space

20 January 2017

Posted on January 20, 2017 Leave a Comment

The National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends report comes out every four years. This year’s “Paradox of Progress” does not bring much novelty when it comes to the list of global trends considered [summary p. 6]. The three scenarii (islands, orbits, communities) piqued my curiosity a little more, in particular the third one discussing the future of governing. In this scenario, successful countries are those who manage to share governing power with local authorities and non-state actors when responding to citizens’ needs. The idea is that national governments retain “hard power” (eg security) while “soft power” is decentralized both geographically and to other actors with technology providing some kind of partnership gel. And there is an emphasis on the growing power of human agency. International organizations get revived because they know how to bring multi-stakeholder partnerships [yes, this non-UN document uses such term] to life. I’d also recommend the first annex [p.85] offering a 3-page five-year outlooks for each region. The Artic/Antarctica and space sections are exciting, not least because they are presented as regions where international cooperation may have the brightest near future. They also got me thinking that most UN agencies do not have a regional office for these parts of the world (nor for the deep and high seas for that matter). And yet, they will increasingly matter for next generations and the natural resources, food, and habitat they will need. Should we consider piloting a desk for polar, space and sea?

It was Davos week. Global reports flooded the Swiss resort. Oxfam did it again: for the fourth year in a row they grabbed headline news with their inequality report showing that the 8 richest men have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world population. The Commission on Business and Sustainable Development report argued that $12 trillion of market opportunities could be unlocked by 2030 if companies embraced a sustainable growth model. And the Edelman’s 2017 Trust Barometer, surveying 30,000 people in 28 countries, unpacked the global trust crisis. Trust in institutions is declining across the board from governments and businesses to NGOs and the media. More than half of interviewees, including those with high-income and college degree, believe that the system is failing them. The credibility of government leaders and CEOs is at all-time low. The most credible person today is a peer (“person like yourself”). Information coming from a spontaneous speaker, relating to personal experience, and communicated via a company’s social media is more likely to be perceived as true than information with a more traditional format, style and channel. The report thus calls for a communication model that work “with the people” rather than “for the people”.

Two weeks ago, I flagged exciting trends for renewable energy generation. But green power can only boom with matching prospects on the storage and distribution fronts. This graph from the International Finance Corporation’s “Energy storage trends and opportunities in Emerging markets” offers just that. It forecasts that “energy storage deployments in emerging markets worldwide are expected to grow by over 40 percent annually in the coming decade”.

My quote this week is from Andrew Sullivan’s “I used to be a human being”: “If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.”

12 February 2016

Posted on February 12, 2016 Leave a Comment

Gabriel Zucman’s “The hidden wealth of nations”, said to be the most comprehensive study on tax evasion, estimates that 8% of global financial wealth is held in tax havens. Poorer countries suffer the biggest loss with 20-30% of wealth held offshore for many African and Latin American countries compared to 10% for Europe and 4% for the US. Zucman is very critical of attempts made so far to counter tax dodging and proposes a new approach based on (i) financial/commercial sanctions against key uncooperative players (e.g., Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Virgin Islands) and (ii) the creation of an automatic global wealth registry accessible to national tax authorities for verification purposes. Being Piketty’s protégé, Zucman also suggests that such global financial registry could be used in combination with real estate registries to impose a global tax on wealth stocks. The final chapter of the book on corporate tax avoidance points the finger at US firms accounting for more than half of the global problem ($130 vs $240 billion per year). Very critical, again, of existing countering initiatives (e.g., by OECD & G20), Zucman calls for focusing corporate taxation on the consolidated profits of firms at the global level. Many have called Zucman “utopian” but what I found most interesting is that his book contributes to bringing tax avoidance – once an expert- or activist-type issue only – into the mainstream. Podcast suggestion here (1h18’).

Ban Ki Moon’s “One humanity: Shared responsibility”, setting the stage for the World Humanitarian Summit, came out this week. Pundits are offering summaries and analyses. And here are the take-aways of our colleague Emily Garin who read it for us: The report does a great job of laying out the myriad challenges that need to be tackled, though it (perhaps understandably?) doesn’t break much new ground in terms of grand solutions. The hundred-odd recommendations contained throughout are helpfully summarized here. The big missing piece, however, is a compelling vision for the added value of the UN in the midst of these problems and solutions. The report rightly accepts the oft-repeated call for more investment in national systems and local actors, but simultaneously fails to make the case for the distinct role that only UN agencies are or should be playing. As our donors and partners look more closely at bottom lines and value-for-money, what is our answer to this increasingly common question?

My graph of the week is from Chris Hoy’s “Can developing countries afford the SDGs?” which compares the price tags of 3 SDG targets (poverty, health, and education) with the public finance capacity (government revenue + ODA) of low income (LICs) and lower middle income countries (LMICs). It shows that most LICs cannot afford the SDGs. For the Democratic Republic of Congo, the cost of reaching these targets equals the national GDP. But Hoy also shows that most LMICs could cover SDG costs with government revenue only. So his recommendation is for donors to redirect ODA from LMICs to LICs. This is going against the latest ODA trends.

Two quotes this week as I could not make up my mind. One from Kimberly Bryant and Kim-Mai Cutler at the 9th Annual Crunchies: “… and the Crunchie [for biggest social impact] goes to … Code.Org !”.
And one from Prof. David Reitze: “We have detected gravitational waves. It’s the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we’ve been deaf.”

16 July 2015

Posted on July 16, 2015 Leave a Comment

I enjoy a story that gives a different perspective on headline news. Three recent illustrations:

While analysts examine the Iran nuclear deal’s impact on global geopolitics and investments, Schroeder’s “The Iran I saw” describes a local transformation shaped by an expanding cohort of young Iranian entrepreneurs, a growing number of Chinese expatriates fluent in Farsi, and the boom of software-enabled businesses.

Although all eyes are on Greece, the Financial Times’ “Latin lessons: China’s slowdown vs Grexit” claims that two larger forces might have more impact on the world economy in the nearer future: the collapse of commodity prices and the drop in Chinese imports.

The humanitarian crowd was largely absent from this week’s Financing for Development gathering in Addis. Yet Redvers’ “Aid: It’s complicated” argues that funding is the key entry point to bridging the deep-rooted and outmoded development/humanitarian divide.

My graph of the week is from Cham’s PhD Comics.

A useful companion article is Achor’s “Are the people who take vacations the ones who get promoted?” Its key messages: taking all your vacations brings you a higher chance of being promoted than not taking them all; resting your brain increases your creativity and is good for business; and your boss thinks that you are more productive if you are happier thanks to taking your vacations. So there you go: win-win-win!

Most papers and magazines offer summer reading lists. Bill Gates does too. And then there is Quartz staff who got annoyed by the lack of diversity of The New York Times‘ selection and offer alternative lists with African and Indian authors only.

My quote of the week is from Overbye in “Reaching Pluto, the end of an era of planetary exploration”: “None of us alive today will see a new planet up close for the first time again.”