Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Does Israel Belong in the OECD
The OECD wonders whether to let Israel join the Paris-based rich club. My op-ed for Foreign Policy in Focus says it probably should not largely because Israel isn't a democracy unless you take a very weird interpretation of democracy.
IMF Proposes 100-Billion-Dollar Climate Fund (IPS)
By Adam Robert Green
LONDON, Mar 25, 2010 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the first details of a proposed financing framework, dubbed the 'Green Fund', intended to mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with the consequences of climate change and mitigate further emissions.
Outlined in a staff paper by IMF economists Hugh Bredenkamp and Catherine Pattillo, the Green Fund could launch from a capital injection by developed countries, in the form of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a currency issued by the IMF to member countries.
The facility would eventually combine resources from investors, raised through 'green bonds' in global capital markets, with developed country subsidies. Contributors could scale their equity stakes in proportion to their IMF quota share.
Aid would then be extended in the form of grants or highly concessional loans to developing countries but the IMF would not finance or manage the Fund, according to the authors.
The IMF began working on the concept of a Green Fund following the talks at the United Nations Copenhagen Conference (COP15) in December because, while finance was discussed and various figures pledged, it was not clear where the money was going to come from.
"The risk is that, without a credible framework for delivering financing on the scale necessary, soon enough, and on the right terms, developing countries' response to climate change will be either insufficient or delayed, thereby endangering sustainable growth and increasing ultimate costs, or financed in ways that are inconsistent with maintaining fiscal and broader macroeconomic stability," the authors write.
IMF officials told IPS the Fund could enable faster and more reliable disbursement than uncoordinated aid pledges from rich countries, which often fail to materialise.
Thursday's report is the first time the IMF has directly implicated itself in the issue of climate-related financing efforts. However, the authors stress that the proposal is not a formal announcement by the IMF to create the facility.
Ilana Solomon, policy analyst at ActionAid, told IPS that she welcomed the IMF paper as "an interesting contribution to the debate", and that she supports the use of SDRs in climate financing and believes this proposal has broken through the barrier of using SDRs for finance.
"A consolidated, centralised Fund, as long as there is transparency, will also facilitate the tracking of commitments," she said.
But Solomon expressed concerns about "lack of clarity regarding where the Fund would sit, and the implicated role of the World Bank" in terms of funding management.
"ActionAid wants to see an explicit endorsement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the medium through which resources should flow," she told IPS.
Solomon also questioned the 100-billion-dollar per annum benchmark against which the Fund is framed, suggesting 200 billion dollars per year in public financing as a more appropriate figure, and pointed out that climate finance should consist entirely of grants, not loans, because the developed countries are responsible for the majority of emissions.
Peter Chowla, programme manager at the Bretton Woods Project, told IPS he was also pleased that the issue of using SDRs in climate finance was being raised, but that the IMF was stepping beyond its mandate.
"No institution other than the UNFCCC should run climate finance. That is the only legitimate forum where everyone has a say," he said. He added that before they can play a constructive role in climate financing, IFIs needed to undergo radical reform.
"You cannot take an institution with a lop-sided governance structure and expect it to be trusted," he said. "To base any new institutional arrangement on the IMF quota formula is backward looking."
The IMF paper is published just days before the first meeting of the newly formed U.N. High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, which takes place on Monday, Mar. 29 in London.
The advisory group is chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Minister Meles Zenawi, along with other heads of state including Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister of Norway. Trevor Manual, South Africa's respected minister for national planning, the philanthropist George Soros and Nicholas Stern, the climate change economist, are also members of the group.
LONDON, Mar 25, 2010 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the first details of a proposed financing framework, dubbed the 'Green Fund', intended to mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with the consequences of climate change and mitigate further emissions.
Outlined in a staff paper by IMF economists Hugh Bredenkamp and Catherine Pattillo, the Green Fund could launch from a capital injection by developed countries, in the form of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a currency issued by the IMF to member countries.
The facility would eventually combine resources from investors, raised through 'green bonds' in global capital markets, with developed country subsidies. Contributors could scale their equity stakes in proportion to their IMF quota share.
Aid would then be extended in the form of grants or highly concessional loans to developing countries but the IMF would not finance or manage the Fund, according to the authors.
The IMF began working on the concept of a Green Fund following the talks at the United Nations Copenhagen Conference (COP15) in December because, while finance was discussed and various figures pledged, it was not clear where the money was going to come from.
"The risk is that, without a credible framework for delivering financing on the scale necessary, soon enough, and on the right terms, developing countries' response to climate change will be either insufficient or delayed, thereby endangering sustainable growth and increasing ultimate costs, or financed in ways that are inconsistent with maintaining fiscal and broader macroeconomic stability," the authors write.
IMF officials told IPS the Fund could enable faster and more reliable disbursement than uncoordinated aid pledges from rich countries, which often fail to materialise.
Thursday's report is the first time the IMF has directly implicated itself in the issue of climate-related financing efforts. However, the authors stress that the proposal is not a formal announcement by the IMF to create the facility.
Ilana Solomon, policy analyst at ActionAid, told IPS that she welcomed the IMF paper as "an interesting contribution to the debate", and that she supports the use of SDRs in climate financing and believes this proposal has broken through the barrier of using SDRs for finance.
"A consolidated, centralised Fund, as long as there is transparency, will also facilitate the tracking of commitments," she said.
But Solomon expressed concerns about "lack of clarity regarding where the Fund would sit, and the implicated role of the World Bank" in terms of funding management.
"ActionAid wants to see an explicit endorsement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the medium through which resources should flow," she told IPS.
Solomon also questioned the 100-billion-dollar per annum benchmark against which the Fund is framed, suggesting 200 billion dollars per year in public financing as a more appropriate figure, and pointed out that climate finance should consist entirely of grants, not loans, because the developed countries are responsible for the majority of emissions.
Peter Chowla, programme manager at the Bretton Woods Project, told IPS he was also pleased that the issue of using SDRs in climate finance was being raised, but that the IMF was stepping beyond its mandate.
"No institution other than the UNFCCC should run climate finance. That is the only legitimate forum where everyone has a say," he said. He added that before they can play a constructive role in climate financing, IFIs needed to undergo radical reform.
"You cannot take an institution with a lop-sided governance structure and expect it to be trusted," he said. "To base any new institutional arrangement on the IMF quota formula is backward looking."
The IMF paper is published just days before the first meeting of the newly formed U.N. High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, which takes place on Monday, Mar. 29 in London.
The advisory group is chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Minister Meles Zenawi, along with other heads of state including Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister of Norway. Trevor Manual, South Africa's respected minister for national planning, the philanthropist George Soros and Nicholas Stern, the climate change economist, are also members of the group.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Asia Surpasses Americas in Clean Energy Spending, Says NEF
China’s energy spending pushed Asia-Oceania above the Americas for clean energy asset investment in the last quarter of 2009, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (who contribute to this edition – see page …). The report found that new investment increased by 25% in Asia-Oceania, whilst falling by 14% in EMEA and 25% in the Americas. Tracking spending by venture capitalists, governments, asset financiers and others, NEF saw $37.3 billion invested in Asia-Oceania as a whole, versus $32 billion for the Americas. “Asia has arrived not just has a big consumer of energy but also as a heavyweight investor in clean energy capacity,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of NEF.
The report found that of the $145 billion global clean energy investment last year, $91.9 billion was asset finance for major projects like wind farms, solar parks and biofuels plants. Offshore wind was a particularly prominent area of investment. The report also notes that many commercial banks restricted credit to renewable energy projects as a result of the recession, leading public sector institutions like the European Investment Bank and BNDES of Brazil to pick up the slack. “Clean energy remains a sector with strong long term growth fundamentals even during hard economic times,” said Mr Liebreich.
The report found that of the $145 billion global clean energy investment last year, $91.9 billion was asset finance for major projects like wind farms, solar parks and biofuels plants. Offshore wind was a particularly prominent area of investment. The report also notes that many commercial banks restricted credit to renewable energy projects as a result of the recession, leading public sector institutions like the European Investment Bank and BNDES of Brazil to pick up the slack. “Clean energy remains a sector with strong long term growth fundamentals even during hard economic times,” said Mr Liebreich.
Google Launches Energy Subsidiary
Internet giant Google has applied for permission to buy and sell wholesale electric power as a marketer. The application was made on 23 December by Google’s new Delaware-registered subsidiary, Google Energy, to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that regulates the US power grid.
Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman, said the corporation is not seeking to become an energy trader, but rather wants greater flexibility for buying renewable energy for its electricity-hungry data centres.
Google – which became the world’s largest search engine a decade ago – claimed to be carbon neutral in 2008 (see Table 2), but is heavily dependent on offsets. "Right now, we can't buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets," says Niki Fenwick. Google Energy was formed to “identify and develop opportunities to contain and manage the cost of energy for Google”.
Google’s interest in energy is not purely introspective. Last year it launched Google PowerMeter, a web-based home energy use tool and has partnered General Electric to work on smart grids, energy software and plug-in hybrid technology. Google invests in renewable energy through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, and its venture capital units.
Google also recently rented goats to maintain the lawns of its California headquarters in a low carbon (high-methane?) way
Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman, said the corporation is not seeking to become an energy trader, but rather wants greater flexibility for buying renewable energy for its electricity-hungry data centres.
Google – which became the world’s largest search engine a decade ago – claimed to be carbon neutral in 2008 (see Table 2), but is heavily dependent on offsets. "Right now, we can't buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets," says Niki Fenwick. Google Energy was formed to “identify and develop opportunities to contain and manage the cost of energy for Google”.
Google’s interest in energy is not purely introspective. Last year it launched Google PowerMeter, a web-based home energy use tool and has partnered General Electric to work on smart grids, energy software and plug-in hybrid technology. Google invests in renewable energy through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, and its venture capital units.
Google also recently rented goats to maintain the lawns of its California headquarters in a low carbon (high-methane?) way
Monday, 4 January 2010
2010
First day back at the lathe. Abysmal. Unable to undertake noble work, I have spent the morning padding listlessly around WH Smiths buying new pens and filling in next of kin details in my new diary.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Transcript of Interview with Dr. Adel Zagha, at Birzeit University
Hi All,
Below is an (unedited) transcript of an interview with Dr. Adel Zagha at Birzeit University in Ramallah, part of a piece I am doing on trade and development in the oPt.
1. Does the PA have a coherent vision for economic development in the Palestinian territories? How does it compare with that of Hamas?
The PA has developed plans for economic development of medium term nature. The PA had done so many times. My own reading of these plans is that they were drawn in hassling manner with the purpose of soliciting funding from the donor community. I myself do not believe in development under occupation (being it explicit or under the veil). When the nation has no control over its territorial borders; no contiguity among its regions; with frequent closures for security reasons or whatever reasons by the Israeli military forces; while national unity does not exist; and no participatory approach to development, development itself becomes an exercise to solicit funding and no more. For long term purposes, I believe the PA should work closely with the Palestinian people’s representatives to draw a national vision for development
For Hamas, I have read no document of them that lay the ground for a long term vision for economic development aside from the religious rhetoric. Development builds on three foundations: (a) provision of basic needs (you cannot have more if you do not have enough), (b) freedom of choice (including freedom from foreign military occupation, slavery, freedom of thought and freedom to choose appropriate technology, …etc), and (c) a basic change towards behaviour and attitudes to enable the people to have self dignity, identity or what have you. I do not think that Hamas is scoring in any of these, no matter what the reasons are. Imposing and indoctrination of ideology will limit the freedom of thought and the freedom of choice and it will never enable people to become masters of their own lives.
Over the medium term, the PA is scoring in soliciting funding for some development projects which can bring some improvements of the economic situation and some economic growth. But I suspect its long run sustainability. I believe that external funding should have had concentrated on building the national capacities to enable the internal impulse of economic growth (not to mention development). Moreover, the character of economic improvement that had been achieved under the PA is biased and had worsened income distribution since it had lead to the concentration of power and wealth in the hand of a few. Hamas’s policies on the other hand had lead into the pauperization of the masses and transformed the people of Gaza into receivers of aid while the productive base of the Strip had become thin (while at the same time, a new social class of rich people had emerged who had fortunes of trade smuggling).
2. Could you outline the principal economic constraints of the Paris Protocol in terms of the fiscal autonomy of the PA?
I wrote much about this. The main constraint is that the PA is made to be almost totally dependent of the Israeli transfers of revenues that accrue to the PA through the clearance system. It is also believed that some sort of fiscal leakage even if Israel had had the best intentions due to the fact that many products are re-exported to the Palestinian side as if they were Israeli products while they are in fact imported to Israel. Another form of fiscal leakage happens due to the loss of seigniorage that could have been gained on the circulation of a national currency. The circulation of the Israeli shekel is behind such a loss (estimated at about 5% of GDP).
3. Would you agree that a resolution to the PA-Hamas split is a precondition for economic growth? If we look at Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as one political unit, and I think we should, then I would agree that such resolution is a precondition for economic growth. There are natural and historical economic ties between the two areas. They complement each other. For economic development, I believe such a resolution is a necessary condition for economic and social development because without national consolidation and unity development becomes impossible.
4. The PA wants to join the WTO. What are your thoughts on the desirability of this bid?
I think we cannot avoid becoming a member of the WTO. If we have to have some differential treatment in terms of trade policies (tariffs and quotas), then we should come a member to make benefit of such clauses where Palestine should be treated as a developing nation.
The idea that we are a de facto member of the WTO is absurd. Israel is not a developing nation and Palestine is only an annex to it. I am sure that Palestine needs time to become free of the Israeli economic hegemony. During this time we should not leave it the best intentions of Israel. We need to benefit from the WTO clauses on the differential treatment of a Palestine as a developing nation. With the WTO on our side, we can negotiate better terms with Israel than otherwise. Of course the benefits from WTO membership can be utilized if Palestine was sovereign. You know that friends of Palestine, countries like China might not agree to such full membership because it would not welcome such a move because Taiwan would become eligible for such membership something that China would hate.
I have to summarize by saying this: Development under occupation is an illusion on the one hand. Liberation is the anti thesis of military occupation and nothing less. On the other hand, development is more than lip service. It entails basic transformation from being destined to being masters of own future. By itself, transformation entails the building of strong foundations to enable the fulfilment of the human potential of free Palestinians as citizen of a free country and citizen of a world where mutual interests promotes cooperation rather than hegemony.
Below is an (unedited) transcript of an interview with Dr. Adel Zagha at Birzeit University in Ramallah, part of a piece I am doing on trade and development in the oPt.
1. Does the PA have a coherent vision for economic development in the Palestinian territories? How does it compare with that of Hamas?
The PA has developed plans for economic development of medium term nature. The PA had done so many times. My own reading of these plans is that they were drawn in hassling manner with the purpose of soliciting funding from the donor community. I myself do not believe in development under occupation (being it explicit or under the veil). When the nation has no control over its territorial borders; no contiguity among its regions; with frequent closures for security reasons or whatever reasons by the Israeli military forces; while national unity does not exist; and no participatory approach to development, development itself becomes an exercise to solicit funding and no more. For long term purposes, I believe the PA should work closely with the Palestinian people’s representatives to draw a national vision for development
For Hamas, I have read no document of them that lay the ground for a long term vision for economic development aside from the religious rhetoric. Development builds on three foundations: (a) provision of basic needs (you cannot have more if you do not have enough), (b) freedom of choice (including freedom from foreign military occupation, slavery, freedom of thought and freedom to choose appropriate technology, …etc), and (c) a basic change towards behaviour and attitudes to enable the people to have self dignity, identity or what have you. I do not think that Hamas is scoring in any of these, no matter what the reasons are. Imposing and indoctrination of ideology will limit the freedom of thought and the freedom of choice and it will never enable people to become masters of their own lives.
Over the medium term, the PA is scoring in soliciting funding for some development projects which can bring some improvements of the economic situation and some economic growth. But I suspect its long run sustainability. I believe that external funding should have had concentrated on building the national capacities to enable the internal impulse of economic growth (not to mention development). Moreover, the character of economic improvement that had been achieved under the PA is biased and had worsened income distribution since it had lead to the concentration of power and wealth in the hand of a few. Hamas’s policies on the other hand had lead into the pauperization of the masses and transformed the people of Gaza into receivers of aid while the productive base of the Strip had become thin (while at the same time, a new social class of rich people had emerged who had fortunes of trade smuggling).
2. Could you outline the principal economic constraints of the Paris Protocol in terms of the fiscal autonomy of the PA?
I wrote much about this. The main constraint is that the PA is made to be almost totally dependent of the Israeli transfers of revenues that accrue to the PA through the clearance system. It is also believed that some sort of fiscal leakage even if Israel had had the best intentions due to the fact that many products are re-exported to the Palestinian side as if they were Israeli products while they are in fact imported to Israel. Another form of fiscal leakage happens due to the loss of seigniorage that could have been gained on the circulation of a national currency. The circulation of the Israeli shekel is behind such a loss (estimated at about 5% of GDP).
3. Would you agree that a resolution to the PA-Hamas split is a precondition for economic growth? If we look at Gaza Strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as one political unit, and I think we should, then I would agree that such resolution is a precondition for economic growth. There are natural and historical economic ties between the two areas. They complement each other. For economic development, I believe such a resolution is a necessary condition for economic and social development because without national consolidation and unity development becomes impossible.
4. The PA wants to join the WTO. What are your thoughts on the desirability of this bid?
I think we cannot avoid becoming a member of the WTO. If we have to have some differential treatment in terms of trade policies (tariffs and quotas), then we should come a member to make benefit of such clauses where Palestine should be treated as a developing nation.
The idea that we are a de facto member of the WTO is absurd. Israel is not a developing nation and Palestine is only an annex to it. I am sure that Palestine needs time to become free of the Israeli economic hegemony. During this time we should not leave it the best intentions of Israel. We need to benefit from the WTO clauses on the differential treatment of a Palestine as a developing nation. With the WTO on our side, we can negotiate better terms with Israel than otherwise. Of course the benefits from WTO membership can be utilized if Palestine was sovereign. You know that friends of Palestine, countries like China might not agree to such full membership because it would not welcome such a move because Taiwan would become eligible for such membership something that China would hate.
I have to summarize by saying this: Development under occupation is an illusion on the one hand. Liberation is the anti thesis of military occupation and nothing less. On the other hand, development is more than lip service. It entails basic transformation from being destined to being masters of own future. By itself, transformation entails the building of strong foundations to enable the fulfilment of the human potential of free Palestinians as citizen of a free country and citizen of a world where mutual interests promotes cooperation rather than hegemony.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
George Soros
I like Soros' weathered face. I'm reminded of Saul Bellow's advice that you should only trust someone if they look as though they have been kicked around a little
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