by Alex Evans | Nov 13, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, London Summit
Ahead of this weekend’s G20 summit, David and I have published a short paper entitled A Bretton Woods II worthy of the name. Key points:
– The summit is unlikely to be able to live up to its billing. Leaders do not yet understand the nature of the problem well enough to be able to implement viable solutions. However, the problem is more fundamental than a simple lack of shared awareness.
– History suggests that leaders will only think the unthinkable on institutional reform once the challenge they face has really hit rock bottom. But history also suggests that we are wrong to think that the worst of the crisis is now past, given that many past banking crises have taken five years or more to unravel.
– Bretton Woods 1 looked across the whole international economic waterfront in 1944, while this weekend’s summit will be much more narrowly focused. Leaders will make a big mistake if they try and tackle finance in isolation, given the growing impact of resource scarcity, and that 2009 is supposed to see another ambitious global deal – on climate.
– We need to recalibrate what we expect from globalization through a serious debate about subsidiarity. Where has globalization gone too far, too fast? Where do we need more integration at a global level? These were exactly the questions that preoccupied Keynes in 1933, when he weighed the relative benefits of global versus local across a range of variables. We need a similar debate today as a precursor to serious international economic reform.
– Leaders need to extend their horizons in (at least) five directions: onto longer time scales; beyond financial regulation into wider resource scarcity challenges; into other international processes, especially climate; towards grand bargains with emerging powers; and beyond government, to non-governmental networks.
Full version after the jump, or better yet here’s the pdf.
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by Charlie Edwards | Nov 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa, North America, UK
The received wisdom within the British Government and the higher echelons of the Ministry of Defence’s Main Building is that the situation in Basra is safer and better since Charge of the Knights, the Iraqi led operation earlier this year. Given the situation on the ground, the argument goes, it makes sense that British Armed Forces should depart soon.
This argument is seductive and credible – but not without risk. Senior Ministers who have recently returned from Basra, like Douglas Alexander, have argued that it makes sense to leave now. In theatre the discussion is more nuanced and centres on the progress of each Military Transition Team (MiTT) in Basra and the surrounding areas. If one was to characterise the general feeling then it would be something along the lines of: ‘We have done our best but now it is up to the Iraqis’.
But should we really be thinking of leaving Basra so soon?
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by Alex Evans | Nov 13, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, South Asia
It’s a while since stories started to emerge about the possible evacuation to New Zealand of the population of Tuvalu, a Pacific small island state, as rising sea levels begin to make themselves felt.
But this week’s news that the Maldives is actively planning for the same scenario represents an upwards shift in gear. For one thing, we’re talking about a lot more people – over a quarter of a million, as opposed to 9,000 with Tuvalu.
Moreover, the shape of the plan looks rather different: rather than presenting themselves as environmental refugees, the Maldives’ new president intends to establish a sovereign wealth fund to use tourism revenues to purchase land in a third country – India and Sri Lanka are both mentioned in coverage – for the whole population.
The really big question, though, is the one posed by Scott Leckie of Displacement Solutions, a refugee consultancy:
We don’t know where they plan to buy this land or whether they have thought it through … are they actually asking to re-establish the Maldives elsewhere?
One to add to the rapidly growing list of new climate-driven sovereignty dilemmas for the 21st century, along with access rights to a newly melted Northwest Passage, ownership rights over newly available Arctic oil and the rest…
(For more on this and related issues, see the new issue of Forced Migration Review, which is a special edition on the issue of climate change and displacement.)
by Alex Evans | Nov 13, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
I loved this public service announcement from the Japanese Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – easily the most succinct and accessible summary I’ve seen of why food prices have risen. Also interesting to see how strongly the Japanese government is leading on messages of greater national self-sufficiency as the way forward.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok3ykR2GHCc]
(H/t The Meaningfulness of Little Things.)
