by Alex Evans | Nov 14, 2013 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Whether it’s at the climate summit currently underway in Warsaw (from where I’m writing this post) or at two key meetings happening in NYC next month on the post-2015 agenda, financing is one of the issues furrowing most brows.
Right now, progress in both places is stalled. Promises of $100 billion a year by 2020 under the Green Climate Fund are starting to look like a bad joke – especially to the least developed countries (LDCs) who most urgently need help to adapt to climate impacts.
Aid flows, meanwhile, have actually been declining for the last two yeas, rather than rising towards the 0.7% target. And they’re falling fastest for LDCs: while bilateral aid as a whole fell by 4% last year, it fell by 12.8% for them.
Nor does it look likely that rich countries are about to put big new pledges of cash on the table any time soon, what with weak growth, high unemployment, and fiscal pressures – despite the crucial 2015 deadlines on both climate and development. Yet if they fail to do so, it could toxify the dynamics on both issues – and contribute to an outcome where the climate and development ‘tribes’ perceive themselves to be fighting over the same pot of cash rather than working together on a shared agenda.
Is there any way to defuse this ticking timebomb? Well, there might be. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Aug 1, 2012 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Economics and development
Global concern is currently mounting all over again about the impacts of a more resource-scarce world, with particular attention focused at present on the risks of a renewed global food price spike following a spate of extreme weather in the US and around the world. Two weeks ago, corn and soyabean prices broke the record they had set during the 2008 food spike, while wheat prices have increased by 50% over the last five weeks.
These global trends have the potential to cause massive problems for a country like Ethiopia – where wheat is by far the country’s biggest import by value. And that’s before you take into account low agricultural yields and farm sizes, major exposure to drought, limited access to energy, and how these challenges will be magnified by high rates of population and economic growth, which will increase demand for resources – as well as intensifying climate change impacts
Against this backdrop, the NYU Center on International Cooperation has just published a new report of mine entitled Resources, Risks and Resilience: Scarcity and climate change in Ethiopia. This is the first in a series of CIC case studies on the risks that resource scarcity and climate change pose to poor countries – and on how those countries and their international partners can build resilience to them. (A second case study, on resource scarcity in Pakistan, is currently being prepared by David Steven; plans are also in train to undertake a third study on Nigeria.)
While the report sets out a daunting set of scarcity-driven challenges for Ethiopia, it also notes that Ethiopia’s government is well aware of the challenges it faces, and has put in place a battery of policies to address them – including, notably, the breathtaking aim of becoming a middle income country by 2025 with zero net growth in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as an extremely ambitious (and controversial) program of dam-building and large scale agricultural projects.
As well as assessing these policies, the report also identifies a range of vulnerabilities, policy gaps and exogenous risks that will need to be taken account of in future planning by the government and its international partners. It concludes by setting out a ten point agenda on how Ethiopia’s government and partners can improve their performance in managing scarcity issues. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Dec 9, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
The World Food Programme has just published a new report (pdf; also Reuters coverage here) on how climate change will affect hunger, which both summarises the state of scientific knowledge on the issue and sets out a policy agenda to tackle it. Key messages:
– By 2050, the number of people at risk of hunger because of climate change will be 10 to 20 per cent higher than it would have been without climate change.
– The number of malnourished children is expected to increase by 24 million – 21 per cent higher than without climate change.
– Sub-Saharan Africa will be worst affected, with the semi-arid regions either side of the equator hit hardest of all.
– But here’s the good news: if we get the policies right – on mitigation and on adaptation – the increase in the number of hungry people by 2050 could be limited to just 5% (which would actually be a substantial reduction in proportionate terms, given that population is projected to rise by 50% over the same period).
The lead author for the report was Martin Parry, the Chair of IPCC Working Group 2 (the part of the Panel that looks at impacts). I was one of three other authors, and wrote the part of the report covering policy responses.
