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).
Articles and Publications
Delicious
Rss
Twitter - David Steven
""By comparison, government debt is ‘only’ £950 billion.""
Your statement is incorrect…and I'm being extremely polite.
In order to suspend rationality, as you clearly have done…. you just got to get me some of whatyever it is you are smoking!
Either that, or,… I have a bridge I could sell you!
Great post. Do you think think Clegg could make hay by referring to St Vince's repeated warnings on this score over past years (though I'm nt sure if he actually proposed concrete measures that would have deaklt with the problem)?
But putting aside how to use this to score points , you're right that it's another example of tough-sounding talk on fixing the economy backed up by not much of anything. And it's agood eaxmple of where the 'it came from over the seas' talk falls down – while we wouldn't have emerged unscathed, this negligence has clearly made us worse off.
It also doesn't help that so many news outlets are covering this as if it's to be welcomed. Take this for example:http://bit.ly/ce6JK0
Round and round and round it goes.
Where it goes too, nobody knows.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=a7h1lGnar8…
Now you do!
More money printing/bailouts…. more debauched currencies…….. debts that can't be paid, won't be.
Post democratic high tech feudalism, that is the intention…..be warned!
Dave,
…. traitor Klegg is an ex-employee of the EU.
His pension rights from there dictate his actions to sell out this nation to furher his own interests, rather than act in this nations interests.
It was pension rights from the EU that carried the vote for Lisbon in the Lords, with parasitical folks like Kinnock present.
If they vote against the EU interests, they face lost pension rights.
And that's in black and white from the marxist EUSSR
Indeed he doesn't seem to be, even though housing is one issue he really did stick to with his complaints when Brown was sleeping at the wheel.
But wow, did Clegg miss an opportunity last night. Even though the other parties have prepared their "Vince ain't all that" defences, I think he could have scored big. It's similar to the lack of anti-Iraq populism from last week – maybe he thinks we're over it, and we want positive visions for the future, but my hunch is that "we were the only ones against it", both as regards deregulation and a quite-old war, would go down very well. Voters don't get bored as quicjky as pundits. Interestingly, it was Obama's highest scoring moment on the (admittedly unscientific) worm thingie in one of his debates, even as McCain was trying to make it all about the surge and what to do next. That was a while ago, but not so long as to be irrelevant…
Meander – my figures are from the end of 2009 (follow the link), so they are out of date. Other than that, I think the point stands.
Dave – yes I think Clegg should make more of Cable. I am amazed he didn’t mention him when the topic came up last night. Though I’m not sure that Cable is offering any robust solutions yet…
Interesting piece David but sadly we didn't get the answer to that question last night. I have to say I listened to the debate on the radio and Gordon did a much better job than I think the polls suggested he just isn't made for TV!
David said….""Other than that, I think the point stands"".
Sorry, David, but it doesn't… it doesn't even crawl.
Brown was the one that commited the UK tax payer to stand behind the casino activities of the banks, and forced lunatic mergers which screwed the shareholders of banks not needing that merger. He was the one who insisted on a softly, softly touch when enforcing regulations on these banks. I also saw zero protests when various agreements crawled out of Basle. All hail the BIS, god of banking.
Brown broke the law of the land, (bankruptcy being one of many), and forced Co directors to do likewise!
The tax base was fine, and Brown luvs taxes.
If he had listened to any competent economist, (since he obviously isn't) he would know that towards the end of a debt-soaked economic binge, the marginal GDP generated by each unit of debt injected decreases until the GDP generated becomes negative. The GDP generated for the last 5 or 7 years has been far smaller then the rate of increase of systemic debt. In other words GDP was an illusion, created by an increase in Debt. There was NO GDP growth, absent debt. It was an entire fiction, additionally hidden by fraudulent statistics.
And the stupid buggers at all levels of economics and gov't claim that they couldn't see it coming!
They are all bare faced liars…. A first year economics student could see it coming!
THAT is the economic fraud that sits behind this corrupt, house flipping, gov't.
And in the theme of the election, each of the main three parties told lies when promising the electorate a referendum on EU membership. Brown lawyers in court (something that we hear remarkably little about, but we should!!!) claimed in his defence that there should be no reasonable expectation of truth contained in an official printed manifesto.
And the judge agreed!
That being the case, why should we now believe any word that any barefaced liar, ermm, politician, tells us, ever again??
Perhaps you'd care to answere that point, because it stands tall, and at attention!!
Not one sitting MP deserves to be returned, not one.
Dave,
None of my arguments is a straw man
I look at the totality of the situation to draw conclusions and trends.
You claim to be a global dashboard, yet you choose to isolate specifics in order to project a distorted picture, a picture ar variance to the picture projected by the totality.
You either are one, or the other.
Returning to the details of your blog….it is largely moonshine…particularly when the EU now makes the vast majority of laws, etc, and where our MEPS are a rubber stamp, and our Westminster MPs, outside of eagerly implementing EU directives, are busy doing nothing in particular, other than their own personal aggrandisement.
Discussions on who will work with who mean nothing towards policy. Nothing. They are comparable to re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic.
Absent the creation of a credible budget and policy, and a credible time table for action, the markets will make the decisions needed. After that the freedom to create "policies" will be gone.
The irony is that a credible budget and timetable will expose the current words from politicians to be what they are…….
Now lets move to private and public debt.
A mortagee defaults, this leads eventually to foreclosure.
1) Increase in social spending
2) A bank somewhere writes down an asset on a balance sheet, and the P&L takes a hit. Less profits = fall in share price. Reducing assets destroy capital ratios and curtail future lending. Reduce assets by a greater degree and the bank must cease trading or raise more capital….ergo, in extremis, another bailout from taxpayer. Depending on the leverage employed by the bank, capital raising can be required after relatively small reductions in capital.
A plastic holder defaults….proceed from 2) above again.
Under the current system, symplistic description above, the levels of private debt may well become public debt via more govt bailouts.
At some point the debt has to be paid down or defaulted, and if defaulted, then written down by the lender. If the lender goes boom, the State steps in at some point..
Every day that passes, while our snivelling politicos move deckchairs, the options for action are being reduced.
Under EU plans, ultimately Westminster will become a mere tourist attraction, and regions report to Sprout Town….with the exception of the SE, who report to Paris. You know this, but you persist in pointless speculation…Daren't you tell the truth? Is it all just a facade?
If you want to see someone who is guilty of creating straw men….look in the mirror.
Nice post,
Labour promised us low inflation and low interest rates. They just cooked the books, and changed all the rules on RPI and CPI so they could stay in power.
http://www.mrscohen.com/personal/-/news/other/con…
I actually remember a blip in the housing market in 2006 so what did labour allow to happen, lower interest rates and relaxed lending criteria. 5 times joint incomes and 125% mortages.
The government are there to protect us from ourselves, it was just irresponsible of labour and Brown is utterly to blame for this countries woes.
D
Part 2
Brown says Cameron will impose huge cuts and we will get a double dip recession. How clever of him, he is right a double dip recession will happen when Cameron gets in and makes those long overdue cuts and we do see massive job losses and the new recession Labour will say I told you so.
We have to have this cruel medicine to sort this mess out, the sooner the better, then hopefully we will see house prices fall back to affordable levels.
Just because we don’t want to lose our jobs / houses doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Just because we don’t want inflation or high interest rates doesn’t mean that won’t happen either. It has to happen to get this mess sorted.
I have worked through and survived three recessions, negative equity, 21% interest rates, starting tax rates of 33%. Prepare yourselves for the worst and hopefully we will all get through this mess.
D
Beautifully detailed article. However, what most of us would be asking here is – the scenario in UK might just be a little uncertain to predict considering the austerity drive that has been ushered in by the David Cameron government. What say?
Dear David Steven,
Thank you very much indeed for this analysis. I am sorry if I am asking a question that is obviously answered above but where does that graph of house prices and average household incomes come from?
Best wishes
Matthew Amadeus Devereux