by Alex Evans | Aug 20, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Full marks to WWF for their report on virtual water use today, which finds that when imports of virtual water – the water used to grow or manufacture goods that are then imported into the UK, sometimes from severely water-stressed countries – each Briton uses some 4,645 litres, making the UK the sixth largest net importer of water in the world. Only 38% of the UK’s net water use actually comes from Britain’s own resources, the report adds. (Press release; report.)
Virtual water’s a handy concept, not least in that it shows up where consumers’ real water impact takes place. Turning off the tap while brushing one’s teeth is all very well, but if you really want to have an impact, go vegetarian: here’s the amount of water it takes to produce selected foods:
1 kg of potatoes – 500 litres
1 kg of wheat – 900 litres
1 kg of rice – 1,900 litres
1 kg of poultry – 3,500 litres
1 kg of beef – 15,000 litres
(Source: the excellent Atlas of Water. Buy one today.) Agriculture’s easily the world’s largest consumer of water, too: it accounts for 70% of global water use, compared to 20% for industry and 10% for the domestic sector.
In case you wondering, WWF says the top 5 net importers of virtual water are Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and Italy. And the top 5 exporters? The USA, Australia, Argentina, Canada and Thailand. (Sixth is India, where water tables are plummeting.)
by Daniel Korski | Aug 14, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks
Whilst the US has stolen a march on Europe by deciding to send aid with the US military, this will be palliative and humanitarian, rather than deal with the longer-term reconstruction requirements.
The EU has similarly released funds for humanitarian programmes – which will be needed to help and house the estimated 100.000 refugees. But for the longer-term, what’s needed is joint UN/World Bank Assesment Mission to survey the reconstruction requirements
Such a mission should then be followed up by a donor’s conference hosted by an EU state. There the US and EU can pledge aid and coordinate their contributions.
France, which has led mediation efforts and recently hosted similar events for the Palestinians and Afghanistan, are ideally prepared to lead the effort.
If the EU wants to play a larger role on the civilian side – given its likely subsidiary peacekeeping role – it would be logical to appoint an EU Special Envoy to lead a joint EU Council/Commission Reconstruction Mission with third-party participation ie the US (like ICO in Kosovo). Preferably UN-mandated but not strictly necessary as it could be by Tblisi’s invitation.
Adam Kobieracki, the Polish former NATO Assistant Secretary-General would be an ideal candidate unless the mandate of the current EUSR Peter Semneby is to be refocused from the South Caucasus (inc Armenia).
In most post-conflict scenarios, the host government is very weak and coordination therefore a task for the international community . This is patently not the case in Georgia and the sooner the Georgian president appoints someone to lead the reconstruction effort – or take the role himself – the better.
Two tricky questions, however, remain.
First, given the damage done to the Georgian security forces, it will be necessary to survey their state and propose an Security Sector Reform plan to rebuild these. Putting a plan together will require an assessment and a seperate donor conversation.
– although this will obviously be contentious with Russia. To start off, the US, Canada and the UK should field a joint mission which can report back to other donors.
Second, what to do about South Ossetia and Abkhazia? The fighting has clearly wrought considerable damage in the break-away republics and if the refugees are ever going to return, many of their houses will need to be rebuilt and the economy re-started.
But to what extent should this be Russia’s task as opposed to the EU’s? And if the EU gets involved – funding a large reconstruction programme – should this work be part of a quid pro quo over other issues, for example the role and independence of its peacekeepers? Any Assesment UN/World Bank mission should clearly spend time in the two break-away republics but the analyses should be seperate from the assesment of Georgia proper, not automatically be part of the donor’s conference and deal directly with the criminalised political economy of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
by Alex Evans | Aug 1, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Influence and networks
Oh dear. First the collapse of Doha, and now this:
Russia plans to form a state grain trading company to control up to half of the country’s cereal exports, intensifying fears that Moscow wants to use food exports as a diplomatic weapon in the same way as Gazprom has manipulated natural gas sales.
The move by Moscow, the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of cereals, has been sharply criticised by US agriculture diplomats as a “giant step back” to the Soviet era.
Morevoer, in the future Russia’s strategic importance as a grain producer is likely to grow as a result of climate change: higher average temperatures are likely to benefit Russia’s agricultural productivity, at least in the short term, as temperate latitudes are projected by the IPCC to see some carbon fertilisation effects between one and three degrees C of warming. (This said, Russia’s yields could still fall in absolute terms if extreme weather events, droughts and changes in water availability impact heavily – but it’s still likely that Russia’s importance as a producer would grow in relative terms.)
Russia (like Canada) looks set to be one of the big winners of the 21st century world of scarcity. Massive investment in new oil production even as the price soars; the prospect of even more resource finds as the Arctic melts; relatively lower exposure to climate impacts; and Russia’s role as a breadbasket of the world (with all the influence that this entails) set to grow and grow.
by Mark Weston | Jul 23, 2008 | Africa, Economics and development
I was doing a little research for my upcoming book on West Africa yesterday, and came up with the following factoid: since 1960, the top five countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (that is, the countries with the best quality of life in the world – Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland) have had 44 changes of government following peaceful democratic elections. The total for the bottom five countries? Two. Yes, in a total of two hundred and forty years, there have been just two peaceful handovers of power that have respected the will of the people. One in Sierra Leone, one in Mali. Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Niger have had none. Doubters of the economic value of democracy, take note.
by Alex Evans | Jul 1, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
What a depressing spectacle it is to watch the Church of England sinking into meme warfare with itself. On Sunday came the news that conservative evangelicals representing half the world’s Anglicans were (in effect) breaking away from the main churches in the US and Canada to set up a new network called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA). Apparently they’re here to rescue us all from “militant secularism and pluralism”.
Then, today, the news that more than 1,300 clergy (including 11 serving bishops) had written to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to say that they’ll defect from the Church of England if women bishops are consecrated. “We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home [if women bishops are allowed]”, the letter says.
Now, I’m not going to get stuck into the rights and wrongs of gay bishops, female bishops, red bishops, blue bishops or any other kind of bishops in this post. Too much verbiage has already been expended on the issue, and in any case it’s not as if anyone actively involved in these debates hasn’t already made up their mind.
No, what annoys me is that the clergy involved in these quite fantastically acrimonious disputes are supposed to represent moral leadership. An example to the rest of us. At a point when meme warfare between rival values system is holding the world back from moving forward on any number of fronts, the Church – if it stands for anything – ought to be showing that unity in diversity is a realistic possibility; that dialogue can lead to consensus; that even the most apparently profound and fundamental differences can still be bridged. Fat chance, apparently.
Interesting fact: the word religion comes from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to unite or bind together’. Not that you’d be able to tell from watching this bunch of clowns.
