Governments are increasingly using public procurement policy to promote the use of legal and sustainable timber, thereby helping to reduce deforestation and illegal logging and encouraging sustainable forestry. 

At least 26 countries, mostly in the EU, currently possess some form of timber procurement policy at central government level. Although some have been implemented more recently than others and all tend to vary in their design, the evidence suggests that they are having a positive effect on increasing market share for verified legal and sustainable timber. Although government purchasing accounts for only a limited share of the market, the evidence also suggests that these timber procurement policies are having a broader impact on consumer markets, partly through their impact on suppliers and partly through the signals they send to the market. 

These policies are also relatively straightforward to introduce: many countries already possess some form of green procurement policy, and criteria for legal and sustainable timber can easily be tailored to fit. In general no new legislation is needed, though the more comprehensive policies benefit from training and advice to government purchasers. 

The gradual spread of the EU Green Procurement Policy programme, and commitments by an increasing number of private companies to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains are likely to encourage further uptake of procurement policies for sustainable timber. Timber procurement can also provide valuable lessons to governments when developing sustainable procurement policies for other products associated with deforestation, such as palm oil. 

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. 

The Japanese government has continued to engage on the issue of illegal logging and related trade, but its approach remains focused on ‘soft’, voluntary measures rather than establishing legally binding requirements. It has been actively promoting the country’s legality verification system, known as the goho-wood system, and this is helping to raise awareness of the issue of illegal logging in Japan. However, the system is not only voluntary but has serious design weaknesses which limit its ability to eliminate illegal products from Japan’s market.

While the number of companies registered as goho-wood suppliers has increased, this may be occurring at the expense of sustainability certification, which is more demanding and expensive. The number of companies in Japan with FSC chain-of-custody certification remains low.

Japan’s imports of timber-sector products at high risk of illegality are estimated to have declined significantly since the start of the century, though levelling off since 2010, while imports of high-risk paper-sector products are estimated to have gradually increased over this period. Levels of high-risk imports remain significantly above those of the other consumer countries reviewed. These are currently estimated to comprise 12 per cent and seven per cent of total timber- and paper-sector products respectively.

It is recommended that the government develop further legislation to control imports of illegal products, including a requirement for risk assessment and mitigation as well as third-party monitoring. Such legislation would also help support the government’s policy to promote the domestic timber industry. Until such legislation is passed, Japanese industry should implement more robust risk assessment and mitigation procedures.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. 

The French government has been engaged on the issue of illegal logging and the related trade: the government played an active part in the development of the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan and has been supporting the negotiation and implementation of voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) in producer countries.

The government has also been actively promoting the production and consumption of sustainable timber, providing funding for forest-management related projects in producer countries and establishing the National Group on Tropical Forests to facilitate a multi-stakeholder dialogue on forest policy. Media coverage of illegal logging has increased considerably since 2007, indicating greater awareness of the issue among the general public.

This response, as well as increased sourcing of sustainably certified products by the private sector, is thought to have been a factor in the decline in imports into France of timber-sector products likely to be illegal. The proportion of timber-sector imports at high risk of illegality is currently estimated to be two per cent. The proportion of highly processed products such as furniture has grown significantly, as has the share coming from China, with a parallel decline in imports of logs and sawnwood from central and West Africa.

However, there remain a number of areas for improvement by the government. In particular, with legislation now in place to implement the EUTR, this should be rigorously enforced and sufficient resources put in place to enable this. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the sanctions regime should be monitored. The planned review of the public procurement policy should be undertaken, and monitoring of its implementation should also be introduced.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade.

The United Kingdom has shown a strong response to the problem of illegal logging and related trade; of the five consumer countries studied, it scored highest in the assessment of laws, regulations and policies related to this issue.

The government played an active part in the development of the EU’s FLEGT Action Plan and has subsequently been supporting the negotiation and implementation of voluntary partnership agreements with producer countries. The government has also been providing a significant amount of funding, through the Forest Governance, Markets and Trade Programme, to initiatives aimed at tackling the trade in illegal timber and improving forest governance.

The private sector in the UK has also been proactive, as reflected in the increase in the number of companies with chain-of-custody certification and in the amount of certified wood-based products on the UK market. A high level of media coverage of illegal logging also indicates that there is widespread awareness of this issue.

This response is thought to be partly responsible for the decline in imports into the UK of timber-sector products likely to be illegal, currently estimated to comprise three per cent of the total. However, there has been a significant shift in the types and sources of high-risk products coming into the UK, reflecting changes in the global timber industry: a growing proportion is coming from China and comprises more highly processed products such as furniture.

While the UK has been one of the most proactive European countries in addressing illegal logging and the related trade, further action could be taken. Cooperation with the Chinese government and its private sector would be beneficial. Systematic monitoring of the UK’s timber procurement policy is also required, and the efforts made to date to enforce the EUTR will need to be maintained.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. 

Efforts to tackle the problem of illegal logging and related trade have continued in the United States; the Lacey Act amendments in 2008 have influenced behaviour within the industry and high-profile enforcement cases have increased awareness of the issue. 

The impact of the Lacey Act on levels of illegal imports into the US is uncertain. The proportion of imports of high-risk timber-sector products is estimated to have declined since 2010, while that of paper-sector products has stayed at about the same level: in 2013, high-risk imports were estimated to comprise five per cent and two per cent of the totals respectively. However, there has been a significant shift in the types and sources of high-risk products coming into the country, reflecting changes in the global timber industry: a growing proportion is coming from China and comprises more highly processed products such as furniture.

Though the Lacey Act is an important piece of legislation for tackling the trade in illegal timber, several implementation and enforcement challenges have arisen since the amendments were enacted, in particular the interpretation of ‘due care’. Improvements to the procedure for processing import declaration forms are also required to ensure effective enforcement of the act. In order to effectively tackle illegal logging and the related trade, the US government should also continue to encourage its trading partners to strengthen their forest governance.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. 

The Netherlands has shown a strong response to the problem of illegal logging and related trade: the government played an active part in the development of the EU’s FLEGT Action Plan, and has been supporting the negotiation and implementation of Voluntary Partnership Agreements with producer countries.

The government has also been promoting the production and consumption of sustainable timber. It has a comprehensive procurement policy, established the Sustainable Trade Initiative and helped to launch the European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition.

As a result both of these government actions and of promotion by the private sector, there is a high proportion of certified wood-based products on the Dutch market as well as a large number of companies with chain-of-custody certification. A high level of media coverage on the issue of illegal logging also indicates that there is widespread awareness of this issue.

This response is thought to be partly responsible for the decline in imports into the Netherlands of timber-sector products likely to be illegal, currently estimated to comprise two per cent of the total. However, there has been a significant shift in the types and sources of high-risk products coming into the country, reflecting changes in the global timber industry: a growing proportion is coming from China and comprises more highly processed products such as furniture.

While the Netherlands has been one of the most proactive European countries in addressing illegal logging and the related trade, further action could be taken. A key challenge will be effective enforcement of the EU Timber Regulation given the Netherlands’ role as a major conduit for timber to the rest of Europe. Systematic monitoring of its timber procurement policy is also required.

This paper accompanies a series of Chatham House assessments on China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, the US and Vietnam and provides details on how the estimates of the level of illegality of imports of wood-based products into those countries were derived. The assessments are part of a research project that monitored levels of illegal logging and related trade in selected consumer, producer and processing countries in order to evaluate the effectiveness of efforts to tackle this problem.

The paper describes the methodology for estimating the levels of wood-based products at high risk of illegality that are being imported into consumer and processing countries. The methodology was developed in order to provide quantitative estimates of the scale of such imports and to assess how they have changed over time. The figures adopted for the assessments are based on the best available evidence; but, given the challenges of quantifying levels of illegal logging and the limited information available for some countries, they should not be regarded as definitive. Rather, they indicate the likely levels of illegality and, perhaps more important, how they may have changed over time.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. The Chinese government has made notable progress in its efforts to tackle illegal logging and the associated trade. This has included the development of a draft national timber legality verification system (TLVS) and its active engagement with a number of consumer countries. The government’s plans to establish bilateral trade agreements with producer countries are also encouraging, although no formalized commitments have yet been made. Reflecting the growing awareness of the impact of Chinese companies overseas, the government has also been developing further guidance to promote sustainable forest products trade and investment.

The private sector is also taking action, with continued growth in the uptake of chain-of-custody (CoC) certification. Industry associations have been promoting legal and sustainable sourcing, and they will have an important role to play in testing the draft TLVS.

These steps are likely to have had an impact on the volume of illegal wood-based products being imported into China. However, trade data discrepancies and analysis of trade flows both indicate that illegal trade remains a significant problem. While imports of high-risk products are estimated to have declined since 2000, these are reckoned to comprise 17 per cent of the total by volume in 2013. This proportion is high compared with other timber-importing countries examined in this assessment.

In order to build on its response to illegal logging and related trade, the Chinese government should establish binding regulations and stringent controls on the import and export of illegal wood-based products. The draft TLVS should be further developed, including through pilot projects with timber-exporting countries and effective consultation with industry, civil society and other consumer-country governments. The government’s procurement policy should be strengthened through the clarification of its legality and sustainability requirements, the inclusion of a wider range of products within its scope, and the development of a robust mechanism to monitor compliance. 

Increased training for the private sector on due diligence, market regulations and legality requirements in consumer countries is required to stimulate further action by industry, and the work to elaborate further guidelines for companies operating overseas in the forest products trade should be continued. Awareness-raising initiatives for Chinese consumers should also be extended, in order to increase demand for verified legal wood-based products.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses illegal logging and the associated trade. 

The Vietnamese government has made some progress towards tackling illegal logging and the associated trade. It has negotiated a voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) with the EU, a process that has prompted a review of relevant legislation and improved the government’s engagement with civil society. In addition, it has signed agreements with Lao PDR and Cambodia in which it has committed to coordination on forest management and trade. However, there has been little progress in policy reform, and there is still no legislation regulating illegal timber imports.

There is a high level of awareness of illegal logging and associated trade within the private sector: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain-of-custody (CoC) certification has increased rapidly, particularly in the furniture sector. But efforts are hampered by poor access to third-party verified raw material.

Both trade data discrepancies and analysis of trade flows indicate that illegal trade remains a serious problem. The volume of imports of wood-based products at a high risk of illegality is estimated to have increased since 2000, while its share in the volume of total imports of wood-based products gradually declined until 2009 and then increased slightly: they are estimated to have comprised 18 per cent of the total by volume in 2013.

In order to build on its response to illegal logging and related trade, the government should establish a legal responsibility for Vietnamese importers to ensure that their timber sources are legal. Furthermore, to increase domestic demand for legal products, it should establish a public procurement policy requiring the use of verified legal products. Within the framework of the VPA, broad and effective multi-stakeholder engagement will be vital to ensure that a robust timber legality assurance system is developed. In addition, proactive partnerships should be forged with high-risk supply countries to establish legality criteria and indicators that reflect the full scope of the relevant legislation in those countries.

This event will focus on the trade in Pericopsis elata (Afrormosia/Assamela) harvested in West and Central Africa, and will be co-chaired by Emmanuel Heuse, FLEGT facilitator in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This workshop is supported by the Climate and Land Use Alliance, the UK Department of International Development and the European Union Action to Fight Environmental Crime.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This event is part of a series of illegal logging update meetings that will bring together more than 250 participants from civil society, industry and governments from around the world. 

Download the presentations from the event on the Illegal Logging Portal.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall, which stood between 1961 to 1989, came to symbolize the ‘Iron Curtain’ – the ideological split between East and West – that existed across Europe and between the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, and their allies, during the Cold War. How significant was the Berlin Wall during the Cold War – was it more important physically or psychologically?

The Berlin Wall was important physically, as well as psychologically, because Berlin was the only city that was divided physically by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc and the West.

Given the disparity that quickly emerged between the two sides in economic wealth, freedom of expression and so on, the fear was that, without that wall, there would've been a unification of Berlin in a way that the Soviet side would have lost.

But it was also very important psychologically because it became the symbol of the division between two ideologies that saw each other as inimical to each other.

That meant that if you wanted to visualize the Cold War, and the separation between the capitalist, democratic system of the West and the communist, command-and-control system of the East, Berlin offered a place where you could physically walk from one world, through a checkpoint, into the other. The whole Cold War could be reduced to this one nexus point.

Because of its psychological as well as its physical significance, the fall of the Berlin Wall quickly became the symbol of the collapse of the communist ideology it had shielded.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have reportedly built over 1,000 kilometres of walls – the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Wall – along their borders.

Why has Europe been building more walls and how effective have they been? Have they been used more as symbols to appeal to political bases, and if so, has it worked with voters?

The walls that have been built in Europe recently have been for a very specific reason. This was the huge influx of migrants and refugees to Europe in 2015, through what was called the ‘eastern Mediterranean’ or ‘western Balkan route’, from Turkey to Greece and on through the Balkans, Serbia and Hungary to northern Europe – in what was Europe's biggest migrant and refugee crisis since the Second World War.

What’s interesting is that for Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government, which was on the frontline of the flow of migrants and refugees, building a wall was a way of reasserting its sovereignty. 

Like many other countries along the ‘migrant route’, they resented that the rules under which people could migrate into Europe were flouted by northern European governments which were willing to accept large numbers of migrants and refugees.

By accepting them, they kept attracting more, and so Orbán was worried that, at some point, Germany might say ‘We can’t take anymore’ and they’d be left in Hungary.

It’s important to remember that the communist states of central and eastern Europe were kept in aspic by the Soviet Union – they existed in a hermetically sealed environment without immigration. As a result, they didn’t experience the rise of multicultural societies of the sort that emerged in Britain, Belgium, France and Germany, where immigration persisted throughout the Cold War period.

The countries of central and eastern Europe were delighted that the Berlin Wall collapsed because it allowed them to unify with western Europe. They had been vassal states of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and by joining the EU, they re-discovered personal freedom and re-gained national sovereignty. They thought they had become masters of their own future again.

But they suddenly found they were on the frontline of a new movement of people that wanted to get into the same world that they’d entered some 15 years earlier. And, as hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees began arriving, they suddenly realised they were in a union that did not respect their sovereignty.

So, for them, putting up walls was a sovereign act against a European Union that didn’t seem to take their sovereignty seriously.

Has it worked? Definitely. The flow of migrants has been reduced drastically. This is partly because the EU paid Turkey to hold back the over three million migrants based there. But the walls also acted as a physical and psychological deterrent. 

It also worked politically. It allowed Viktor Orbán and other European parties that took the sovereigntist line to strengthen their appeal to voters – voters like to know that governments can do certain things like protecting them and their borders.

What is hypocritical, however, is that many of the governments in western Europe which criticized the Hungarian government for building its wall have actually been rather grateful that they did so as it slowed down the flow of migrants to their countries.

Then there’s the additional hypocrisy of the EU criticizing Donald Trump for building his wall with Mexico when Europeans are benefitting from theirs in Hungary.

Two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, former US president Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’ declaring ‘across Europe this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand [freedom].’

32 years later, building a wall along the US–Mexico border has become a cornerstone of the current US administration under Donald Trump who has pledged to build a ‘big beautiful wall’. How does this reflect the political evolution of the US and what effect does that have across the rest of the world?

President Reagan talked about tearing down the Berlin Wall as a symbol of the Cold War. He knew that the fall of the wall would undermine the Soviet Union. 

President Trump is way beyond the Cold War. Building a new wall is his response to the growing sense of economic dislocation that segments of America, like Britain and other parts of Europe and the developed world, have experienced on the back of the rise of globalization, which was partly the result of the end of the Cold War but also the rise of China.

The spread of globalization, the declining earning power of many workers in the West, advances in technology which have taken away many high-earning jobs, the eight years of austerity after the global financial crisis – these are all factors driving Trump’s thinking. 

Have inflows of Mexican immigrants or immigrants through the Mexico border been the principal driver of economic insecurity?  No.  What you’ve got is Trump promising to build a wall as a symbol of his administration’s determination to protect Americans.

So I’d say the US–Mexico wall is another symbolic – or psychological – wall. Trump’s wall is supposedly about stopping illegal immigration but there are still plenty of ways to come through the border posts. It’s principally an exercise in political theatre.

From the Great Wall of China to Hadrian’s Wall, walls and fences of all sorts have been used throughout history for defence and security, but not all of them have been physical.

So-called ‘maritime walls’, as well as ‘virtual walls’, are also increasingly being enforced which, today, includes border forces patrolling seas and oceans, such as in the Mediterranean Sea or off the coasts of Australia, and border control systems controlling the movement of people. Politically how do these types of barriers compare to physical ones?

You could argue that the Mediterranean Sea, and the European border forces operating within it, still act as a physical wall because they constitute a physical obstacle to migrants being able to move from the South across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. 

So I don’t see this maritime wall being much different to the physical walls that have been built to try to stop migrants – just like any other border patrol, the Italian navy is preventing NGO vessels carrying migrants, who have been stranded at sea from docking at Italian ports. 

In this sense, you could argue that the Mediterranean Sea is a larger version of the Rio Grande between the US and Mexico which also incorporates physical barriers along its shores.

I think the more interesting walls that are being built today are virtual walls such as regulatory walls to trade, or with the internet, new barriers are being built to digital communication which affect your capacity to access information. 

In the end, all these walls are manifestations of national sovereignty through which a government demonstrates it can ‘protect’ its citizens – whether they are successful in this objective or not.

The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the presence of enforcement mechanisms along the border, has become a key issue in the Brexit negotiations. How much of the debate over this is about the symbolism of the border against its economic implications?

The Irish border carries great symbolic importance because it reflects the reality of the separation of two sovereign states.

On the island of Ireland, the British and Irish governments have wanted to minimize this reality to the greatest extent possible. They even went as far as removing all types of barriers as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

This is the same sort of fiction the European Union created when it removed any physical manifestations of the existence of borders between those member states in its Schengen agreement on borderless travel.

By removing physical manifestations of the border, the UK was able to reduce some of the popular support for Irish unification as well as support for the IRA’s campaign of violence and terrorism to try to force the same outcome. 

Brexit has thrown a huge spanner into this arrangement. If Brexit is going to mean the entire UK not being in the EU’s customs union then some sort of border would need to be reinstated.

The British government proposed to do all the checks behind the border somewhere. The EU’s view was, ‘Well, that’s nice for you to say, but this border will become the EU’s only land border with the UK, and you cannot guarantee that people won’t be able to smuggle things through.’

On the other hand, recreating a border of some sort, whether physical or not, would reignite the differentiation between the two nations – running counter to the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.

The only solution available to Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been to put the border down the Irish Sea.  While this means that Northern Ireland will no longer be an obstacle to the UK signing new, post-Brexit, free trade agreements with other countries, it has betrayed the Conservative Party’s unionist allies, for whom it’s essential that the UK’s borders include and not exclude them. 

By the end of the Cold War there were just 15 walls and fences along borders around the world, but today, there are at least 70. How effective, do you think, building barriers are as a political and military strategy to defence and security issues given their financial – and human – cost?

Physical barriers can be an effective form of protection – or imprisonment. 

The separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories has reduced the level of terrorist violence being perpetrated in Israel, but the cost has been the impoverishment of many Palestinians, and is another nail in the coffin of a two-state solution.

Yet many Israelis are saying that, maybe, being entirely separate is the best way to achieve peace between the two sides.

However, the walls around the Gaza Strip have not prevented, for various reasons, the Hamas government from developing rockets and firing them into Israel.   

You could argue that the border between China and North Korea, which is severely patrolled, has been a tool of continued political control protecting the Kim Jong-un regime from collapse – as has its virtual border preventing internet penetration.

Similarly, the virtual border the Chinese government has created around its own internet, the ‘great firewall’, has been very effective both economically – allowing Chinese internet platforms to develop without the threat of competition – and also as a form of political control that helps the Chinese Communist Party retain its monopoly on power. 

So walls in all of their shapes and forms can work. They are like sanctions – sanctions are easy to impose but difficult to remove. Walls are easy to build but they’re difficult to break down. 

But my view would be that they still only work temporarily. In the end, walls serve their particular purpose for a particular period, like the Berlin Wall, they end up outliving their purpose.

You have to be alive to the fact that, whether that purpose was a good or bad purpose, there will be a moment when walls end up protecting the interests of an ever-narrower number of people inside the wall, while they cease serving, if they ever did, the interests of the growing number on both sides. 

It’s ironic that the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was not the main marker of the end of the Cold War. It began earlier that year, with the intensification of people protesting in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Once Hungarian troops dismantled the fence separating them from Austria in May 1989, thousands of Hungarian citizens simply walked out of their country, because by then, the wall between the East and West only existed in their minds.

Then, once East Germans also realized that Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet regime had lost its willingness to defend the Berlin Wall, it collapsed. 

So it is interesting that we’re marking the end of the Cold War with this anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which of course, did divide two halves of one country, making its fall all the more poignant and powerful. But the end of the Cold War really began with the fall of the invisible wall in people’s minds.

In 2018, Iceland joined the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a network of countries developing frameworks to measure social, economic and environmental factors in an attempt to move beyond GDP being the sole measurement of economic success. Other governments and organizations supporting this approach include New Zealand, Scotland and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
 
Against this backdrop, the prime minister of Iceland and 2019 Chatham House Prize nominee, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, shares insights into her government’s approach and her personal and political motivations for embarking on the wellbeing economy project.

The Belvedere Forum is a leading annual British and Polish bilateral dialogue bringing together a diverse group of actors from civil society, politics, business, academia and NGOs. It seeks to strengthen and deepen the extensive partnership between the two countries by exploring political, economic, social and cultural issues through debate and discussion.

The forum is an annual event alternating between the UK and Poland. Originally created in 2017 by the governments of the UK and Poland, the forum is now jointly organized by Chatham House and the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) in Warsaw.

Helen Thompson reflects on the changing nature of the EU as a federation and will seek to map post-Brexit options for the UK within this history. 

Since its beginning in the 1950s, the evolution of European integration has created a series of predicaments for the UK which has been forced again and again to redefine its relationship with the European entity. As Britain seeks to leaves the European Union, it will again need to find a new relationship with it at a time when the future of the US commitment to Europe is also uncertain.
 
Assuming Brexit takes place, to what extent could the federalization of the EU pose issues for the UK? What does a move towards federalization mean for security globally? And how would Britain and Northern Ireland navigate a relationship with a customs union federation?
 
The Schapiro Lecture is published in Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics.


 

In recent decades, political party systems across Europe have fragmented and electoral volatility has increased. The number of parties represented in parliaments across the continent has grown and the formerly dominant mainstream parties have seen their support base collapse, forcing parties into often uncomfortable and unstable coalitions.

From the United Kingdom to Germany, politicians and commentators talk of such scenarios in often apocalyptic terms and associate it with political instability and policy paralysis.

They shouldn’t. Instead they should focus their energy on making these increasingly competitive political markets work.

The Netherlands is frequently held up as a prime example of this process, which is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘Dutchification’. Its highly proportional political system has created the opportunity for new parties and specific interest groups to win parliamentary representation, ranging from an animal rights party and a party catering specifically to the interests of the elderly.

This has been accompanied by increased electoral volatility. In the 1970s, less than 15% of seats in the Dutch parliament would change party at any election, but in the last election in 2017, this was just over a quarter. The system also created space for the relatively early rise of populist far-right parties, though it was not the cause of their rise.

Nevertheless, despite the regularly difficult coalition politics, it remains one of the most well-governed countries in the world.

A short history of fragmentation

Looking at the effective number of parties represented in parliaments, the number of parties, corrected for their size, provides a good measure of the extent of fragmentation. In the Netherlands this steadily increased from around four in the 1980s to over eight following the election in 2017. Even the populist far-right vote has fragmented, with two parties partly competing for the same electorate. In other countries it has been a more recent phenomenon. Spain remained a de facto two-party system until the financial crisis. Dissatisfaction with both mainstream parties has seen challenger parties on both the left and the right attract significant support, making it harder to form stable coalitions. Political fragmentation decreased slightly in Italy in recent years, but that was from a high base as it shot up in the early 1990s when the post-war political settlement crumbled.

German politics, long a hallmark of stability, is struggling with the decrease in support for the parties that dominated its political scene in the post-war period. The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats only barely managed to win a majority together in the election in 2017, at 53.4% of the vote compared with the 81.3% achieved 30 years earlier. The latest polls suggest they would only get to 40% together if an election were held today.

A similar trend is visible within the European Parliament. Whereas the two largest groups in the European Parliament, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, together won 66% of the vote in the election in 1999, they did not even manage to win a majority together in 2019, taking just 39.5% of the vote.

No crisis of democracy

If electoral volatility and political fragmentation does indeed constitute some sort of crisis of democracy, we should expect to see voters become unhappy about how their national democracy functions. Largely, the opposite seems to be the case.

In the Netherlands, satisfaction with its democracy went up at the same time as Dutchification did its work. Similar trends are visible in other highly fragmented European political systems, often those with very proportional systems. Despite regular minority governments, satisfaction with democracy is above 90% in Denmark and at 80% in Sweden, according to the latest Eurobarometer data.

In comparison, it stood at 52% in the United Kingdom and 53% in France, where the electoral system has, at least on the surface, prevented the kind of fragmentation supposedly plaguing proportional systems.

Satisfaction with democracy seems to be affected by a number of factors. This includes the state of the economy, particularly in countries that were hit the hardest by the global financial and euro zone crises. Nevertheless, the data suggests that, even if we can’t say that Dutchification by definition leads to more satisfaction with democracy, it is clearly not associated with falling faith in the system.

A competitive political market

Dutchification should be seen as accompanying a more competitive political marketplace. A more emancipated, demanding and politically engaged electorate than in the post-war decades is willing to shop around instead of merely vote according to socioeconomic class or other dividing lines, such as religious ones. The fragmented parliaments that emerge as a result provide better representation of different groups within European societies.

This makes life harder for Europe’s political parties and politicians, as they juggle large coalitions, or changing coalitions under minority governments, but provides voters with more choice and democratic renewal. If handled correctly this would also allow more responsiveness to shifts in public opinion.

Such democratic creative destruction in competitive political markets is to be celebrated in a well-functioning democracy. Just as companies prefer to operate in an oligopoly, political parties prefer the stability of limited political competition. But wishing for this kind of stability comes perilously close to preferring stability over proper representation.

Worrying about Dutchification risks confusing a crisis of the traditional mainstream parties with a crisis of democracy. For some countries, particularly those like the Netherlands and Denmark which have longer histories of consensus-based politics and coalition building, this is an easier adjustment. But this should not be an excuse to not attempt to make politics work better as they were forced to go through, arguably still ongoing, adjustment processes too.

Instead of investing in futile attempts to get back to how things were in the old days, or hoping this will somehow magically happen, political leaders and parties across Europe need to reassess how they deal with the new reality of Dutchification.

Perhaps it will be second time lucky. At the end of April, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) will elect a new party leader to follow in the footsteps of Angela Merkel. An emergency party congress has been summoned to do that after the surprise resignation of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Merkel’s chosen successor.

The plan is to leave the decision on who will be the CDU candidate for chancellor at the next election until after Germany’s EU presidency concludes in December. So Merkel will keep her job until 2021, and the new leader will have to learn to live with her.

The three leading candidates are Armin Laschet, Friedrich Merz and Norbert Röttgen, all from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Two of the three – Merz and Röttgen – were sacked by Merkel from their former jobs. They have not forgotten. Only Armin Laschet, currently CDU leader in North Rhine-Westphalia and state premier, can be described as a Merkel loyalist, true to her centrist mantra.

He is the man to beat, having teamed up with Jens Spahn, the 39-year-old health minister, who is popular with party conservatives. Spahn will run as his deputy, so the team straddles the left-right divide in the party. But the contest still seems set to be a bitter battle between pro- and anti-Merkel factions that could leave the party badly split.

After nearly 15 years as chancellor, and 18 years as CDU leader, Merkel remains the most popular politician in Germany. In spite of criticism that she lacks vision, her caution and predictability appear to be just what most German voters like.

But her term in office has also seen the steady shrinking of the centre ground in German politics, with the rise of the environmentalist Green party and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at the expense of the centre-right CDU and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The battle for the soul of the CDU is between those who think Merkel has been too left-wing, and want a more conservative leader to win back AfD voters, and those who believe that the CDU must stay in the centre, and prepare for a future coalition with the Greens. Merz is seen as the former, Laschet and Röttgen the latter.

Unless Laschet emerges as the clear winner in April, the leadership contest is likely to leave Germany sorely distracted by domestic politics just as it takes over the EU presidency in the second half of the year. Instead of Merkel having a triumphant international swansong on the EU stage, she could be battling to protect her inheritance at home.

The one area on which all three leadership candidates seem to agree is foreign policy: they all want Germany to take more leadership and responsibility, and for the European Union to play a bigger role in security, defence and international affairs. They are all Atlanticists, but critical of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ stance. All are on the record criticizing the chancellor – at least tacitly – for not having a more vigorous foreign policy.

There the similarity ends.

On the right, the 64-year-old Merz is both the most conservative and the most popular with the party grassroots. He fell out with the chancellor when she took over his job as CDU leader in parliament in 2002. He quit politics to become a corporate lawyer (and a millionaire), but never lost his political ambition. He is an economic liberal but socially conservative, a strong critic of Merkel’s migration policy and her lack of clear leadership. Critics say he is a man of the past, and not a team player.

On the EU, he believes Germany is ‘leaving too much to the French’. If France and Germany cannot agree on financial matters, he said at the London School of Economics in February, they should instead forge a stronger EU industrial policy focused on creating more ‘European champions’.

Laschet, the Merkel loyalist, is four years younger, and from the left of the party. Like Merz, he is a former member of the European parliament. In 2015, he defended Merkel’s open border policy to accept refugees stranded in the Balkans. On Russia, however, he is more critical, calling for a new effort to re-engage with Vladimir Putin. Most recently, at the Munich Security Conference, he called for stronger Franco-German relations, and more support for the eurozone reforms proposed by Emmanuel Macron.

As CDU leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Laschet has the strongest power base. He earned his political spurs there by winning the last state election in 2017, in contrast to Röttgen, who lost to the SPD and Greens five years earlier.

Röttgen, chairman of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, is the surprise candidate. Once a Merkel favourite, they fell out when she sacked him as environment minister after he lost the North Rhine-Westphalia election. By throwing his hat in the ring, he has forced it to become an open contest. He is independent-minded and outspoken, but not as bitterly hostile to the chancellor as Merz, so he could be a compromise candidate.

Laschet is clearly the man Merkel would find it easiest to live with. The decision will be taken by a party congress, not a grassroots ballot, which gives him a better chance. But Merz is the most eloquent orator and seen as the best campaigner. The challenge for party members is whether they believe it is better to swing right and squeeze the AfD, or stick to the centre to hold onto voters tempted by the Greens, who have replaced the SPD as the second-most popular party in Germany.

The race is wide open. So is the future of the CDU. The only prediction one can make with much certainty is that as long as Merkel remains chancellor, any successor will struggle to get out of her shadow.

Since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, few countries have chosen to ignore social distancing recommendations. But, even among those states which have, the Belarusian official response to its epidemic remains unique.

President Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s statements that vodka, sauna and tractors are protecting Belarusians from coronavirus attracted amused attention in international media. Lukashenka also described other societies’ response to COVID-19 as ‘a massive psychosis’.

Although Lukashenka is notorious for his awkward style of public communication, the fact that Belarus is refusing to impose comprehensive confinement measures is of concern. Belarusians continue to work, play football and socialise.

Lukashenka, himself playing ice hockey in front of state cameras, claims it is the best way to stay healthy. Belarusian authorities clearly appear to be in denial – and this could have dire humanitarian consequences.

From denial to half measures

Belarus actually has one of the largest numbers of hospital beds in the world per 1,000 of the population. But in the absence of quarantine measures its health system, already crippled by corruption and embezzlement, is likely to be overwhelmed.

Patients being treated for pneumonia in hospitals have suggested medical staff are uninformed and inadequately equipped. It is claimed doctors are not reporting COVID-19 as the suspected cause of death, either through a lack of testing or for fear of reprisals.

Observers believe the real mortality rate is already well above official figures (40 deaths as of 16 April). Based on an Imperial College London model, between 15,000 and 32,000 people could die under the current mild confinement regime – and such a high death toll would hugely impact the country’s political stability. Citing personal data protection, the Ministry of Health has imposed a total news blackout; the only cluster officially acknowledged so far is the city of Vitsebsk.

Although specific Belarusian cities and some individuals started changing their approach – by extending school vacations or cancelling weddings – such measures remain half-hearted.

Clearly a major reason for such an apparently irresponsible reaction is that Belarus cannot afford a massive lockdown that would freeze its already underdeveloped economy and drive it deeper into recession. Unlike many other nations, Belarus lacks budgetary resources for a sizable stimulus package. But a delayed response might backfire on the economy.

Economic recession has been forecast to amount to at least 10% of GDP. For Lukashenka, who openly challenged conventional wisdom regarding the need for quarantine and isolation, such an economic downturn would harm his confidence rating in the eyes of Belarusian voters, mindful of the state’s mismanagement of the crisis. And it could create doubt within the ruling elite itself, with Lukashenka seeking re-election for a sixth mandate in late August.

Against this backdrop, a radicalization of the opposition-minded part of society is also to be expected, with greater reliance on social networks in the face of official secrecy and disinformation. The expected response of the regime is then likely to be pre-emptive repression. Evidence is emerging that law enforcement agencies have already stepped up judicial and paralegal harassment of dissenters, notably independent journalists and bloggers.

Russia’s initial reluctance to address the coronavirus crisis may also have influenced Belarus. Lukashenka and his administration often react to public health challenges by the Soviet rulebook, reminiscent of the Soviet authorities’ mismanagement of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Russia has unilaterally closed its borders with Belarus and, as bilateral relations continue to deteriorate, this casts further doubt on the viability of the Union State of Belarus and Russia. Pro-Russian media forecast Moscow will be unwilling to alleviate the expected socio-economic crisis, as it continues to reject Minsk’s demands regarding subsidised oil deliveries. Yet the Kremlin might use the crisis as an opportunity to resume its integrationist pressure on Belarus.

China, with which Belarus engaged in a seemingly privileged strategic partnership in the 2010s, was actually the first country to dispatch humanitarian aid to beef up Belarusian capacity to fight the virus.

But Minsk should not expect Beijing to rescue its economy and, unless it commits to more internal reforms, Belarus is not likely to receive much from the EU either. The regime has already applied to the IMF for emergency financial support, but conditions are attached and, even if successful, the funds would amount to no more than $900m.

The government’s decision to take only half measures so far is rooted in the hope COVID-19 is not as bad as foreign experts fear. But, unless the leadership acknowledges the public health crisis and mitigates its economic impact, COVID-19 will accelerate Belarus’s slide back into international self-isolation. If combined with a humanitarian crisis, this will put the Belarusian regime under considerable stress.

This crisis does risk a new ‘Chernobyl moment’ for the authorities, but the population could react more vocally this time. As volunteers self-organise to fight the epidemic, it might become more difficult for the authorities to say that it is efficient in running the country. But the bottom line is Belarus desperately needs money. Whoever steps up to support Belarus financially will also be able to heavily influence its politics.

In a new event in the Sustainable Transitions series, the speaker will present an update of Sino-Russian gas cooperation.

To give a comprehensive account of their impact on global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, he will discuss the following points:

• Gas is scheduled to start flowing from the Power of Siberia I (POS) on 2 December 2019. But what is the background of development of POS 1 and what is its current status and prospects? 
• What are the chances of exporting gas through the proposed Altai pipeline? Why is the Mongolia export route so significant? And how will it affect the Central Asian Republics and in particular Turkmenistan’s gas export to China? 
• What are the implications of both POS I and Altai gas via Mongolia route in the context of global LNG supply?
• What are the prospects for multilateral pipeline gas cooperation in northeast Asia?
• What are the implications for other Arctic onshore LNG supply, in particular, for Novatek's Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 1 and 2 to China on top of POS 1 and Altai gas?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

In the context of the feasibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, policymakers are beginning to pay more attention to options for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A wide range of potential carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options are currently being discussed and modelled though the most prominent among them are bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation and reforestation.

There are many reasons to question the reliance on BECCS assumed in the models including the carbon balances achievable, its substantial needs for land, water and other inputs and technically and economically viable carbon capture and storage technologies.

This meeting will examine the potentials and challenges of BECCS in the context of other CDR and emissions abatement options. It will discuss the requisite policy and regulatory frameworks to minimize sustainability and socio-political risks of CDR approaches while also avoiding overshooting climate goals.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The 30th Global Forum on Forest Governance will take place remotely online on 13-14th July 2020. Online registration, with further details, will follow in due course.

Summary

• Current climate efforts are not progressing quickly enough to prevent the world from overshooting the global emissions targets set in the Paris Agreement; accordingly, attention is turning increasingly to options for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – ‘carbon dioxide removal’ (CDR).
•  Alongside afforestation and reforestation, the main option under discussion is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS): processes through which the carbon emissions from burning biomass for energy are captured before release into the atmosphere and stored in underground reservoirs.
• This pre-eminent status is not, however, based on a comprehensive analysis of the feasibility and impacts of BECCS. In reality, BECCS has many drawbacks.
• Models generally assume that biomass for energy is inherently carbon-neutral (and thus that BECCS, by capturing and storing the emissions from combustion, is carbon-negative), but in reality this is not a valid assumption.
• On top of this, the deployment of BECCS at the scales assumed in most models would consume land on a scale comparable to half that currently taken up by global cropland, entailing massive land-use change, potentially endangering food security and biodiversity. There is also significant doubt about the likely energy output of BECCS solutions.
• BECCS may still have some role to play in strategies for CDR, depending mainly on the feedstock used; but it should be evaluated on the same basis as other CDR options, such as nature-based solutions or direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). Analysis should take full account of carbon balances over time, the requirements of each CDR option in terms of demand for land, water and other inputs, and the consequences of that demand.
• There is an urgent need for policymakers to engage with these debates. The danger at the moment is that policymakers are ‘sleepwalking towards BECCS’ simply because most models incorporate it – or, almost as bad, it may be that they are simply ignoring the need for any meaningful action on CDR as a whole.