by David Steven | Jan 21, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system, London Summit
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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by Alex Evans | Jan 19, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
Former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman has a piece in the new edition of Foreign Affairs on the Great Crash of 2008, which takes the following as its opening premise:
The financial and economic crash of 2008, the worst in over 75 years, is a major geopolitical setback for the United States and Europe. Over the medium term, Washington and European governments will have neither the resources nor the economic credibility to play the role in global affairs that they otherwise would have played. These weaknesses will eventually be repaired, but in the interim, they will accelerate trends that are shifting the world’s center of gravity away from the United States.
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by David Steven | Dec 15, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
A while ago, a few beers drunk, I became embroiled in speculating about decidedly unconventional ways of controlling greenhouse gases. Two ideas lodged firmly enough in my memory to last until the next day: burning sheep and burying trees.
Now before any of you vegans start with the hate mail, I want to stress that this was a thought experiment. No lamb was subjected to even the lightest singeing. But you understand the logic…wouldn’t it be good if you had a machine that could range around marginal land (rather than attractive pasture) under its own steam, all the while turning biomass into a high-octane biofuel?
Use a sheep and you’d get wool as an additional by-product. Plus the UK proved the concept when it incinerated most of the cows in the country when BSE hit…
Tree burying seemed like a cheap and easy way of carbon sequestration (with technology that works today, rather than in twenty years’ time). Grow trees as fast as possible. Then throw them down a disused coal mine. Repeat ad nauseam. Of course, you’d get methane released as the trees rotted – but surely there’d be a way of sealing that in or tapping it off.
It turns out that tree burying isn’t such a bonkers idea – it’s just you need to bury charcoal instead. Or so I discovered today at a post-Poznan washup (hosted by IES, Globe and European Economic and Social Committee), where the best presentation of the day was from Craig Sams on biochar.
Craig founded the Whole Earth organic food brand and Green and Black‘s organic chocolate (both of which he has since sold). He’s now pushing charcoal as a low-tech solution to the climate change problem, working with Daniel Morrell, founder of the Carbon Neutral Company.
Craig’s pitch is as follows (for more detail see this white paper from the International Biochar Initiative):
- The world’s soil has lost a colossal amount of carbon due to centuries of intensive agriculture (accounting for about half of the current stock of atmospheric greenhouse gases).
- You can take biomass (fast growing crops that you grow specially, coppiced trees or even the crud that gathers on the forest floor), and turn it into charcoal using pyrolysis (you get some energy too).
- The char can then be added to soil (either in forests or on agricultural land), where it enriches it, reduces the need for nitrate fertilisers, and stores large quantities of carbon for the long-term (all, potentially, achieved through a myriad of grassroots schemes).
Craig dropped an eye-popping stat into his presentation. If all available land were devoted to biochar for just one year, then enough carbon could be sequestered to take atmospheric concentrations back to pre-industrial levels. Admittedly, we’d all starve for 365 days – but it shows the potential.
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by David Steven | Dec 8, 2008 | Off topic
It was a very busy weekend on Global Dashboard. So in case you missed it:
by David Steven | Dec 6, 2008 | Conflict and security, South Asia
In an extraordinary twist to the Mumbai attrocities, Pakistan’s Dawn News is reporting that Pakistan prepared for war after their President – Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widow – received a call, as the crisis raged, from someone who claimed to be the Indian External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee.
Whether it was mere mischief or a sinister move by someone in the Indian external affairs ministry, or the call came from within Pakistan, remains unclear, and is still a matter of investigation. But several political, diplomatic and security sources have confirmed to Dawn that for nearly 24 hours over the weekend the incident continued to send jitters across the world. To some world leaders the probability of an accidental war appeared very high.
It all started late on Friday, November 28. Because of the heightened tension over the Mumbai carnage, some senior members of the presidential staff decided to bypass the standard procedures meant for such occasions, including verification of the caller and involvement of the diplomatic missions, and transferred the late-evening call to Mr Zardari. The caller introduced himself as Pranab Mukherjee and, while ignoring the conciliatory language of the president, directly threatened to take military action if Islamabad failed to immediately act against the supposed perpetrators of the Mumbai killings.
As the telephone call ended many in the Presidency were convinced that the Indians had started beating the war drums. Within no time intense diplomatic and security activity started in Islamabad. Signals were sent to everyone who mattered about how the rapidly deteriorating situation may spiral out of control. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was advised to immediately return to the capital from Lahore, and a special plane (PAF chief’s) was sent to Delhi to bring back the visiting Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi early in the morning on Nov 29 even when he was already booked to return by a scheduled PIA flight the same evening.
