security

24 February 2017

Posted on February 24, 2017 1 Comment

Last week-end, back-to-back with the G20 meeting of foreign ministers, the 2017 Munich Security Conference gathered diplomats, politicians, and military/security experts to talk about the future of transatlantic relations, of NATO, and of the EU, and about the security situation of the Middle East and the Pacific under the banner “Post-Truth, Post-West, Post-Order?“. Every February, I follow this meeting to monitor the growing securitization of development. As usual, the curtain raiser for the conference does a good job at pulling together great infographics in one place. Four points that I did not see in headline news but caught my attention. One, I heard Angela Merkel, Bono and SG Guterres say that investments in girls’ education and empowerment were key for peace and security. Two, in his closing remarks the Chairman of the Conference proposed “to complement the 2% goal [ie NATO’s recommendation to spend 2% of GDP on defense] with a larger 3% goal [focusing on] defense, foreign policy, development assistance”. This proposal is in line with the growing focus of politicians on the development/security nexus. While this not new, it is now put forward in blunt terms. See for instance EU Foreign Affairs Mogherini’s quote: “Investing in development, investing in the Sustainable Development Goals, investing in humanitarian [aid], is not charity. It is an investment, a selfish investment, in our security”. This rhetoric might help rallying taxpayers, but it can also negatively affect financial flows to those in need. Just last week, I flagged how aid was moving away from far-away conflicts towards humanitarian contexts with direct ties to EU migration. Three, last year, the Munich conference held its first ever panel on global health security…at 10 pm. This year the “small bugs, big bombs” panel was programmed mid-day and pulled out the big guns: Bill Gates, Paul Kagame, David Miliband, Stefan Oschmann, Peter Salama, and Erna Solberg. Setting the stage, Bill Gates pointed to the connections between health and international security saying that we were ignoring them at our peril. He called for an “arsenal of new weapons—vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics” and argued that we needed to “prepare for epidemics the way the military prepares for war”. And this year for the first time, climate change, previously systematically addressed together with energy security, got its own “climate security” panel. Fourth, an energized 13-min speech by SG Guterres is worth watching as it gives a good sense of where the house is going. If you don’t have time, watch the 2-min “deep” UN reforms part [8’45’’-11’] covering: (i) peace and security strategy, operational set up, and architecture; (ii) the development system coordination, accountability, and evaluation; and (iii) management. He wrapped up his statement on the need to look into new issues which are changing the nature of relations in our world, and possibly defining the crises of tomorrow. He named AI, genetic engineering, and cyberspace. And he called “absolutely crucial” the development of a “capacity of analysis and discussion to be able to think about models of governance for these new areas that will be essential in our lives in 10 years.” Hear! Hear!

Even though I canceled my account 7 years ago, Facebook was in my face all week. First, Mark Zuckerberg came out with a manifesto: Building a global community. Wow: Is this where the new international order is going to come from? This week, Facebook also made it possible to wire money internationally via its platform, walking in the footsteps of Tencent whose messenger + payment combo revolutionized the banking sector in China. This is one of the peripheral trends reshaping financial transfers to developing countries, and to refugees, in a context where remittance flows are three times bigger than ODA.

My graph this week is from Data Selfie, a Chrome extension that allows you to analyze what you do on Facebook, the way Facebook does it. Data Selfie allows you to peak behind the curtain and see what natural language processing and machine learning algorithms do with the digital crumbs you leave while browsing through your old high school friends’ vacation photos. Pretty cool.

My quote this week is from Cari Romm’s “The key to productivity is a good desk neighbor”: “Replacing an average performer with one who is twice as productive results in his or her neighboring workers increasing their own productivity by about 10 percent, on average. The effect also only worked one way: Lesser performers could improve by sitting next to more competent colleagues, but those colleagues wouldn’t find themselves dragged down by their seatmates.”

26 February 2016

Posted on February 26, 2016 Leave a Comment

It is always good to have a look at the OECD-DAC High Level Meeting Communiqué. The main take away this time around is the expansion of the ODA definition to include certain military and security activities. The donor rhetoric used to justify the change is that “development, human rights, and peace and security are indivisible and interrelated”. This Devex article gives a good overview of what the redefinition entails. Last week I flagged how “our” issues were increasingly on the agenda of security gatherings. Here we see that “our” crowd takes steps towards securitizing ODA. Activists rang alarm bells arguing that this would take even more aid money away from poorest countries, including fragile ones. Helen Clark agreed. Let me highlight 3 other points from the Communiqué that clearly relate to our work. One, a DAC definition of “violent extremism” [footnote 19 page 16] and a list of new ODA-eligible activities to prevent violent extremism that include education; working with civil society to prevent radicalization and promote community engagement; and research on the causes of violent extremism in developing countries. This sends a strong signal that violent extremism is no longer a taboo topic for development organizations. Two, donors are revisiting the use of the Rio markers to better track environment-related development finance. We could learn from this to track the environmental contributions of development operations. Three, donors are still discussing the ODA eligibility of in-donor refugee costs. This is another trend affecting ODA flows to poorest countries.

While all tech eyes are on the Mobile World Congress, some fintech entrepreneurs are meeting in South Africa to discuss how blockchain technology could disturb Africa’s financial infrastructure the same way mobiles reinvented Africa’s communication infrastructure. Elizabeth Gould’s “Africa’s big banks are betting on fintech startups and bitcoin to beat disruption” provides illustrations of the possible transformative power for the continent and quotes Barclays’ Head of Innovation: “Blockchain could be the most significant social and political innovation to impact Africa in 100 years”.

I also need to recommend Charles Duhigg’s “What google learned from its quest to build the perfect team”. The key to a perfect team is not about members being smart or having complementary competencies. It is all about “social sensitivity”. Trust me, read this. It will speak to you.

The Money Project’s “All of the world’s money and markets in one visualization” is mind-blowing. I could not cut and paste the whole graph so below is only the tip of the iceberg. Click on the link and scroll down to discover where the world’s money is. If, like me, you thought that the accumulation of global debt was one of the scariest economic trends, think again. There is worse, big-scale worse.

My quote this week is from Bill Gates’ 2016 Annual Letter: “Within the next 15 years—and especially if young people get involved—I expect the world will discover a clean energy breakthrough that will save our planet and power our world.”

19 February 2016

Posted on February 19, 2016 Leave a Comment

The “2016 Munich Security Report” came out ahead of the Munich Security Conference gathering diplomats, politicians, and military & security experts every February. A lot of dark suits and grey hair. It is a worth reading report with good illustrations. A few things that jumped at me: A table comparing ‘old’ international organizations with ‘new’ Chinese-led ones to show the creation of a parallel order [p.11]; a section on Daesh that raises more questions than provides answers – problematic for a prominent security report [18-22]; a map of Africa showing each country’s median age which I thought was a good reminder for those working with/for young people on the continent [p.32]; an assertion that “70 percent of nations worldwide explicitly qualify climate change as a national security concern” [p.44]. Discussions at the Conference itself were dominated by the Syrian conflict, the refugee crisis, and whether the NATO-Russia relation was heading towards a “new Cold War”. Noticeable was the first ever plenary session on global health security. While not much will be news to you, the growing emphasis on the health-security nexus in this forum matters for how it (re)frames the debate. Médecins sans Frontières President Joanne Liu urged attendees to not (i) focus on epidemic responses only (but also consider the security of health providers for instance), nor (ii) make national security the main driver of response (but rather follow humanitarian law).

Cesar Victora and al’s “Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect” pulls out a long list of killer facts from systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the relations between breastfeeding and children/mother outcomes: e.g., improving breastfeeding could save 820,000 under-5 children annually; longer breastfeeding can increase children’s IQ by 3 points; every year she breastfeeds, a mother reduces her risk of breast cancer by 6%. The wildest part of the research argues that the feeding mode was the second most important (after the delivery mode) determinant of an infant’s microbiome which in turn influences her immune and cognitive capacities. For more on this, get on page 486 of the paper and its super interesting references like this Nature article taking stock of the growing gut-to-brain research space.

My map this week is from Mekonnen and Hoekstra’s “Four billion people facing severe water scarcity”. Previous studies used annual water flow averages and large spatial units (river basin resolutions) to estimate that 1.7 to 3.1 billion people suffered severe water scarcity. This study focuses on monthly flows and uses a finer spatial resolution to show that 4 billion people are affected. That’s 2/3 of the world population! They live in areas with high population density, intense irrigated agriculture and/or low natural water availability. Half of them are in India and China.

My quote this week is from my son Liam confiding in his friend Oliver: “My mom works at UNICEF but doesn’t do the real UNICEF work; she just sits in front of a computer all day”.