And so to TckTckTck.org, the most pointless NGO campaign of the year, upon whom I heaped ridicule earlier this month for their fabulously vague policy position that Copenhagen should produce “an ambitious, fair and binding climate change agreement”. After a period of silence, TckTckTck have now been in touch via email, and have explained that

We’d been waiting for our site to officially launch so that we could point you and your readers to a resource that specifically addresses your questions. The site launched earlier this week, and we’ve put this page together for that purpose.

And so (drum roll), here’s the real policy platform.

Fair

- Reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020.

- Enable and support poor countries to adapt to the worst consequences of the climate crisis, reduce their emissions and ensure technology sharing including through the provision of sufficient public funds.

- Protect marginalized communities in rich and poor countries.

Ambitious

- Ensure that global greenhouse emissions peak no later than 2017.

- Create a pathway to clean jobs and clean energy for all.

- Establish necessary conditions for a sustainable and prosperous future for people, flora and fauna.

Binding

- Agree to a legally binding international agreement that can be verified and enforced

Saints preserve us - that’s the detailed policy position?

OK, we do have two pieces of specificity here in the 40% 2020 target (though they forgot to stipulate 1990 as the baseline – a schoolboy error that the Japanese and others will have immense fun with in a few months’ time), and the 2017 peaking date. But where the hell is the global context – the definition of some kind of overarching objective, like a ppm stabilisation target? Where is it explained how we will achieve stabilisation at any level without quantified targets for developing countries – a subject not even alluded to here via the usual unspecific platitudes about common but differentiated responsibilities?

This “policy position” is no more specific than what we had before; instead, it’s simply more verbose.  We have a call for “sufficient public funds” for developing countries, but no number attached to it.  A reference to “a pathway to clean jobs and clean energy for all”, but no tests so that policymakers or members of the public can determine whether any given set of actions is adequate. The motherhood and apple pie of “necessary conditions for a sustainable and prosperous future for people, flora and fauna”, followed a moment later – with no discernible sense of irony – with calls for an agreement “that can be verified and enforced”.

Um, guys, this isn’t any better. TckTckTck will doubtless say in their defence that they’re trying to communicate a highly complex area in a way that will resonate with the public. But the obvious rejoinder to that is that surely the point of this campaign – if there is a point - is to influence negotiators at Copenhagen. And if the policy asks are so vague that negotiators themselves can’t tell whether they’re meeting NGOs’ headline asks, then you can bet your bottom dollar that those NGOs are failing to influence the process in any meaningful way. (more…)

I went to the Climate Camp yesterday, on Blackheath, next to Greenwich Park, a brick’s throw from the Royal Observatory. The camp is maybe a 150m-diamater circle, with a metal fence around it, filled with tents. You have to enter through a steel gate, over which hangs a sign saying ‘Capitalism is crisis’, and under which crusties sit on straw bales, perusing the new entrants like monkeys outside a Hindu temple. (more…)

Presentation by Alex Evans to a seminar organised for the UN Department of Political Affairs by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (August 2009)

Download Speech

I spent yesterday morning presenting on scarcity issues - water, food, energy, land and climate security – to staff from the UN Department of Political Affairs, as part of a three day session on non-traditional security threats organised by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. 

Here’s a copy of my presentation on the kinds of institutional change we need in order to manage scarcity, which focuses particularly on reducing the vulnerability of poor people and fragile states.  This draws heavily on a new report on Multilateralism and Scarcity that I’ll be publishing through the Brookings Institution later in the year.

Also presenting were Geoff Dabelko from the Woodrow Wilson Center (if you don’t subscribe to The New Security Beat, the Center’s superb blog on scarcity-security links, then you should); and Mike Hutton from the US Department of Energy’s Office for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence (as previously documented here, one of a handful of hotspots of radical forward thinking in the US government – you can get involved, too).

He didn’t get it at Kyoto – and he doesn’t get it now.

John Prescott – former British Deputy PM, and its lead negotiator at the 1997 Kyoto climate summit – is making headlines this morning with his call for “equalising greenhouse gas emissions per head in each country”.  But what he’s getting wrong (again – sigh) is the point that what we need to equalise for a fair global deal isn’t emissions per capita – it’s emission entitlements per capita.

This is not hair-splitting. Equalising emissions per capita is just what obviously and inevitably happens if we’re solving climate change: given that total global emissions will have to fall by at least 80% by 2050, and almost certainly by close to 100% at some stage, then obviously it follows that we’ll all be equalising our emissions – at roundabout zero.

The real question is what happens between now and that point – and in particular, how global emissions permits get shared out.  We always think of emissions targets as burdens, but they’re also tradable assets, of course.  They’re worth quite a lot: global emissions trading markets were worth $64bn in 2008.  That’s already more than half the size of total global aid flows ($120bn in 2008).

So the $64bn question – literally – is what share of these assets low income countries get.  If they get an equal per capita entitlement within a global emissions budget, then the fact that their per capita emissions are so low means they get to sell their surplus permits via emissions trading markets - and a major new finance for development flow is created, at the same time as the climate is being stabilised.

If, on the other hand, all they get is John Prescott’s implied assurance that we’ll all end up at zero emissions in a hundred years or so, then that’s not really the same thing at all, is it?

From Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, a sad tale:

“They needed a room with proper ventilation so that the security guards could make bacon sandwiches without the whole place smelling of bacon. I was in the only one they had, so I had to move.”

My friend, not long appointed a special adviser to one of John Major’s Cabinet ministers, looked sheepish. He was explaining to me why his office next door to the Secretary of State had become one that was up two flights of stairs and along a corridor. As he told me the tale, he slowly realised that he’d been had. The Civil Service had found his “special advice” inconvenient. In future, they decided, there would be no more bumping into the minister. My friend would have to call up and arrange a meeting.

I felt sympathetic. But really all I could do was laugh. The inventiveness of the Civil Service, as they dreamt up ways to hobble special advisers, was always so impressive. The lightness of touch was what I enjoyed most. These people knew how to beat someone up without leaving a mark on their body that they could show to Amnesty International.

Ah yes, they certainly do. When I became a special adviser at DFID in 2003 and was first shown my office, I realised that it was a looong corridor length away from the Secretary of State’s private office.

A year later, I returned from leave to discover that my office had halved in size: the wall had been moved six feet.  To create a new meeting room for the Permanent Secretary on the other side.

As Finkelstein rightly observes, all you could do was laugh…

I recently blogged about UN peacekeepers’ efforts to save the world by planting trees in places like Darfur and the Congo (I even featured on the New York Times website discussing this “new vogue of environmental priorities”).  Now an eagle-eyed reader sends these, well, gritty photos of two of the 30,000 trees planted so far – in this case, by top members of the UN mission in Timor-Leste.

The other 29,998 trees are doing just fine, I’m sure…

- With the news that President Obama has nominated Ben Bernanke for a second term, over at the New Republic Noam Scheiber assesses the merits of continuity at the Fed. Stephen Roach, meanwhile, examines the case against the incumbent chairman, arguing that Obama’s decision should open a “broader debate over the conduct and role of US monetary policy”.

- Taking us back to the depths of last September’s financial meltdown, Faisal Islam has some interesting insights into the collapse of Lehman Brothers as viewed from British shores.

- Elsewhere, debate continues apace about the rights and wrongs of releasing the Lockerbie bomber. Suggesting that “cock-up offers as convincing an explanation as conspiracy for the handling of Mr Megrahi’s release”, Philip Stephens argues that the decision highlights the “price of realism” in foreign policy.

- Speaking of which, in the latest edition of FP Magazine none other than Paul Wolfowitz assesses the realist credentials of President Obama; providing at once a telling insight into the mindset of a man at the heart of foreign policy making during the Bush years.

- Mark Easton’s BBC blog, meanwhile, takes a look at how the British government is looking to influence public behaviour in light of the Chief Scientist’s warning of a “perfect storm” of energy, food and water scarcity by 2030.

- Finally, as President Obama holidays on Martha’s Vineyard, the White House announces what he’ll be reading on the beach. Slate offers its take here.

Lots of media coverage this morning about the leaking of the confidential memo written by Mona Juul, Norway’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, on Ban Ki-moon’s performance as Secretary-General – but no-one seems to have posted the full text. So here it is.

(more…)

As Abdelbaset al-Megrahi makes his way to the airport after his release from prison on compassionate grounds, you have a choice of two conspiracy theories about why he was allowed out.

Option 1: it was all about oil. Interesting fact: while Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa, Libya has the largest reserves.  You might therefore conclude that there’s plenty of exploration / production fun to be had there.  You might also observe that the Libyan Investment Corporation’s partner in this activity is, er, BP (see their annual review, p. 26).  Add in the reports that Peter Mandelson just happened to run into Colonel Gadaffi’s son in (where else) Corfu, and presto! Your conspiracy theory is ready to serve.

Option 2: Richard Ingrams, on the other hand, has an altogether different theory - and it goes like this:

The Justice Minister Jack Straw is old enough to know that we have a long and shameful tradition, where terrorism is concerned, of imprisoning the wrong people. And the notorious Irish cases in the 1970s and 80s wreaked havoc with the reputation of the police, the intelligence services and the judges.

The offence of which Megrahi was – almost certainly wrongly – convicted after a trial lasting six months before three distinguished Scottish judges was far more serious than anything the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six were accused of doing. Resulting in the deaths of 280 innocent people, it was far and away the most serious act of terrorism in our history. So, what if Megrahi’s appeal succeeded and it was shown that yet again the security forces and the judges had got it wrong – and this at a time when the Government is trying to introduce more and more draconian measures to deal with the supposed threat of terrorism?

Opposition to giving the police yet more powers would inevitably be boosted and the awkward question would be raised – if not Megrahi then who did it? The official hope, now that Megrahi has applied to drop his appeal, is that we can finally draw a line under Lockerbie and move on.

Take your pick…

Time to catch up with the Global Market Review of the Denim and Jeanswear Industries – Forecasts to 2006, which we foolishly missed on its publication in May.

The long-term future

* Looking ahead to 2016, the denim jeans market has a rosy future, the report says.

* Dollar growth will be 6.6% between 2012 and 2016, while unit growth will be 7.7%. This is a direct consequence of the shift in the market away from developed countries and towards the rest of the world.

* Even the more pessimistic long-term scenario sees North American consumption flat at 35%, a 5% rise in the jeans market value in Japan and South Korea, and a dramatic 23% jump in the US dollar value of the jeans market in the rest of the world.

* The only blip is a 2% drop in Europe’s share of world consumption to 35%.

There goes the West…