Recent months have seen increasing interest in the idea that Rio+20 could be the launch pad for a new set of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs). But what would SDGs cover, what would a process to define and then implement them look like, and what would some of the key political challenges be? This short briefing [...]
Any global framework for development which is agreed after 2015 will be a political deal between states. This paper looks at recent trends in policy and politics in emerging economies and traditional donors to assess where a consenus might lie. It suggests some principles for a post-2015 agreement which emerge from recent policy developments
Paper from ODI and UNDP, authored by Claire Melamed and Andy Sumner, summarising the evidence on the impact of the MDGs, and looking at current trends in poverty and in global governance that will affect the shape and the scope of any future agreement on global development.
Why resource scarcity will be a game changer for global justice agendas, and what aid donors, NGOs and other development opinion formers need to do about it. WWF / Oxfam report by Alex Evans.
The Rio 2012 sustainable development summit is at risk of being the latest in a long line of damp squibs on environmental multilateralism – but could still make real progress, if it focuses on greening growth and building resilience to shocks and stresses, and above all faces up to the issues of fair shares that arise in a world of limits.
How national and international governance systems need to be reconfigured to meet the challenges of food security in a world of tighter supply and demand balances and increasing volatility. Report for Oxfam’s new Grow campaign by Alex Evans. (May 2011)
Article on scarcity of resources in Pakistan and what it means for the country.
Text of speech by Alex Evans to Institute for New Economic Thinking annual conference at Bretton Woods; the YouTube video is here. (April 2011) Download Speech
Article published on China Dialogue on reasons for the new food price spike, including potential implications of the current drought in China. (February 2011) Download Article
Eight critical uncertainties for development over the next decade, and ten recommendations for what ActionAid – who commissioned this report – should do to prepare for them
Article published in World Politics Review on current American foreign policy
Report asking how organisations can prosper in what will be a turbulent period for world order
Center on International Cooperation report on what forms of multilateral cooperation are needed to manage scarcity of resources
Background paper on whether resource scarcity and climate change will cause increased violent conflict
Chatham House report on how the UK’s new coalition government should upgrade and reform the way Britain conducts foreign policy
Introductory remarks by David Steven at a Brookings Institution seminar on risk and resilience in the global system (March 2010)
Talk given by David Steven at Gresham College on risk and resilience in the UK housing market, as part of a Long Finance Roundtable meeting (March 2010)
Report by David Steven in response to the FSA’s Mortgage Market Review
Brookings Institution report by Alex Evans, Bruce Jones and David Steven on how globalisation could fail – and how it could be made more resilient. Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary World Economic Forum in Davos.
Report by Alex Evans and David Steven analysing the post-Copenhagen context on climate change, including a proposed 12 point action plan. Written for the Brookings Institution / NYU Center on International Cooperation Managing Global Insecurity programme.
World Food Programme report on the state of the science on what climate change means for hunger, plus policy recommendations. Authored by IPCC Impacts Chair Martin Parry with Mark Rosengrant, Tim Wheeler and Global Dashboard’s Alex Evans (December 2009)
Presentation by Alex Evans to a seminar organised for the UN Department of Political Affairs by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (August 2009)
Article on risk and resilience by Alex Evans and David Steven – part of a special in World Politics Review on risk and resilience in a globalized age (July 2009)
Report by Alex Evans and David Steven exploring the future international institutional requirements for managing climate change, and including three scenarios for climate institutions between now and 2030. Commissioned by the UK Department for International Development. (May 2009)
Article by Alex Evans and David Steven exploring resilience as a political agenda – part of a special edition of Renewal on the transformation of foreign policy (February 2009)
Climate and cities think piece, co-authored by David Steven and the British Council’s Peter Upton (29 January 2009)
Chatham House pamphlet by Alex Evans on how scarcity issues will shape the outlook for global food production, and the actions that policymakers need to take at the international level and in developing countries to ensure food security in the 21st century
Paper by David Steven, presented to “Reforming International Institutions – Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century,” a conference organized by the United Nations University and the British Embassy in Tokyo (Jan 2009).
Speech by Alex Evans at the Tomorrow Network (25 November 2008)
Paper by Alex Evans and David Steven on financial reform and wider multilateralism, published ahead of the G20 ‘Bretton Woods II’ Summit (November 2008).
Speech by David Steven to RUSI Conference on UK Resilience (8 October 2008)
Chapter by Alex Evans and David Steven in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office publication, ‘Engagement: public diplomacy in a globalised world’ (July 2008). Download Chapter
Draft report by Alex Evans exploring multilateral system reforms needed in order to manage resource scarcity issues more effectively. The final version will be published in early 2010 (July 2008)
Speech by Alex Evans at UK Parliament (8 July 2008)
Speech by David Steven at the UNU G8 Symposium (4 July 2008)
Speech by Alex Evans to United Nations Association UK (7 June 2008)
Speech by David Steven to the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group seminar on Strategic Communications, Public Diplomacy and Afghanistan (4 June 2008).
Speech by David Steven to the University of Westminster Symposium on Transformational Public Diplomacy (30 April 2008).
Briefing paper by Alex Evans, published through Chatham House’s food programme (April 2008).
Speech by David Steven to RUSI Conference on Critical National Infrastructure (16 April 2008).
Paper by Alex Evans and David Steven, commissioned by Gordon Brown and presented to heads of state at the Progressive Governance Summit (April 2008).
Chapter by Alex Evans and David Steven, as part of the British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 book ‘Talking Trans-Atlantic’ (March 2008).
Article by Alex Evans for the Environmental Policy & Law Journal (January 2008).
Report by Alex Evans and David Steven, written for the London Accord (December 2007).
New paper by Alex Evans on climate policy after 2012 from the Center on International Cooperation (October 2007).
Chapter on the FCO from Manchester University Press’s Alternative Comprehensive Spending Review, by David Steven (September 2007).
Note by Alex Evans and David Steven about how to restructure the UK’s foreign policy system in order to manage trans-boundary global risks better (April 2007).
Talk given by David Steven at the Wilton Park conference: The Future of Public Diplomacy. Focuses on strategies to drive public diplomacy to the heart of the foreign policy armoury (March 2007).
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Palin’s position on climate change seems quite complicated. She certainly appears to believe it’s a problem worth responding to:
“Many scientists note that Alaska’s climate is changing. We are already seeing the effects. Coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice and record forest fires affect our communities and our infrastructure. Some scientists tell us to expect more changes in the future. We must begin to prepare for those changes now.”
But then there’s the quote you cite about it not being man-made…
Complicated? How about contradictory? At least McCain accepts the long-settled hard science on CO2. Palin’s view, like creationism, is a product of blind commitment to an ideology that doesn’t allow for inconvenient things like actual evidence.
We absolutely need to find every way possible to cut our carbon emissions and work with all countries to set hard targets for near and long-term cuts – not just “aspirational” aims, and not just a number for 2050. What about NOW?
Palin is so far off the page on this it’s pathetic. I can laugh off people trying to claim the earth is only 6000 years old, since the practical implications are few. But trying to run the country based on Palin’s views on climate would risk everything in a huge gamble that somehow all the climate scientists were wrong, and a few loudmouth reactionaries like Limbaugh, Crichton, and Milloy were right (about which of their contradictory alternate theories? Sunspots, cosmic rays, not really warming? Who the heck knows?)
I’m not prepared to gamble our future on that.
I believe Sarah’s right. I’ve studied solar activity for 30+ years as an amateur radio operator and have seen the correlation between length of solar cycles and climate cooling and warming. Presently the stratosphere has been cooling for over a decade, an effect which is coupling down, and cycle 23 has gone on for over 12 1/2 years. Recently we have gone 45 days with zero sunspots (dxlc.com/solar/).
Well Jim she is dead wrong. If you are going to make such a bold statement back it up. The IPCC at best links sunspot activity at 20% to Global warming, and this was study that took the human’s effect on the environment at its most conservative. The sheer amount of independant ways to determine how global warming has changed since the industrial period all indicate an EXTREMELY high probability it is due to humans. Accept the evidence, that is what science is about.
oops sorry Jim i meant Mike
There is no proven link between anthropogenic activity in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The IPCC does not have the final say on this issue. Many people are mislead by the IPCC’s “2500 scientists” check out ther contributors list for the IPCC. Many of these “scientists” are not what people perceive as scientists. Additionally,a number of contributors that are actually scientists have asked to be taken off the contributors list. The IPCC and other climate scientists that claim there is a correlation between anthropogenic ghg emissions and climate change have a vested interest in keeping the hype going – its called funding. If you take a look at climate you’ll find its cyclic…and remarkably predictable based on sun activity.
what a worry that the us might have a vp who believes something so far off in the creationist model – ie the earth is 6000 yrs old. These views are as a mad as others that we can’t state because of fears about being labelled. The states are in trouble along with the rest of us
“Show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change,” Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday. “I have not said that.”
Hm. Not clear where she stands now, except denying she ever said something that nobody claims she did say.
A few comments from Sir David Green and Sir John Houghton may usefully bear on the matter ~
http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/viewpoint/professor_sir_david_king/
http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83
Bests,
Ed.
Maybe I should have made it clear before. I am an astrophysicist and I have studied stellar activity. tlt2372 you need to take your head out of the sand and look at the evidence not at your conspiracy theories. So your saying that 2500+ scientists including some of my peers are making all this stuff up just so we can get more funding? Your making as much sense as a creation “scientist”.
I’m gonna pull nerd speak here but its really quite simple. Energy from the sun that strikes the earth during the day gets released as infrared radiation at night into space.
The vibrational modes of the CO2 molecule is infrared active, thus the more CO2, the more heat will remain atmosphere, thus global warming. These are facts.
I’m glad that people like you who can’t accept the facts and would prefer to selectively view data are in a minority.
The only vested interest as a scientist i have in this issue is that our world has a future!
I think you may have missed my point Gregory. I understand the properties of CO2 and the theories behind global warming. Like you, I am quite qualified to speak on this subject although I dont think its necessary to publish my resume. Ultimately, the discussion on global warming is not whether earth is warming – evidence shows at this time it is. The discussion point is whether the cause of the warming can be contributed to man made activities, specifically discharging carbon dioxide and other gases that can be expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents, into the atmosphere.
There is no direct link between anthropogenic activity and climate change. Periods such as the Medieval Warming Period are a good indicator that anthropogenic CO2 cannot be linked with climate change.
In refernce to the IPCC report; many of the IPCC’s assumptions have recently been called into question.. The Former Director of Meterology at THe Weather Channel states “The report’s {IPCC}final summaries had several failings. First, it blindly accepts a 20th-century carbon dioxide rise of 36 percent, when direct measurements(1) suggest the change is closer to 15 percent. Their models assume an annual increase of 1 percent, although over the last 50 years the long-term annual average consistently has been less than half that, 0.43 percent. Their models treat the oceans as distilled water when in reality they are an infinite buffer for atmospheric CO2. Burning all the earth’s fossil fuels would amount to no more than a 20 percent increase. It could never double(2). In any event, ice cores tell us carbon dioxide lags, not leads, the temperatures by as much as 800 years.”
It looks like you may have been duped by Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Check out ‘The Global Warming Swindle’..and try not to take scientific discussions so personally. As scientists our motto has to contain dispassion.
Not to name drop – but there are quite a few scientists that believe that there is no tie between anthropogenic activity and climate change… to name a few: Bob Carter, James Cook University; Richard Lindzen, MIT; Phillip Stott, University of London; John Christy, IPCC….they may not equate to your astrophysics degree but they are quite accomplished in their own right.
I agree, scientific discussions, i.e. peer review are to be treated impartially, however these are not scientific discussions.
With name-dropping I could throw in a list of scientists who believe the world is 6000 years old so it doesn’t mean too much. What they believe in isn’t nearly as important as what evidence they can present. And no I haven’t seen ‘An inconvenient truth’ and I don’t think I need to.
I mentioned the IPCC because it is most recognised study so far but I could just as easily mention dozens more. It seems pretty clear to me that whatever new evidence, studies, reports, ‘missing links’ etc that anyone could present to you or other climate sceptics will always be dismissed (which has happened consistently over the last decade).
History shows that with every scientific upheaval there has always been resistance by some, and that’s fine, I accept that. It helps science be self-correcting. We always have to be open to the possibility that we may be wrong, but it is an evidence based discipline.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”
–Carl Sagan
Good day.