably due to anxieties about implying that consumers may have to change behaviour.
The issue of food waste is a massive issue in its own right – the UK wastes 4 million tonnes of food a year, and the forthcoming Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit report on food says that up to 40 per cent of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it’s consumed. But its long term significance may be as a bridgehead for opening up a broader front on demand reduction: as the food equivalent of energy efficiency, if you like.
Another of the battles in that front will be over biofuels – a major new source of demand for crops. The leak last week of an internal World Bank document showed just how significant biofuels have been: it argued that biofuels have been responsible for as much as 75% of food price increases – way more than the 30% previously estimated by the International Food Policy Research Institute. (The Bank’s 75% figure isn’t new – it’s been kicking around their HQ for at least three months – but its release now will definitely increase pressure on the US to reduce subsidies for corn-based ethanol.)
But what I think’s most significant of all about Brown’s new tack is that it makes him the first head of government to talk clearly about the elephant in the room with food prices: the fact that our diet in developed countries has a direct effect on the food security of poor people in developing countries. Waste may be the first stop – but the train line we’re on leads directly to the question of how much meat and dairy products we can consume without impinging on others’ fair shares.