Showing posts from category Russia.
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Stress Levels of Major Global Aquifers Revealed by Groundwater Footprint Study
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In the “first spatially explicit comparison of groundwater use, availability, and environmental flow for aquifers globally,” a new article in Nature finds that the “size of the global groundwater footprint is currently about 3.5 times the actual area of aquifers.” An aquifer’s footprint is the theoretical size it would need to be to sustainably support use at its current rate, so groundwater footprints being much larger than their corresponding aquifers is a sign of overuse.
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Population Aging: A Demographic and Geographic Overview
›The original version of this article, by Richard Cincotta, appeared on the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 Blog. It is the first post in a series on population aging, featuring Jack Goldstone, Richard Jackson, Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, Ronald Lee, Andrew Mason, Toshi Yoshihara, Elizabeth H Stephen, David Coleman, and Eric Kaufmann.
This series, Population Aging to 2030, begins with an introductory essay aimed at familiarizing readers with some of the demographic and geographic particulars of this phenomenon, and with several key demographic terms. The term most in need of definition is, of course, “population aging.” -
Loaded Dice and Human Health: Measuring the Impacts of Climate Change
›In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “Insights From Past Millennia Into Climatic Impacts on Human Health and Survival,” Anthony McMichael compares scientific literature that reconstructs past climates with epidemiological research and comes away with more than a dozen examples of the influence of climate on human health and survival. “Risks to health [as a result of climatic change] are neither widely nor fully recognized,” McMichael writes, but “weather extremes and climatic impacts on food yields, fresh water, infectious diseases, conflict, and displacement” have led to human suffering across the centuries. Some of the literature reviewed, for instance, links the Younger Dryas (a several centuries long period of cooling) to hunger in the Nile Valley between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, climatic shifts that expanded the range of disease carrying rats and fleas to the “Black Death” during the mid-1400s, and unusually strong El Niño events to a series of late Victorian-era droughts during the late-1800s.
“Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice,” a working paper from James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy recently submitted to PNAS, uses surface air temperature analysis from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies to examine the impact of global warming on the frequency of extreme weather events. Using measurements from 1951 to 1980 as a baseline, the study finds, first, that the planet has warmed by around half of a degree Celsius since the reference period, and second, that the global area affected by “extreme anomalies” (exceeding three standard deviations from the mean climate) has increased by a factor greater than 10. Affecting approximately 10 percent of global land surface in the last several years, these anomalies, such as the droughts and heat waves observed in Texas in 2011, Moscow in 2010, and France in 2003, “almost certainly would not have occurred in the absence of the global warming,” according to the authors.
The study uses this new evidence about the impact of climate change to update the concept of climate change as a “loading of the climate dice.” Where, the “climate of 1951-1980 [is represented] by colored dice with two sides red for ‘hot,’ two side blue for ‘cold,’ and two sides white for near average temperature,” and the dice themselves represent the chance of observing variations on mean temperature. Under this metaphor, today’s climate is best approximated by a dice with four sides red, one blue, and one white, according to the study.
As for the future, the data suggest that with just one full degree of warming, anomalies three deviations beyond the mean will be the norm, and five deviations beyond the mean will become more likely (the latest IPCC projections suggest between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius are likely). In essence, the red side of the die are not only multiplying, but becoming much more extreme. To put this into scale, the Moscow 2010 heat wave, an event that exceeded the three deviations mark, coincided with a doubling of the death rate in the Russian capital. -
Responses to JPR Climate and Conflict Special Issue: John O’Loughlin, Andrew M. Linke, Frank Witmer (University of Colorado, Boulder)
›Guest Contributor // JPR Special Issue // April 12, 2012 // By John O’Loughlin, Andrew Linke & Frank Witmer
Complexity, in terms of economic, cultural, institutional, and ecological characteristics, weighs heavily on contemporary attempts to unravel the climate change/variability and conflict nexus. The view that local-level complexity can be “controlled away” by technical fixes or adding variables in quantitative analysis does not sit well with many geographers (though some do try to adopt a middle ground position).
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Book Review: ‘Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction’
›The principal argument of Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction is highlighted by the question mark in the title. In many resource rich countries, natural assets have not led to development. The book advances the hypothesis that “for the depletion of natural assets to be converted into sustained development, a series of decisions has got to be got sufficiently right” (p. 1). That series of decisions is examined in detail through case studies on Cameroon, Chile, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, and Zambia, produced by a diverse group of academic and practicing economists under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and the Oxford Centre for the Economics of Resource Rich Countries (OxCarre).
The editors of Plundered Nations are two of the leading economists working on the management of resource wealth. Paul Collier, through innovative and sometimes controversial work on conflict, democracy, and development, helped trigger the attention now being given to the “resource curse” thesis – the idea that mineral or oil wealth cannot be relied on to lead to economic development, stability, or democracy in developing countries. His co-editor, Anthony Venables, heads OxCarre, established in 2007 to become a global center of excellence in the economics of resource rich countries with a mandate to inform policy.
The introductory analysis by Collier and Venables describes the “key decisions” necessary to harness resource wealth for sustained economic development, and the country case studies explore in detail how each of these decisions has played out in each country and with what results.
Leveling the Information Playing Field
Deepwater drilling for oil and gas runs at over $500,000 a day; developing new mines and oil or gas fields can cost billions of dollars. In order to commit to this spending, investors’ licenses need to be secure; but to ensure that investors do not play competitive games to the detriment of government, license terms must also require that prospectors do actually invest in exploration within a relatively brief time period.
The first “key decision,” therefore, concerns setting up a proper investment regime. The importance of creating incentives for exploration and production is often neglected in policy analysis about how to avoid the resource curse. Here, the book provides very clear guidance to governments, and by implication, donors too: Governments should try to level the information playing field between them and extractive industry corporations by investing in as much public geologic information as is practicable. (This is where donors can, and do, help.) Then, the investment regime must be one that provides incentives for companies to (literally) sink capital into exploring for resources and turning finds into production.
Finally, the authors argue that governments should auction off exploration areas gradually to raise the prices paid and allow governments to claw back the risk premium embodied in early exploration.
Revenue Generation and Management
The second of the “key decisions” relates to taxation and the generation of revenues for governments. Here the authors cannot provide such a clear set of prescriptions. Instead, the book highlights general factors that should be taken into account when developing a tax regime, including geology (some resources are much more difficult – and costly – to extract than others) and built-in flexibility to changing commodity prices and other circumstances.
“A well designed tax regime,” they write, is “more dependent upon it being designed to anticipate changes in circumstances than it is to the niceties of the legal process” (p. 5).
Several of the case studies also look closely at the role of state companies as generators of revenues. In both Chile and Malaysia, state companies have been very effective, while, in contrast, the state company in Zambia came to not only “absorb all profits internally in the form of rising unit costs, but, by the time [the company] was dissolved, it was running at a loss equivalent to 10 percent of gross domestic product” (p. 5).
The case studies debunk two frequently voiced and contrasting stereotypes: one that national resource companies are essential to securing national benefit from resources, the other that they are inherently inefficient at capturing resource wealth. History shows that neither generalization is accurate – there have been successes and failures on both sides.
The discussion of government revenues also explores the problematic question of who gets resource revenues in divided countries and how resource revenues can be used to build peace rather than ferment conflict. From the profiles on Russia, Malaysia, and Nigeria in particular, the advice is clear and strong: assuming transparent and equitable motives, national governments should be given priority over local claims for disproportionate benefits.
The Challenge of Saving Prudently
The third “key decision” is on how government revenues are used, specifically how much to save.
Saving is needed both to smooth out the avoidable swings in revenues (because prices and production vary year to year) and to allow non-renewable resources (oil and minerals) to be steadily replaced with sustainable assets, but the various savings strategies analyzed in the case studies illustrate how difficult it is to get it right in practice.
The challenges are diverse. Cameroon’s savings strategy, initially widely praised, ended up failing completely. Secrecy, intended to forestall populist pressures for inappropriate domestic spending, and overseas investment, intended to help avoid “Dutch disease,” imploded into a mess of funds lost to corruption and politically driven local spending.
Kazakhstan appeared to being do everything right in terms of oil revenue savings, only to have things upturned as private sector loans, secured against the prudent management of the oil sector, generated an unsustainable property and construction bubble that required the carefully accumulated oil funds to be used to bail out banks.
One important conclusion drawn by the authors is to question the widely recommended practice of investing revenue funds in liquid assets overseas. The case studies illustrate that overseas assets can be too easily brought back to plug unanticipated gaps in home government budgets or to try and resolve political crises. The second lesson is the importance of building a common understanding across society of why some resource revenues are being saved – Chile and Botswana are cited as successful examples of this.
The Right Investments
After deciding how much of resource revenues should be saved, the final “key decision” governments face is what the remainder should be spent on and in what order. “Properly chosen, domestic investment can transform the economy away from resource dependence to a structure in which it is easier for ordinary citizens to generate productive livelihoods,” the authors write (p. 18).
Malaysia’s sequential investment in agriculture, for example, followed by manufacturing, and most recently in social sectors was a success. However, the Nigeria, Iran, and Kazakhstan case studies are reminders that managing domestic spending is difficult and the risk of white elephant projects that swallow excessive resources for little payoff is high.
In this context, Plundered Nations makes the important point that building capacity for public investment, improving the climate for private investment, and lowering the unit costs of construction are key areas to focus on (though exactly how to accomplish these goals will depend on the country in question). Priority actions might include improving port infrastructure; strengthening laws and enforcement capacity on public procurement; and/or expanding vocational training so that local workers are employed in the skilled construction trades.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
The “key decisions” outlined throughout the case studies show that when resource-rich countries make sound choices (e.g. Malaysia and Chile), the results are seen in rapid economic growth accompanied by social peace. But where these inflection points are mishandled or ignored (e.g. Cameroon), the main legacy of extractive industry revenues is a deterioration of all social indicators.
Though the decisions track dominates the structure of the book, the authors highlight the role that individuals can play as well. The skill and integrity of the leaders of Malaysia’s state oil company; the courage and tenacity of Nigeria’s finance minister and a handful of other senior civil servants in turning around some of the country’s macro-economic management problems after 2003, including by securing debt relief – all were critical individual efforts.
Not for the Generalist
This is an extraordinarily interesting book, but it is also a difficult read. Unlike Paul Collier’s other policy-oriented books such as The Bottom Billion or Wars, Guns, and Votes, which are accessible to a reader new to the subject matter as well as informative for specialists, the target audience for Plundered Nations is students, researchers, and policymakers working across development economics and natural resource economics, but some prior knowledge is assumed. For a reader new to these topics, I would suggest starting with the Nigeria case study. Nigeria’s experience up to 2003 illustrates the whole range of problems associated with natural resource extraction.
Also, though its breadth is valuable, I suspect I am not the only person who would have gotten more out of the book had a conclusion been added. The arguments made in Plundered Nations are consistent with the Natural Resource Charter, which the editors are deeply involved in. A conclusion that drew out this connection and pointed readers – especially policymakers – towards the charter would have been a logical finish and would, in any case, be a great addition for future editions.
Second, though the book touches on the varied results of different national companies, with new countries emerging as resource producers every year – consider Ghana, Mongolia, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Sudan (new country, old producer) – and national companies from Brazil, China, and Norway increasingly active internationally, it would be valuable to have a follow-up set of case studies that looks at the specific prerequisites for national resource companies to be successful in harnessing resource wealth for sustained economic development.
Despite these quibbles, Plundered Nations is essential reading for policymakers, students, and advisors who understand the risks of dependence on resource extraction and want to understand how they can be mitigated to ensure development rather than suffering.
Jill Shankleman is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former senior social and environmental specialist at the World Bank. She now works as a consultant to multinational companies and banks, where her work focuses on oil, gas, and mineral extraction in developing nations.
Sources: Oil-Price.Net, Oxford Centre for the Economics of Resource Rich Countries.
Image Credit: Plundered Nations?: Successes and Failures in Natural Resource Extraction cover via Amazon.com. -
Jay Ulfelder, Dart-Throwing Chimp
Public-Health Campaigns as Outsized Threats to Authoritarian Rule
›August 17, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Jay Ulfelder, appeared on his blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Are certain forms of popular activism more likely to hasten the fall of dictatorships than others? This question occurred to me after reading a recent Washington Post story describing how one Russian woman, Darya Makarova, has turned her own frustration with the poor health care given to her (now dead) young son into a wider campaign that’s has caught Moscow’s eye:Thousands have turned out for her rallies, written letters, signed petitions or joined in Internet forums. Since Maxim’s death in November, she has raised money to reopen a children’s clinic, with an emergency room, in her community. She has shamed the city into buying three new ambulances, with proper equipment. She has launched a nonprofit organization, Health Care for Children, that has national ambitions. Politicians have sought her out. Pavel Astakhov, who holds the newly created title of children’s ombudsman, came from Moscow to see her – and then appointed her his unpaid deputy, giving her more access and clout. Even officials from the sprawling and notoriously indifferent Health Ministry started to pay attention.
I can see why government officials would be nervous about this still-modest and outwardly apolitical campaign. Popular activism around matters of public health and safety seems like it should pose a special challenge to authoritarian regimes, like Russia’s, that stake their right to rule on paternalistic claims about their ability to deliver both social welfare and social protection.
Movements organized around failures of public health and safety are threatening to these regimes because they call out the paternalistic state for failing at its own game. Whatever the form of government involved, one of the modern state’s fundamental roles is to protect its citizens from public health threats. Even when they serve this function poorly, most autocrats claim to be trying, and these campaigns reveal that they are not succeeding.
Continue reading on Dart-Throwing Chimp.
Photo credit: “Your Health rests with…,” courtesy of flickr user okeos. -
Managing Our Forests: Carbon, Climate Change, and Fire
›“We cannot manage our planet if we cannot manage our forests,” said William Sommers, a research professor with the Center for Climate and Society at George Mason University, during a recent event at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The event, which coincided with the International Year of Forests, was the fourth in a series co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Environmental Change and Security Program on “Managing the Planet.” Sandra Brown, director and chief scientist of the Ecosystems Services Unit at Winrock International and David Cleaves, climate change advisor to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, joined Sommers and moderator Thomas Lovejoy, professor at George Mason, to discuss the impact of climate change, carbon, and fire on the world’s forests. [Video Below]
Fire: A “Critical Element”
“Forests have evolved over Earth’s history,” said Sommers, with fire being a “constant shaper” of this evolution. Humans first used fire as a tool about 400,000 years ago, and around 10,000 years ago, we began using fire for agricultural purposes, which, Sommers said, can be considered the beginning of forest management.
The resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been an important consequence of this human intervention, Sommers said. CO2 emissions have an “exceptional persistence” in the atmosphere, which, explained Sommers, “commits us to irreversible warming over the next 1,000 years.”
In order to counteract these warming effects, a replacement for the “business-as-usual” approach is needed, Sommers said. If not, he warned, CO2 concentrations could reach a thousand parts per million by the end of the century: “It has been 30 to 100 million years since Earth experienced that level of atmospheric CO2 concentration, and Earth was extremely warm at that time.”
“Fire remains a critical element of the earth’s system and is highly sensitive to climate change,” said Sommers. The potential feedback relationship between fire and climate change was illustrated in dramatic fashion in the summer of 2010 with the outbreak of wildfires in Russia after the hottest summer temperatures on record.
Time is running short, Sommers warned, to answer the question of whether humans can anticipate and respond to climate change and manage forests in a sustainable manner.
Reducing Emissions & Improving Management
“Logging can be well-planned and well-designed or maybe not so well-planned,” said Brown as she spoke about her research on the logging industry in the tropics. Sustainable forest management in the tropics is still “a bit of the wild west” in some countries, though the situation is improving slightly, she said.
One way to improve management and reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be through the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) program of the United Nations. REDD+ can provide incentives, Brown said, for people to come up with useful innovations and improvements to forest management. But, she warned, “the longer we keep waiting, [the more] forests are diminishing.”
When a tree is felled, Brown said, there is a lot of collateral damage. An estimated one billion metric tons of CO2 are released every year from logging in the tropics of Africa and Latin America, she explained. One-half of these emissions are from the harvesting itself and the other half is from incidental damage and infrastructure, such as from the skid trails and haul roads needed to transport the logs out of the forest.
Therefore, it is important for all possible reduction steps to be taken, Brown said: “Where we have opportunities to produce goods with reducing emissions, we need to take those opportunities. We just can’t keep thinking, ‘That’s too small to worry about.’ If there’s what we call ‘low-hanging fruit,’ why not go for it?”
In order to reduce emissions and improve management, Brown suggested reducing avoidable waste by trimming more off of felled logs to increase volume, creating a management plan wherein felled logs are accurately mapped and skid trails are better planned, and using silvicultural treatments to speed the forest’s recovery.
Integrating Climate Change Into Risk Management
The job of the U.S. Forest Service has always been that of a “stress manager,” said Cleaves. Climate change is likely to ramp up existing stressors, such as drought and wildfires, which is why it is necessary for the Forest Service to integrate climate change adaptation techniques into the existing stress manager role. “We feel that there is no such thing as a separate climate change program,” he said.
Many difficult choices will have to be made to address climate change, Cleaves said: “We can’t afford the scale of the problem; we can’t afford to solve it all. We need to be able to prioritize.” These choices will have to be based on economic, social, and ecological values in order to “manage risks around the full sweep of the elements of sustainability,” he said.
The country’s forests are changing and we have already seen whole system change, Cleaves explained. For example, climate change has altered snow cover patterns leading to the decline of over half a million acres of yellow-cedar forest in Alaska.
Other threats facing U.S. forests include disease (such as white pine blister rust), increased variability of fires, increased housing growth near forested areas, and the possibility of forests turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources. That is to say, as forests are destroyed through fires, clearing, or disease, they release back into the environment the carbon they have absorbed.
Risk must be integrated into the decision-making process of the agency, and to this end the Forest Service has created the National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change. But in order to meet these climate change challenges, Cleaves said, “we have to get moving.”
Sources: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USA Today.
Photo Credit: “Michigan,” courtesy of flickr user The U.S. Army. -
What “Lost” Cultures Can Contribute to Management of Our Planet
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“Climate change is not a technical problem for indigenous people – it’s a psychological and spiritual problem,” said Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, at a recent Wilson Center event, the third in a series co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Environmental Change and Security Program. Indigenous people are “being driven out of existence,” as climate change alters landscapes and weather patterns that they have carefully adapted to over centuries, he said. These people are not “failed attempts at being modern…they are unique answers to the fundamental question, ‘what does it mean to be human and alive?’” he said. “It behooves us to pay attention to how they choose to live upon the earth.” [Video Below]
