As the spotlight shifts from the UN General Assembly and world leaders converge on Pittsburgh for the G20, there’s been much debate about the prospects for success and the competing agendas of member countries.

- The core negotiations seem set to finalise agreement over a “framework for balanced and sustainable growth” – particularly critical from US and Chinese perspectives – that seeks to give the IMF a greater reporting role in policing global imbalances. The FT’s Money Supply blog offers a sceptical comparison of the leaked draft agreement with the IMF’s current role.

- As to the Europeans: Gordon Brown seems to be adopting a broader focus, calling in an NYT op-ed for “a new system of governance” to form the “next common economic goal”. (He also announced that UK Business Minister Shriti Vadera would be going on secondment to the South Korean government to help develop proposals on global financial architecture ahead of their G20 presidency next year.) For Angela Merkel, the “most important subject” is financial regulation; she argues that “we must not search for substitute issues”; and for Sarkozy too, the top priorities look to be bankers’ bonuses and agreement over capital requirements for banks.

- Trade and protectionism are sure to form another important aspect of negotiations, particularly for China and India. VoxEU takes an interesting look at trends in world trade since the November 2008 Washington Summit,  highlighting how G20 states’ oft-proclaimed commitment against protectionism has been broken by member governments approximately once every three days since last year’s commitments. “No other statistic”, Simon Evenett argues, “better demonstrates the paucity of global leadership on contemporary protectionism”.

- Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, calls for the summit to focus on the world’s developing economies, highlighting the positive contribution they can make to the health of the global economy. Pittsburgh, he argues, can mark the advent of a more “responsible globalisation” founded on “multiple poles of growth”. Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, meanwhile, presents his take on the G20 grouping in the LA Times.

- Around the think tanks, finally: Brookings has an in-depth report focusing on some of the broader implications of the G20 agenda, from the protectionism issue to African and Latin American perspectives, as well as assessing the G20’s approach to climate change. The Carnegie Endowment, meanwhile, has an interesting take on Saudi Arabia’s approach to the summit, given its increasing exposure to instability in the financial markets and vulnerability to shifts in oil and food prices.

Elsewhere, Chatham House has analysis of some of the key short-term economic indicators, as well as long-term GDP forecasts – arguing that it is still to early too be coordinating exit strategies. The Canadian-based Centre for International Governance Innovation, meanwhile, takes a comprehensive look at some of the challenges facing the G20 as a forum for global economic governance, with contributions from policymakers and academics alike.

Excerpt from the World Bank’s just-published World Development Report 2010 (which this year takes climate change as its theme – overview pdf):

Enshrining a principle of equity in a global deal would do much to dispel such concerns and generate trust. A long-term goal of per capita emissions converging to a band could ensure that no country is locked into an unequal share of the atmospheric commons. India has recently stated that it would never exceed the average per capita emissions of high-income countries. So drastic action by high-income countries to reduce their own carbon footprint to sustainable levels is essential. This would show leadership, spur innovation, and make it feasible for all to switch to a low-carbon growth path.

Hey, did the Bank just endorse Contraction and Convergence? Not quite. As I explained a few weeks back, converging to equal per capita emission levels is not the same as converging to equal per capita emission entitlements – the difference being the small matter of whether poor countries get to benefit from emissions trading markets worth, oh, a few billion dollars. Shame the Bank missed that trick. Not so UNCTAD, on the other hand, as we saw a couple of weeks ago:

… if population size were to be given an important weight in the initial allocation of permits across countries, many developing countries would be able to sell their emission rights because they would be allotted considerably more permits than they need to cover domestically produced emissions.

Interesting coda: I was having lunch the other day with a senior official from an international agency that shall remain nameless.  I was saying I couldn’t figure out why low income countries didn’t get out there and demand quantified emission targets – allocated on the basis of immediate convergence to per capita convergence in emission entitlements. His answer: because they lack an equivalent to the OECD  – i.e. a think tank that supports them as a bloc.

Back in the 1970s, he continued, UNCTAD was increasingly showing signs of fulfilling this role; but it started to get too good at it, so major donor nations deliberately scaled back its funding. All the more welcome, then, to see UNCTAD punching above its weight on the biggest development issue of the 21st century.  Bravo.

(PS. You might think that the G77 performs the role of an OECD for poor countries, on climate as on other issues. But you’d be wrong, on two counts. First, there’s the point that G77 lacks a secretariat – in contrast to OECD’s small army of extremely smart people in Paris. But second and more fundamentally, there’s the point that however cohesive G77 might look like from the outside, the fact is that low and middle income countries have increasingly divergent interests on climate change.

Partly it’s a question of where climate finance goes: middle income countries want to see lots of cash being pumped into low carbon development programmes that will help them to grow and to access clean technology, whereas low income countries are far more concerned with adaptation.

But more fundamentally, it’s about the emission entitlements issue. Pretty much all low income countries have per capita emissions far below the global average – so if emission permits were shared out on an equal per capita basis, they’d be making real money.  Not so most of the major emerging economies – above all China, which already has per capita emissions above the global average, and would hence be a net purchaser of permits from the get-go, whenever the convergence date might be.  No surprise, then, that G77 skirts around the issue, preferring to lead on the need for developed countries to cut their own emissions and cough up more climate finance…)

A few days ago the House of Commons International Development Committee released its latest report (entitled Aid Under Pressure: Support for Development Assistance in an Economic Downturn) and there are a few points which might be of interest to Global Dashboard readers.

As its title would suggest, the report focuses on the impact of the financial crisis on international development efforts. It opens on a grim note with the news that DFID estimates that by the end of next year 90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty as a result of the crisis. Moreover, the WHO believes that up to 400,000 additional children could die as a result. The International Development Committee adds that progress towards the MDGs may have been set back by up to three years.

A major point made in testimony given to the Committee was that initial expectations that the developing world would be insulated from the impact of the crisis have proven false. Whilst the contagion effect of the crisis has only directly harmed western economies, the indirect knock-on effects have applied pressure to transnational business flows worldwide. The World Bank reports that of the 107 counties it categorises as ‘developing’, 40% are ‘highly exposed’ to the downturn.

Unsurprisingly-though quite rightly-the International Development Committee’s response to all this is to insist on the importance of maintaining ongoing aid commitments, as agreed at the G20 summit in July.

Aside from that, the issue of tax havens is highlighted and it would seem that the British government is increasingly committed to making progress in this respect. Gordon Brown in particular has been forthright on this issue, but his government seems somewhat hamstrung at present and we shall have to await developments.

In the wake of the London Summit, institutional reform is back on the agenda. The need to overhaul the IMF and World Bank, particularly in regard to apportionment of votes within those organisations needs to be a priority for the post-crisis politics of global governance. Indeed, reform has been presented as a condition for the boost to IMF funding that the G20 agreed upon earlier this year. Broader questions of operational versatility are also important. In these respects, the Committee’s report is strong on good ideas and analysis, but light on suggestions for how Britain can help bring about the desired changes. For that perhaps we need to wait for the DFID White Paper due later in the summer.

On a seemingly superficial note, the Committee proposes that DFID’s name be changed and puts forward ‘British Aid’ and ‘DFID UK’ as possibilities. The intention, it seems is to increase the ‘visibility’ of UK international development spending. Of course, DFID does a lot more than aid, so I think we can immediately dismiss the first suggestion. As a reserved Brit, the idea of being so brash as to use ‘UK’ on international development work is too reminiscent of the US tendency to splash the Stars and Stripes on aid parcels. It seems… immodest, somehow. But it might be a good idea all the same – US aid is part of its soft power and in the same way, the work of the Department for International Development has the potential to be a significant contributor to British attempts to win ‘hearts and minds’, particularly in countries like Afghanistan. After all, the Committee’s report points out that DFID is the largest donor to the World Bank’s International Development Association. Maybe blowing our national trumpet more boldly isn’t such a bad idea. Though one wonders if there isn’t a snappier name out there somewhere – suggestions welcome, of course.

Here in Britain, the fallout from recent revelations about MPs’ expenses continues. Meanwhile, it seems that World Bank officials have been up to similar tricks. Admittedly we cynics may scoff at their lack of imagination – after all, they haven’t been buying birdhouses or maintaining their moats with public funds. But Peter Bosshard at International Rivers, reviewing a book by former Bank staffer Steve Berkman, highlights some dubious claims all the same (hat tip: Bretton Woods Project). Berkman’s book:

reports how Nigerian officials charged $2,200 for 18 cups of tea and snacks at a roadside stall under a World Bank loan (and got away with it). A project office with eight staff in the same country charged a switchboard for 60 telephones, 48 air conditioners, 14 shredders and 12 refrigerators to the operating expenses of another Bank project – all at prices well above the going market rates. They also claimed expenses for television and video sets at 249,999 Naira apiece – more than ten times the equipment’s street value, but just one Naira less than the amount which triggers stricter controls.

Few will be surprised to hear about World Bank money disappearing – Berkman quotes an internal report which found that ’stealing from Bank funds is the rule, not the exception’. But all the same (and perhaps I’m being naïve), one would have thought that World Bank employees would have enough problems with the endemic low-level fraud that their organisation is known for, without contributing to it themselves. Of course, unlike British parliamentarians, World Bank officials aren’t politicians and being insulated by their institution, will never have to face the wrath of the public.

As David just noted, this morning’s Lex column in the FT is relatively upbeat about the dangers of protectionism, arguing that “the disaggregation of global supply chains, the source of the huge efficiencies that companies pass on to consumers, will not be easily undone.”

Whether or not that’s right (and like Willem Buiter, Martin Wolf is also a good deal more downcast than the Lex team), it’s interesting to compare today’s Lex column with what they had to say about capital flows to emerging markets just a couple of days ago.  Here’s the bit that made me sit up:

Take Brazil and India, the globe’s ninth and 12th biggest economies, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest estimates. While the developed world is expected to shrink by 2 per cent this year, the IMF reckons Brazil will grow by 2 per cent, and India by 5 per cent. Why? One answer is that they have stable banks, relatively closed economies, and large internal markets. This has insulated them from much of the global turmoil.

The contrast with East Asia is stark. Singapore’s economy shrank at an annualised 17 per cent rate at the end of last year, South Korea by some 20 per cent. Yet this is not for lack of capital. Asian economies, after all, are global creditors. Their economies have shrunk instead because they are heavily oriented towards collapsing international trade. Meanwhile, their local markets are undeveloped and weak. Asia’s challenge is how to best deploy its accumulated surpluses to boost domestic demand.

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Thanks to Flickr user Oliver Ingrouille

Prepare to heave at this New York Times screed on how tough life is for bankers these days.

“Nobody in the investment banking world is expecting pity, or even a sympathetic ear, these days,” the article begins, before quoting banker after banker who not only feels  ”unfairly singled out“, but wants destitute home owners to accept the lion’s share of the blame:

Financiers tell their not-for-attribution account of the mortgage crisis like this: Americans undersaved and overspent for decades, relying on rising property values to bankroll their lifestyles.

But nobody on Wall Street forced United States homeowners to take out loans on houses they couldn’t afford, or refinance mortgages to spend money on cars they shouldn’t have bought.

Of course, others are at fault too. Ratings agencies failed to warn innocent financiers of the risks they were taking, while regulators… well, they should be ashamed of their many failings. Bankers did just one thing wrong. They trusted us too much – and we let them down.

Now they are spat on as they cross the sidewalk from their limousines and are too embarrassed to admit what they do at champagne receptions. “I’d almost rather say I’m a pornographer,” says one poor soul. “At least that’s a business that people understand.”

Then there’s the last devasting blow – having their bonuses cut:

“Fact is that this is a terrible way to make a living — except for the money,” Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston and now a private investor, said. “The lifestyle is terrible — the hours, the sucking up. These guys must feel like they’re the victims of a capricious god.”

Yes indeed, Ken, it seems they do.

I see my first ever boss, Geordie Greig, has been nominated as the editor of the London Evening Standard by the new owner of the paper, playboy oligarch and former KGB spook, Alexander Lebedev.

I’ve interviewed Lebedev in Moscow. He is a strange man. Not your typical Russian oligarch at all. He’s something of an outsider in Putin’s government, despite having worked as a spy abroad (he was based here in London during the 1980s, and his job was to monitor capital flows from the USSR).

He’s much closer to Gorbachev, and the two own one of Russia’s few independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta. People were worried Novaya Gazeta would lose its teeth when a KGB man bought it, but no, it still seems full of brave journalists -  one of which was gunned down in Moscow in mid-January, while walking with a human rights lawyer.

The thing that struck me about Lebedev was how wowed he was by British society. He enthused about a dinner he was at in London, where he sat between Tom Stoppard and Tom Wolfe. His son Evgeny is even more of a butterfly, and he could be the one in the driving seat at the Standard.

What will be interesting is how the paper will report UK-Russian relations, next time Russia is in the news for some aggressive action (shouldn’t be long now), particularly if it took place in London, like the Litvinenko killing. I don’t think Lebedev would sit by and let the Standard slag off the Kremlin, as one previous editor, Max Hastings, is fond of doing – he referred in passing to Putin as ‘Russia’s chief Mafia capo’ in a Mail article last week. Not sure that would wash with the new proprietor of the Standard.

The G20 London Summit in April will be Barack Obama’s first trip to Europe. The Canadians get him first (apparently this is traditional), while the Japanese (who see the G20 as an evil plot to dilute their influence) are hoping for a sneaky bilateral before the big G20 powwow.

But London will be the big one. Gordon Brown – tired of saving the world on his lonesome – will slip into the role of Robin. Obama will play Batman and kick the world back into shape. The role of Joker is yet to be cast.

But will the summit be a success? The British PM has a lot riding on it, and not just because he believes he can use the event to transform his electoral prospects. We’re in the midst of “the first financial crisis of the global age,” he says, and the best solution is try to bind all the key global issues (economy, trade, climate change, energy, development etc) into a new vision for a  “global society”.

“This is not like the thirties,” Brown told a Davos audience (slightly plaintively, perhaps). “The world can come together.” But will it? And more to the point, will Obama reserve sufficient bandwidth to global coordination? Or will he be sucked into further America First policies, as the mess at home hoovers up a growing proportion of his time, energy and political capital?

The past does not dictate the present of course, but the historical precedents are not so good. The nearest equivalent to the London Summit in the thirties was World Monetary and Economic Conference, which was held in the summer of 1933.

This meeting, which bought 66 countries together in last ditch attempt to trigger global economic recovery, was derailed by a new US President – Franklin D Roosevelt – who had recently been elected in a landslide. Roosevelt rejected a compromise deal that had been hammered out by his own delegation.

The result was humiliation for a weakened British Prime Minister, and a furious reaction from the other European nations, led predictably enough by the French. The Germans, meanwhile, were left out on a limb. Hitler – just settling in as Chancellor – was forced to disown his Economic Minister mid-summit. It was an early setback for him on the international stage.

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Image Author: mike_is_scrumptious

Assume a robust global deal on climate and the world’s cities will have to transform their infrastructure, economies and societies in little more than a generation.

Assume uncontrolled emissions growth and they face growing impact from a less hospitable and more volatile climate.

Either way – big changes are on the way. Few cities’ leaders grasp the scale of the challenge, especially in developing countries, where towns and cities will have an additional 1.5bn residents to cope with by 2030.

This new think piece has been prepared as part of the British Council’s Climate and Cities programme. Download the pdf (which has full references) or read the full text below the jump.

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Today sees the launch of The Feeding of the Nine Billion, my Chatham House pamphlet on food prices and scarcity issues, which brings a year-long research programme to its conclusion.  This morning’s Financial Times has a piece on the report here, and there’s a BBC World Service interview with me here (scroll to 9.42; you need RealPlayer installed).

The report’s key diagnosis is that while food prices have fallen significantly from their peak last year, they remain acutely problematic for poor people and por countries at their current levels – and poised to resume their upwards climb when the world emerges from the downturn.  Accordingly, the last thing policymakers can do at this stage is to heave a sigh of relief – on the contrary, they need to treat the current easing in prices as a window of opportunity in which to agree the comprehensive, long-term collective action needed to ensure food security for all in the 21st century.

Long term demand drivers, above all a population set to reach over 9 billion by mid-century and the rising affluence and expectations of a growing ‘gloal middle class’ are half the story, with the World Bank forecasting 50% higher demand for food by 2030. 

On the other hand, scarcity issues will present increasing challenges on the supply side.  Oil prices are also set to resume their climb after the downturn, given that investment in new production has collapsed as oil prices have fallen, setting the stage for a future supply crunch; food prices can be expected to follow them, as biofuels, fertiliser prices and transport costs all play their part.  Climate change, water scarcity and competition for land will all also push prices upwards.

So what needs to be done?  The report sets out a ten point agenda for action at the international level and in developing countries, but overall I think of the challenge in four key areas. (more…)

A year or so ago, I did a post wondering what had happened to the anti-globalisation movement. Well, something looking very like it now certainly seems to be reappearing in Iceland at least. Here’s Roger Boyes in the Times on Wednesday last week:

Icelanders all but stormed their Parliament last night. It was the first session of the chamber after what might appear to be an unusually long Christmas break. Ordinary islanders were determined to vent their fury at the way that the political class had allowed the country to slip towards bankruptcy. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, fired rockets at the windows and lit a bonfire in front of the main door. Riot police moved in.

Eirikur Bergmann thinks this amounts to “at the very least, a revolution in political activism”.  And both writers are having a grand old time identifying the baddie.  (more…)

Over the past few weeks the UK government has been organising an extensive series of horizon scanning events to feed into the current revision of the National Security Strategy.  In all, some 24 workshops have been held on the full range of foreign policy issues; various other events have also been held, including the Wilton Park conference I mentioned a couple of weeks back. 

Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work.  Like Charlie, I’m starting to feeling a sense of deja vu each time I attend an awayday or brainstorming session that concludes that emerging economies are, well, emerging; that resources are becoming more scarce; that everything’s interconnected; and so on. 

I can see the utility of futures work that focuses on a pretty specific area – prospects for the pharmaceutical sector, say, or the future of UN peacekeeping – but I suspect that very big picture horizon scanning is only really helpful at this stage if it yields up insights or possibilities that are being ignored or overlooked.

For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing (viz. climate change, organised crime, economic meltdown, terrorism, energy scarcity – you know, the usual list).

Normally, when we think about state fragility we assume that we’re talking about the Lebanons, Somalias and Guinea-Bissaus of the world.  But as people who work in the counter-insurgency sphere have been pointing out for some time, the problem of erosion of state capacity is a whole lot more widespread than that.  (more…)

David Cameron yesterday warned that the UK could be forced to go cap in hand to the IMF, as it did in 1976 under chancellor Denis Healey. (This, by the way, at the launch of a new programme at Demos about ‘progressive conservatism’. Et tu, Demos?)

The question is, would the IMF have the cash. Click on more to read a story I recently wrote for my mag, www.emeafinance.com, which looks at the risk of the IMF running out of money in the next 18 months, and asks what the chances are of it receiving more funds from cash-rich G20 governments (answer: slim).

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I’ve been in Japan today, speaking at ‘Reforming International Institutions – Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century’,  a seminar organized by the United Nations University and the British Embassy in Japan.

You can download my talk here (with pictures, references etc) – or the text only is available below the jump. There’s a webcast too.

Headlines:

• It’s going to be a tough year. The financial meltdown has a long way to go, and the downturn is risking turning into a global depression.
• Trade is a bell wether. Protectionist pressures are already on the rise. If they gain traction, take that as a warning of a wider loss of confidence in global institutions.
• The unravelling of global economic imbalances could prove corrosive to the international order. If countries start to devalue to protect exports, expect a tit-for-tat dynamic to kick in.
• Scarcity issues (energy, water, land, food, atmospheric space for emissions) remain the key medium term driver of global change. Commodity prices will spike again as soon as there’s recovery.
• The downturn has stemmed the uncontrolled growth of emissions, but also lessened the chance of a robust global deal on climate.
• Economic bad times could well drive increased conflict. A major new security threat might be the fabled black swan – hitting just when the global immune system is already overloaded.
• If we experience a long crisis (or a chain of interlinked crises), we are likely to see either a significant loss of trust in the system (globalization retreats), or a significant increase in trust (interdependence increases). 
• You need to stretch time horizons to get the latter – shared awareness (joint analysis of risks and challenges), as a basis for shared platforms (loose coalitions of leaders), which can lobby for a shared operating system (a new international institutional architecture).
• 2009 sets a challenging agenda for the G20 (financial reform and economic recovery – but framed by a broader vision on climate, resources, security etc.)…
• …the G8 (caucus of rich countries able to tee up Copenhagen and kick start development assistance if developing countries begin to teeter)…
• …the UN (especially Ban Ki-Moon’s proposed high level ‘friend’s group’ on climate, but also as a fora for getting to grips with scarcity issues)…
• and the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO (first of all ensuring they keep their heads above water, then looking to ’save globalization from itself’).
• Oh and be ready for the backlash – people are angry and rightfully so, but that may well lead us down some populist blind alleys.

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It’s been another terrible day for the pound as markets punish the British government for stepping in to prop up… the markets:

Analysts said the [latest bailout]… shone a particularly unflattering light on the state of the British government’s finances as it was forced to take an ever-increasing role in the private sector.

James Hughes at CMC Markets said: “Any support seen through yesterday’s session for sterling is looking to be little more than wishful thinking as currency markets take on board the fact that the UK government is risking looking like a huge bank with some legislative functions attached, as RBS now seems to be teetering on the brink of full nationalisation.”

Credit ratings agencies are also enjoying the party, despite being utterly discredited. When they downgrade the UK’s credit rating, the current devaluation (which has upsides) may turn into a rout (which won’t):

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia lowered its forecast for the pound to $1.50 by the end of June from a previous estimate of $1.60, citing a high risk of a cut to the UK’s credit rating outlook. Richard Grace, CBA’s chief currency strategist, warned in a note on Tuesday that UK debt may now be greater than forecast due to the government’s additional bank bailout plans and cited the “high risk” of a downward revision to the ratings outlook for the UK.

Any downgrade wil force many investors to sell their UK government debt, raising the government’s cost of borrowing. The FT’s Lex thinks there’s one thing that will stop a run on the pound – all the world’s other major currencies are screwed too…