In March alone, at least nine cities across three continents were hit by terrorist attacks. Municipalities—from megacities to tertiary cities—continue to bear the brunt of such attacks: in the short term, they provide first response and take essential security measures; in the longer term, they suffer from the fallout of intercommunal tensions and economic slowdowns, which can last for years and spread beyond the target city.

Yet, post-attack discussions tend to be dominated by what national governments can do to prevent future attacks—whether through enhanced border security, law enforcement, intelligence, or military measures; or though intensified efforts to resolve underlying conflicts; or through more cooperation with foreign governments. This is understandable given the resources of national governments and their long-standing monopoly on force and foreign policy. Nevertheless, a small but growing number of cities and other local authorities are realizing that they have an essential role to play in countering violent extremism (CVE) as well.

Urban trend-setters

There is nothing new about cities coming to the realization that they need to act in the face of global challenges. Mayors and city-networks such as the C40 Climate Action Leadership Group have vocally engaged on the global stage to counter carbon emissions. Cities have frequently shown themselves to be generally more nimble and less averse to risk-taking than their national counterparts. Mayors operate under intense expectations to “get things done,” but when it comes to the threats of transnational violent extremism, what does that mean?

Much like with climate change and other global challenges where cities are becoming increasingly active stakeholders, cities are serving as laboratories for developing and testing innovative initiatives to prevent violent extremism from taking root, designed and implemented in collaboration with local communities. 

[C]ities are serving as laboratories for developing and testing innovative initiatives to prevent violent extremism from taking root.

The comparative advantages of local authorities are manifold: They are best positioned to understand the grievances that might make their citizens vulnerable to terrorist recruitment; to identify the drivers and early signs of violent extremism; to build trust between the community and local police; to develop multi-agency prevention efforts that involve families, community leaders, social workers, and mental health professionals; and to develop programs that offer alternatives to alienated youth who might otherwise be attracted to violence. 

Recognizing these advantages, local leaders are developing strategies and programs to address the violent extremist threat at each stage of the radicalization cycle. Cities across Europe have been at the forefront of these efforts, with Aarhus, Denmark often cited as a model. The approach of Aarhus involves both prevention and care, relying an extensive community-level network to help young people returning from Syria an opportunity to reintegrate in Danish society (provided they haven’t committed a crime) and mentoring to try to dissuade people from traveling to the conflict. 

In Montgomery County, Maryland, the county authorities are involved in a community intervention program that includes training for faith leaders, teachers, social service providers, police, and parents on how to recognize the early signs of extremism in underserviced immigrant communities. 

In Montreal, a $2 million, multi-disciplinary “anti-radicalization center” provides mothers who suspect their children may be vulnerable to radicalization or recruitment with resources that don’t involve contacting the police. The center focuses on training people how to identify the signs of radicalization and researching the drivers of radicalization in Montreal and what works to prevent its growth. 

Cities are dynamic actors, in part, because they have no problem borrowing from each other. Inspired by the Montreal initiative, Brussels opened a prevention-focused, anti-radicalization center, which—like the Montreal center—keeps the police out of the picture unless necessary to confront an imminent threat.

In Australia, both Victoria and New South Wales have set aside funds to support local NGO-led interventions that target individuals who may be radicalizing and build community resilience.

In Mombasa, Kenya, Governor Hassan Ali Joho is working with the regional parliament and local civil society groups to develop a county-level CVE strategy that includes a heavy focus on providing youth with positive alternatives to joining al-Shabab.

Except for Mombasa, nearly all municipality-led CVE efforts are taking place in the global north. Throughout the world, mayors and other local leaders are not part of national-level conversations about how to prevent future attacks. If national governments insist on viewing national security issues like violent extremism as being the exclusive policy domain of the capital, they will miss crucial opportunities to address a threat that is increasingly localized. 

Part of the challenge is that, much like on other global issues, municipal authorities operate within the policy and bureaucratic frameworks of national governments. Those governments can enable or, just as frequently, impede effective local action. Thus, there is often a ceiling for local actors. Raising or breaking through the ceiling is particularly difficult in the security space, given the monopoly that many national governments want to maintain over issues of national security—even while recognizing the need for local solutions.

Flattening the CVE policy space

The good news is that in countries where local authorities can innovate and lead, energy around city-led CVE efforts is increasing. Cities are sharing lessons learned and challenges, with city-to-city networks like with the Strong Cities Network (SCN)—which held its first summit earlier this month in Antalya, Turkey—sprouting to facilitate cooperation.

Yet, a significant majority of SCN members are in countries where national governments already acknowledge local authorities’ key role in CVE. With a few exceptions, cities from large swathes of the globe—including in regions where the problem of violent extremism is most acute, like the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Asia—are not enabled to contribute to efforts to prevent violent extremism from taking root in their communities. 

CVE discussions in general should highlight ways in which national policymakers have enabled effective local CVE activities, as well as roadblocks and solutions. These discussions should also be brought into multilateral platforms such as the U.N. Global Counterterrorism Forum. 

A number of other steps could be taken to enhance vertical cooperation on CVE. For example, countries could involve municipal-level representatives (not simply the national ministry responsible for engaging with such authorities) in developing national CVE plans and provide such authorities with a role in implementation. National governments that already do this could start including representatives of cities in security and broader foreign policy dialogues, particularly with those that continue to resist their involvement. 

National governments should incentivize local authorities to work with their communities to innovate in this issue area. A public-private innovation fund could be established to support city-led CVE projects in countries where political will exceeds resources; those international donors committed to supporting local solutions to global challenges and increasing the involvement of local authorities in national security conversations should invest in such a fund and, more broadly, in building the capacity of city-level officials and practitioners in the CVE sphere.

None of these steps is likely to be an elixir—after all, the notion that national security issues should be handled exclusively at the national level is deeply entrenched. However, taking these steps can generate gradual improvements in vertical cooperation on CVE issues, much like we have seen with international and inter-agency counterterrorism cooperation involving national governments over the past decade. 

We’re just over midway through the hazy days of summer vacation, and children without access to high quality enrichment opportunities are already slipping behind their wealthier peers. As noted in a recent New York Times article, in addition to the decrease in math proficiency that most kids experience over the break, low-income children also lose more than two months of reading skills—skills they don’t regain during the school year. This compounds the already deep educational disparities found among students of different socioeconomic groups, which can be observed as early as 18 months of age.

Most efforts to address these gaps focus on improving our K-12 educational systems. Yet, children spend an average of 80 percent of their waking time outside of a classroom—a simple, yet startling statistic that highlights the need to explore a broader range of solutions.

As we learned at a recent Brookings event, Urban Thinkscape, an ongoing project from developmental psychologists Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, might be one of those solutions. Drawing on findings from their research on guided play—particularly from interventions like the Ultimate Block Party and The Supermarket Study—the project embeds playful learning activities, such as games and puzzles, into public places where children routinely spend time during non-school hours. Designed by architect Itai Palti, each installation is created with specific learning goals in mind and reflects best practices in psychological research.

With a pilot led by researcher Brenna Hassinger-Das in progress in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone, the project is already revealing important lessons—not only for educators, but for urban planners and policymakers as well.

The first involves the (often under-appreciated) need to work with local residents. Through meetings and focus groups with leaders of community organizations, neighbors, and Promise Zone stakeholders, the team gained a clearer understanding of resident needs, spurred interest in the project, identified potential sites, and improved designs. Residents were brought into the process early, empowered to offer suggestions at several stages, and will continue to be engaged as the project is implemented and assessed.

The upshot? When community members are meaningfully involved—and local wisdom valued—from the onset, residents become invested in the project and feel a sense of ownership of it over the long haul. This not only improves the likelihood that the project will succeed, but also helps foster neighborhood trust and cohesion, and builds social capital that can be applied to future efforts.

A second lesson is the extent to which a full scaling of the project could help transform distressed neighborhoods through what Project for Public Spaces often refers to as “lighter, quicker, cheaper” interventions.

Many high poverty urban areas are challenged with large numbers of vacant or underutilized properties, as well as dull spaces (like bus stops) that serve only utilitarian functions. The Urban Thinkscape project aims to take such spaces and remake them into opportunities for interaction and learning—and by doing so create tangible improvements to the neighborhood’s physical fabric. While the West Philadelphia pilot has substantial long-term planning behind it, ideally the “playful” installments will be refined over time so they can be more easily and cheaply implemented in other urban neighborhoods.

Finally, the Urban Thinkscape interventions have the potential to advance academic and spatial skills in children, reducing the gap in school readiness, and ultimately fostering better educational and life outcomes.

Many families in high poverty neighborhoods can’t afford extracurricular enrichment activities, particularly during the summer. And even where they might be offered—via community centers, or through other nonprofit initiatives focused on the arts, STEM activities, or sports—children may only experience them at certain times of the week. Urban Thinkscape aims to supplement these activities by embedding learning opportunities into the everyday landscape through interventions that develop numeracy, literacy, and other skills necessary to succeed in school and eventually the workforce. From an urban planning and policy perspective, this individual development is critical to helping build family wealth and vibrant, healthy city neighborhoods.

Though still nascent in its development, the Urban Thinkscape model appears to be a fun, innovative way to give children—and their caregivers—learning opportunities outside the classroom, while creating new gathering spaces and improved public places. In this way, the project is creatively employing the city itself as an agent of change. If the full vision of this work is realized, perhaps we can finally put the brakes on the “summer-slide” such that all kids can start the school year at the top of their game.

There are a number of causes of the financial crisis that has devastated the U.S. economy and spread globally. Weakness in financial sector regulation was one of the causes and the proliferation of different regulators is, in turn, a cause of the regulatory failure. There is a bewildering, alphabet soup variety of regulators and supervisors for banks and other financial institutions that failed in their task of preventing the crisis and, at the same time, created an excessive regulatory burden on the industry because of overlapping and duplicative functions.

We can do better. This paper makes the case for a single micro prudential regulator, that is to say, one federal agency that has responsibility for the supervision and regulation of all federally chartered banks and all major non-bank financial institutions. There would still be state-chartered financial institutions covered by state regulators, but the federal regulator would share regulatory authority with the states.

The Objectives Approach to Regulation

The Blueprint for financial reform prepared by the Paulson Treasury proposed a system of objectives-based regulation, an approach that had been previously suggested and that is the basis for regulation in Australia. The White Paper prepared by the Geithner Treasury did not use the same terminology, but it is clear from the structure of the paper that their approach is essentially an objectives-based one, as they lay out the different elements of regulatory reform that should be covered. I support the objectives approach to regulation.

There should be three major objectives of regulation, as follows.

• To make sure that there is micro-prudential supervisions, so that customers and taxpayers are protected against excessive risk taking that may cause a single institution to fail.

• To make sure that whole financial sector retains its balance and does not become unstable. That means someone has to warn about the build up of risk across several institutions and perhaps take regulatory actions to restrain lending used to purchase assets whose prices are creating a speculative bubble.

• To regulate the conduct of business. That means to watch out for the interests of consumers and investors, whether they are small shareholders in public companies or households deciding whether to take out a mortgage or use a credit card.

In applying this approach, it is vital for both the economy and the financial sector that the Federal Reserve has independence as it makes monetary policy. Experience in the United States and around the world supports the view that an independent central bank results in better macroeconomic performance and restrains inflationary expectations. An independent Fed setting monetary policy is essential.

An advantage of objectives-based regulation is that it forces us to consider what are the “must haves” of financial regulation—those things absolutely necessary to reduce the chances of another crisis. Additionally we can see the “must not haves”—the regulations that would have negative effects. It is much more important to make sure that the job gets done right, that there are no gaps in regulation that could contribute to another crisis and that there not be over-regulation that could stifle innovation and slow economic growth, than it is that the boxes of the regulatory system be arranged in a particular way. In turn, this means that the issue of regulatory consolidation is important but only to the extent that it makes it easier or harder to achieve the three major objectives of regulation efficiently and effectively.

For objectives-based regulation to work, it is essential to harness the power of the market as a way to enhance stability. It will never be possible to have enough smart regulators in place that can outwit private sector participants who really want to get around regulations because they inhibit profit opportunities or because of the burdens imposed. A good regulatory environment is structured so that people who take risks stand to lose their own money if their bets do not work out. The crisis we are going through was caused by both market and regulatory failures and the market failures were often the result of a lack of transparency (“asymmetric information” in the jargon of economics). Those who invested money and lost it often did not realize the risks they were taking. To the extent that policymakers can enhance transparency, they can make market forces work better and help achieve the goal of greater stability.

Having a single micro prudential regulator would help greatly in meeting the objectives of regulation, a point that will be taken up in more detail below. It is not a new idea. In 1993-94, the Clinton and Riegle proposals for financial regulation said that a single micro prudential regulator would provide the best protection for the economy and for the industry. In the Blueprint developed by the Paulson Treasury, it was proposed that there be a single micro prudential regulator. 

Read the full paper » (pdf)

Downloads

• Download

Downloads

• Sample Chapter
• Table of Contents

• {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2404-9, $18.95 Add to Cart

Access to information and communication technology through cell phones, the internet, and electronic media has increased exponentially around the world. While a few decades ago cell phones were a luxury good in wealthy countries, our data show that today over half of respondents in Sub-Saharan Africa and about 80 percent of those in Latin America and Southeast Asia have access to cell phones. In addition to making phone calls and text messaging, cell phones are used for activities such as accessing the internet and social network sites. Meanwhile, the launch of mobile banking gives access to these technologies an entirely new dimension, providing access to financial services in addition to information and communication technology. It is estimated that in Kenya, where the mobile banking “revolution” originated, there are some 18 million mobile money users (roughly 75 percent of all adults). Given the expanding role of information technology in today’s global economy, in this paper we explore whether this new access also enhances well-being.

Neither of the authors is an expert on information technology. The real and potential effect of information technology on productivity, development, and other economic outcomes has been studied extensively by those who are. Building on past research on the economics of well-being and on the application of the well-being metrics to this particular question, we hope to contribute an understanding of how the changes brought about by information and communication technology affect well-being in general, including its non-income dimensions.

Our study has two related objectives. The first is to understand the effects of the worldwide increase in communications capacity and access to information technology on human well-being. The second is to contribute to our more general understanding of the relationship between well-being and capabilities and agency. Cell phones and information technology are giving people around the world – and particularly the poor – new capabilities for making financial transactions and accessing other services which were previously unavailable to them. We explore the extent to which the agency effect of having access to these capabilities manifests itself through both hedonic and evaluative aspects of well-being.

Downloads

• Download the full paper

Abstract

We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We posit that individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test four hypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another;and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We find that: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii)both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contribute insight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely,people’s capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.

Downloads

• Download the full paper

Cliquez ici pour lire la version complète de ce blog en français »

2016: The turning point

Policymakers and development practitioners now face a new set of challenges in the aftermath of the global consensus triumvirate Addis Agenda—2030 Agenda—Paris Agreement: [1] implementation, follow-up, and review. Development policy professionals must tackle these while at the same time including the three pillars of sustainable development—social development, economic growth, and environmental protection—and the above three global consensus’ cross-sectoral natures—all while working in a context where policy planning is still performed in silos. They also must incorporate the universality of these new agreements in the light of different national circumstances—different national realities, capacities, needs, levels of development, and national policies and priorities. And then they have to significantly scale up resource allocation and means of implementation (including financing, capacity building, and technology transfer) to make a difference and enhance novel multi-stakeholder partnerships to contain the surge of global flows of all kinds (such as migration, terrorism, diseases, taxation, extreme weather, and digital revolution) in a resolutely interconnected world. Quite an ambitious task!

Given the above complexities, new national and global arrangements are being made to honor the commitments put forth to answer these unprecedented challenges. Several African governments have already started establishing inter-ministerial committees and task forces to ensure alignment between the global goals and existing national planning processes, aspirations, and priorities.

With the international community, Africa is preparing for the first High-Level Political Forum since the 2030 Agenda adoption in July 2016 on the theme “Ensuring that no one is left behind.” In order to inform the 2030 Agenda’s implementation leadership, guidance, and recommendations, six African countries [2] of 22 U.N. Member States, volunteered to present national reviews on their work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a unique opportunity to provide an uncompromising reality check and highlight levers to exploit and limits to overcome for impact.

Paralleling Africa’s groundwork, the United Nations’ efforts for coordination have been numerous. They include an inter-agency task force to prepare for the follow-up forum to Financing For Development timed with the Global Infrastructure Forum that will consult on infrastructure investment, a crucial point for the continent; an appointed 10-representative group to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism that facilitates the development, transfer and dissemination of technologies for the SDGs, another very important item for Africa; and an independent team of advisors to counsel on the longer-term positioning of the U.N. development system in the context of the 2030 Agenda, commonly called “U.N. fit for purpose,” among many other endeavors.

These overwhelming bureaucratic duties alone will put a meaningful burden on Africa’s limited capacity. Thus, it is in the interest of the continent to pool its assets by taking advantage of its robust regional networks in order to mitigate this obstacle in a coherent and coordinated manner, and by building on the convergence between the newly adopted texts and Agenda 2063, the African Union’s 50-year transformation blueprint, with the help of pan-African institutions.

Besides national and global, there is a third level of consideration: the regional one. Indeed, the three major agreements in 2015 emphasized support to projects and cooperation frameworks that foster regional and subregional integration, particularly in Africa. [3] Indeed, common and coherent industrial policies for regional value chains developed by strengthened regional institutions and sustained by a strong-willed transformational leadership are gaining traction towards Africa’s insertion into the global economy.

Africa has long made regional economic integration within its main “building blocs,” the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs), a core strategy for development. The continent is definitely engaged in this path: Last summer, three RECs, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), launched the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) that covers 26 countries, over 600 million people, and $1 trillion GDP. The tripartite arrangement paves the way towards Africa’s own mega-regional one, the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), and the realization of one broad African Economic Community. If regionalization allows free movement of people, capital, goods, and services, the resulting increased intra-African connectivity will boost trade within Africa, promote growth, create jobs, and attract investments. Ultimately, it should ignite industrialization, innovation, and competitiveness. To that end, pan-African institutions, capitalizing on the recent positive continental performances, are redoubling their efforts to build an enabling environment for policy and regulation harmonization and economies of scale.

Importantly, infrastructure, without which no connectivity is possible, is undeniably the enabling bedrock to all future regionalization plans. Together with market integration and industrial development, infrastructure development is one of the three pillars of the TFTA strategy. Similarly, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency, the technical body of the African Union (AU) mandated with planning and coordinating the implementation of continental priorities and regional programs, adopted regional integration as a strategic approach to infrastructure. In fact, in June 2014, the NEPAD Agency organized the Dakar Financing Summit for Infrastructure, culminating with the adoption of the Dakar Agenda for Action that lays down options for investment mobilization towards infrastructure development projects, starting with 16 key bankable projects stemming from the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). These “NEPAD mega-projects to transform Africa” are, notably, all regional in scope.

See the full map of NEPAD’s 16 mega-projects to transform Africa here »

Supplementing NEPAD and TFTA, the Continental Business Network was formed to promote public-private dialogue with regard to regional infrastructure investment. The Africa50 Infrastructure Fund was constituted as a new delivery platform commercially managed to narrow the massive infrastructure finance gap in Africa evaluated at $50 billion per annum.

The development of homegrown proposals and institutional advances observed lately demonstrate Africa’s assertive engagement towards accelerating infrastructure development, thereby regionalization. At the last AU Summit, the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee approved the institutionalization of an annual PIDA Week hosted at the African Development Bank (AfDB) to follow up on the progresses made.

The energy partnerships listed below illustrate the possible gain from adopting trans-boundary approaches for implementation and follow-up: the Africa Power Vision (APV) undertaken with Power Africa; the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) model accompanying the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Africa Hub efforts; and the Africa GreenCo solution that is to bank on PIDA.

• Africa Power Vision: African ministers of power and finance gathered at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in 2014 decided to create the APV. The vision provides a strategic template harnessing resources to fast-track access to modern energy for African households, businesses, and industries. It draws up a shortlist of African-driven regional priority energy projects mostly extracted from the PIDA Priority Action Program, which is the PIDA short-term pipeline to be completed by 2020. The game changer Inga III hydropower project, the iconic DESERTEC Sahara solar project, and the gigantic North-South Interconnection Transmission Line covering almost the entire TFTA are among the 13 selected projects. The APV concept note and implementation plan entitled “From vision to action” developed by the NEPAD Agency, in collaboration with U.S. government-led Power Africa initiative, was endorsed at the January 2015 AU Summit. The package elaborates on responses to counter bottlenecks to achieve quantifiable targets, the “acceleration methodology” based on NEPAD Project Prioritization Considerations Tool (PPCT), risk mitigation, and power projects’ financing. Innovative design was thought to avoid duplication, save resources, improve coordination and foster transformative action with the setting up of dual-hatted Power Africa – APV Transaction Advisors, who supervise investment schemes up to financial closure where and when there is an overlap of energy projects or common interest. Overall, the APV partnership permits a mutualization of expertise while at the same time, since it is based on PIDA, promoting regional economic integration for electrification.

• ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Sustainable Energy for All initiative worldwide as early as 2011 with the triple objective of ensuring universal access to modern energy services, doubling the rate of improvement of energy efficiency, and doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030. Since its inception, SE4ALL prompted a lot of enthusiasm on the continent, and is now counting 44 opt-in African countries. As a result, the SE4ALL Africa Hub was the first regional hub to be launched in 2013. Hosted at the AfDB in partnership with the AU Commission, NEPAD Agency, and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), its role is to facilitate the implementation of SE4ALL on the continent. The SE4ALL Africa Hub 3rd Annual Workshop held in Abidjan last February showed the potential of this “creative coalition” (Yumkella, 2014) to deliver on areas spanning from national plans of action, regionally concerted approaches in line with the continental vision, to SDG7 on energy, to climate Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) made for the Paris Agreement. Above all, the workshop displayed the hub’s ability to efficiently kick-start the harmonization of processes for impact among countries. Forasmuch as all ECOWAS Member States opted-in to SE4ALL, the West African ministers mandated their regional energy center, ECREEE, to coordinate the implementation of the SE4ALL Action Agendas (AAs), which are documents outlining country actions required to achieve sustainable energy objectives, and from then Investment Prospectuses (IPs), the documents presenting the AAs investment requirements. As a result, the ECOWAS Renewable Energy Policy (EREP) and the Energy Efficiency Policy (EEEP) were formulated and adopted; and a regional monitoring framework to feed into a Global Tracking Framework, the SE4ALL measuring and reporting system, is now being conceived. The successful ECREEE model, bridging national inventory and global players, is about to be duplicated in two other African regions, EAC and SADC, with the support of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

• Africa GreenCo: Lastly, initiatives like Africa GreenCo are incubating. This promising vehicle, currently funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, envisions itself as an independently managed power trader and broker to move energy where needed. Indeed, Africa GreenCo aims to capitalize on PIDA power projects: In its capacity as intermediary creditworthy off taker, it plans to eventually utilize their regional character as a value addition to risk guarantee. To date, Africa GreenCo is refining the legal, regulatory, technical, and financial aspects of its future structure and forging links with key stakeholders in the sector (member states, multilateral development banks, African regional utilities for generation and interconnection called Power Pools) ahead of the completion of its feasibility study in June 2016.

The above-mentioned partnerships are encouraging trends towards more symbiotic multi-stakeholders cooperation. As they relate to home-crafted initiatives, it is imperative that we do not drift away from a continental vision. Not only do Africa-grown plans have higher chance of success than the one-size-fits-all imported solutions, but consistent and combined efforts in the same direction reinforce confidence, emulation, and attract supportive attention. It implies that the fulfillment of intergovernmental agreements requires first and foremost their adaptation to local realities in a domestication process that is respectful of the policy space. Mainstreaming adjustments can be later conducted according to evidence-based and data-driven experiments. Between these global engagements and national procedures, the regional dimension is the indispensable link: Enabling countries to bypass the artificiality of borders inherited from colonial times and offering concrete options to eradicate poverty in a united-we-stand fashion. Regional integration is therefore a prelude to sustainable development operationalization within Africa and a key step towards its active partaking in the global arena. Regionalization can also trigger international relations shift provided that it encompasses fair multilateralism and sustainable management of global knowledge. Indeed, the resulting openness and the complexity encountered are useful parameters to enrich the conception of relevant local answers.

These success stories show the great potential for new experiments and synergies. To me, they inspire the promise of a better world. The one I like to imagine is characterized by mutually beneficial ecosystems for the people and the planet. It encourages win-win reverse linkages, or in other words, more positive spillovers of developing economies on industrial countries. It is a place where, for example, an African region could draw lessons from the Greek crisis and the other way around: China could learn from Africa’s Maputo Development Corridor for its Silk Road Economic Belt. Twin institutes performing joint research among regional knowledge hubs would flourish. Innovative Fab Labs would be entitled to strive after spatial adventure with e-waste material recycled into 3D printers. In that world, innovative collaborations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) would be favored and involve not only women but also the diaspora in order to develop environmentally sound technical progress. Commensurate efforts, persistent willingness, indigenous ingenuity, and unbridled creativity place this brighter future within our reach.

Beyond the recognition of the African voice throughout the intergovernmental processes, Africa should now consolidate its gains by firmly maintaining its position and safeguarding its winnings throughout the preliminary phase. The continent should urgently set singular tactics with the greatest potential in terms of inclusiveness and creation of productive capacity. While doing so, African development actors should initiate a “learning by doing” virtuous cycle to create an endogenous development narrative cognizant of adaptable best practices as well as failures. Yet the only approach capable of generating both structural transformation and informative change that are in line with continentally own and led long-term strategies is … regional integration.

Click here to read the blog in English »

2016: une année décisive

Les décideurs politiques et les spécialistes du développement sont désormais confrontés à une nouvelle série d’enjeux suite à l’établissement, par consensus mondial, du triumvirat composé du Programme d’action d’Addis-Abeba, du Programme d’action 2030 et de l’Accord de Paris [1]  : mise en œuvre, suivi et passage en revue. Les professionnels des politiques de développement doivent aborder ces enjeux tout en y intégrant ces trois piliers du développement durable que sont le développement social, la croissance économique et la protection environnementale, sans oublier les trois volets intersectoriels du consensus mondial précités, tout cela en opérant au sein d’un contexte dans lequel la planification des politiques reste accomplie de façon cloisonnée. Ils doivent également incorporer le caractère universel de ces nouveaux accords en tenant compte des différentes circonstances nationales ; à savoir les divers besoins, réalités, capacités, niveaux de développement nationaux, de même que les diverses priorités et politiques nationales. Ils doivent aussi accroître considérablement l’allocation des ressources et les moyens de mise en œuvre (comme le financement, le renforcement des capacités et le transfert de technologies) pour changer les choses et améliorer les nouveaux partenariats réunissant plusieurs parties prenantes en vue de restreindre les mouvements mondiaux de toutes sortes (notamment la migration, le terrorisme, les maladies, la fiscalité, les phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes et la révolution numérique) dans un monde résolument interconnecté. Il va sans dire que la tâche est très ambitieuse !

Ces difficultés sont à l’origine de nouveaux accords nationaux et internationaux visant à honorer les engagements pris pour répondre à ces enjeux sans précédent. Plusieurs États africains ont déjà commencé à créer des comités interministériels et des groupes de travail pour assurer l’alignement entre les objectifs mondiaux et les processus, les aspirations et les priorités actuels. 

L’Afrique prépare, en collaboration avec la communauté internationale, le premier Forum politique de haut niveau depuis l’adoption du programme d’action 2030 qui aura lieu en juillet 2016 et dont le thème sera « Veiller à ce que nul ne soit laissé pour compte ». Afin d’éclairer le leadership, l’orientation et les recommandations relatifs au Programme d’action 2030, six pays africains [2] parmi les 22 États membres de l’ONU se sont portés volontaires pour présenter des études nationales sur le travail accompli en vue d’atteindre les Objectifs de développement durable (ODD), soit une opportunité unique de fournir un examen objectif sans compromis et de mettre en avant les leviers d’exploitation et les limites à surmonter afin d’avoir un impact.

Les Nations Unies ont déployé de nombreux efforts de coordination parallèlement au travail de terrain réalisé par l’Afrique : en premier lieu, la création d’un groupe de travail interinstitutions chargé de préparer le forum sur le financement du développement de suivi synchronisé avec le Forum mondial pour l’infrastructure, qui consultera sur les investissements en infrastructures, un aspect crucial pour le continent ; un groupe composé de 10 représentants nommés dont la mission consiste à soutenir le Mécanisme de facilitation des technologies aux fins du développement, du transfert et de la diffusion de technologies pour les ODD, soit un autre aspect très important pour l’Afrique ; et enfin une équipe de conseillers indépendants dont la mission consiste à fournir des conseils sur le positionnement à plus long terme du système de développement de l’ONU dans le contexte du Programme 2030 communément appelé  « UN fit for purpose », parmi tant d’autres efforts.

Ces obligations bureaucratiques écrasantes pèseront à elles seules lourdement sur les capacités limitées de l’Afrique. C’est la raison pour laquelle le continent à tout intérêt à regrouper ses ressources en tirant parti de ses robustes réseaux régionaux pour atténuer cet obstacle de façon cohérente et coordonnée et en capitalisant sur la convergence entre les textes nouvellement adoptés et l’Agenda 2063, le programme de transformation mis en place par l’Union Africaine sur une durée de 50 ans, avec l’aide d’institutions panafricaines.

Outre les échelons nationaux et internationaux, il convient de tenir compte d’une troisième dimension : l’échelon régional. Ainsi, les trois principaux accords conclus en 2015 privilégiaient le soutien aux projets et aux cadres de coopération encourageant l’intégration régionale et sous-régionale, en particulier en Afrique. [3] C’est la raison pour laquelle des politiques industrielles communes et cohérentes relatives aux chaînes de valeur régionales formulées par des institutions régionales renforcées et portées par un leadership transformationnel volontariste s’imposent comme le meilleur moyen de favoriser l’insertion de l’Afrique au sein de l’économie mondiale.

L’Afrique considère depuis longtemps l’intégration économique régionale, partie intégrante de ses principaux « piliers », à savoir les huit Communautés économiques régionales (CER), comme étant une stratégie de développement de base.

Le continent s’est manifestement engagé dans cette voie : l’été dernier, trois CER, le Marché commun pour l’Afrique de l’Est et de l’Afrique australe (COMESA), la Communauté d’Afrique de l’Est (CAE) et la Communauté de développement de l’Afrique de l’Est (SADC) ont créé le Traité de libre-échange tripartite (TFTA) regroupant 26 pays, avec plus de 600 millions d’habitants et un PIB global de mille milliards de dollars US. Cet accord tripartite ouvre la voie à l’accord « méga-régional » de l’Afrique, la Zone de libre échange continentale (CFTA) et à l’instauration d’une vaste communauté économique africaine. Si la régionalisation permet la libre circulation des personnes, des capitaux, des biens et des services, c’est la connectivité intra-africaine accrue en découlant qui stimulera les échanges commerciaux au sein de l’Afrique, favorisera la croissance, créera des emplois et attira des investissements. Il devrait enfin faire démarrer l’industrialisation, l’innovation et la compétitivité. À ces fins, les institutions panafricaines, soucieuses d’exploiter les récentes performances favorables enregistrés par le continent, redoublent d’efforts pour créer un environnement propice à l’harmonisation des politiques et des réglementations et aux économies d’échelle.

L’infrastructure, sans laquelle toute connectivité est impossible, constitue indéniablement le fondement de tout futur plan de régionalisation. Outre l’intégration du marché et le développement industriel, le développement des infrastructures est l’un des trois piliers de la stratégie du TFTA. De la même manière, l’agence pour le Nouveau partenariat économique pour le développement en Afrique (NEPAD), l’organe technique de l’Union africaine (UA) chargé de planifier et coordonner la mise en œuvre des priorités continentales et des programmes régionaux, a adopté l’intégration régionale en tant que méthode stratégique pour l’infrastructure. Le NEPAD a d’ailleurs organisé, en juin 2014, le Sommet de Dakar sur le financement des infrastructures ayant abouti à l’adoption du Programme d’action de Dakar qui présente des options en matière de mobilisation d’investissements dans des projets de développement des infrastructures, en commençant par 16 projets bancables clés issus du programme de développement des infrastructures en Afrique (PIDA). Il est intéressant de noter que ces « mégaprojets du NEPAD visant à transformer l’Afrique » ont tous une portée régionale.

En complémentant les efforts du NEPAD et du TFTA, le Réseau d’affaires continental a été formé pour promouvoir le dialogue entre les secteurs public et privé sur la thématique de l’investissement en infrastructures régionales. Le Fond Africa50 pour l’infrastructure a été constitué en guise de nouvelle plateforme de prestation gérée commercialement en vue de combler l’énorme vide au niveau du financement des infrastructures en Afrique, un trou évaluée à 50 milliards de dollars US par an.

L’élaboration de propositions propres et les progrès institutionnels récemment observés témoignent de la détermination de l’Afrique à accélérer le développement des infrastructures, et donc la régionalisation. Lors du dernier sommet de l’UA, le Comité d’orientation des chefs d’État et de gouvernement a approuvé l’institutionnalisation d’une Semaine PIDA organisée par la Banque africaine de développement (BAD) en vue d’assurer le suivi des progrès accomplis.

L’élan des projets énergétiques régionaux en Afrique

Les partenariats énergétiques indiqués ci-dessous illustrent les avantages potentiels des méthodes de mise en œuvre et de suivi transfrontalières : l’Africa Power Vision (APV) réalisée avec Power Africa, le modèle du Centre pour les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique(ECREEE) de la CEDEAO accompagnant l’initiative Énergie Durable pour Tous (SE4LL), une initiative mise en œuvre par la plateforme Africaine et la solution Africa GreenCo basée sur le PIDA.

• Africa Power Vision : Les ministres Africains de l’énergie et des finances réunis à l’occasion du Forum économique mondial (FEM) de Davos en 2014 ont décidé de créer l’APV. La vision fournit un modèle stratégique de mobilisation de ressources afin de permettre aux entreprises, aux industries et aux foyers africains d’avoir un accès plus rapide à l’énergie moderne. Elle dresse une liste de projets énergétiques basés sur des priorités régionales établies par l’Afrique et extraites en grande partie du Programme d’action prioritaire du PIDA, à savoir l’éventail de projets à court terme devant être achevés à l’horizon 2020. Le projet hydroélectrique Inga III qui changera les règles du jeu, l’emblématique projet solaire DESERTEC Sahara et la gigantesque ligne de transport d’électricité nord-sud couvrant la quasi-totalité du TFTA sont parmi les 13 projets sélectionnés. La note conceptuelle et le plan de mise en œuvre intitulés « De la vision à l’action » élaborés par le NEPAD, en collaboration avec l’initiative Power Africa dirigée par le gouvernement américain ont été approuvés lors du Sommet de l’UA de janvier 2015. Le paquet présente des mesures permettant de surmonter les impasses afin d’atteindre des objectifs quantifiables, la « méthode d’accélération » basée sur l’Outil de classement de projets par ordre de priorité (PPCT en anglais), l’atténuation des risques et le financement de projets d’électricité. Une conception innovante a été élaborée pour éviter les doublons, économiser des ressources, améliorer la coordination et encourager des actions transformatrices en établissant des Conseillers transactionnels Power Africa – APV portant deux casquettes, qui supervisent les plans d’investissement jusqu’à la clôture financière si et quand des projets énergétiques d’intérêt commun viennent à se chevaucher. Globalement, comme il est basé sur le PIDA, le partenariat APV permet de mutualiser les expertises tout en promouvant l’intégration économique régionale au niveau de l’électrification.

• Centre pour les énergies renouvelables et l’efficience énergétique de la CEDEAO : Le secrétaire général des Nations Unies, Ban Ki-moon a lancé l’initiative Énergie durable pour tous dans le monde entier dès 2011, dans le triple objectif de garantir l’accès universel à des services énergétiques modernes, doubler le taux mondial d’amélioration de l’efficacité énergétique et doubler la proportion d'énergies renouvelables dans le bouquet énergétique mondial à l’horizon 2030. Depuis sa création, SE4ALL a suscité un fort enthousiasme sur le continent et compte désormais 44 pays africains participants. Par conséquent, la plateforme africaine SE4ALL a été la première plateforme lancée en 2013. Organisée par la BAD en partenariat avec la Commission de l’UA, le NEPAD et le Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement (PNUD), son rôle consiste à faciliter la mise en œuvre de SE4ALL sur le continent. Le troisième atelier annuel de la plateforme africaine de SE4ALL tenu à Abidjan en février dernier a révélé le potentiel de cette « coalition créative » (Yumkella 2014) pour produire des résultats tant au niveau des plans d’action nationaux et des approches régionales concertées conformes à la vision continentale qu’à celui de l’ODD7 pour l’énergie et aux Contributions prévues déterminées au niveau national (CPDN) créés pour l’Accord de Paris. Avant tout, l’atelier a prouvé que la plateforme est capable de commencer efficacement à harmoniser les processus pour obtenir un résultat dans les différents pays. En dépit du fait que les États membres de la CEDEAO participent à SE4ALL, les ministres ouest-africains ont chargé leur centre énergétique régional, le CEREEC, de coordonner la mise en œuvre des Programmes d’action de SE4ALL (PA), qui sont des documents décrivant les mesures que doivent prendre les pays pour satisfaire les objectifs en matière d’énergies renouvelables et de là les Prospectus d’investissement (PI), les documents présentant les critères d’investissement relatifs aux PA. Par conséquent, la Politique relative aux énergies renouvelables (PER) et la Politique relative à l’efficacité énergétique (PEE) de la CEDEAO ont été formulées et adoptées. Un cadre de surveillance régional visant à enrichir un Cadre de suivi mondial, le système de mesure et de préparation de rapports SE4ALL, est en cours de conception. L’efficace modèle du CEREEC, en créant un pont entre les inventaires nationaux et les acteurs mondiaux, est sur le point d’être reproduit dans deux autres régions d’Afrique, la CAE et la SADC, avec l’appui de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour le développement industriel (ONUDI).

• Africa GreenCo : Enfin, des initiatives comme Africa GreenCo sont en cours d’incubation. Ce véhicule prometteur, actuellement financé au moyen d’une subvention accordée par la Fondation Rockefeller, se veut à la fois un négociant et un courtier en électricité indépendamment géré dont la fonction consiste à déplacer de l’électricité là où elle est nécessaire. Ainsi, Africa GreenCo cherche à capitaliser sur les projets énergétiques du PIDA : en sa qualité d’acheteur intermédiaire solvable, elle prévoit d’utiliser à l’avenir son statut régional en guise de valeur ajoutée au niveau de la garantie contre les risques. À ce jour, Africa GreenCo continue à peaufiner les aspects juridiques, réglementaires, techniques et financiers de sa future structure et forge des liens avec des parties prenantes clés du secteur (États membres, banques de développement multilatérales, services publics africains de génération et d’interconnexion appelés pools énergétiques) avant l’achèvement de son étude de faisabilité en juin 2016.

Les partenariats précités indiquent des tendances encourageantes en direction d’une coopération plus symbiotique entre les différentes parties prenantes. Comme ils relèvent d’initiatives « faites maison », il est important de ne pas perdre de vue la dimension continentale. D’une part, les plans élaborés par l’Afrique ont plus de chances de réussir que des solutions importées uniformes et d’autre part, des efforts cohérents et combinés allant dans la même direction renforcent la confiance et l’émulation et attirent des soutiens. Ceci implique que pour remplir les accords intergouvernementaux, il est nécessaire avant tout de les adapter aux réalités locales à travers un processus d’intégration respectueux de l’espace politique. Cette intégration peut ensuite faire l’objet d’ajustements en fonction d’expériences fondées sur des données et des preuves concrètes. Entre ces engagements mondiaux et les procédures nationales, la dimension nationale demeure le lien indispensable : permettre aux pays de contourner le caractère artificiel de leurs frontières héritées de l’époque coloniale et leur offrir des choix concrets pour éradiquer la pauvreté dans l’unité. L’intégration régionale est donc le préambule à l’opérationnalisation du développement durable au sein de l’Afrique et une étape clé de son parcours en direction d’une participation active sur la scène mondiale. La régionalisation peut également faire évoluer les relations internationales, à condition qu’elle aille de pair avec un multilatéralisme équitable et une gestion durable des connaissances globales. C’est pourquoi l’ouverture qui en découle et la complexité rencontrée sont autant de paramètres utiles pour enrichir la conception de réponses locales pertinentes.

Ces réussites ouvrent de grandes perspectives en termes de nouvelles expériences et synergies. Elles représentent pour moi la promesse d’un monde meilleur. Celle que je me plais à imaginer est empreinte d’écosystèmes mutuellement bénéfiques pour les personnes et la planète. Elle encourage les liens inversés où tout le monde est gagnant, c’est-à-dire un monde où les économies en développement ont des retombées plus positives sur les pays industriels. C’est un monde où, par exemple, une région d’Afrique pourrait tirer des leçons de la crise grecque et vice-versa : un monde où la Chine pourrait tirer des enseignements du Corridor de développement de Maputo pour sa ceinture économique de la route de la soie. Un monde dans lequel des instituts jumelés effectuant des travaux de recherche conjoints dans les différents centres de connaissances régionaux prospéreraient, où des « fab labs » innovateurs pourraient ambitionner une aventure spatiale basée sur des déchets électroniques recyclés en imprimantes 3D. Dans un tel monde, des collaborations innovantes dans les domaines des sciences, des technologies, de l’ingénierie et des mathématiques (STEM) seraient encouragées. Celles-ci encourageraient la participation des femmes, et aussi celle de la diaspora en vue de développer des avancées techniques solides du point de vue écologique. Des efforts proportionnels, une volonté sans faille, une ingénuité autochtone et une créativité sans limites mettent cet avenir plus souriant à notre portée.

Au-delà de la reconnaissance de la voix africaine tout au long des processus intergouvernementaux, l’Afrique doit désormais consolider ses avancées en maintenant fermement sa position et en protégeant ses gains tout au long de la phase préliminaire. Le continent doit de toute urgence définir des tactiques spécifiques offrant le plus grand potentiel en termes d’inclusion et de création de capacités de production. Parallèlement, les acteurs du développement africain doivent démarrer un cycle vertueux d’apprentissage par la pratique en vue de créer une philosophie de développement endogène prenant en considération les meilleures pratiques adaptables et les échecs. Néanmoins, la seule approche capable de produire à la fois une transformation structurelle et un changement informé conformes aux stratégies à long terme propres au continent et dirigées par lui est… l’intégration régionale.  

[1] Issus respectivement des négociations intergouvernementales à l’occasion de la Troisième Conférence sur le financement du développement (FFD3), l’Agenda du développement post 2015 et la Conférence des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques (COP21).

[2] Égypte, Madagascar, Maroc, Sierra Leone, Togo et Ouganda

[3] Comme précisé au Programme d’action d’Addis-Abeba par exemple : « Nous engageons instamment la communauté internationale, notamment les institutions financières internationales et les banques multilatérales et régionales de développement, à accroître leur soutien aux projets et aux cadres de coopération qui favorisent cette intégration régionale et sous régionale, notamment en Afrique, et qui améliorent la participation et l’intégration des entreprises et notamment des petites entreprises industrielles, en particulier celles des pays en développement, dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales et les marchés mondiaux. »

Change is a complicated thing in Cuba. On the one hand, many Cubans remain frustrated with limits on economic and political opportunity, and millennials are emigrating in ever rising numbers. On the other, there is more space for entrepreneurship, and Havana is full of energy and promise today.

The island’s emerging private sector is growing—and along with it, start-up investment costs. Three years ago, Yamina Vicente opened her events planning firm, Decorazón, with a mere $500 in cash. Today she estimates she would need $5,000 to compete. New upscale restaurants are opening: Mery Cabrera returned from Ecuador to invest her savings in Café Presidente, a sleek bistro located on the busy Avenue of the Presidents. And lively bars at establishments like 304 O’Reilly feature bright mixologists doing brisk business.

Photo credit: Richard Feinberg.

Havana’s hotels are fully booked through the current high season. The overflow of tourists is welcome news for the thousands of bed-and-breakfasts flowering throughout the city (many of which are now networked through AirBnB). While most bed-and-breakfasts used to be one or two rooms rented out of people’s homes, Cubans today are renovating entire buildings to rent out. These are the green shoots of what will become boutique hotels, and Cubans are quitting their low-paying jobs in the public sector to become managers of their family’s rental offerings.

Another new sign: real estate agencies! Most Cubans own their own homes—really own them, mortgage-free. But only recently did President Raúl Castro authorize the sales of homes, suddenly giving Cubans a valuable financial asset. Many sell them to get cash to open a new business. Others, to immigrate to Miami.

WiFi hot spots are also growing in number. Rejecting an offer from Google to provide Internet access to the entire island, the Cuban government instead set up some 700 public access locations. This includes 65 WiFi hot spots in parks, hotels, or major thoroughfares, where mostly young Cubans gather to message friends or chat with relatives overseas.

Economic swings

2015 was a good year for the Cuban economy, relatively speaking. Growth rose from the disappointing 2 percent in recent years to (by official measures) 4 percent. The Brazilian joint venture cigarette company, Brascuba, reported a 17 percent jump in sales, and announced a new $120 million investment in the Mariel Economic Development Zone. Shoppers crowded state-run malls over the holiday season, too. 

Photo credit: Richard Feinberg.

Consumers still report chronic shortages in many commodities, ranging from beer to soap, and complain of inflation in food prices. Alarmed by the chronic crisis of low productivity in agriculture, the government announced tax breaks for farmers in 2016. The government is already forecasting a slower growth rate for 2016, attributed to lower commodity prices and a faltering Venezuelan economy. It’s likely to fall back to the average 2 percent rate that has characterized the past decade.

Pick up the pace

Cuban officials are looking forward to the 7th Conference of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) in mid-April. There is little public discussion of the agenda, however. Potential initiatives include a new electoral law permitting direct election of members of the national assembly (who are currently chosen indirectly by regional assemblies or by CCP-related mass organizations); a timetable for unification of the currency (Cubans today must deal with two forms of money); some measures to empower provincial governments; and the development of a more coherent, forward-looking economic development strategy.

[T]here are now two brain drains: an internal brain drain, as government officials abandon the public sector for higher incomes in the growing private sector; and emigration overseas.

But for many younger Cubans, the pace of change is way too slow. The talk of the town remains the exit option. Converse with any well-educated millennial and they’ll tell you that half or more of their classmates are now living abroad. Indeed, there are now two brain drains: an internal brain drain, as government officials abandon the public sector for higher incomes in the growing private sector; and emigration overseas to the United States, but also to Spain, Canada, Mexico.

The challenge for the governing CCP is to give young people hope in the future. The White House has signaled that President Obama may visit Cuba this year. Such a visit by Obama—who is immensely popular on the island—could help. But the main task is essentially a Cuban one.

Richard Feinberg’s forthcoming book, “Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy,” will be published by Brookings Press later this year.

Not the least worrying feature of these chaotic times is that the members of my transatlantic analyst tribe—whether American or European—have stopped being smug or snarky about goings-on on the other side of the Atlantic. For two decades, the mutual sniping was my personal bellwether for the rude (literally) health of the relationship.

No more. Now my American neocon buddies are lining up to sign scorching open letters against the GOP frontrunner, begging the Brits not to brexit, and lambasting Obama because he’s not doing more to help German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Heck, they would even let him take in Syrian (Muslim Syrian, if necessary!) refugees if it helps her. 

My fellow Europeans have been shocked into appalled politeness by the recognition that The Donald has genuine competition in the U.K.’s Boris Johnson, France’s Marine le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or Russia’s Vladimir Putin. They recognize that the roar of Trump’s supporters is echoed on streets and social media websites across their own continent—including in my country, Germany, which is reeling after taking in more than a million refugees last year.

Adding to the general weirdness, parliamentarians of Germany’s Die Linke (successor to East Germany’s Communist party) have been casting longing glances at the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. "Who would have thought a democratic Socialist could get this far in America?" tweeted Stefan Liebich. His fellow Member of Parliament Wolfgang Gehrcke, a co-founder of the West German Communist Party DKP in 1968, wistfully confessed his regret on German national radio recently at never having visited the United States. The Linke has been getting precious little traction out of the turmoil at home, despite their chief whip Sahra Wagenknecht, who rocks a red suit and is herself no slouch at inflammatory rhetoric.

Like [political elites], we [analysts] mostly ignored or took for granted that the essential domestic underpinnings of foreign policy were hardwired into our constitutional orders: political pluralism, economic opportunity, inclusion.

One would have to be made of stone not to be entertained by all this. Rather less funny is the fact that we, the analysts, have been as badly surprised by these developments as the politicians. We are indeed guilty of much of the same complacency that political elites are currently being punished for on both sides of the Atlantic. Like them, we mostly ignored or took for granted that the essential domestic underpinnings of foreign policy were hardwired into our constitutional orders: political pluralism, economic opportunity, inclusion. In other words, a functioning representative democracy and a healthy social contract. 

That was a colossal oversight. George Packer’s "The Unwinding" is a riveting depiction of the unraveling of America. Amanda Taub, Thomas Frank, and Thomas Edsall have written compelling recent pieces about the fraying economic and social conditions which offer a potent explanation for the current dark mood of much of the American electorate. Yet "Europe" could be substituted for "America" in many of these studies with equal plausibility. 

A thread which runs through all these analyses is the enormous fear and anger directed at international trade—a feeling stoked masterfully by Trump, but likewise by his European counterparts. Another common element is the increasing inability of representative democracy and its politicians to deal with these problems—whether because they are being deliberately undermined (e.g. by Russia), or are simply overwhelmed by it all. 

“Europe“ could be substituted for “America“ in many of these studies with equal plausibility.

The implications for foreign and security policy are already on view. Western governments find themselves increasingly on the defensive at home as they try to grapple with fierce divisions in Europe and in the transatlantic alliance on how to handle war and human misery in the Middle East, to prevent Europe’s eastern neighborhood from succumbing to failure, to save a faltering transatlantic trade agreement, and to support and protect the liberal global order. Even Chancellor Merkel, who has been pushing hard for an EU-Turkey deal to manage the flow of refugees to Europe, is finding herself besieged at home by an insurgent challenger in form of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).

So, as you watch the primaries in Washington, D.C. and Wyoming (March 12) and Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina (March 15), you may also want to give some attention to three regional elections in my country. Three of Germany’s sixteen states or Länder—Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saxony-Anhalt—go to the polls, on what Germany’s media are already calling Super Sunday. The AfD, which was only founded in 2013 (when it narrowly missed the 5 percent threshold to get into the federal legislature), is already present in five states. It is expected to rake in double-digit percentages in all three upcoming votes.

One thing’s for sure already: There will be little to be smug about.

“It’s probably the most interesting presidential election I’ve seen in my lifetime,” I said to an American friend the moment I arrived to Washington. My friend was upset. “For you it’s interesting,” he said. “For us it’s painful.”

“What you’ve just said rings a bell,” I said. “This is exactly, word for word, what I keep saying to foreign journalists who come to Israel to write a story.” Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight: the rivals exchange numerous hits, shout at each other, humiliate each other, disregard every rule, but in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight...in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Americans are supposed to play their political game in a cooler way. At least, this is the impression a foreign correspondent get when he lands here, directly from the boiling quarrels of the Middle East. 

I had the opportunity to cover almost all the U.S. presidential campaigns since Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1974. I loved it—I loved the town halls and the rallies in remote places, where people are kind and willing to answer every clueless question from a foreign reporter; I loved the access to the candidates, weeks and months before the secret service builds a wall between them and real life; I loved the hectic atmosphere, described so well in the “Making of the President” books by Theodore H. White; I loved to see how little-known candidates like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama evolve, grow, and flourish; and I enjoyed every chapter: the spins, the buzz, the role played by big money.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger—anger dominated the selection process in both parties. Angry voters elected angry candidates. If a candidate was not angry enough—e. g. Jeb Bush—the voters judged him unfit for the job.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger.

An accidental tourist like me pauses here for a long list of questions: how do we quantify anger? Is it limited to the ballots or can it evaporate at some point and turn into violent acts, as Donald Trump has insinuated time and again? Is it a reflection of the bitterness of specific, limited constituencies or is it something much more widespread, an outrage of a generation or a class of Americans who feel that they were betrayed by the political and business elite, by the establishment? How to explain the Trump phenomenon, the Sanders phenomenon? 

The obvious answer is the economic collapse of 2008: the people who fell victim to the 2008 crisis, who lost a home or a job or had to give up college for their children are now in revolt. Why now and not earlier? Because four years ago they were struggling to survive; they were busy. Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

Tip O'Neill, speaker of the house in the second half of the previous century, taught us that all politics is local. There is a lot of truth in it even today, but is it the whole truth? In the flat world of 2016, local politics are executed in a global way. All politics are local and global at the same time. Political actions spread from country to country like the Zika virus, using social media as carriers.

The young Sanders supporters I met in Brooklyn, during the last Democratic debate, were not much different from the young Israelis I met in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Those Israelis complained about similar things: high prices, loss of employment security, difficulty getting a decent job, and the ever-growing gap between expectations and reality. They were promised to live in the land of opportunity; the opportunity was not there—not for them.

Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

They complained bitterly about the banks and the major corporations. They became so big that the government has no choice but to subsidize them when they lose money. And the people who run them get huge salaries and bonuses on the expense of the shareholders and the general public. Israel used to be a social democratic society, with a strong middle class and a relatively narrow gap between rich and poor. Now the rich are very rich and get richer, and the less fortunate are left behind.

The protest was fueled by social media: another similarity between Tel Aviv and the young voters in Brooklyn and elsewhere. The brazenness, the bluntness, the rudeness of the social media culture affected the political discourse. It became less cordial and more personal. 

Israelis were not alone. The Arab Spring predated the Israeli Summer. Greece and Spain followed. Occupy Wall Street, a smaller, more radical protest movement, appeared on the streets of major American cities in the fall of 2011. It was inspired by the protests in the Arab countries and in Spain. The demonstrators faded away after a while, but they left their mark: political agendas have changed dramatically, governments fell, conventions were shuttered. It remains to be seen if and how they will contribute to social justice and equality.

In Israel, the demand for social justice captured a prominent place on the national agenda; several activists in the protest movement were elected to the Knesset; the rhetoric has changed, priorities didn't. Not really. Most Israelis were not prepared for a revolution, not even a moderate revolution, Bernie Sanders-style. 

I have no way to know what lies ahead for the American society. What I can see so far is a unique electoral season, characterized by unusual, almost bizarre candidates, their qualification for the job questionable, and a long, destructive battle over votes. For many Americans it is painful. People in other countries can only wonder: is it the best America is able to produce? 

Downloads

• Table of contents
• Chapter One

• {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 9780815728016, $25.00 Add to Cart

Editor's Note : In this piece from South Asia Hand, Teresita Schaffer and her husband, Howard Schaffer, reflect on how India and Pakistan sometimes find it difficult to shift gears to solve problems, even when they would greatly benefit from doing so. The authors develop this theme more fully in their forthcoming book, "India at the Global High Table: The Quest for Regional Primacy and Strategic Autonomy." The book will be published by Brookings Institution Press this spring.

A deadly avalanche that killed ten Indian soldiers earlier this month on the disputed 20,000 foot high Siachen glacier in Kashmir received extensive coverage in the Indian and Pakistani media. The avalanche prompted some commentators in both countries to call for an early settlement of what seemed to them and to many others (including ourselves) a senseless dispute.

Their voices were largely drowned out in India by an outpouring of patriotic fervor that cast the dead soldiers as “Bravehearts” who had died for their country. The Indian Defense Minister publicly dismissed pleas that both sides pull back from the 47-mile long glacier where they have confronted one another since 1984. Possibilities for a settlement seem remote.

Siachen is one of several disputes between India and Pakistan that range in importance from the future status of Kashmir to the precise location of a small stretch of their international boundary near the Indian Ocean. The Siachen dispute arose because the Line of Control drawn between the contending armies in Kashmir terminates in the high Himalayas. India and Pakistan have different versions of where it should go from there as it makes its way toward the Chinese border. This made the glacier a no-man’s land.

Anticipating a Pakistani move in 1984 to seize Siachen, the Indian army struck first. Since then it has controlled most of the glacier, including the main range. Pakistan also deploys troops in the area. Published figures say that the two countries together maintain about 150 outposts. Published figures would put the numbers of troops somewhere around 1000-2000 for each side. These are small numbers for both armies, but there is a long and complicated logistical and support chain that goes with them. India’s formal reports to parliament put the numbers of soldiers killed from 1984 to date at just under 900; Pakistani losses are variously estimated at 1000-3000.

Some fighting took place in the earlier years, but a ceasefire was worked out in 2003 and remains in place. The real enemy is nature, in this high altitude freezing desert. There have been no deaths by enemy fire in recent years. At the post most recently struck by an avalanche, the oxygen is so thin that it cannot support fire for cooking. Over time, both sides learned to deal more effectively with the bitter cold and piercing winds. The mudslides and avalanches that have kept up a steady stream of death have been triggered both by climate change and by human activity that unsettled the packed snow on the glacier itself. The recent disaster was by no means the most deadly: in April 2012, 140 Pakistani soldiers were buried by another avalanche.

Sporadic efforts to resolve the dispute have included the idea of converting Siachen into an “international peace park.” Less idealistic approaches have focused on the demilitarization of the glacier, but only after both sides had reached an agreement delineating the areas they had occupied before withdrawing and pledging not to try to take them back. These efforts won some support within the government headed by Indian National Congress party leader Manmohan Singh in the 2000s. But they were stoutly opposed by the Indian Army, one of the few security issues on which the normally apolitical uniformed military has taken a public stand.

This was particularly evident in 2006, when India and Pakistan seemed to be coming close to an agreement on the issue. In a telegram later released by Wikileaks, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi reported in May of that year that “Army Chief J.J. Singh appears on the front page of the Indian Express seemingly fortnightly to tell readers the Army cannot support a withdrawal from Siachen.” The embassy went on to note that “given India’s high degree of civilian control over the armed forces, it is improbable that Gen. Singh could repeatedly make such statements without Ministry of Defense civilians giving it at least tacit approval.” It concluded that “[w]hether or not this is the case, a Siachen deal is improbable while his – and the Army’s – opposition continues to circulate publicly.” After the most recent tragedy, LtGen D. S. Hooda, who heads the Northern Command of the Indian army, has maintained this position. He was quoted in a Kashmiri paper as saying that despite these tragic casualties, India must remain in its present positions. He specifically ruled out the mutual demilitarization suggested by Pakistan.

The Indian public has had ample opportunity to read about the terrible human cost of Siachen, but civilian public opinion is unlikely to force the issue. For Indians, the avalanche tragedy was heightened by the apparently miraculous survival of one of the soldiers, who was reportedly buried under twenty-five feet of snow for six days before being rescued. Medically evacuated to New Delhi, he was visited in the hospital by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and became an instant, highly publicized hero. His death a couple of days later made him a national martyr.

Siachen has been one of the issues discussed between India and Pakistan in the on-again, off-again dialogue they initiated in the late ‘90s. Plans to recommence these wide-ranging discussions in January were postponed following the attack on an Indian air base by Kashmiri dissidents whom the Indians were convinced had been directed from within Pakistan.

Progress on Siachen is unlikely when and if these talks actually begin. Although the Modi government was willing to exchange with Bangladesh a small number of enclaves along their border, abandoning territory in Kashmir would strike a much different nerve both in the ruling BJP, the army, and the country at large. (It would be easier for the Pakistanis to accept since their military, which calls the shots on these issues, could argue that Pakistan had got the better deal by forcing the Indians off the main glacier range.)

So the issue is likely to continue to perplex outsiders like ourselves. Retired Indian Army friends have told us how important Siachen is for Indian security. But we find it difficult to accept the assertion that Siachen is a potential invasion route. The difficulty both Pakistan and India have had sustaining small forces in that terrain would be magnified many-fold if one attempted a major military operation. By the same token, we wonder how important Siachen would be in India’s strategy against China. It has long struck us as a great waste of men and material which, were the two sides to act rationally, could be satisfactory resolved. Worse, the deaths suffered by both sides are only likely to increase as climate change increases the risk of avalanches and mudslides.

But Indians and Pakistanis are not the only people in the world who don’t always act rationally on emotionally-charged issues.

• {BE4CBFE9-92F9-41D9-BDC8-0C2CC479A3F7}, 9780815728337, $35.00 Add to Cart

Quoting Walt Whitman in his speech to a joint meeting of Congress last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared: “there is a new symphony in play.” He was referring to the relationship, but there were some new themes in his speech as well, in addition to a few familiar, predictable ones.

The old

Shared Democratic Values. Modi’s speech covered some of the same ground on shared democratic values as his predecessors. Referring to Congress as a “temple of democracy”—a phrased he’s used in the past for the Indian parliament—and to India’s constitution as its “real holy book,” he stressed that freedom and equality were shared beliefs. In a section that elicited laughter, he also commented that the two countries shared certain practices—legislatures known for bipartisanship and operating harmoniously. Also par for the course was Modi’s emphasis on India’s diversity. An implicit response to critics of India on human rights (including minority rights), freedom of the press, and tolerance of dissent, Modi noted that India’s constitution protected the equal rights of all citizens and enshrined freedom of faith. Echoing former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s words on unity in diversity, he asserted “India lives as one; India grows as one; India celebrates as one.” 

Terrorism. Like Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh before him, Modi highlighted the challenge of terrorism, stressing it was globally the “biggest threat.” Acknowledging existing India-U.S. counter-terrorism cooperation, he called for more, including an approach “that isolates those who harbor, support and sponsor terrorists; that does not distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists; and that delinks religion from terrorism.” Like his predecessors, Modi did not explicitly mention Pakistan, but alluded to it. He asserted that while it was a global problem, terrorism was “incubated” in India’s neighborhood. In what seemed like a reference to the Congressional hold on the subsidized sale of F-16s to Pakistan, the Indian prime minister also lauded that body for “sending a clear message to those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains. Refusing to reward them is the first step towards holding them accountable for their actions.” 

The Indian Economy. From Jawaharlal Nehru onward, prime ministers have outlined their domestic objectives in speeches to Congress, highlighting the reforms they’ve undertaken. Modi did too, highlighting India’s growth rate and economic opportunities, while acknowledging that much remained to be done. And there were also subtle responses to criticisms of Indian economic policy: for example, the remark about legislative gridlock suggested that American policymakers should understand why some reforms in India are taking time; the quip about India not claiming intellectual property rights on yoga was a rejoinder to those who give India a hard time about intellectual property rights (especially in the pharmaceutical sector). He also noted that in the past “wagers were made on our failure,” and yet Indians have time and again found a way to survive and succeed.

The new

Anti-Declinism. For those promising to make America great again, Modi had a message: it already is. In a speech to the U.S.-India Business Council the day before, he exuded optimism—not just about India, but the United States as well, asserting that, to him, “America is not just a country with a great past; it is a country with an exciting future.” In his speech to Congress, he referred to the U.S. as “great” at least four times and spoke of its “innovative genius.” Recalling that he’d thus far visited half of all American states, he noted what he believed was the United States’ “real strength”: Americans’ ability to dream big and be bold. 

In an election year when the nature and extent of American engagement with the world is being debated, Modi acknowledged the country’s global contributions and called for a continued U.S. role in the world. He applauded—and led members of Congress in a round of applause—for “the great sacrifices of the men and women from ‘The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave’ in service of mankind.” With the exception of Nehru, who paid his respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Indian premiers have tended not to mention American troops—partly a result of differing views on the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars. Modi, on the other hand, explicitly mentioned U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, where “the sacrifices of Americans have helped create a better life.” 

In a more challenging, complex, and uncertain world, he asserted that U.S.-Indian engagement could make an impact, by “promoting cooperation not dominance; connectivity not isolation; respect for global commons; inclusive not exclusive mechanisms; and above all adherence to international rules and norms.” (No prizes for guessing the country that went unnamed). 

The Open Embrace. Modi-Obama hugs have fueled many a tweet. But the speech signaled and reflected a much broader embrace—an India-U.S. one that has been in the works for at least the last 17 years but has become much more visible in the last two. In 2000, addressing Congress, Vajpayee called for the two countries to “remove the shadow of hesitation that lies between us and our joint vision.” Not all his compatriots will agree, but Modi declared: “Today, our relationship has overcome the hesitations of history” and recalled Vajpayee labeling the two as “natural allies.” Listing the ways the relationship had grown closer, he emphasized that this “remarkable story” was not a partisan effort: “[t]hrough the cycle of elections and transitions of administrations the intensity of our engagements has only grown.” He also talked about what the two countries could do together, and stressed that the relationship was good for India. While he’s previously called the United States “a principal partner in the realization of India’s rise as a responsible, influential world power,” he went further this time, stating: “In every sector of India’s forward march, I see the U.S. as an indispensable partner.” 

Not a Free-Rider. But throughout the speech, Modi asserted that this relationship benefited both countries “in great measure,” with a “positive impact on the lives” of people in each. Echoing Singh, he noted that many members of Congress indeed believed that “a stronger and prosperous India is in America’s strategic interest.” Modi made the case that India is not a free rider—that through its businesses, market, talent, and diaspora it is contributing to American economy and society. The day before, in his speech to business leaders, he stressed that India was also “poised to contribute as a new engine of global growth” (and made a pitch for support to such “democratic” engines).

Modi furthermore highlighted Indian contributions to global and regional peace and prosperity, noting, for example, that its “soldiers too have fallen in distant battlefields” for freedom and democracy (alluding to the millions that fought in the World Wars). He also highlighted India’s efforts in Afghanistan, its troop contribution to U.N. peacekeeping operations, its role in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and its evacuation operations in Yemen in which it rescued Americans as well. In addition, Modi noted India’s contributions of ideas, whether yoga or non-violent protest. And he stressed that India would be a responsible stakeholder and security provider—one that, in partnership with the United States, could “anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa and from Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It can also help ensure security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on seas.” But he also called for international institutions to reflect this role and “the realities of today.”

Members of Congress, for their part, will look to see whether and how Modi’s rhetoric will translate into reality. The prime minister suggested that it won’t always be the way the United States would like. He didn’t use the term “strategic autonomy,” but talked of “autonomy in decision-making”—while noting that it, as well as “diversity in our perspectives,” weren’t bad things for the partnership. And, as is his preferred style, he came up with 3Cs to characterize the state of the relationship: “comfort, candor, and convergence.” Whether they remain characteristic of the partnership, and to what degree, will partly depend on who is the next U.S. president and how she or he sees the U.S. role in the world and India’s place in it.

Once upon a time, long ago, the development industry was fixated on measuring aid from richer to poorer countries. They called it ODA, standing for Official Development Assistance. For decades this aid has been codified, reported, and tracked, mostly by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (DAC/OECD), a club of advanced economies. In advance of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, the DAC announced that ODA has risen by 6.9% over 2014 levels to 132 billion dollars, a record amount. Importantly, ODA increased even after stripping out funds spent on refugees.

The United Nations has established targets for ODA—like the famous 0.7 percent of national income—which have taken on legendary status as benchmarks of national generosity. Only six out of 28 DAC countries met this target last year: Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Some institutions and lobby groups remain fixated on ODA, but many development actors now reject it as flawed. A major theme of the Spring Meetings is how to move beyond ODA and expand other forms of financing for development. ODA is, among other things, symptomatic of a charity perspective, rather than investment; inappropriate for South-South cooperation; and unable to capture the big new landscape of public-private links. What’s more, it is riddled with self-serving quirks like scoring numerous flows—the cost of university places in donor countries, and administrative costs of aid agencies—that never reach developing countries.

Perhaps the most telling weakness of ODA is that emerging powers like China and India see little merit (and arguably, some residual stigma) in this concept and, therefore, will not report on that basis to a club to which they do not belong. As their share of the world economy and their interactions with other “developing” countries continue to grow, this means ODA will inevitably start to represent an ever smaller share of official financing for development.

TOSSD stands for Total Official Support for Sustainable Development. The idea, still being fleshed out, is to have a universally accepted measure of the full array of public financial support for sustainable development. TOSSD should differ from ODA in at least three ways:

• First, it should take a developing country perspective rather than a donor country perspective. So it should cover the value of all funding for development that is officially supported, from pure grants to near-market loans and equity investments, as well as guarantees and insurance.
• Second, it should measure cross-border flows from all countries, not just the rich members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee.
• Third, it should include contributions to global public goods needed to support development, like U.N. peacekeeping and pandemic surveillance.

There are many complications behind any international attempt to define and track such a huge range of activities. Some are technical, but can probably be resolved with enough goodwill and professionalism. So, for example, we can debate how to establish whether and how official support to private investors changes their behaviour, delivering “additional” development results compared to a situation without that support. In the end, sensible solutions and workarounds will be found.

More difficult are a couple of politically sensitive challenges, which at the same time underlie the value of reaching consensus on a new measure. How far, for example, should the new measure recognise indirect spending on global public goods? Take for example public research on an AIDS vaccine that could lead to prevention of millions of deaths in developing countries. Right now, this would not count as ODA because the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries is not its main objective.

We tend to think that consideration of globe-spanning benefits like these, which do not fit the simple mould of money crossing borders, is an essential feature of a new measure of development finance. However, it will need to be bounded sensibly, not least because of underlying suspicions that the countries that are today most likely to deploy such tools, and claim them as a large part of their distinctive contribution, are among the “old rich”—though that could change quickly. We suggest that spending on a defined list of global public goods should be included, perhaps those that support Agenda 2030, such as U.N. peacekeeping or a global research consortium like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

A second potentially divisive issue, already alluded to, is how to value non-monetary flows, like technical assistance, and in a fair way across countries. We think it would be a powerful positive signal for international cooperation if even modest contributions by low- and middle-income countries are recognised, celebrated, and valued according to the contribution being made, not the cost of providing the assistance. The assistance provided by professionals from developing countries (think Cuban doctors) should be measured at the same prices as assistance provided by professionals from rich countries. Some form of purchasing power parity equivalence would need to be defined and used.

This is a hugely contentious question. Neither of the most obvious answers, the well-organised but globally unloved OECD and the legitimate but under-resourced U.N. secretariat, are likely to be acceptable without some changes. A preferred candidate has to have a sufficiently broad group of countries prepared to self-report on even a loose set of definitions in order to get momentum. At a minimum all the major economies of the world, for example members of the G-20, should be willing to participate. It should also have the technical capacity to help countries provide information in a consistent way.

The International Monetary Fund or World Bank could be candidates—most countries already report to them on a range of data, including financial flows. The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, with its membership of many development actors and technical support, could be another. Or a new group could be created in much the same way as the International Aid Transparency Initiative. This could even be a revamped Development Assistance Committee that operates with broader support in much the same way as the OECD’s tax work has many non-OECD members participating. What is important is that the guiding principle be to measure official cross-border financial resources that support the new universally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals, and to start now and learn by doing.  Such initiatives are too easily killed by subjecting them to endless external criticism that a perfect solution has not been found.

TOSSD may be one of the least attractive acronyms on offer today. Without disrespect to its OECD authors, it will anyway have to change to something that works for all the major stakeholders, and is not visibly invented in Paris and that also encourages players who are not strictly speaking “official,” like foundations, to sign up. We tend to favor a plainer, simpler wrapper like International Development Contributions (IDC), or Defined Development Contributions (DDC). 

With over 16 million people and nearly 8.6 million jobs, America's older industrial cities remain a vital-if undervalued-part of the economy, particularly in states where they are heavily concentrated, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. They also have a range of other physical, economic, and cultural assets that, if fully leveraged, can serve as a platform for their renewal.

Read the Executive Summary  »

Across the country, cities today are becoming more attractive to certain segments of society. Meanwhile, economic trends-globalization, the demand for educated workers, the increasing role of universities-are providing cities with an unprecedented chance to capitalize upon their economic advantages and regain their competitive edge.

Many cities have exploited these assets to their advantage; the moment is ripe for older industrial cities to follow suit. But to do so, these cities need thoughtful and broad-based approaches to foster prosperity.

"Restoring Prosperity" aims to mobilize governors and legislative leaders, as well as local constituencies, behind an asset-oriented agenda for reinvigorating the market in the nation's older industrial cities. The report begins with identifications and descriptions of these cities-and the economic, demographic, and policy "drivers" behind their current condition-then makes a case for why the moment is ripe for advancing urban reform, and offers a five-part agenda and organizing plan to achieve it.

Publications & Presentations
Connecticut State Profile
Connecticut State Presentation 

Michigan State Profile
Michigan State Presentation 

New Jersey State Profile
New Jersey State Presentation 

New York State Profile
New York State Presentation 

Ohio State Profile
Ohio State Presentation
Ohio Revitalization Speech

Pennsylvania State Profile 

Downloads

• Download

At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

Downloads

• Download

Event Information

The 2008 Ohio Summit – Restoring Our Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities convened more than 1000 government, corporate, civic, neighborhood and academic leaders from around the state, including Governor Ted Strickland, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, Senate President Bill Harris and Speaker of the House Jon Husted confirmed as speakers. The Summit was co-convened by the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and GreaterOhio.

The purpose of The Summit was to elicit reaction to a draft set of proposals for state policy reforms that reflect a critique of past policies, aimed at revitalizing communities throughout Ohio. Each of the recommendations was carefully tailored to the unique assets and challenges of Ohio’s 32 core communities whose revitalization is the springboard to a more prosperous and competitive state as a whole. Comments derived from this gathering will help to shape the final report to be released in early 2009.

Comment here »

Event Presentations:

• Bruce Katz Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
  Download multimedia presentation slides
  Download written remarks
• Scott Bernstein President, Center for Neighborhood Technology 
  Download presentation slides
• Rob Greenbaum Professor, John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University 
  Download presentation slides
• Mark Partridge Swank Chair in Rural-Urban Policy, The Ohio State University 
  Download presentation slides
• Jane Dockery Associate Director, Center for Urban and Public Affairs, Wright State University 
  Download presentation slides
• Alan Mallach Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution 
  Download presentation slides

Event Resources:

• Welcome Letter 
• Summit Agenda 
• Sponsor List 
• Biographies of the Speakers 
• Executive Summary- Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities 
• A Restoring Prosperity Case Study: Akron, Ohio 
• Working Draft: Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing Ohio’s Core Communities 
• Working Draft: Our Joint Future: Rural-Urban Interdependence in 21st Century Ohio 
• Restoring Prosperity to Ohio: Fact Sheet 
• Ohio Summit in the News

Video

• The Honorable Michael Coleman
• Lavea Brachman
• Bruce Katz
• The Honorable Ted Strickland

Bruce Katz offers a number of key recommendations to foster prosperity in the Buckeye state.

Louisville/Jefferson County is the principal city of America’s 42nd largest metropolitan area, a 13-county, bi-state region with a 2006 population estimated at 1.2 million. It is the largest city by far in Kentucky, but it is neither Kentucky’s capital nor its center of political power.

The consolidated city, authorized by voter referendum in 2000 and implemented in 2003, is home to 701,500 residents within its 399 square miles, with a population density of 4,124.8 per square mile.² It is either the nation’s 16th or its 26th largest incorporated place, depending on whether the residents of smaller municipalities within its borders, who are eligible to vote in its elections, are counted (as local officials desire and U.S. Census Bureau officials resist). The remainder of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) population is split between four Indiana counties (241,193) and eight Kentucky counties (279,523). Although several of those counties are growing rapidly, the new Louisville metro area remains the MSA's central hub, with 57 percent of the population and almost 70 percent of the job base.

Centrally located on the southern banks of the Ohio River, amid an agriculturally productive, mineral rich, and energy producing region, Louisville is commonly described as the northernmost city of the American South. Closer to Toronto than to New Orleans, and even slightly closer to Chicago than to Atlanta, it remains within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the American population living east of the Rocky Mountains.

This location has been the dominant influence on Louisville’s history as a regional center of trade, commerce and manufacture. The city, now the all-points international hub of United Parcel Service (UPS), consistently ranks among the nation’s top logistics centers. Its manufacturing sector, though much diminished, still ranks among the strongest in the Southeast. The many cultural assets developed during the city’s reign as a regional economic center rank it highly in various measures of quality of life and “best places.”

Despite these strengths, Louisville’s competitiveness and regional prominence declined during much of the last half of the 20th Century, and precipitously so during the economic upheavals of the 1970s and ‘80s. Not only did it lose tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs and many of its historic businesses to deindustrialization and corporate consolidation, it also confronted significant barriers to entry into the growing knowledge-based economy because of its poorly-educated workforce, lack of R&D capacity, and risk-averse business culture.

In response, Louisville began a turbulent, two-decade process of civic and economic renewal, during which it succeeded both in restoring growth in its traditional areas of strength, most notably from the large impact of the UPS hub, and in laying groundwork for 21st century competitiveness, most notably by substantially ramping up university-based research and entrepreneurship supports. Doing so required it to overhaul nearly every aspect of its outmoded economic development strategies, civic relationships, and habits of mind, creating a new culture of collaboration.

Each of the three major partners in economic development radically transformed themselves and their relationships with one another. The often-paralyzing city-suburban divide of local governance yielded to consolidation. The business community reconstituted itself as a credible champion of broad-based regional progress, and it joined with the public sector to create a new chamber of commerce that is the region’s full-service, public-private economic development agency recognized as among the best in the nation. The Commonwealth of Kentucky embraced sweeping education reforms, including major support for expanded research at the University of Louisville, and a “New Economy” agenda emphasizing the commercialization of research-generated knowledge. Creative public-private partnerships have become the norm, propelling, for instance, the dramatic resurgence of downtown.

The initial successes of all these efforts have been encouraging, but not yet sufficient for the transformation to innovation-based prosperity that is the goal. This report details those successes, and the leadership, partnerships, and strategies that helped create them. It begins by describing Louisville’s history and development and the factors that made its economy grow and thrive. It then explains why the city faltered during the latter part of the 20th century and how it has begun to reverse course. In doing so, the study offers important lessons for other cities that are striving to compete in a very new economic era. 

Download Case Study » (PDF)

Downloads

• Download

Chattanooga a few years ago faced what many smaller cities are struggling with today—a sudden decline after years of prosperity in the "old" economy. This case study offers a roadmap for these cities by chronicling Chattanooga's demise and rebirth.

Chattanooga is located in the southern end of the Tennessee Valley where the Tennessee River cuts through the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau. The city’s location, particularly its proximity to the Tennessee River, has been one of its greatest assets. Today, several major interstates (I-24, I-59, and I-75) run through Chattanooga, making it a hub of transportation business. The city borders North Georgia and is less than an hour away from both Alabama and North Carolina. Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham are all within two hours travel time by car.

Chattanooga is Tennessee’s fourth largest city, with a population in 2000 of 155,554, and it covers an area of 143.2 square miles. Among the 200 most populous cities in the United States, Chattanooga—with 1,086.5 persons per square mile—ranks 190th in population density.2 It is the most populous of 10 municipalities in Hamilton County, which has a population of 307,896, covers an area of 575.7 square miles, and has a population density of 534.8 persons per square mile.

With its extensive railroads and river access, Chattanooga was at one time the “Dynamo of Dixie”—a bustling, midsized, industrial city in the heart of the South. By 1940, Chattanooga’s population was centered around a vibrant downtown and it was one of the largest cities in the United States. Just 50 years later, however, it was in deep decline. Manufacturing jobs continued to leave. The city’s white population had fled to the suburbs and downtown was a place to be avoided, rather than the economic center of the region. The city lost almost 10 percent of its population during the 1960s, and another 10 percent between 1980 and 1990. It would have lost more residents had it not been for annexation of outlying suburban areas.

The tide began to turn in the 1990s, with strategic investments by developing public-private partnerships—dubbed the “Chattanooga way.” These investments spurred a dramatic turnaround. The city’s population has since stabilized and begun to grow, downtown has been transformed, and it is once again poised to prosper in the new economy as it had in the old.

This report describes how Chattanooga has turned its economy around. It begins with a summary of how the city grew and developed during its first 150 years before describing the factors driving its decline. The report concludes by examining the partnerships and planning that helped spur Chattanooga’s current revitalization and providing valuable lessons to other older industrial cities trying to ignite their own economic recovery. 

Download Case Study » (PDF)

Downloads

• Download

Part of the larger Northeast Ohio regional economy, the Akron metropolitan area is composed of two counties (Summit and Portage) with a population of just over 700,000, and is surrounded by three other metropolitan areas. Akron is located approximately 40 miles south of Cleveland, 50 miles west of Youngstown, and 23 miles north of Canton. The Cleveland metro area is a five-county region with a population of 2.1 million. The Youngstown metro area includes three counties, extending into Pennsylvania, and has a population of 587,000. Canton is part of a two-county metropolitan area with a population of 410,000.

The adjacency of the Akron and Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) is an important factor in the economic performance of the Akron region. The interdependence of economies of the two MSAs is evidenced by the strong economic growth of the northern part of Summit County adjacent to the core county of the Cleveland metropolitan area. This part of Summit County beyond the city of Akron provides available land, access to the labor pools of the two metropolitan areas, and proximity to the region’s extensive transportation network.

Although affected by economic activity in the larger region, the fate and future of Akron and its wider region are not solely determined by events in these adjacent areas. While sharing broad economic trends with its neighbors, the Akron metro area has been impacted by a different set of events and has shown different patterns of growth from other areas in Northeast Ohio.

This study provides an in-depth look at Akron’s economy over the past century. It begins by tracing the industrial history of the Akron region, describing the growth of the rubber industry from the late 1800s through much of following century, to its precipitous decline beginning in the 1970s. It then discusses how the “bottoming out” of this dominant industry gave rise to the industrial restructuring of the area. The paper explores the nature of this restructuring, and the steps and activities the city’s business, civic, and government leaders have undertaken to help spur its recovery and redevelopment. In doing so, it provides a series of lessons to other older industrial regions working to find their own economic niche in a changing global economy. 

Download Case Study » (PDF)

Downloads

• Download

Over 30 years ago, the World Bank began to develop policies to safeguard the rights of those displaced by Bank-financed development projects. The safeguard policy on involuntary resettlement initiated in turn a series of follow up policies designed to safeguard other groups and sectors affected by Bank investments, including the environment and indigenous people. Since its adoption in 1980, the Bank’s operational policy on involuntary resettlement has been revised and strengthened in several stages, most recently in 2001. The regional development banks – African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – have all followed the World Bank’s lead and developed policies for involuntary resettlement cause by development projects financed by these multilateral banks.

While the policies are complex, the basic thrust of these safeguard policies on involuntary resettlement has been to affirm:

• Involuntary resettlement should be avoided where feasible.
• Where it is not feasible to avoid resettlement, the scale of displacement should be minimized and resettlement activities should be conceived and executed as full-fledged sustainable development programs on their own relying on commensurate financing l and informed participation with the populations to be displaced.
• Displaced persons should be assisted to improve, or at least restore their livelihoods and living standards to levels they enjoyed before the displacement.^[1]

Even with these safeguards policies, people displaced by development projects risk – and very large numbers have actually experienced – a sharp decline in their standards of living.^[2] Michael Cernea’s Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction model identifies the most common and fundamental risks of such displacement and resettlement processes: landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalization, food insecurity, increased morbidity and mortality, loss of access to common property, and social disintegration.^[3] If insufficiently addressed, these embedded risks convert into actual processes of massive impoverishment. And particular groups may be especially affected, as noted in the World Bank’s Operational Policy: “Bank experience has shown that resettlement of indigenous people with traditional land-based modes of production is particularly complex and may have significant adverse impacts on their identity and cultural survival.” (OP 4.12, para.9)

These safeguards policies are an important instrument to minimize and overcome the harm suffered by those displaced by development projects. It should be noted, however, that there have always been problems in the implementation of these policies due to the evasive implementation by borrowers or the incomplete application by World Bank staff. The Bank’s interest in researching the impacts of compulsory resettlement triggered by its projects has been sporadic. In particular, World Bank has not carried out and published a comprehensive evaluation of the displacements caused by its massive project portfolio for the last 20 years. The last full resettlement portfolio review was conducted two decades ago, in 1993-1994. In2010, with the approval of the Bank’s Board, the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) undertook a broad review on how not only the policy on involuntary resettlement, but all social safeguards policies have or have not been implemented. Reporting on its findings, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) publicly faulted World Bank management for not even keeping basic statistics of the number of people displaced and not making such statistics available for evaluation.^[4] Similar analytical syntheses are missing from other multilateral development agencies, such as, IADB and EBRD. There is a strong sense within the community of resettlement specialists that successful cases are the exception, not the norm. In sum, projects that are predicated on land expropriation and involuntary resettlement are not only forcibly uprooted large numbers of people, but leaving them impoverished, disenfranchised, disempowered, and in many other aspects worse off than before the Bank-financed project.

While the Bank’s safeguard policies were in need of review and many argued for a more explicit incorporation of human rights language into the policies, the Bank took a different approach. The Bank’s team tasked with “reviewing and updating” eliminated many robust and indispensable parts of the revised existing safeguards, watered down other parts, and failed to incorporate important lessons from the Bank’s own experiences as well as relevant and important new knowledge from social, economic, and environmental sciences.

At the end of July 2014, the Bank published a “draft” of the revised safeguards’ policies which were not based on consultation with civil society organizations (CSOs) as had been promised. Rather the newly proposed policies were held close and stamped “strictly confidential.” The numerous CSOs and NGOs involved for two years in what they thought was a consultative process learned only from a leak about plans by Bank management for proposals to the Bank’s Board and its Committee for Development Effectiveness (CODE). Because of this secrecy, the Bank’s Board and the CODE itself were not made aware of the civil society’s views about the Environmental and Social Safeguards draft policy, before CODE had to decide about endorsing and releasing it for a new round of “consultation.”

As is well known, the process shapes the product. These bizarre distortions in the way the World Bank conducted what should have been a transparent process of genuine consultation resulted in some deep flaws of the product as manifest in the current draft ESS.

The backlash was inevitable, strong, and broad, coming from an extensive array of constituencies:’ from CSOs, NGOs, and various other groups representing populations adversely affected by Bank financed projects, professional communities , all the way to various organisms of the United Nations. More than 300 civil society organizations issued a statement opposing the Bank’s plans and at World Bank meetings in mid-October 2014, civil society organizations walked out of a World Bank ‘consultative meeting’ on the revised policies. The statement argued that the consultative process had been inadequate and that the safeguards were being undercut even at a time when the Bank is seeking to expand its lending to riskier infrastructure and mega-project schemes. While the Review and Update exercise was expected to strengthen the provisions of existing policies, instead the policies themselves were redrafted in a way that weakened them. The civil society statement notes that the revised draft “eliminates the fundamental development objective of the resettlement policy and the key measures essential to preventing impoverishment and protecting the rights of people uprooted from their homes, lands, productive activities and jobs to make way for Bank projects.”^[5] Not only did the revised policy not strengthen protections for displaced people, but each of its “standards” represents a backwards step in comparison to existing policies. According to the draft revised policies the Bank could now finance projects which would displace people without requiring a sound reconstruction plan and budget to “ensure adequate compensation, sound physical resettlement, economic recovery and improvement.” Moreover, the application of some safeguards policies would now become optional. Although the regional development banks have not – so far – begun to take actions to weaken their own safeguard policies, there is fear that they will follow the Bank’s lead.

Just as humanitarian response to internally displaced persons seems to be sliding backward, so too the actions of development agencies – or at least the World Bank – seem to be reversing gains made over the past three decades.

Is it possible to isolate the well-established mode of Arctic cooperation from the disruptive impact of the Ukraine crisis? Many stake-holders in cooperative projects with Russia keep insisting on an affirmative answer and seek to bracket out tensions emanating from such obscure locations as Debaltsevo or Mariupol. The European Union (EU), which is due to adopt a new Arctic Policy by the end of the year, would have been content to maintain the focus on environmental protection and economic development; the discussions in Brussels, however, have increasingly shifted to far less appealing “hard security” matters. Officials from the European Commission seem deeply reluctant to deal with Russia’s military activities in the high north but have to acknowledge that they are making it much more difficult to cooperate with Russia. As April’s Arctic Council ministerial meetings approach, the United States and Europe must be realistic about the ways in which far away events will negatively affect the possible achievement of their goals. 

Moscow is expanding rather than camouflaging the scope of exercises undertaken by its newly-formed Arctic Joint Strategic Command. Russian President Vladimir Putin used to proudly proclaim Russia’s abiding interest in Arctic cooperation, but even the most pro-engagement Arctic partners cannot fail to see that Russia’s interest is clearly slackening. This may be partly due to the disappearing attractiveness of exploration of the Arctic resources, since the estimated production costs of the off-shore platforms go far beyond the expected returns on the current level of oil prices. Another reason may be the disappointment in the commercial prospects of the Northern Sea Route (or Sevmorput), where maritime transit contracted by an astounding 77 percent in 2014, after several years of promising growth. A further reason may be Moscow’s recognition that the much trumpeted (and still not submitted) claim for expanding its “ownership” over the Arctic shelf cannot be legally approved because Denmark has presented its own claim, and the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf cannot make any recommendations on clashing claims.

It is hard to find an active lobby in Russia for sustaining cooperative projects or at least the joint work in the Arctic Council, as many actors who promoted the Barents Cooperation in the 1990s, are either on a short leash (as is the case with regional governors) or branded as “foreign agents” (the NGOs that want to avoid such branding have to curtail or cut ties with Western colleagues). The appointment of Dmitri Rogozin as a chair of the new government commission on Arctic matters bodes ill for the cooperative endeavors because this firebrand “patriot” deservedly holds a spot on U.S., EU, and Canadian sanctions lists. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry is still circulating a message of commitment to the Arctic dialogue. The forthcoming session of the Arctic Council ministers in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, might test this commitment with the issue of granting observer status to the EU. It was Canada who blocked the resolution of this issue at the previous meeting in Kiruna, Sweden, in 2013, but the controversy about seal products has been resolved, and Canada is ready to put the question on the agenda as its chairmanship of the Council expires. European Commission officials expect that during the 2015 meeting, Russia will raise objections because the EU is now seen as an antagonist, but EU officials still feel it is important to force Moscow to put their opposition on the record.

One external party that aims at enhancing and also at reformatting the Arctic cooperation is China, and while Moscow has to show eager attention to Beijing’s opinions, it cannot be comfortable with this “encroachment.” Russia’s traditional position has been that Arctic matters were the responsibility of the littoral states, but China insists on having a say and even entertains notions of the high north as a “global common,” a prospect which Moscow finds hard to swallow. 

It is indeed futile to praise the value of cooperative ties when seven members of the Arctic Council are compelled to tighten step by step the regime of sanctions against the eighth member, which is sinking into a deep economic crisis but persists in building its power projection capabilities in the High North. The usefulness of engaging Russia is beyond doubt, but it would be irresponsible to expect that joint projects in monitoring climate change could reduce the risks from expanding Russian military activities. The high north is one area where Moscow fancies itself to be in a position of power, but so far it has not found a way to enjoy it. It is not my intention to give the Kremlin war-mongers ideas about putting this military advantage to good political use, but when the likes of Rogozin or Nikolai Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council and former head of the Russian Federal Security Service) profess particular interest in the Arctic, it is only prudent to expect a brainstorm of sorts. The technique of “hybrid war” is not only the continuation but also a driver of Putin’s politics of confrontation, and this drive transforms the unique Arctic landscapes into just another “theater.”

Can the United States and Russia actually cooperate in the Arctic? It might seem like wishful thinking, given that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asserted that there is in fact a “New Cold War” between the two countries in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. Many people—at that conference and elsewhere—see the idea as far-fetched. Sure, Russia is launching air strikes in what has become an all-out proxy war in Syria, continues to be aggressive against Ukraine, and has increased its military build-up in the High North. To many observers, the notion of cooperating with Russia in the Arctic was a non-starter as recently as the mid-2015. There have been, however, significant changes in Russia’s behavior in the last several months—so, maybe it is possible to bracket the Arctic out of the evolving confrontation.

These and other matters were the subject of discussion at a recent conference at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in New York, in which we had the pleasure to partake last week.

Moscow learns its limitations

Russia steadily increased its military activities and deployments in the High North until autumn 2015, including by creating a new Arctic Joint Strategic Command. There have been, however, indirect but accumulating signs of a possible break from this trend. Instead of moving forward with building the Arctic brigades, Russian top brass now aim at reconstituting three divisions and a tank army headquarters at the “Western front” in Russia. News from the newly-reactivated airbases in Novaya Zemlya and other remote locations are primarily about workers’ protests due to non-payments and non-delivery of supplies. Snap exercises that used to be so worrisome for Finland and Norway are now conducted in the Southern military district, which faces acute security challenges. Russia’s new National Security Strategy approved by President Vladimir Putin on the last day of 2015 elaborates at length on the threat from NATO and the chaos of “color revolutions,” but says next to nothing about the Arctic.

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin—who used to preside over the military build-up in the High North—is these days travelling to Baghdad, instead. Sustaining the Syrian intervention is a serious logistical challenge on its own—add low oil prices into the mix, which threw the Russian state budget and funding for major rearmament programs into disarray, and it’s clear that Russia is in trouble. 

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey.

The government is struggling with allocating painful cuts in cash flow, and many ambitious projects in the High North are apparently being curtailed. In the squabbles for dwindling resources, some in the Russian bureaucracy point to the high geopolitical stakes in the Arctic—but that argument has lost convincing power. The threats to Russian Arctic interests are in fact quite low, and its claim to expanding its control over the continental shelf (presented at the U.N. earlier this month) depends upon consent from its Arctic neighbors.

Let’s work together

Chances for cooperation in the Arctic are numerous, as we and our colleagues have described in previous studies. The current economic climate (i.e. falling oil prices, which makes additional energy resource extraction in most of the Arctic a distant-future scenario), geopolitical climate (sanctions on Russia targeting, amongst others, Arctic energy extraction), and budget constraints on both ends (Russia for obvious reasons, the United States because it chooses not to prioritize Arctic matters) urge us to prioritize realistically.

• Improving vessel emergency response mechanisms. Though many analysts like to focus on upcoming resource struggles in the Arctic, the chief concern of naval and coast guard forces there is actually increased tourism. Conditions are very harsh most of the year and can change dramatically and unexpectedly. Given the limited capacity of all Arctic states to navigate Arctic waters, a tourist vessel in distress is probably the main nightmare scenario for the short term. Increased cooperation to optimize search and rescue capabilities is one way to prepare as much as possible for such an undesirable event. 
• Additional research on climate change and methane leakage. Many questions remain regarding the changing climate, its effects on local flora and fauna, and long-term consequences for indigenous communities. Increasingly appreciated in the scientific community, an elephant in the room is trapped methane in permafrost layers. As the Arctic ice thaws, significant amounts of methane may be released into the atmosphere, further exacerbating global warming.
• Expanding oil emergency response preparedness. The current oil price slump likely put the brakes on most Arctic exploration in the short term. We also believe that, unless all long-term demand forecasts are false, an additional 15 million barrels of oil per day will be needed by 2035 or so—the Arctic is still viewed as one of the last frontiers where this precious resource may be found. At the moment, Arctic states are ill-prepared to deal with a future oil spill, and more has to be learned about, for instance, oil recovery on ice and in snow. The Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic was an important first step.
• Preparing Bering Strait for increased sea traffic. As the Arctic warms, increased sea traffic is only a matter of time. The Bering Strait, which is only 50 miles wide at its narrowest point, lacks basic communication infrastructure, sea lane designation, and other critical features. This marks another important and urgent area of cooperation between the United States and Russia, even if dialogue at the highest political level is constrained. 

Can the Arctic be siloed?

There is no doubt that the current cooled climate between Russia and the other Arctic states, in particular the United States, complicates an ongoing dialogue. It is even true that it may prohibit a meaningful conversation about certain issues that have already been discussed. 

Skeptics will argue that it is unrealistic to isolate the Arctic from the wider realm of international relations. Though we agree, we don’t think leaders should shy away from political dialogue altogether. To the contrary, in complicated political times, the stakes are even higher: Leaders should continue existing dialogues where possible and go the extra mile to preserve what can be preserved. Russia’s desire for expanding its control over the Arctic shelf is entirely legitimate—and opens promising opportunities for conversations on issues of concern for many states, including China, for that matter.

Realists in the United States prefer to focus on expanding American military capabilities, their prime argument being that Russia has significantly more capacity in the Arctic. While we would surely agree that America’s current Arctic capabilities are woefully poor, as our colleagues have described, an exclusive focus on that shortcoming may send the wrong signal. 

We would therefore argue in favor of a combined strategy: making additional investments in U.S. Arctic capabilities while doubling down on diplomatic efforts to preserve the U.S.-Russian dialogue in the Arctic. That may not be easy, but given the tremendous success of a constructive approach in the Arctic in recent years, this is something worth fighting for. Figuratively speaking, that is.

ABSTRACT

Of the many regulatory responses to climate change, cap-and-trade is the only one currently endorsed by large segments of the scientific, economic and political establishments. Under this type of system, regulators set the overall path of carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions, allocate or auction the appropriate number of emissions allowances to regulated entities and – through trading – allow the market to converge upon the least expensive set of abatement opportunities. As a result, the trading price of allowances is not set by the regulator as it would be under a tax system, but instead evolves over time to reflect the underlying supply and demand for allowances. In this paper, I develop a simple theory that relates the initial clearing price of CO2 allowances to the marginal cost premium of carbon-free technology, the maximum rate of energy capital replacement and the market interest rate. This theory suggests that the initial clearing price may be lower than the canonical range of CO2 prices found in static technology assessments. Consequently, these results have broad implications for the design of a comprehensive regulatory solution to the climate problem, providing, for example, some intuition about the proper value of a possible CO2 price trigger in a future cap-and-trade system.

Downloads

• Download