Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that the world is undergoing a transition away from fossil fuels and carbon-intensive sectors, towards renewable energy and clean growth. The collapse of oil demand and prices have simply compounded the challenges that oil and gas producers already faced.

What happens next will have significant implications for Norway, as one of the world’s largest exporters of both energy and capital, and for the UK, as it plans its recovery and looks ahead to its hosting of the next major climate change summit in 2021 - COP26.

While the speed and scale of the transition has always been uncertain and contested, an accelerated transition with deep implications for future oil and gas demand looks plausible.

There has long been a debate over when global demand will peak, but what happens after demand has peaked is perhaps the more critical question. Now there is the additional uncertainty of how this post-peak demand might be affected by an oncoming global recession and potentially by the greening of recovery measures implemented in response to it. Will there be an extended plateau, a gentle decline or a sudden collapse?

The post-peak trend will impact oil producers and exporters to varying degrees, in terms of their vulnerability to reduced volumes and lower prices, and their ability to compete in a shrinking market. There is also growing scepticism over whether natural gas can act as a bridge between coal-fired power and renewables, as increasingly, renewables directly replace coal.  There is also significant uncertainty over extent to which hydrogen, either produced from fossil fuels or renewable energy, will play a significant role in a decarbonizing energy sector.

Even before the pandemic, there was growing public and political pressure in most EU member states for more ambitious action on climate change. More challenging climate targets now look certain as a growing number of governments and companies commit to becoming carbon-neutral by ever-earlier dates.

While market developments, such as the rate of change and the costs of technologies such as renewable energy and electric vehicles will heavily influence their deployment rates, policy interventions and large-scale investment in core infrastructure are still crucial to their scaling up. We are now seeing the EU refocus its Green Deal in support of post-COVID recovery, and scale its support for transition in coal-dependent and carbon-intensive regions with its €100bn Just Transition Mechanism.  

These developments have significant implications for fossil fuel producers and energy consumers both inside and outside the EU. It will particularly affect Norway, not only as a significant supplier of energy to the EU, but as a member of the European Economic Area, with likely pressure to adopt similarly binding domestic carbon reduction legislation. Similarly, as the UK forges new post-Brexit trading and regulatory relationships, it will need to align with European policies for efficiency.

As the host of the critical COP26 UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow next year, the UK will also need to at least match the EU in terms of its ambition on national emissions reductions, and in placing decarbonization and sustainability at the heart of COVID-19 recovery measures. However, unfortunately, the early indications are that 'Project Speed' will focus on traditional infrastructure projects are less than promising.    

The UK and Norway face similar challenges, as oil and gas producers that recognize the importance of climate change, and will rightly face scrutiny where they reinvest in their oil and gas sectors. They are both outside, yet highly dependent on developments within the EU. However, they are also both, somewhat surprisingly, world leaders in different aspects of decarbonization, such as off-shore wind or electric vehicle deployment, in part due their offshore capabilities and advanced manufacturing capabilities. This presents an opportunity for both countries and their industries to place an accelerated energy transition at the heart of their economic recovery and their relationship with the EU.

There will of course be different opinions on how to do this. A new Chatham House paper – Expert Perspectives on Norway’s Energy Future – explores these issues in the Norwegian context, and draws upon the views of 15 international experts on energy transition and climate change, each interviewed in depth. While unsurprisingly there is little consensus, these views provide valuable background from which to consider the future of future of energy for Norway, and for its partners including the UK and the EU.

Trade policy is a blunt instrument for realizing human rights. Although many trade agreements now include commitments on human rights-related issues - particularly labour rights - not everyone agrees that linking trade to compliance with human rights norms is appropriate, let alone effective.

Sceptics point out that such provisions may become an excuse for interference or ‘disguised protectionism’ and admittedly anyone would be hard-pressed to identify many concrete improvements which can be directly attributed to social and human rights clauses in trade agreements.

This lack of discernible impact has a lot to do with weak monitoring and enforcement. A more fundamental problem is the tendency of trading partners to gloss over – both in the way that commitments are framed and in subsequent monitoring efforts – significant implementation gaps between the standards states sign up to, and the reality.

Working from ‘baseline’ international standards and treating each state’s human rights treaty ratification record as an indicator of compliance does offer objective verifiability. But it also means underlying economic, structural, cultural, social, and other problems, often go unidentified and unaddressed in the trading relationship.

Regulatory failings of trading partners

Those with sufficient leverage can use dispute resolution or enforcement proceedings to signal displeasure at the regulatory failings of their trading partners, as recently shown by the European Commission (EC) in relation to labour violations by trading partners – against South Korea under the 2011 EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and Cambodia under the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) scheme.

These actions do show a more proactive and rigorous EU approach to monitoring and enforcement and have been largely welcomed – especially by trade unions – as a necessary political response to persistent failings by the states to address violations of fundamental labour rights. However, claiming any major victories on behalf of the workers who produce the goods being traded seems premature.

The ‘implementation gaps’ - between human rights commitments made in a state-to-state context and the reality of the human rights situation on the ground - mean there may be cases where enforcement action under a trading arrangement, such as the removal of trade preferences, may actually make things worse. Some local unions have expressed concern that the EU action against Cambodia may be detrimental to vulnerable migrant women factory workers, especially in the context of a worsening economic situation due to the pandemic.

Making stakeholder voices heard

There are routes through which people with first-hand knowledge of human rights-related problems arising from trading relationships – such as labour rights abuses in global supply chains – can make their voices heard. Unions have used consultative bodies set up under trade agreements to highlight labour abuses in trading partner countries - this helped to shift the Commission’s strategy towards South Korea.

But the rather vague and open-ended mandates of these consultative bodies, and their reliance on cash-strapped civil society organisations to do much of the heavy lifting, means they are not a solid basis for systematic follow-up of human rights problems.

And yet, every country is likely to have a number of agencies with interests and expertise in these issues. Beyond labour inspectorates, this could include environmental regulators, licensing bodies, ombudsmen, national healthcare bodies, special-purpose commissions, ‘responsible business’ oversight and certification bodies, local government authorities and national human rights institutions.

At present these groups are barely mentioned in trade agreements with monitoring frameworks for human rights. And if they do feature, there tends to be little in the agreement terms to guarantee their participation.

To seriously address implementation gaps, there needs to be much greater and more systematic use of these domestic regulatory bodies in human rights monitoring and enforcement activities. These bodies are potentially vital sources of information and analysis about the many different social, economic, environmental and human rights consequences of trade, and can also contribute to designing and delivering ‘flanking measures’ needed to assist with the mitigation of human rights-related risks or adverse impacts which have been detected.

Looking further ahead, monitoring practitioners may find - as those involved in the EU GSP+ scheme have already noticed - that close and visible engagement with domestic regulatory bodies helps strengthen a regulator in getting clearer political support and better resources. It can also help with greater ‘buy-in’ to human rights reform agendas, creating conditions for a positive legacy in the form of more confident, committed, and capable domestic regulatory bodies.

Paying more attention to synergies that exist between the work of domestic regulatory bodies and the principles and objectives which cause states to seek human rights commitments from their trading partners is a vital contribution to the concept of ‘building back better’ from the present crisis.

The goal should be to move from the present system – which veers between largely ineffective consultative arrangements and adversarial, often high stakes, dispute resolution – to more cooperative and collaborative systems which draw more proactively from the knowledge and expertise of domestic regulatory bodies, not only in the identification and monitoring of risks, but also in the delivery of jointly agreed strategies to address them.

This article is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, promoting research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade.

Many people are aware that the scourge of malnutrition affects a vast number of individuals and communities around the world. However, most tend to view it as a problem to be addressed by governments, charities or donors, rather than the corporate sector.

Certainly, when considered at a societal scale, malnutrition makes the complexities of delivering inclusive growth all the harder. It ratchets up the public health burden while restricting the potential for at-risk populations to take part in productive employment.  Economies are hindered, lives are blighted and the potential for people to reach their full potential can be severely limited.

A number of upcoming summits represent a window of opportunity to address nutrition in the context of resilience, particularly in the wake of COVID-19 and the much-referenced ambition for governments to ‘build back better’. The opportunity is there to foster a true partnership between governments, third sector organizations and businesses of all sizes, sectors and geographies to work for the betterment of society and deliver benefits to all participants in such a partnership. 

So what is the role of business in relation to nutrition - where does it sit on their list of priorities and why should it matter to them? A new Chatham House report represents an important contribution to the discussion about the role of business in addressing malnutrition. Through thorough research and direct engagement with businesses, it seeks to find out if malnutrition is on the corporate radar and the extent to which it is considered a material issue.

Surprisingly, whilst many large corporates recognize malnutrition as a matter for concern, this is typically defined only in the context of CSR programmes or related ambitions. These types of commitments have their limitations though; most notably the fact that the communities more severely affected by malnutrition typically sit outside of the sphere of influence of the multi-national companies with the greatest ability to mobilize resources and make an impact. Where populations are marginalized, operating within the informal economy and living in settings that are too fragile for large-scale business investment, corporate CSR programmes are unlikely to have a meaningful impact.

The report also asked businesses whether they considered malnutrition to have a material impact on their ability to create value, protect value and manage risk. In the majority of instances the answer was no. This may be surprising, particularly given the evidence provided by new modelling – done for this report using a purpose-built model by Vivid Economics – that illustrates the costs posed to business by malnutrition within a population. On an immediate and direct level, the impacts can be considerable due to lost or reduced productivity from the employee base. However, if even that immediate impact is addressed, the externalities associated with malnutrition can come back and have a negative effect on businesses and investors alike.

When reflecting on externalities and the landscape of risk within which business operates, it is worth considering climate change by way of comparison. Climate change is well embedded in the risk profiling of most progressive and well-managed corporates – although in some instances meaningful action may be well overdue. That said, it is recognized that the direct and indirect impacts have the potential to conspire and permanently reduce shareholder, stakeholder and societal value. 

Similarly, if left unchecked, the externalities associated with malnutrition will undoubtedly contribute to an increased level of risk in terms of both operating and investment environments. This is both an issue of social equity and enlightened self-interest given that good nutrition is key to the success of many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and is essential to driving sustainable economic growth. One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is the manner in which widespread malnutrition can significantly reduce the resilience of populations to external risks, including the outbreaks of infectious disease. We need only to look at the impact of climate stress and related events to understand how closely linked malnutrition is – or may become – to the incidence of social unrest and armed conflict in low-income countries.

Progressive companies and investors have already identified the ability to drive inclusive and sustainable growth as a compelling imperative for investment. In this context, the potential for improved nutrition – both in the workforce and amongst the communities upon which the firms depend – should be a true priority. As fund managers seek increasingly meaningful insight into the way that companies within their portfolio(s) create value, protect value and manage risk, the scope of environmental and social governance is expanding. Many recognize the link between delivering on the SDG agenda and protecting or enhancing shareholder value into the longer term. This is a powerful lever for change, particularly when considering that good nutrition is integral to the success of the ambitions laid out by the various SDGs. Successfully delivering against nutrition-focused targets could unlock growth in developing markets and create an enabling environment for achieving the broader SDG agenda. This may in turn help companies to deliver enduring shareholder value in a way that does not undermine their corporate sustainability commitments.

So, given the insights provided by this report, what can businesses do that have the potential to make a practical and effective impact? There are three main action points around which the private sector can galvanize its efforts and work in partnership to deliver a meaningful impact. 

The first action point is a basic requirement to be proactive and make supportive interventions with existing and future workforces, ensuring that staff are well fed and have appropriate facilities for breastfeeding and childcare. Beyond that foundational commitment, the second action point is to work to build impactful and well-governed partnerships to work within local communities and deliver outcomes at an appropriate scale. The third and final action point sets out the importance of reporting. Businesses should thoroughly assess the impacts of their operations, investments and influence. They should be transparent about those impacts and report both on the current situation and the commitments made to deliver on measurable targets.

Malnutrition is a scourge; it negatively impacts individuals, families, societies and economies. Now is the time to align corporate, government and third sector efforts to consign it to the past. We just need leaders to be bold enough to seize the opportunity.

Flaring is a significant source of economic and environmental waste. Except when safety-related, flared gas can often be captured and monetised using low-cost proven solutions.

In doing so, governments can improve health and safety, reduce emissions (of carbon dioxide, methane, and particulates) and add value by driving up revenue, increasing reserves and production, creating jobs and improving the industry’s ‘social license to operate’.

Flare capture also helps countries to deliver on the Paris Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #13 while, for example, providing affordable alternatives for heating and cooking.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region accounts for 40% of the world’s flaring. In the region, flaring has increased year-on-year - apart from 2018 - to almost six billion cubic feet of gas per day, generating up to 300-500 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.

These emissions result not only from the combustion of gas, but also from the venting, from inefficient flares, of un-combusted methane, a more potent greenhouse gas. Yet much of this is avoidable.

There are many commercially attractive options to reduce flaring in MENA. The key is to use the right proven technology and to be agile in commercial structuring. And the prize could be a boost to MENA’s annual revenues by up to $200 per second (up to $6.4 billion per year) by delivering wasted gas to market by pipeline, as power or in liquid form.

The chart highlights the abundance of flaring across the MENA region, and in many cases, their proximity to population centres. While Iran, Iraq, and Algeria generate 75% of MENA’s flaring, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar are notable for their relatively low ‘flaring intensity’ i.e. flaring normalized to oil production.

In today’s world of lower energy prices, it makes sense to monetise every molecule. Even more so for national oil companies, which are responsible for most of the flaring, since they are not only the custodians of their countries’ natural resources, but they also generate a dominant source of government revenue.

Most oil producers in MENA have already made commitments to the World Bank’s flaring-reduction initiatives (e.g. ‘Zero Routine Flaring by 2030’), but to date, delivery is mostly lacking. Three main issues have hindered progress.

Firstly, operators, regulators, and governments highlight that flaring is often not ‘sufficiently on the radar’. Flaring is often underreported if not ignored or denied - although satellite detection gives unavoidable transparency. In MENA alone, more than 1,700 flare clusters are visible every day from space.

Secondly, flare capture is sometimes not perceived to be economically viable due to costs, taxes, or inappropriate technology. Thirdly, there are often issues around resources, especially concerning management bandwidth, delivery capabilities or financing.

Yet these issues can be solved if the right proven technologies are combined with the right commercial structures. To accelerate flare capture projects, stakeholders in the MENA hydrocarbons sector must consider several complementary, action-oriented initiatives.

In particular, they should:

• Promote transparency and disclosure to drive greater awareness of flaring. Governments, regulators and operators must understand the real scale of their gas flaring opportunity and be capable of acting, as a recent report for the EBRD on Egypt highlighted. Compliance with clear standards for measuring, monitoring and verification is critical.
• Advance policies and incentives which encourage action. Better commercial terms will incentivise and accelerate flare investments. Stronger penalties will help, but independent and capable regulators must actually enforce these penalties. Through the use of such clear anti-flaring policies, Norway’s flaring intensity is almost 20 times lower than the MENA region.
• Improve the investment climate, beyond economics and open access to a broader range of players. Local market failures can be avoided by reducing the complexity and cost of in-country operations and by removing excessive, rigid, or redundant regulations. By enabling greater ‘third-party’ access to gas and power projects and infrastructure, new players can accelerate change by deploying new technologies and new operating models. Better third-party access will also unlock ideas, capital, skills and project-specific financing options. Algeria is making steps towards such liberalisation through its new 2019 Hydrocarbon Law.
• Reduce subsidies and improve energy efficiency and reduce demand, increase gas exports and boost national revenues. Countries with large subsidies on transport fuels and power, such as Algeria and Iraq, stand to gain the most.
• Encourage collaboration between stakeholders in industry and government by creating working groups to radiate best practices, build capacity, deploy technology and local content, such as the flare minimization programme in Saudi Arabia or Iraq’s major flare-to-power project operated by the Basrah Gas Company.

The industry needs to prepare for a greener world after COVID-19 and investors and consumers are demanding cleaner fuels. Since gas is widely viewed as a transition fuel, MENA governments and stakeholders must work to eliminate its wastage and seize the revenue, production and environmental opportunities that flare capture projects offer.

There is much new leadership in the region in government and critical institutions with new mandates for change. The time to act is now.

Although the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is focused on the Line of Contact around Nagorny Karabakh, a new - and significant - outbreak of violence has happened some 300 kilometres away on high ground along the de jure Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

Although not a first, violence in this area has generally been contained by the proximity of major transport and infrastructure arteries, and of civilian populations on both sides of the border. Plus, unlike in Nagorny Karabakh, the extended deterrents conferred by Armenia’s membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and bilateral agreements with Russia are also – theoretically at least – in force.

Despite this, battlespaces opened rapidly, with bombardment of civilian homes, drone strikes and cyberattacks on government and other sites being widely reported by both sides. At the time of writing, combined reported casualties were already at least 16, the highest for a single incident since April 2016’s ‘four-day war’.

Most are known to be Azerbaijani combatants, including the highest-ranking Azerbaijani serviceman to be killed in action since the 1990s – the respected Major General Polad Hashimov. And, although rumoured to be removed soon anyway following a campaign of negative briefing, Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov was publicly blamed in the immediate aftermath for ‘meaningless’ diplomacy and dismissed. He was replaced by education minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

Origins of the clashes

How the fighting began remains unclear. The escalation did not appear to result from a coordinated offensive operation of the kind that led to the four-day war, nor are there obvious strategic goals for either side in terms of the international border. There does appear to have been an element of surprise as an Azerbaijani vehicle unexpectedly encountered a new Armenian post, triggering deadly artillery exchanges.

Unclear boundaries in highland terrain may have played a role. Although referred to as the international border, the de jure boundary between Armenia and Azerbaijan - previously an inconsequential internal administrative boundary in the Soviet Union - is not clearly demarcated in many areas and does not coincide with lines of actual control.

Here, as in Nakhichevan - Azerbaijan’s exclave bordering Armenia and Iran - Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have been engaged in long-term, incremental competition for tactical advantage by claiming higher ground in ‘no man’s lands’. But in remote and cartographically ambiguous areas, the precise location of borders - and even place-names - are unclear, and rival forces can unexpectedly meet their adversaries.

Although clear strategic objectives appear absent, what might then have been a lesser incident escalated purposefully into a crisis – suggesting a political rationale.

A missed opportunity for a negotiations reset

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan began 2020 with unfinished consolidations of domestic power - whether bottom-up in the case of Armenia’s ‘Velvet Revolution’, or top-down in the case of Azerbaijan elite renewal. COVID-19 then added further challenges, with the government of Armenia facing significant domestic criticism for its handling of the pandemic, while numerous opposition activists in Azerbaijan were arrested, and the country’s economic vulnerability to external shocks was highlighted.

But throughout this, the frontlines did remain calm - as they generally have since the three-year period from 2014-2017 which witnessed regular skirmishes, use of heavy weaponry and four days of intensive combat in April 2016. In January 2019, the OSCE Minsk Group made the often-cited announcement that the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed on the necessity of ‘preparing their populations for peace’.

Although the quietest year on the frontline since the 1990s then followed, neither side invested seriously in a peace strategy. After a reasonable start and moves towards humanitarian cooperation, relations between President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan eventually visibly soured.

Several moves, such as the go-ahead for new infrastructure in the occupied territories and Pashinyan’s attendance at de facto leader Arayik Harutyunyan’s inauguration in Nagorny Karabakh, were received in Azerbaijan as evidence of Armenian insincerity towards the peace process.

More inflammatory rhetoric then resumed, leading the OSCE Minsk Group to call for calm at the end of June. As recently as July 7, President Aliyev expressed public criticism of the peace process and emphasised the validity of Azerbaijan’s right to use force.

Each new round of Armenian-Azerbaijani fighting serves as an audit of the various restraining factors preventing a larger war. A Russian-Euro-Atlantic-Iranian consensus on proactively containing any new Armenian-Azerbaijani war appears to still hold, although senior-level attention from US secretary of state Mike Pompeo trailed that of his counterparts.

Russia acted quickly to offer mediation, reflecting the reality that any large-scale Armenia-Azerbaijan war would test Russia’s extended deterrence guarantees to Armenia. As in April 2016, Turkey has been vigorous in its support of Azerbaijan, raising concerns in Armenia and drawing oblique warnings from Russia. On the other hand, the CSTO - much to Armenian chagrin - dithered, initially calling then postponing a meeting citing the need for more time to study the situation.

Unprecedented spontaneous demonstrations in Baku called for war with Armenia, broke into the Azerbaijani parliament and, in some cases, articulated anti-government slogans. In the absence of reliable polling, such protests cannot be taken as evidence of a popular consensus in favour of war.

But they do underline the importance of the conflict as the one issue in Azerbaijan where open protest is accepted as legitimate and cannot easily be dispersed. As losses over the past week are counted, the dismissal of the foreign minister may not be sufficient to quell public anger.

Prospects are now real of a return to the dynamics in 2014-15: recursive low-level violence aimed at influencing the diplomatic calendar and public opinion while remaining below the deterrence threshold for triggering active external involvement.

Gon Coulibaly, an economic technocrat and Ouattara loyalist since the 1990s, was earmarked in March as the candidate for the ruling Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) party in the elections due in October, and represented a handpicked heir, trusted to sustain the strategy established during Ouattara’s nine years in power.

Many RDHP parliamentarians and local mayors are now pressing the 78-year-old Ouattara to run again. This was not what he had planned. He hoped to go out on a high – ‘par la grande porte’ – and set a statesmanlike example of retirement by choice, making way for the next generation. His leadership of reform of the regional currency that will see the end of the West African CFA franc would have been the crowning achievement of a presidency that had taken his country from post-war stagnation to sustained growth GDP growth rates around seven per cent before COVID-19 forced a slowdown, as it has worldwide.

A profound strategic dilemma

Gon Coulibaly had undergone a heart transplant in 2012, and when he hurried to Paris in early May and was fitted with a stent, some wondered whether he would have the energy required for an election campaign. Yet he returned home on 2 July, with his formal nomination by the RHDP pencilled in for early the next month. His sudden death on 8 July, at the age of just 61, was a terrible personal blow for Ouattara, who had regarded him almost as a son, and much more than a purely political protégé. But it also left the president facing a profound strategic dilemma.

Names of alternative potential RHDP candidates have been floated – notably the defence minister, and now interim premier, Hamed Bakayoko and the secretary general of the presidency Patrick Achi. Both have solid electoral track records and ample experience of government. But over recent days the impression has grown that they do not command the ultimate confidence of Alassane Ouattara to take on the leadership of the nation.

Speculation has grown that the president will conclude that he has no choice but to go back on his promise to retire and stand for yet another term. Although some respected legal experts disagree, he has always made a point of insisting that the constitutional reform of 2016 allows him to run again. And many influential voices within the RHDP are now pressing him to do so.

This is not ‘rentacrowd’ fawning. Many members of the governing party have always felt that Ouattara offers the strongest blend of political appeal, governing capability and international profile required to lead a country that likes to see itself as West Africa’s ‘elephant’.

A weak opposition, but third term challenges

In electoral terms, Ouattara’s greatest campaign asset might be the unconvincing state of the opposition figures who are actually free to stand, after the Ivorian authorities’ strong-armed the judicial system into blocking the hopes of the of the smooth-talking former parliamentary speaker Guillame Soro, who had great appeal for Cote D’Ivoire’s growing young population. Soro is now exiled in France after conviction in absentia for corruption. Ex-president Laurent Gbagbo remains in Brussels, while the International Criminal Court considers the prosecution appeal against his acquittal on charges of human rights crimes. He is now allowed to travel and has applied for a passport to come home, but it is unclear if this will be granted. That leaves another former head of state, the 86-year old Henri Konan Bédié, as the main opposition challenger.

However, even if the RHDP party machine delivers victory for Ouattara, a third term risks hard questions from those who dispute its legitimacy and it may generate other significant political challenges too. Some 60 per cent of Ivorians are under the age of 25, and many young people are impatient for leaders more in tune with their concerns and outlook. Some 51 per cent now live in towns and cities.

The sprawling Abidjan conurbation, in particular, weighs heavily in the political culture and national mood. Street protest and urban frustrations are a real factor, and something that fuels vocal grassroots support for both the Soro and Gbagbo camps.

Moreover, despite the government’s capable management, the COVID-19 crisis has struck a severe economic and social blow that is sure to impose painful legacy pressures. Even when real GDP was rising by seven per cent per annum, increasingly evident inequality was brewing popular resentment. Corruption appeared to be on the rise, and the obvious prosperity, construction and consumption in parts of Abidjan were not reflected nationwide nor in all sections of society.

In the latter years of his second term, Ouattara recognized this and launched an ambitious programme to broaden the reach of development and nudge growth towards a more ‘inclusive’ model. But selling this as the core of an election agenda would be harder for a political veteran who has been in power since 2011 and who now went back on his rhetoric about making way for a younger generation.

A third term Ouattara would also face challenges internationally, and particularly in West Africa. He has always presented himself as a statesmanlike figure with restraint and respect for institutional values, setting a tone that has helped in the management of numerous regional crises – exemplified by his participation in a five-president mission to Bamako last week, an effort to broker a solution to Mali’s political and protest deadlock. If a third term run sparks mass domestic protest or accusations of constitutional manipulation, the diplomatic standing and influence so associated with Ouattara will be jeopardized.

So Côte d’Ivoire’s president faces profoundly awkward questions as he ponders the third term bid that he had forsworn less than five months ago. And yet he may well conclude that, from his political perspective, there is no viable alternative.

While we must wait for the final reckoning of most successful national coronavirus responses, it does still appear those countries with memories of MERS and SARS - such as Singapore, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, and South Korea – led the way in being best prepared for COVID-19, with strong contract tracing and isolation measures.

Experience of previous outbreaks informed the containment strategies adopted by countries in East Asia in response to COVID-19. Vietnam reported its first case of COVID-19 in January but, over the following four months with rapid targeted testing, contact tracing and successful containment, only around 300 additional cases with no deaths were confirmed.

These countries learned to be flexible fast when new transmissions occurred, establishing quick lockdown measures targeted at key groups such as Singapore’s schools or South Korea’s night clubs and religious centres. In stark contrast, most European countries were overwhelmed by the pandemic despite enjoying world-class health systems, predictive models, scientific expertise, wealth, and resources.

Asia may have suffered first from coronavirus, but there is no ‘first mover advantage’ in dealing with a pandemic. The more resilient a society, the better placed it is to cope with a variety of risks and challenges. But to become resilient, a society needs to have faced setbacks and learned from them. And to remain resilient, it needs to stay aware of its own vulnerabilities and avoid complacency.

Prior experience of crises and disturbances, coupled with a ‘trial and error’ process of learning to deal with them, makes a society more resilient, whereas high levels of economic welfare and relative lack of recent crises leave some societies less prepared to face shocks. This is known as the ‘vulnerability paradox’.

Within Europe, it has actually been the Greek handling of COVID-19 that so far appears more successful than others. Greece is a country which has suffered a decade of austerity leading to a weakened healthcare system. And with one of Europe’s oldest populations, the Greek government was keenly aware of its own vulnerabilities. This prompted an early lockdown and a rapid increase in intensive care beds.

Although better state capacity and health system capability are clearly positives for mitigating disasters, citizens do tend to be less familiar with risk preparedness. This lack of experience can then breed complacency which threatens societies where risks are often complex, numerous, transboundary and inter-related.

Conversely, the absence of systemic resilience at a national level often puts the onus on family units or local communities – creating resilience as a necessary response to weak government capacity. There is little choice but to learn to look after yourself and your community.

However, although the vulnerability paradox helps explain why prior experience makes a system more resilient, societies need to stay aware of their own vulnerabilities and avoid complacency if they are to continually remain resilient.

Complacency coupled with a belief in the virtues of the free market has left some countries hit harder than others by the pandemic. In normal times, ‘just in time’ business models can be highly efficient compared to holding vast stocks. But it does not require hindsight to know that a global health crisis will see demand for protective equipment soar and these business models severely challenged.

Several societies have also witnessed a decline in trust towards institutions, especially politicians or the media. The deployment of science as justification for political decisions around coronavirus was presumably intended to help garner trust in those decisions. But when the science itself is inexact because of inadequate or emerging knowledge, this strategy is hardly fail-safe.

COVID-19 does provide an opportunity to rebuild trust by rethinking the relationship between the state and its citizens, to engage people more directly in a discussion about societal resilience with empowered citizens, and to rebuild a social contract between state and society in the context of recent significant changes and further potential threats.

It should also provide a salutary wake-up call to a range of ‘strongmen’ leaders prone to portraying issues rather simplistically. Although COVID-19 may be one of the few complex problems to which simplistic measures do apply - such as wearing a mask and using social distancing – these do not provide the whole solution.

Generally, declining trust in politicians reflects the ongoing inability of current politics to deal with a range of societal challenges. COVID-19 is certainly the most sudden and presents the biggest immediate economic shock of recent times, but it is just the latest in a long line of examples of political failure, such as conflict in the Middle East, climate change, terrorism, and cyber-attacks.

Along with the growth of automation and digitization which provide opportunities at the macro-level but threats at a more micro-level, what most of these issues have in common is that national responses are likely to fail. Restoring trust requires re-energized global governance, and this means compromise and humility – qualities which appear in short supply to many current politicians.

But, regardless of political will, building resilience to tackle ongoing or rapidly forthcoming challenges also rubs up against free market beliefs, because building resilience is a long-term investment and comes at a price. But by acknowledging vulnerabilities, avoiding complacency, implementing lessons from past experiences, and learning from others, policymakers will be better prepared for the next crisis.

Reconstructing societies through the prism of resilience creates fundamentally different outcomes to global challenges, and can build trust between elected representatives and the wider population. Accepting the vulnerability paradox and acknowledging that those generally less prone to disasters are actually less able to cope when change happens creates a powerful argument for this new approach.

Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka deserves sanctions. This election campaign in Belarus, which culminated in a vote on Sunday is the most brutal and dirty in its history. But, so far, the EU, the UK and the US have only issued familiar-sounding and futile appeals to the Belarusian authorities condemning their actions. Not imposing sanctions is a de facto licence to continue with repression.

Despite all this, the West is unlikely to impose significant sanctions afterwards. There are several questionable reasons for this. First, Western policymakers fear sanctions against Lukashenko will make him more likely to genuflect to Russia. However, relations with Russia have already deteriorated as Belarus accuses Russia of trying to interfere with its domestic affairs.

Sanctions serve as a wake-up call. The Belarusian authorities then might seek - once again - to repair relations with the West and reduce repression for greater assistance in any direct confrontation with Russia.

Second, the West is reluctant to implement sanctions because it has already invested somewhat in warming relations with Belarusian authorities. Punishing Lukashenko could mean burying the - admittedly modest - achievements of a Belarus-West dialogue that started in 2014 after the conflict in Ukraine began.

Even US secretary of state Mike Pompeo met with Lukashenko in Minsk this year, after which Belarus replaced a small but symbolic amount of Russian oil for American. All the same, the West has its conscience to answer to if dialogue is won but repressions continue.

The third reason why the West may not resort to targeted economic sanctions and visa restrictions is a latent concern whether such measures have any effect on democratization processes at all. They may be appropriate punishment, but there is little evidence they ever change the nature of a regime.

According to this logic, if the West imposes sanctions, the Belarusian authorities will continue to crack down with repression because they will have nothing to lose. That said, in previous years, the Belarusian authorities have released political prisoners in response to sticks and carrots brandished by the West. If Belarusian political prisoners did not have a price tag, the authorities would most likely keep everyone in jail.

To be fair, there are reasonable arguments in favour of and against sanctions. But if the West fails to impose them - be it through lack of political will or out of genuine concern about their effectiveness - at least it should focus on helping ordinary Belarusians withstand Lukashenko’s repressions. After the vote, arrested and jailed Belarusian citizens might lack money for lawyers and arbitrarily imposed fines.

If repression spreads further, independent media and human rights organizations will need funds to keep their structures running in the heat of the crackdown. Many entrepreneurs might lose their companies for openly supporting free elections. Thus, if the West will not sanction Lukashenko, it should at least show solidarity with these Belarusians in peril.

This article was originally published in The Telegraph.

Despite being such a historic selection, in certain aspects, Kamala Harris does not actually signal change. She is a moderate in the Democratic Party, an insider more than an outsider, and a highly experienced leader with national, state level and city level credentials. She worked as a district attorney in San Francisco for several years before being elected attorney general for the state of California, and then to the US Senate in 2016. Harris also stood as a candidate against Biden in the contest to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.

Like Joe Biden, she is a highly experienced leader with strong credentials. But California is solidly blue, so she cannot deliver a new state for him. In many ways she is a safe choice and — at a time when Biden is far ahead of Donald Trump in the polls and America faces a lot of uncertainty — many leading political analysts say safe is exactly what the Democratic candidate needs.

But certainly as a signal to the American people, and the rest of the world, of what America is and what it stands for, the choice of Kamala Harris is truly historic. The senator from California is the first African-American woman, and the first Asian-American woman, on the presidential ticket. If Biden wins in November, Harris becomes the first female vice-president.

The historic aspects do not end there. Harris also represents a rapidly growing segment of the US population, but one that gets far less mention — multi-racial Americans. The exact size of America’s multi-racial population has been notoriously hard to measure, especially as it has only been 15 years since the US Census Bureau allowed Americans to choose more than one race when completing their census form. But America has long seen itself as a melting pot, so Harris’s place on the ballot underscores a national narrative with a deep resonance across the country, not least among America’s schoolchildren.

In recent weeks, it came to feel inevitable Biden would choose an African-American running mate. His selection comes at a time when more Americans than ever before have taken to the streets to protest the brutal killing of George Floyd and racial injustice. And the demand for racial equality has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionately affected African-Americans who are dying from the virus at around double the rate of their white American counterparts, while twice the number of black businesses are closing relative to their white counterparts.

The choice of Harris also speaks to another fundamental aspect of the ‘American dream’. She is the daughter of two immigrant parents, her father being from Jamaica and her mother from India. Immigration has become one of the toughest issues in US politics, and immigrants have suffered repeated rhetorical attacks from Trump. One of Harris’s first stands in the US Senate was against President Trump’s entry ban to the US on several countries with majority Muslim populations.

When it comes to questions of identity, the choices that the US electorate now face in November could not be more stark. President Trump used the opportunity of the July 4 weekend to deliver a speech at Mount Rushmore which appeared to actively seek division and to ignite America’s cultural wars.

By choosing Kamala Harris, Biden also continues to signal that he will lead from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.

Harris may be left of Biden, but she is far to the right of other well-known progressive candidates, especially Elizabeth Warren. She has not, for example, supported more far-reaching measures to redistribute wealth, especially the proposal for a wealth tax. And she has a track record of being tough on crime during her years as a prosecutor. Although she played an active role in recent protests and signalled her commitment to police reform and anti-lynching laws, not all young or progressive protesters will be easily persuaded by her credentials.

However, for voters who hoped for a more progressive candidate, two factors play to the advantage of the Biden-Harris ticket. This election still looks set to be a referendum on President Trump and — especially now — his ability to manage the public health and economic crises at home. And Biden has continued to include the progressive side of the Democratic Party in his plans, giving Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez key roles in developing climate proposals, and establishing a series of Unity task forces to bring the party together.

There are also other more conventional factors at play. Biden has relied on the support of African-American and also female voters. While Harris may not broaden this support, it should help ensure these voters turn out — if primarily via their postal box — to vote for Biden. His choice of Kamala Harris answers the one big outstanding question facing his candidacy and signals the true beginning of the race to the White House.

Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s 26-year rule — one of the world’s longest — is itself testament to his regime’s unwillingness to change. Most of Belarus’s immediate neighbours — particularly Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland — are far more prosperous. Now, with the farce of last week’s vote and the subsequent renewed violence that Minsk is willing to use on its citizens, Belarus finds itself at the very bottom of the post-Soviet legitimacy league table. But others share a portion of blame for this saga. The West — and the EU in particular — have failed the people of Belarus.

Russia — as ever in its relationships with the Soviet Union’s other successor states — has much to answer for. Like a drug pusher, it made a loss-leading investment in getting Belarus hooked on subsidised energy with meaningless security guarantees thrown in. Lukashenka may not have been the most compliant of post-Soviet leaders — especially recently — but he is still preferred by the Kremlin over any other potential contender, especially the reforming ones currently at the fore. ‘A son-of-a-bitch, but our son-of-a-bitch’ is Russia’s take.

But if Russia is the pusher, Western countries have been the enablers. Lukashenka has played them — and played them off against Russia — by frequently rejecting the offers of one and getting closer to the other, then switching and doing the same. The inability or unwillingness to recognize — and act on — evidence of the regime’s insincerity and its propensity to inflict harm on its own citizens has encouraged Minsk’s worst excesses. At the time of writing, more than 3,000 are reported to have been arrested and many tortured.

The EU bears special responsibility for this enabling. Ever since Belarus’s independence almost 30 years ago, it has offered plenty of carrots but few meaningful sticks. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that ‘harassment & violent repression of peaceful protesters has no place in Europe’, but statements alone are inadequate. The Belarusian people are risking their freedoms and their lives on the streets of Minsk while the EU simply ‘calls on’ the Belarusian authorities to respect the democratic process.

Never too late

There is plenty that can be done. Sanctions are a much-touted first step and they have been proven to change the calculus, if not the character, of a regime. The EU, the UK and the US should act decisively and in unison to impose them immediately. Included in this would be the immediate halting of direct EU support to state entities.

But — as with Russia — it is lazy to limit responses to sanctions alone. Expulsion from international groups and values-based organizations should also be expedited. The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) project with Belarus and five other countries is a prime example of supposedly conditional offers of financial assistance having been accepted, claimed and then defaulted on, time and again. It is time to make an example of Belarus and expel it from the EaP since it is abundantly clear it has no intention of adopting the values demanded of it.

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) was invited by the Belarusian authorities too late to observe last Sunday’s vote-rigging, so why, in the face of such obvious obstruction, is Belarus even a member? The OSCE often claims its strength is its inclusivity, but this has rarely stood up to scrutiny. Inclusivity may have advantages, but one should also acknowledge its propensity to dilute effectiveness. Belarus should be expelled from here too.

The same goes for the IMF, the World Bank group, and its WTO observer status. It is time to make an example of this regime.

There should be less diplomatic nicety. It is natural that foreign service officials are hard-wired to want to make things better through their undoubted skills of sensitivity and tact, and sometimes this is the right answer. But not always. It would be better in some instances, such as this one, to give a tougher message — making it clear this regime is no longer seen as legitimate and that, where possible, western countries will seek relationships with more representative figures. This is neither easy nor especially pleasant, but it is not the same as breaking off diplomatic relations entirely, which is not wise as sometimes the organs of power must be dealt with.

And in terms of immediate practical help, the EU has an obligation to open its borders to Belarusian refugees who will surely come its way as conditions deteriorate. Lithuania is already showing the way in this regard.

Belarus is not one of the more difficult countries. It has no influence, no natural resources and therefore no leverage. It could resort to even more brutal repression of its citizens, but it should be made clear that such a desperate move by the authorities would entail even greater sanction. A common argument against a tougher approach is that it will drive Belarus into the arms of Russia. But this is to fall into the same trap — blackmail in reality — that we have seen for 20 years. In fact, it would be a good litmus test for a similar policy towards other ‘abuser countries’, such as Hungary.

Russia is certainly watching closely right now, and the last thing it wants is another colour revolution. The probability is that it will get this wish for now, as the demonstrations will surely cool off and key opposition figures not already in jail have been forced to flee. But western quiescence, as it always does, encourages Russia to act with further impunity. No invasion needed this time though if it already has most of what it wants — Union State notwithstanding — and the West stands aside.

A Chinese proverb maintains that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now’. This holds true for dealing with Belarus. It is not too late to act decisively and play hardball. In doing so, the EU would help repair its reputation for hand-wringing and the people of Belarus might look at the EU with a respect they have lost.