Risk assessment: Proactionary principle v precautionary principle

"Proactionary Principle" against the far more popular "Precautionary Principle." Intro: "We can call this “the” Proactionary Principle so long as we realize that the underlying Principle is less like a sound bite than a set of nested Chinese boxes or Russian matroshka (babushka) dolls..." The best of the Russian dolls:


a. Triage: Give precedence to ameliorating known and proven threats to human health and environmental quality over acting against hypothetical risks.

b. Symmetrical treatment: Treat technological risks on the same basis as natural risks; avoid underweighting natural risks and overweighting human-technological risks. Fully account for the benefits of technological advances.

c. Prioritize (Prioritization): When choosing among measures to ameliorate unwanted side effects, prioritize decision criteria as follows: (a) Give priority to risks to human and other intelligent life over risks to other species; (b) give non-lethal threats to human health priority over threats limited to the environment (within reasonable limits); (c) give priority to immediate threats over distant threats; (d) prefer the measure with the highest expectation value by giving priority to more certain over less certain threats, and to irreversible or persistent impacts over transient impacts.


Underlying the whole discussion by the author is a deep appreciation for the great economic concept of opportunity cost. The progress you don't see because you didn't allow change is as much a cost as the losses you do see because you did. It's only because some places and times allowed drastic change that we can look back in time to 1000 A.D., or across the border at Third World countries, and realize how lucky we are that proaction prevailed over precaution.

source: www.econlog.econlib.com


Economics

The three most important things said by Adam Smith: Number one was that Smith exploded the notion that people could only enrich themselves at the expense of others. Not so, said Smith. Wealth is created by specialization and exchange.

Number two was the invisible hand, that spontaneous ordering of society which means that when we act in our legitimate self-interest, we often benefit countless others we shall never meet. When we buy we unwittingly create employment and pay wages. When we sell we provide other people with goods they value more than the money they part with.

Number three, from the Theory of Moral Sentiments, is that the most striking characteristic of humankind is our propensity to empathize with our fellow men and women, feeling sadness at their grief and pleasure at their happiness. The three points, taken together, amount to a powerful social philosophy and gave the world not only the scientific study of economics, but an understanding of how human beings interact with each other. Truly a powerful contribution.

source: www.adamsmith.org

Public services: accountability to domocracy

Experience shows that core public services are not necessarily more efficient under performance-linked private contracts. As with hospital private financiers, or Nord Anglia's flirtation with Hackney's schools or the shady "academy" operators, costs soar and continuous leadership, experience and community involvement long associated with public institutions cannot be legally enforced. Capita may run a smooth congestion charge, but do we want it running the Metropolitan police? We have lost sight of the difference between accountability to a contract and to democracy. >

Simon Jenkins, Guardian, 28 Feb




The sense of direction that media takes as opinion maker is important for the accuracy of beliefs held by the population about the state of the world in which they live. Free spread of information for global audiences requires the elimination of geographical monopolies on law, enabling even greater and more vibrant exchange of ideas and experiments.

Pluralistic line of thought and information is built on multi dimensional version of truth. For this to realize crafting independent institutions that legally protect freedom of information and their conveyors, allow smooth and divers transmission of information and original situation analysis.

Within this framework media is enabled to inform different social players to make informed decisions. Informative, reliable and unbiased analysis generates trust and understanding that is needed for community to advocate the right policy. A successful journalist is one who has influence generated by originality; that her writings impacts upon the actions taken by social actors.


Media has the responsibility of nurturing intellectual capacity of the public and to provide the learning environment that enables individuals to transform or revise beliefs through communication.


Media must take the role of impartial friend who draws reliable, positive, and non-cynical picture of the truth but allowing people to follow their own path in a multitude of directions free from fear of humiliation for their decisions. Nurturing a society that is intellectually mature to bear consequences of their chosen social policies.

Oxfordshire Climate X Change

Oxfordshire Attitudes to climate change

Click here to take part in the largest survey of attitudes to climate change in Oxfordshire. You could win a pair of tickets to the Ideal Home Show. More info here.

Over 350 surveys completed so far!



300,000 people have played the BBC Climate Challenge Game - have you?
Climate Challenge: the game was made by Oxford-based Red Redemption for the BBC.co.uk Science and Nature site. Play the game here. Described as 'catnip for climate geeks', you can read the report of the game http://www.climatex.org/


Creating an inspiring climate awareness in Oxfordshire.

ClimateXChange is about

your questions, your ideas, your solutions

pub quizzes, art competitions, the world's largest public participation climate model, and many other ways of getting involved

why thousands of people were inspired to buy shares in the UK's largest community-owned windfarm in Oxfordshire

why creating a world-leading multi-million-pound climate company in Oxford became a reality

inspiring the guy at the next table to beat climate change

the amazing amount of climate change talent in Oxfordshire: in the universities, businesses, environmental and civic groups

The Oxfordshire ClimateXChange is led by Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute with partners from all over Oxfordshire. ClimateXChange will run through 2007, Oxfordshire’s 1000th anniversary.

The environment movement

The environment movement
The 'environment movement' in its widest sense (simply in terms of people who care about the environment), never really spells out what its vision of the future is, what it is trying to achieve, what a change to a sustainable world would look like. Part of the problem is that many people never really seem to be able to get their thinking above a war mentality - we live in a sort of constant state of siege, where concepts of 'doom' always seem to be upon us. In this situation, can it be surprising that no-one ever stops to say, well hold on for a moment, what kind of world do we want, can we work together to create? We need to be much more rigorous and determined about asking what it would mean to incorporate new ways of interacting with the natural environment into all our thinking, education and then into all our decision making. So, for example, we create opportunities for all school children to go outdoors and learn in outdoor classrooms, and make the commitment to ensure that these spaces are available at a close enough distance to all schools; similarly, spaces are created close enough to hospitals to act as natural healing spaces (benefits of green, plants and the associated wildlife you would get from native planting on health is proven - not just a little grassy park, green spaces with planting of species to attract and provide habitat for native wildlife...); all food production, energy, textile and other non-food crop production is done in a way that takes ecological processes and wildlife into account, that all transport, energy production is decentralised to people see where their energy comes from and see the wildlife benefits of this on their doorstep...and so on, in every sector you can think of. If knowledge and thinking on wildlife and ecological processes were integrated into absolutely every sector of society, the result would be that our surroundings and day-to-day living processes would develop / evolve alongside, and INTO, functioning ecosystems. Such ecosystems would not only be resilient and adapt to environmental change which in various forms / scales happens constantly, but also, the increase in natural habitat, soil etc... would sequester carbon, buffer air, water and against extremes of climate, thereby protecting human society from larger-scale environmental change. The ecosystem approach isn't something that can be created and imposed along previous lines where we decide what the policy output should look like, and then deliver it - rather it would be something that would evolve and emerge naturally as a result of positive collaboration and new innovative projects between all the sectors, as mentioned above.

60x70 cm oil on paper

60x70 oil on paper

60x80 oil on paper

60x80 oil on paper

Boundaries to justice

What constitutes a fair distribution of rights, resources and opportunities? Is it an equal distribution, in which case an equal distribution of what, precisely – resources, opportunities, welfare etc?

Principles of distributive justice apply to a set of individuals insofar as they are either:

a) interacting economically with each other, or
b) subject to the same set of coercive political institutions, or
c) bound together by a common identity.

These are all, evidently, ways in which people may be related to each other, and which in principle could be used to mark a boundary between those who are inside the relationship and those who are not.

source: David Miller, www.politics.ox.ac.uk

The power and the story

In a country with the most competitive, some might say most cruel, media in the world, is the line between news and entertainment becoming increasingly blurred? Is there still an audience for well-researched, in-depth political reporting that can help us better understand world events, or must this be subservient to the race to break the news first? These were some of the thought-provoking issues raised in the second annual Reuters Memorial Lecture entitled The Power and the Story: Media and Politics in the 21st Century, given by John Lloyd, Editor of the Financial Times Magazine, on 22 October.

Mr Lloyd charted the rise of what he called 'synecdoche journalism', where the part is made to represent the whole. The assumptions made may be correct, but he lamented the fact that while there is now more news than ever, there is probably less understanding of news. 'The dilemma is this. The world is very complex. It takes a lot of understanding. We are citizens, who have the right to vote for or against governments and councils and thus need to be informed of the choices we make. But mass journalism - on TV and in mass newspapers - inform us less than they used to do.' Mr Lloyd concluded his talk with a rallying call for the academy and journalism to collaborate in 'raising journalism's game by examining journalism's power within media power', and for the craft of journalism - 'which remains the first recourse for most people when they wish to understand the world beyond their own horizons' - to be taken seriously.
(The Reuters Foundation Programme, associated with Green College, gives mid-career journalists from around the world the opportunity to pursue a subject in greater depth than is possible under the daily deadline pressures they face in the newsroom. During Michaelmas Term nine fellows from media in Europe, Africa, China and Japan are engaged in research on topics including the perception of Muslim women in German national newspapers, an examination of the rise of violent urban militias in Kenya, and a study of the relationship between national security systems and personal information protection.)

Blueprint: Oxford Univ Newsletter

Resource management

Increasingly the human dimension revealed to be playing a key role in resources management. Uncertainties, complex problems render short term prediction possible while integrated approaches to resources management are advocated. Management in this context is an ongoing learning and negotiation process where a high priority is given to questions of communication, perspective sharing and development of adaptive group strategies for problem solving. Such a process is becoming known as social learning.
The notion of social learning has been used in quite different meanings to refer to processes of learning and change of individuals and social systems. Observation of others and their social interactions within a group, e.g. through imitation of role models is part of social learning that feedback individual learning. This is a constant process for learner changing the environment which in turn changes the learner. Models serve as tools of communication in processes of social learning.

Learning process involving resource management emerges in broader approach in communities of practice that emphasizes learning as participation. Individuals engage in actions and interactions that have to be embedded in culture and history. Such interactions are influenced by and may change social structure and, at the same time, the individual gains experience situated in a context. Such learning processes confirm and shape the identity of the individual in its social surroundings. They confirm and change social practice and the associated interpretation of the environment.

This framework embeds the process of social learning for resources management in a context of governance structure and natural environment. It emphasizes that in the process of resource management, social involvement (e.g. the generation of social capital, the development of new social practices) is as important as content management (e.g. the development and communication of knowledge about the state of a water resource, use models to predict the effects of measures to achieve a good ecological state of a river). The outcomes of the management process are not only technical qualities such as an improved state of the environment but also relational qualities such as an improved capability of the actors in a basin to solve conflicts and come to cooperative agreements.

The outcomes feed back into change and mutual tuning of governance structure and the state of the natural environment. Social learning is an iterative and ongoing process that comprises several loops and enhances the flexibility of the socio-ecological system and its ability to respond to change. In this process trust, understanding shared problem and goals and ultimately working together is practiced. The mutual interaction between content management and social involvement in the process of resources management implies that ‘soft’, relational, and ‘hard’, factual aspects of analysing and managing a human-environment system must also be combined (Johnson, 2000).

An investigation into how water management can prove participatory approach focused on the actors who are supposed to later use the models for decision-making and strategic planning, to participate and contribute to the entire modelling process. This guaranteed that the model captures issues that are of relevance to the actors involved. One key assumption is that the process how a model is developed is as important as the factual knowledge included in the model and the model simulations finally produced. The ‘ingredients necessary to encourage social learning are: awareness of others’ perspectives; understanding actors’ mutual dependence and system complexity; learning to work together; elicitation of soft data; and creating trust.

Card sorting technique which finds categorization of concepts is often practised in the discipline of knowledge engineering for expert systems. This technique as a method appears also to be based on an assumption that categorization concepts play a central role in human cognition. Role playing is another good technique for perspective sharing (in that actors had to see the management system from the point of view and goals of another actor) it was also an effective method of allowing people to discover how their own actions affect and interact with other actors’ decisions.
From the increased awareness of others’ perspectives, technical quality outcomes emerged. It became evident during the process that in the system there is a conflict between different actor norms, each of which, on its own, had merits:
_ Supply security must be high.
_ Water saving is a desirable goal.
_ Financial security and efficiency of water supply should be high.
_ Water prices, according to the public, should be seen to be fair and costs should be charged based on consumption.

These norms were seen to conflict with each other in various ways. Having a very high water security locks the system into high fixed costs, which reduces the chances of the water utility remaining financially secure in the face of increasing water saving. As the finances of the water utility become threatened, not only does the ability of the utility to maintain a high security infrastructure get weakened, but also, in order to safeguard economic security, the income from water provision needs to be decoupled from water consumption levels, thus further tariffs based on covering the fixed costs of water supply need to be introduced.

The major outcome in terms of technical quality was a transformation away from considering supply side management as a means to reduce the gap between supply and demand, and instead towards thinking ‘outside the box’ to reach a policy in agreement with the four norms. The resulting idea was a policy of regionalisation including public consultation.

Participatory modelling for resources management is an expanding field. Approaches can vary enormously. Common group models, for example, may be developed from scratch by the group as a whole, rather than being built up from individual mental models. Participants may also not be representative stakeholders; processes may instead be bottom up, composing of members of the community who have direct control over resources, or top down, composing of members of one or more governing authorities.

Over the past years increasing emphasis has been devoted to processes of decision making (mainly based on formal decision theory) in resources management whereas processes of social learning have largely been neglected. However the processes of social learning are important for understanding transformation processes in human-technology-environment systems. Further research is needed between different fields to improve our understanding for processes of social learning and the role of different techniques to facilitate it.

Source: www.economics.ox.ac.uk

Environmental alerts

Recent studies in theUnited Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down80 percent in the sites researched, and that "bee species are decliningor have become extinct in Britain." The studies also revealed that thenumbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70percent. Which came first, the decline in wildflowers or the decline inpollinators, has yet to be determined. If bees continue to die off sowould the crops they support and with that would ensue major economicdisruption and possibly famine.In the US, bee keepers are experiencing unprecedented die offs of beessome losing as much as 80% of their colonies. Commercial beekeepers in22 states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybeecolonies. So far the cause remains unexplained and somewhat mysterious.

Environmental Questioning

Question 1
In his article “Prices vs. Quantities,” Weitzman argues that it is not always clear that Pigouvian taxes are preferred to quota restrictions on output. Explain under what conditions Pigouvian taxes and quotas are equivalent, and under what conditions taxes and quotas might have relative advantages. In your answer be sure to consider both theoretical and practical concerns of implementing taxes and quotas.
Question 2
Explain why it is not necessary to tax or subsidize victims of pollution to induce them to undertake the optimal level of preventative activity.
Question 3
Consider a simple example of a single polluter and a single victim. Assume that there are no impediments to bargaining and that transaction costs are zero. Suppose a tax is placed on the polluter equal to the marginal social damage. If negotiations between the polluter and victim occur after the tax is imposed, will the outcome be Pareto Optimal? Explain either mathematically or graphically and in words.
Question 4
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency describes their sulfur dioxide trading program as follows “The Acid Rain Program represents a dramatic departure from traditional command and control regulatory methods which establish specific, inflexible emissions limitations with which all affected sources must comply. Instead, the Acid Rain Program introduces an allowance trading system that harnesses the incentives of the free market to reduce pollution.” Explain how a system of tradeable permits can “harness the incentives of the free market.” Under what conditions will a tradeable permit system achieve economic efficiency? In your answer be sure to describe the conditions for economic efficiency as they pertain to pollution.
Question 5
Either graphically or mathematically, explain the relationship between compensating variation, equivalent variation, willingness to pay and willingness to accept for a perceived improvement in environmental quality. Under what conditions can we capture the effects of this quality change in the market for a related consumable commodity?
Question 6
Engineers often argue that the social value of an environmental improvement can be measures by the increased economic activity created by the project. For example the argument might go something like this: The social value of a beach renourishment project to improve the quality of Lake Erie beaches can be calculated as the increase in hotel, food, etc. expenditures by visitors to Lake Erie beaches. Is this a measure of the social value of the project?
Question 7
The NOAA Blue Ribbon Panel suggests that the referendum format is the preferred format for the elicitation of willingness to pay using the contingent valuation method. Explain the NOAA Panel’s recommendation.
Source: www.env-econ.net

Hapiness research

While happiness research certainly has its weaknesses, certain findings are interesting, say, that the loss of happiness from losing a job is much greater than that attributable to the lost income. Standard utility theory can't really substitute for these kinds of insights.




There are four different Levels of Measurement, the mathematics and interpretation of which have been worked out in detail. Economists certainly use all of them, perhaps sometimes without knowing that they are.

An example is Interval Measurement, which is used in the measurement of temperature, as in the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.

Taking it from the top, there are:
Ratio Measurement, the one often used in economics, which allows all the arithmetic operations; an example is the Kelvin scale of temperature, which starts at absolute zero.

But also used in economics and the other sciences are:
Interval Measurement, which allows interpretation of ratios of differences, so that, for example, one difference can be said to be twice another, also arithmetic means are interpretable, as well as medians and modes. Can you think of an example used in economics? ( HInt: start by thinking of economic concepts analogous to temperature, like things heating up or cooling down; if such things have a bottom analogous to absolute zero, they are ratio measurements, otherwise not.)

Ordinal Measurement, which allows comparisons of greater and less, also equality and inequality; here the central tendency can be expressed by the median. Examples are the Mohs Scale (of mineral hardness), measures of attitudes and preferences (some economists use those, I think) and many, many other constructs in psychology and other social sciences, including economics.

Finally, Nominal Measurement, which put things into categories, for which the mode is the meaningful measure of central tendency. I'd be willing to bet that economists put things into categories; if so they are using nominal measurement scales.

Source:Bruce K. Britton
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/02/subjective_rela.html

St James Church in Oxfordshire

British Politics

Down to the 1930 in Britain political theorizing of one kind and another occurred not merely in an academic context; it was virtually a national sport of British intellectuals of all ideological and political complexions. It was engaged in not just by political philosophers and by practising statesmen, but by economists, historian, scientists, doctors, clergymen, social workers, soldiers, businessmen, labour leaders, fellow travellers and a host of others who saw themselves as having a finger in the pie of body politics. This academic and popular culture of political thoughts produced a good deal of sometimes amiable, sometimes nauseating rubbish; but it produced also many serious and systematic attempts to analyse the role of the state and other political institutions, in a context of advanced capitalism, urban conglomeration, and modern mass democracy.

Church and Nation after 1918, OUP

The Only Real Political Choice

Our planet cannot long sustain the momentous worldwide embrace of the manufacture of desires

Above all, though, there is the inescapable dilemma that this planet cannot sustain six-and-a-half billion people living like today's middle-class consumers in its rich north. In just a few decades, we would use up the fossil fuels that took some 400 million years to accrete - and change the earth's climate as a result. Sustainability may be a grey and boring word, but it is the biggest single challenge to global capitalism today. However ingenious modern capitalists are at finding alternative technologies - and they will be very ingenious - somewhere down the line this is going to mean richer consumers settling for less rather than more.
Source: Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian, 22 Feb. 07




The only real political choice
With continued expansion of capitalism, politically, things do appear to be the reverse of what he predicted. Instead of class conflict, liberal subjectivity now transcends any division between capitalist and worker. Rather tan revolutionary consciousness, there is a growing hostility amongst today's broad middle class towards politics altogether.
Now that civilization is a synonym of capitalist democracy, anything critical of the current state of things is branded 'radical' and dismissed as irresponsible romanticism. Since democracy has become the 'political wing' of capitalism, the media, the state, and the general public have become violently intolerant of anything but 'personal opinion'. Because capitalism is the social order, 'anti-capitalism' has become a convenient and cogent means of containing any political critique of capital, or science or democracy. Intimidated by the threat of 'disorder', the working class now accepts anti-capitalism as legitimation for amount of police or military violence.
Since within capitalist society everything appears to be a matter of choice and everyone is supposedly equal in the eyes of the law and have the same economic opportunities, it has become generally accepted that criminals and illegal immigrants are simply greedy and the unemployed, lazy. Furthermore, because people appear to make their own conscious 'life-choices', few question the fact that the most powerful capitalist country houses a quarter of the worlds' prisons inmates, a large percentage of whom are a formally enslaved minority. As the liberalist ideal of the universal 'right' to 'free' choice is the only political position that capitalism and democracy allow, whether white, black, gay or Muslim, one has no alternative but to follow the 'straight and narrow', get a job, get married (outside of Britain..see today's Guardian article), buy a house, get connected and watch television. As the only real political choice of any minority is to 'get a job', virtually every political movement of the past has dissolved into individual 'responsibility'.
All hail the New World Order.
Source:Guardian, CiF,22 Feb




Inspiring
Prince Harry will serve in Iraq, Last year, the prince said: "There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country."Source: BBC 22 Feb

Making the right choice

The assumption that energy companies are losers in global warming debate is not correct since ultimately they are the key holders of funds necessary to develop infrastructure for other energy alternatives. Since either ways we need energy to go about our lives, hence, we are on the same side with energy producers. Therefore it is on us to believe global warming by supporting the kind of energy resources that are most sustainable for us, for environment and for future. The change of behavior toward energy use will ultimately drive investments toward the path we deem most suitable for humans, living creatures and planet as well. By disregard for conspiracy theory over global warming and initiatives to mainstream environment friendly-behaviour we will participate in decision making process based on common sense and the logic of risk aversion and management. This is historical and opportune moment for us as habitants of this planet to rectify our energy use and make wise choices.






British household’s energy use totals 27% of national carbon emission 1% annual increase in energy use
Households’ energy use:
12% lights & appliances ( vacuum cleaners and refrigerators, etc.)
59% heater
24% hot water
5% cooking
Source: Energy Consumption in the UK (2002)
Effect of household size on energy use: 5 member households energy consumption halves that of 1 single households.
Project: 40% House, Decreasing CO2 emission by 60% before 2050 (Ref 1990)
source, http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/, gavin.killip@eci.ox.ac.uk, 8 Feb 2007

Reflection

What was it that Newton did in discovering gravity? We knew that apples fall, but he explained the cause of falling. Newton reflected that gravity is much more than the fall of apples. It is the fall of apples and the like. What he did was to connect apples in an orchard with stars in heaven, a mammoth in a pitfall with waves high on the beach. Till he spoke we had no word connecting every incident in nature by thin lines of likeness, thin as the lines of force but stronger than steel. Unlike one who uses a pattern ready made for him Newton had to cut out a pattern in order to show the connections in a whole which no one had ever apprehended as a whole. We now are given the conceptions of gravity and of energy.





On Ethics

In utilitarianism one encounters a clear example to the point of caricature of the approach to ethics which refuses altogether to take personal existence seriously. This is seen in the insistence that the notion of happiness is fundamentally simple. It is insisted that in human satisfaction there is nothing mysterious.



Meta ethical questions

Surprisingly, whereas economics is notorious for having little to say on ethical questions, on meta-ethical questions it has quite a lot to say about different decision-making systems. Coase’s Theorem, for example, tells us that if we can define unambiguously the initial distribution of rights and if we can minimise transaction costs, then the final distribution will be efficient (in the sense that it will approximate a pareto-optimal outcome) irrespective of how the rights were distributed initially.

Direct democracy reduces the transaction costs of monitoring political agents. In classic representative government, the agents (professional politicians) may have interests at odds with the people they supposedly represent. If both parties in a two party system are in agreement on some issue and do not reflect the wishes of the people, the cost of monitoring them is altogether prohibitive. Typically it would involve the near-impossible task of setting up a new political party and winning government.

Comment, Guardian

The environment Movement

The environment movement
The 'environment movement' in its widest sense (simply in terms of people who care about the environment), never really spells out what its vision of the future is, what it is trying to achieve, what a change to a sustainable world would look like. Part of the problem is that many people never really seem to be able to get their thinking above a war mentality - we live in a sort of constant state of siege, where concepts of 'doom' always seem to be upon us. In this situation, can it be surprising that no-one ever stops to say, well hold on for a moment, what kind of world do we want, can we work together to create? We need to be much more rigorous and determined about asking what it would mean to incorporate new ways of interacting with the natural environment into all our thinking, education and then into all our decision making. So, for example, we create opportunities for all school children to go outdoors and learn in outdoor classrooms, and make the commitment to ensure that these spaces are available at a close enough distance to all schools; similarly, spaces are created close enough to hospitals to act as natural healing spaces (benefits of green, plants and the associated wildlife you would get from native planting on health is proven - not just a little grassy park, green spaces with planting of species to attract and provide habitat for native wildlife...); all food production, energy, textile and other non-food crop production is done in a way that takes ecological processes and wildlife into account, that all transport, energy production is decentralised to people see where their energy comes from and see the wildlife benefits of this on their doorstep...and so on, in every sector you can think of. If knowledge and thinking on wildlife and ecological processes were integrated into absolutely every sector of society, the result would be that our surroundings and day-to-day living processes would develop / evolve alongside, and INTO, functioning ecosystems. Such ecosystems would not only be resilient and adapt to environmental change which in various forms / scales happens constantly, but also, the increase in natural habitat, soil etc... would sequester carbon, buffer air, water and against extremes of climate, thereby protecting human society from larger-scale environmental change. The ecosystem approach isn't something that can be created and imposed along previous lines where we decide what the policy output should look like, and then deliver it - rather it would be something that would evolve and emerge naturally as a result of positive collaboration and new innovative projects between all the sectors, as mentioned above.


Luckily, not everyone is so hopeless. At the new National Trust headquarters in Swindon, the entire building has gone green. Photovoltaic cells on the roof provide 30% of the building's energy, movement and lux-sensitive lights vary with the strength of light outside, and the whole building is self-cooling. Even the carpets have been woven with wool from the National Trust's own herd of sheep in the Lake District.

Re: Ethical Capitalism
I'd like to see a UK visionary company like this American company that has the perfect business model for installing domestic or business renewable energy. It's an Energy Services Company (ESCo) model, that goes two steps further than either WindSave's model or the Woking Council model, in taking ALL the hassle out of having a renewable electricity supply for your building, while guaranteeing a price for 25 years that's competitive with brown electricity. Here's the blurb on their web site: Citizene's REnU program packages solar power for you in a simple and smart way. Plainly put, the Citizenr Corporation pays for, installs, owns and operates the solar installation. You don’t have to worry about maintaining the equipment or any of the other concerns that come with making an investment into solar power. All you are required to do is pay for the electricity generated from these panels, at a fixed rate that is at or below your current electricity price, for up to twenty-five years. Well. Small print aside, I'd buy that. Who wouldn't? A no risk, no hassle, service arrangement. I hope this business model can work (I assume they've crunched their figures) and that we'll soon see some British companies try and roll a similar offer out. http://renu.citizenre.com/index.php?c=1170233887
Comments: David Milliband’s blog


Methane Emission
The results of investigation of the rate at which methane is being released in Siberia revealed levels of discharge that were five times higher than previous estimates. The results, echoed by studies at 100 other sites in the north Siberia region, are alarming because methane is far more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and is therefore potentially much more dangerous to the planet. Scientists have calculated that methane has a global warming potential that is 23 times that of carbon dioxide. This means that a kilogram of methane warms the planet's atmosphere 23 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide.
In addition to the methane built up, it is also known that vast amounts of carbon dioxide are locked in the planet's frozen zones. In total, it is estimated there could be as much as 450 billion tonnes of methane and carbon dioxide trapped in the world's permafrost.

Not just a wasteland
· Covering 10 million square kilometres, if Siberia were to secede from Russia it would be the world's largest country.
· Few people live there - only three people to every square kilometre -but it is rich in minerals, including gold and diamonds.
· The 9,295km Trans-Siberian Railway is the world's longest railway, running from Moscow to Vladivostok.
Source: Robin McKie and Nick Christian, Observer, 10 Sept. 2006

The moment of equal opportunity

The Moment of Equal Opportunity

The idea that equality of opportunity involves looking backwards is found explicitly in Rawls, who states: “fairness depends on underlying social conditions, such as fair opportunity, extending backward in time”. An example of this backwards-looking reasoning can be found in Janet Radcliffe Richards’ article “Equality of Opportunity”. Richards parodies the literature on equality of opportunity by considering the headmaster of a sought-after boys’ private school who is newly committed to the concept. After a moment’s reflection, however, the headmaster finds himself inexorably sliding down a slippery slope into straightforward equality of outcome. Richards describes the slide in four phases. In the first phase, the headmaster realizes that it is inconsistent with equality of opportunity to prevent girls from attending the school. In the second phase, he notes that he must also ensure that he selects only on academic ability, such that a particular cultural background is not a requirement of entry. In the third phase, he realises that applicants face an inequality of opportunity as a result of the unequal backgrounds they have experienced; so “the headmaster, although now rather puzzled, wonders about offering remedial classes, and starts to wrestle with counterfactuals about what the children would have been like if they had had each other’s backgrounds.” Fourth and finally, the hapless head is stymied:
He will not be left with this particular puzzle for long, however, since the critic will already have moved on to matters still more perplexing. Even equality of background could not give genuine equality of opportunity, since the children’s different genetic endowments would still leave them with unequal chances of success. This seems to imply that genuine equality of opportunity requires the admission of everybody – the equality of outcome to which the headmaster always thought equality of opportunity was opposed – or, since this is impossible, either closing down the school or admitting pupils by lot. Neither of these is anything like what he had in mind when he started off in pursuit of equal opportunities, but he can now see no escape. A similar reductio ad absurdum argument is set forward in Bernard Williams’ earlier article “The Idea of Equality”. “One might speculate,” Williams notes, about how far this movement of thought might go. The most conservative user of the notion of equality of opportunity is, if sincere, prepared to abstract the individual from some effects of his environment. We have seen that there is good reason to press this further, and to allow that the individuals whose opportunities are to be equal should be abstracted from more features of social and family background. Where should this stop? Should it even stop at the boundaries of heredity?

Perhaps the first thing to note about these two reductios is that the supposedly absurd resting-place at the end of each is in fact precisely what is argued for in much of the relevant literature. The headmaster is asked to “wrestle with counterfactuals about what the children would have been like if they had had each other’s backgrounds”, to notice that “the children’s different genetic endowments would still leave them with unequal chances of success”, and to conclude as a result that either places must be allocated by lot or the school must be closed. These requirements do not seem so absurd in the light of contemporary egalitarian philosophy. For example, Ronald Dworkin states: “Unfair differences are those traceable to genetic luck, to talents that make some people prosperous but are denied to others”, and advocates distribution not by lot but by clamshell. “We must not allow the distribution of resources at any moment to be endowment-sensitive, that is, to be affected by differences in ability”, he cautions. To take another example, Swift moves from the premise of equality of opportunity to the conclusion that “ ‘Family values’ set limits on how far opportunities should be equalised, but respecting those values does not require us to permit private or selective schools.” It seems that, if the headmaster is not to distribute places by lot, he must indeed close down his school. The impression one gets when considering these accounts of equality of opportunity is of lives severed into two halves, with what I call a Moment of Equal Opportunity, or MEO, separating one from the other. In the first half of an individual’s life, many things happen to her that unjustly make her different from her peers. As a foetus, she is unfairly formed with a particular set of genes, giving her particular propensities for particular talents. As a child, she is unfairly subjected to the influence of her parents, who add unjustly-varying degrees of advantage to her genetic endowments according to their inclination for, and skill at, such activities as reading bedtime stories, playing Mozart in the home, taking her to Shakespeare plays and asking her to count and name various everyday objects. As a schoolchild, she is unfairly benefited or harmed by the skills of her teachers, the resources of her school (which may be unfairly determined by the resources of her parents) and the influence of her peers. These benefits or harms repeat themselves as she develops an unfair advantage or disadvantage as regards attaining places in other schools, or perhaps at university.

At some point in this process, equality of opportunity occurs. It is common to argue that this point should occur at age 18, when applications for universities or jobs are submitted. Brighouse, for example, argues that education must give individuals equal opportunities at “the age of majority”.
Consider, for example, two people with similar merit (in the Rawlsian sense, where merit means talent plus effort plus inclination), similar family backgrounds and similar educations at eighteen years old: Jeremy and Jason. Both apply to an elite university, such as Oxford, whose admissions tutors are (we assume) making decisions based on equality of opportunity. As places are scarce, only Jeremy is accepted. Jason studies a similar course at another university, one which is less prestigious and which devotes less time to undergraduate tuition. Both work equally hard (in other words, both display the same amount of effort and inclination to work). Both achieve 2:1 degrees, and both apply for graduate jobs at leading companies in a particular field. Jeremy is more successful. Employers are impressed by his Oxford degree – not because they are wrongly prejudiced in favour of Oxford through something such as an old boy network, but because they believe that Oxford selects the best students in the first place, that it provides its students with a better education than other universities, and that its culture means that its students develop important skills such as confidence and initiative. In other words, employers prefer Oxford graduates because they believe that Oxford graduates are more likely to have qualities which legitimately and genuinely make better employees.

So, Jeremy gets a top graduate job at a leading company, while Jason gets a less prestigious position at a less prestigious company. Both work equally hard. Jeremy’s job develops his skills quickly. He is given important clients to work with, encouraged to try new things, sent on expensive training courses. Jason is also given opportunities to develop and sent on training courses, but his position and his company mean that he does not develop such impressive skills as Jeremy. In five years, each applies for a more senior position at another company. By this stage, Jeremy is the far better candidate. Not only does he have the advantages that his Oxford degree conferred upon him, he also now has a further advantage in terms of career experience, skills and the good name of a prestigious first employer. As a result, Jeremy gets the job. Jason has to wait until he is offered a less significant promotion at a less prestigious company. And here the process repeats itself. By the time they apply for their third jobs, Jason has no hope of competing with Jeremy: Jeremy’s CV is far more impressive, and the experience he has enjoyed and skills he has developed make him clearly the more competent candidate. By retirement, Jeremy has achieved a much higher position in their industry than has Jason, and has earned much more money. Jason is neither poor nor unsuccessful, but his career has not reached the stellar heights of Jeremy’s. This story is by no means unusual. It is the general pattern of career development that we see in many industries - including academia, as Morris Zapp notes with glee. But the point is not merely that this severance of a life into two halves, one before and one after the Moment of Equal Opportunity, does in fact occur. The point is that most advocates of equality of opportunity accept that it should occur. Despite the detailed burrowing into every aspect of an individual’s history that might undermine equality of opportunity (the bedtime stories, the trips to the theatre, the piano lessons), the assumption prevails that at some point the attempt to compensate for previous advantage should stop. We must ask, then, whether the final outcome and progress of Jeremy and Jason’s lives are consistent with justice and with equality of opportunity. unproblematic from the point of view of justice. I criticise these responses by arguing that Jeremy and Jason’s lives contain many features usually accepted as constitutive of, or contributing to, injustice. The responses in the second category agree that Jeremy and Jason’s lives violate equality of opportunity and are, in that respect, unjust. However, the problem with these responses is that equality of opportunity becomes extremely difficult to implement, since it fundamentally conflicts with other important values. Whether a theory fits into response type 1 or response type 2 depends on two things: the version of equality of opportunity it employs, and whether or not it endorses a Moment of Equal Opportunity.

On some theories of equality of opportunity, namely non-discrimination and careers open to talents, the increasing inequalities between Jeremy and Jason are unproblematic. However, most liberal egalitarian theorists advocate some more extensive version of equality of opportunity. According to more extensive theories the progress of Jeremy and Jason’s lives is incompatible with equality of opportunity. In other words, equality of opportunity cannot consistently be restricted to an MEO, but must be applied throughout a person’s life. However, it is not at all clear how equality of opportunity can be applied throughout a person’s life, since doing so poses serious problems of epistemology, efficiency and incentives, and leads to counter-intuitive results. Overall, my argument is that liberal egalitarian theories of equality of opportunity are inconsistent if they support an MEO and unrealisable if they do not.

Equality of opportunity is meant to remedy, not legitimate, inequalities arising from “chance contingencies” that develop the talents of some while leaving those of others unrealised. Rawls does not limit the scope of equality of opportunity to the time before an MEO, but heralds it as a tool to mitigate the ongoing injustices of chance and “social circumstances”, such as winning or losing in early competitions. Rawls extends his idea that the principles of justice, including equality of opportunity, exist to adjust the unfair outcomes of social processes in Political Liberalism. Social processes, he notes, favour “an oligopolistic configuration of accumulations that succeeds in maintaining unjustified inequalities and restrictions on fair opportunity.

Source: Dr Clare Chambers, Each outcome is another opportunity, Dept of Intl Relation, Social Justice working papers, Oxford Univ Sept 2006


One email dated Friday, 16 June, is from Michele Ballarin, chief executive of Select Armor - a US military firm based in Virginia. Ballarin's email was sent to a number of individuals including Chris Farina of the Florida-based military company ATS Worldwide.

Corporation Tax

Structure and scope of corporation tax

There is currently much interest and debate in the UK about the structure and scope of corporation tax. The debate has included a wide set of issues, ranging from the level of the headline rate, and the impact of various European Court of Justice decisions on a variety of issues, to the extent to which the administration of tax creates uncertainty and additional costs for business. The role of the deductibility of interest costs against corporation tax has also played a prominent role in this debate. This report considers two complementary sources of evidence on the impact of existing tax systems on the use of debt. First, using aggregate data and unconsolidated accounting data, it compares the use of debt across countries to that country’s tax rate. As might be expected, a higher tax rate is associated with a greater use of debt. The obvious explanation is that the relative benefit of debt over equity increases with the tax rate, and hence so does the use of debt.
It also seems likely that companies that are part of multinational groups are more sensitive to the host country tax rate than purely domestic companies. However, although there is some evidence of this in the academic literature, the simple evidence presented here is not consistent with this hypothesis.

The second source of evidence presented in the report is a set of structured interviews held with the tax directors of 14 large multinational groups in the UK. These groups include both UK and US parented multinationals, and cover a broad range of sectors. The interviews covered two issues: how tax affects the existing financial structure of the groups, and how potential reforms to the UK corporation tax might affect decisions regarding financial structure.

Broadly, the results of the interviews indicate that UK multinationals typically hold all third party debt in the UK. Having raised debt in the UK, it is then disseminated around the group as needed, using both equity and debt, and taking into account the tax profile of both the funding and receiving countries. Few UK multinational companies now make use of hybrid entities or hybrid-based financial products. Legislation in 2005 significantly limited the scope for such activity, and most respondents considered that highly structured tax-driven products had only a short shelf life. Respondents were asked to comment on a number of hypothetical reforms to the UK tax regime. There was some agreement about the logic of introducing some form of interest apportionment to restrict relief to interest on borrowing to finance activity in the UK. However, a consensus view was that it would be impossible to introduce any form of apportionment in practice without creating considerable administrative and compliance cost, and uncertainty.

As might be expected, the option of simply reducing the rate of tax at which interest could be relieved – say, to 15% - met with little support. The consensus view expressed was that such a reform would impose considerable costs, and reduce the attractiveness of the UK as a location for economic activity. However, a rather more favourable response met the hypothesis that the tax rate on interest received would also be cut. Most respondents considered that a 15% rate on interest received and paid would be sufficiently competitive such that the incentive for offshore financial planning would be removed. Debt would be pushed down to subsidiaries, reducing the overall UK expense, while there would also be an incentive to remit interest to the UK. Perhaps not surprisingly again, reducing the corporation tax rate on all activity also met with a positive response. Profit repatriation generally would be encouraged should this change be coupled with an exemption from tax for overseas dividends.

Source: Michael P. Devereux (Director of Centre for Business Taxation) , Socrates Mokkas (Research fellow), James Pennock (PricewaterhouseCoopers), Peter Wharrad (Vodafone), (Dec 2006), Interest Deductibility for UK Corporation Tax, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation

Democratic Capital

Economic and Political Change

The dynamics of political and economic change, building on two ideas. The first idea concerns the economic effects of democracy. If democracy influences economic performance, this must largely happen via investment decisions and hence through expectations. The prospects of future democracy then become a crucial determinant of current economic performance. This means that, to correctly assess the economic consequences of democracy, we must look beyond the current regime, to expectations about its stability. The second question comes in to examine what make democracies stable. Consolidation of democracy requires that citizens learn to cherish and respect democracy as a method of government. A common perception of democracy as a valuable form of government will not pop up overnight, or in a vacuum. Rather, a gradual appreciation of democracy can be envisaged as an accumulation of a stock of civic and social assets that takes place through a country’s learning from its own historical experience or from its neighboring countries. This consolidation process is referred to as the accumulation of "democratic capital".

A combination of these two ideas suggests rich dynamic interactions between economic and political change, including a positive feedback loop between democracy and economic development. As democracy consolidates and becomes more stable, income grows more rapidly. This feeds into more democratic stability, and yet more economic growth. At the same time, accumulation of democratic capital brings about yet more stability and further growth. Countries ruled by autocrats, instead, are more likely to stagnate because they do not have any chance of initiating this virtuous circle of consolidation and growth. If they happen to become democracies, they remain vulnerable and unstable until they have accumulated enough democratic capital. As instability hurts economic development, it feeds into itself.

Sustained economic growth is driven by investment, which depends on expected returns. If productivity is higher in democratic than autocratic regimes, growth in democracies is negatively affected by the probability of regime change. The probability of a regime change is determined in a global game, where individual citizens decide whether to participate in defending democracy (or overthrowing a dictator). This decision reflects society’s endowment of democratic capital. In equilibrium, higher democratic capital implies a lower probability of autocracy in the future. Therefore, more democratic capital has no direct effect on growth, only a positive indirect effect via higher expected returns (and investments).

Democratic capital has two components: one domestic and one foreign. Domestic democratic capital depends on the country’s own historical experience: it accumulates in periods of democracy and decumulates in periods of autocracy. Foreign democratic capital depends on current experience elsewhere: it accumulates with the incidence of democracy abroad and decumulates with the incidence of autocracy in other countries, with weights depending on geographic distance.

The study found that democratic capital is unambiguously good for growth. The results are not only statistically robust but also quantitatively important. Consistently with the within-regime estimates, the positive effect of democratic capital on growth is only present in democracies. A higher stock of democratic capital makes autocracies more likely to fall, but this effect is not conducive to faster growth as long as the regime remains autocratic.

The notion of democraticcapital refers to variables that influence the stability of democratic regimes, but have no direct effects on economic outcomes. The importance of culture in economic (as opposed to political) development is significant. Several political scientists have discussed the role of masses vs. elites in regime transitions — see, in particular, Collier (1999), Geddes (1999), and Bermeo (2003). Opp (1999) and Gibson (1997) rely on survey data to document how citizens’ decisions to participate in the uprise against socialist autocracies at the turn of the 1990s was motivated by strategic and social considerations.

A number of mechanisms could make a long-standing democracy more resilient to a coup than a short-standing one, including the build-up of formal and informal institutions from political parties to social norms. The same institutions would make the re-institution of democracy more likely in a nation lapsing into autocracy.

Two prominent avenues for future research emerge. One priority would be to allow for more heterogeneity between countries. The task is easier for democracies, because we can exploit a large literature in comparative politics that has studied a variety of democratic institutions, such as the electoral rule (majoritarian vs. proportional), the form of government (presidential vs. parliamentary), and the degree of centralization (federal vs. unitary). These forms of democracy may entail different degrees of political participation. If democratic capital accumulates through active participation, its accumulation and depreciation rates may systematically differ across different forms of democracy. But the empirical findings suggest that understanding the differences between various types of autocracies may be even more important.

A related avenue for future research is to make more precise the notion of democratic capital. Can we better understand just which values and norms are essential and how these relate to cultural and sociological attitudes of the population at large? How important is the contribution of education in the accumulation of these values and norms? Does democratic consolidation require the rise of a middle class with democratic values? Just how essential are independent media in mobilizing support for democracy? Telling these forces apart and more precisely pinpointing their specific roles in the process of democratic capital accumulation is an important priority for further work.

Source: Democratic capital:The nexus of political and economic change, Nuffield College, Economic working paper, March 2006.

Intl Relation and the Study of Development

International Relations and the Study of Development

The disciplines of Development Studies and International Relations rarely, if ever, talk to each other’s concerns in a productive manner. International Relations has tended to view the world’s poorest states through one of two lenses. On the one hand they are seen as ‘data’ that is used to help confirm or refine International Relations theory.

On the other hand, and in its more policy-orientated mode, International Relations has approached these states as the actual or potential source of a whole host of policy problems that threaten the settled well being of western states (AIDS, drugs, refugee flows, smuggling, state collapse).

The actions of ‘development agencies’ similarly receive scant attention within International Relations. What attention is paid to them, again tends to be in terms of whether what they do can be understood through the lens of International Relations theory.

Development Studies too is pretty insular – despite its supposed ‘multidisciplinary’ approach. International Relations as an academic discipline is seen as too distant from the pressing practical problems of development to be of much interest, and the fact that International Relations is generally unconcerned with the fate of the poorest countries simply reinforces the idea that it does not have much to offer thinking about development.
This mutual estrangement is understandable given the all-pervasive academic specialization that characterises the modern university. But it is also intellectually indefensible. The world’s poorest states are as much part of international society as any other, and what happens to these states tells us important things about the dynamics of international society – about how it is governed, what its preoccupations are, and what its rules and norms consist of.iv Looking at these states would help overcome the idea that the world can be divided into a ‘domestic’ and an ‘international’ realm: this makes not the slightest bit of sense when considering the historical trajectory of these states. It would also help overcome the equally empirically implausible view that international politics is best conceived of as an ‘anarchic’ realm; in fact, of course, for the vast majority of states it is a profoundly hierarchical one.
A concern with generating ‘ownership’ of development policies and programmes – by borrowers, ‘stakeholders’ and governments – generates a relatively novel set of policies. There is obviously a history internal to ‘development,’ which helps explain why ‘ownership’ has come to the fore. The most significant parts of this history are the recognition that conditional lending did not work very well to induce policy change, and the recognition
that some kind of effective administrative authority is required if development projects and programmes are to be successful. The emergence of ‘ownership’ is intimately connected to two inter-linked changes in the international political context.

The first is a shift in the way the sovereignty of the world’s poorest states has been understood. The 1990s saw the end of sovereignty as a political value for these states: development agencies and western states no longer thought that the sovereignty of these states was something to be desired, and no longer considered that the practices of ‘development’ should be mediated through sovereignty as a political institution. The second shift, obviously related to the first, is the emergence of an aggressive and expansive global governance agenda led by the powerful western states. This has placed a new emphasis on establishing effective administrative authority in developing countries as an important part of establishing effective networks of global governance.
By the late 1990s, the aid donors’ development agenda for the world’s poorest states had expanded enormously in include a whole range of political, social, and institutional issues, and they continue to pursue very intricate and detailed interventions in many of these areas.xxv
The combination of a vastly expanded development agenda and a rapid rise in the number of development organizations at work in the world’s poorest states stripped the governments of many developing countries of whatever control and authority they did have over the ‘actions and policies of development agencies at work within their borders.

Governments were not powerless, of course. Many of them complied with some of the demands of external donors, but when it came to more politically difficult reforms many governments, particularly in Africa, simply resisted, or subverted donor demands. For example, throughout the 1980s most African governments simply did not engage in privatization of their state owned enterprises, despite being pressured to do so.xxvi Even when privatization was undertaken, governments have often tried to control the process for their own political ends. As Roger Tangri has put it, ‘high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats have been centrally placed to ensure that the pace and scope of privatization as well as certain specific divestiture transactions have been congruent with their political and personal interests’.xxvii Much the same thing happened in other countries too.

It is important to realise, however, that this kind of ‘sly’ power, the power to resist, subvert and evade, is not at all the same thing as having effective control and authority over development policy-making and implementation. Most donors were quite unwilling to give governments this control and authority – perhaps for very good reasons. The trouble was the donors could not be an effective substitute for sovereign authority. The donors were unable to ‘stand in’ for the political and administrative power of the state. This led to a situation where little effective control was being exercised over development policy-making and implementation in many of the world’s poorest countries.

The pursuit of ‘ownership’ is designed to work through enlisting governments, stakeholders and officials as agents in their own development. It emerges in part out of the recognition that ‘imposing’ reform strategies does not work – as evidenced by the experience of structural adjustment. Instead the pursuit of ‘ownership’ uses a variety of techniques designed to generate assent and commitment to particular development and governance objectives. The techniques include various forms of ‘training’, carefully managed processes of ‘consultation’ and the subtle and graduated use of various ‘incentives’. In this way, at least in theory, committed political agents are created.

It should be clear that the pursuit of ‘ownership’ is not the same thing as the granting of ‘sovereignty’. Very little value is placed on the ideas and practices of state sovereignty in the new global governance regime. To be sure a central aim of this regime is the creation and recreation of administrative authority over social, economic and political processes – in short effective governance. But this is to be achieved through mechanisms and techniques, such as ‘ownership’ that are developed and conditioned by the aims and objectives of western states and development agencies.

What this leads to is a view of the state as heavily ‘de-politicised’. The state becomes the administrative vehicle for development and, increasingly, global governance. It ceases to be about collective political freedom. This is of course the great liberal dream – states become simply vehicles for the implementation and administration of liberal projects. The danger here is that, as a matter of sociological fact, some kind of commitment to the idea of the state as a vehicle for collective political freedom is necessary to sustain the development and governance project. As noted earlier the sovereign state became the vehicle for the pursuit of a collective, national, project. The question, I suppose, is this: does sustained commitment to the development project require a certain degree of collective political freedom?


source: David Williams, Ownership, sovereignty, and global governance, dept of intl relation, Oxford Univ. June 2006

Congestion Charging

Congestion Charging
Two interesting perspectives on road pricing, from two interesting thinkers. Firstly Tim Harford asks why climate change (a potential, future problem) receives far more attention than traffic congestion (a real, current problem):
If climate change ever begins to have the same impact on our lives that congestion does today, it will be a dark day indeed. Think about the delays; the uncertainties; think about the lengths big-city dwellers have to go to in an effort to avoid traffic. Then think about how severely the climate would need to change before it had the same effect on your daily routine.
Secondly John Adams (with a letter in The Guardian), says that road pricing is not the solution:
Congestion pricing is not the answer. It will simply disperse the problem into those parts of the country currently least congested, encouraging yet more sprawl and low-density, car-dependent land-use patterns.

city-planning trial run to remove traffic lights. According to The Telegraph:
"We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt,...It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk."
Source: http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2007/02/congestion_char.html

Third interesting perspective: John Galpin, Comment on BBC’s Nick Robinson blog

Leaving aside the civil libertarian issues the point that I and many others keep making is that there is little done about improving transport capacity and price is being used ( or stealth taxes) as virtually the sole mechanism for managing demand, which is hardly a socially inclusive strategy. Why spend billions developing a system that will contribute nothing to improving capacity? At best all it will due is limit demand to those that can afford it.
Unless you live in a major city buses are unreliable. I spent half an hour in the pouring rain yesterday, with no bus shelter, for a bus that didn't arrive. UK train travel is the most expensive per km in the world and often no better than sardine cans on wheels. The congestion zone is expanding when it is known that many have no meaningful alternative. This is in spite of comment to that effect and the fact that the current zone is now achieving little except raise revenue. Cross Rail has remained a fantasy project for much of the time but even if built will do nothing to provide a direct rail link to Heathrow for the 7 million that live to the west of the airport even though it will pass within a mile of the new runway. Try using public transport to carry a 25 kg suitcase by from "rural" Berkshire to Heathrow for a flight before mid day. I have, I barely got there and by the time I did I just wanted to go home! Just how are seven million of us supposed to avoid using cars for this? Say to hell with business, work and vacations by just staying at home perhaps?
People don’t appreciate being charged more and more but not seeing the alternatives being developed. And that just doesn't apply to transport. As many keep pointing out if you want to tax travel, fuel duty is directly proportional to vehicle fuel efficiency and miles travelled. It is simple and even more reliable to collect than annual car tax.
Government needs to show some form in using the tax they have and are collecting to develop the supply side of this system. Just using additional, ever more complex, bureaucratic and expensive price management systems to ‘restrict demand’ is not feasible without alternative mechanism and that is why I signed the petition.





Climate Change

Proposing key features include:
impose a series of global caps on annual greenhouse gas production
set aside the country-based approach, replacing it with a unified global approach
control greenhouse gases at point of production, not of emission; in the case of fossil fuel emissions, control the production of the fuel itself as close as feasible to the mine or well-head, based on the global warming potential of the fuel in question when burnt
sell greenhouse gas production "Rights" at a global auction open to all bidders
limit the fossil fuel production of any company in any year to the level for which they have obtained Rights
treat other industrial production of greenhouse gases in the same way, for example: carbon dioxide (CO2) from cement production; and surplus radiative impacts for aviation
for avoidable diffuse greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and CO2 from forest burning, issue limited Rights to governments on a per capita of population basis
credit Rights to companies who demonstrably destroy or safely bury greenhouse gases
use the funds raised at the global auction to address both the causes and consequences of climate change
Taken as a whole, these measures offer a new approach which would achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas production in a way that is economically efficient, fair and equitable. And the climate funds - which could easily reach $500bn-$1 trillion (£250-£500bn) per year - could be used in many positive ways, for example:
establish a Climate Adaptation Fund to help the worst affected countries adapt to climate change
finance programmes to reduce fossil fuel demand, aimed especially at poorer countries and populations
pay "rent" to countries with natural biomes acting as carbon sinks and stores within their territories, such as forests and swamps, to maintain and expand those sinks and stores
establish a Low Carbon Development Bank to support viable low-carbon energy developments
fund low-carbon energy research, for example, into renewable generation technologies
buy out fossil fuel deposits to prevent their exploitation, which will also give an economic return to countries losing revenue from fossil fuel sales
BBC online: Oliver Tickell freelance journalist




Measures of protection for the environment:
Extracts from Pre Budget Report

• A key aim of government intervention is to encourage behavioural change, particularly with regard to the use of energy, waste and water. Investment to increase efficiency in these areas is often a cost-effective option for businesses and households, but short-term cost considerations and market failures can create barriers to the take up of more efficient alternatives. Intervention can correct these market failures, ensuring the implementation of the ‘polluter pays’ principle in which environmental costs are fully internalised in economic decisions.
• UK greenhouse gas emissions fell by 14.5 per cent between 1990 and 2004. The UK is the only G7 country already meeting its Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 12.5 per cent compared with 1990 levels over the years 2008 to 2012. Following the measures announced in the Climate Change Programme Review, projections suggest that by 2012 the UK could reduce its emissions by between 23 to 25 per cent from 1990 levels,
going far beyond its Kyoto commitment; and

• carbon intensity, which measures the level of carbon emissions against gross domestic product (GDP), has improved by 55 per cent since the early 1970s at a rate of 2 per cent per year.

• Good progress has been made in other areas. On air quality, between 1997 and 2003, nitrous oxide emissions were reduced by 22 per cent and sulphur dioxide emissions were reduced by 41 per cent. Between 1997-98 and 2005-06, the volume of waste going to landfill fell by 25 per cent and household recycling rates in England increased from around 8 per cent to nearly 27 per cent. Between 2001 and 2005, there was a reduction in sales of virgin aggregate in Great Britain of around 18 million tonnes and an estimated increase in recycled aggregate of around 8 million tonnes. 62 per cent of England’s rivers were of good chemical quality in 2004, compared with 43 per cent in 1990. 70 per cent were of good biological quality, up from 60 per cent in 1990.

• Three elements of policy are required for an effective global response: pricing of
carbon – through tax, trading or regulation – with economic efficiency pointing
towards a common global price; support for innovation and research, development
and deployment of low-carbon technologies; and actions to encourage behaviour
change and energy efficiency in the move to a low-carbon economy. In addition,
action to reduce deforestation and enable adaptation to climate change is also
important.

• The public sector has an important role to play in setting an example to encourage all
individuals, households and firms to improve their energy efficiency and limit their
environmental impact.
The public sector spends over £125 billion on goods and services a year and it is vital
that this investment is spent in a way that is good for the environment as well as good value
for money. It is a condition of funding for the Building Schools for the Future programme that
all schools being rebuilt or subject to major refurbishment meet the Building Research
Establishment’s environmental assessment method ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ rating for
schools. To extend ambition for low-carbon buildings, even higher standards for new
and refurbished schools is set to reduce their carbon emissions by up to 60 per cent over
existing standards, and in some cases up to carbon neutrality.

• Transport is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK and, due
in part to sustained economic growth, emissions are set to continue growing until around 2015,
before falling thereafter. In addition, the sector is a significant contributor of air pollutants.
However, environmental goals must be pursued alongside wider priorities. A safe, clean and
efficient transport system underpins sustainable economic growth, boosts productivity,
extends mobility and helps create a more inclusive society.
Sulphur-free fuels offer local air quality benefits, while helping new engine
technologies work more efficiently. Regulations brought forward early in 2007
to ensure the widespread availability of sulphur-free diesel and sulphur-free
‘super’ grades of petrol.

• In November 2005 the Government announced it would introduce a Renewable
Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) requiring transport fuel suppliers to ensure a set percentage
of their sales are from a renewable source. Budget 2006 announced that the level of obligation
would be set at 2.5 per cent in 2008-09 and 3.75 per cent in 2009-10, before reaching 5 per cent
in 2010-11. This will deliver net savings of around 1 MtC per year by 2010. The Government
intends the level of the Obligation to rise above 5 per cent after 2010-11, provided that three
critical factors are met: development of robust sustainability and carbon standards;
development of a new fuel quality standard at EU level to ensure existing and new vehicles can
run on biofuel blends higher than 5 per cent; and the costs being acceptable to the consumer.

• On improving water quality and efficiency the Government agreed to consult on a
proposal to oblige water companies in areas of serious water stress to consider compulsory
metering alongside other measures in drawing up long-term plans for managing water
resources. The Government is currently assessing a range of possible policy options to tackle
diffuse water pollution from agriculture (DWPA), and remains committed to ensuring that the
costs of such pollution do not fall on water customers. The Government will consult shortly
on the most cost-effective options for dealing with DWPA and continues to keep options for
using economic instruments under review. The pesticides voluntary initiative remains in
place

• Between 1997-98 and 2005-06, the total quality of waste disposal to landfill sites
registered for landfill tax fell by 25 per cent, while the amount of active waste
disposal to landfill by 14 per cent. www.uktradeinfo.com,


Extracted from:
Pre-Budget Report: The Government’s policy objectives and Budget measures




Productivity of the economy
It has since become the consensus among experts in the field that it is only natural that the development of revolutionary technologies and investments in them take decades to show up in the overall productivity of the economy.
That "diffusion lag" has been described by the economic historian Paul David, who used the electric dynamo as an example. Invented in 1866 by Werner von Siemens, the dynamo made possible the electrification of all kinds of production processes. Nevertheless, it showed up in American productivity statistics no earlier than the 1920's.
[T]he ICT [information and communication technologies] revolution has, in some ways at least, surpassed earlier technological revolutions. The British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, for instance, has calculated that the contribution of ICT to economic growth in the United States over the last 25 years "has exceeded that of steam and at least matched that of electricity over comparable periods."
"The Solow productivity paradox stems largely from unrealistic expectations," Crafts concludes. "The true paradox is why more should have been expected from ICT."
Source: www.ecolog.com

Risk Assessment and Management: Water System

Basic concepts and core issues of risk assessment and management
Key questions and issues
n What is risk?
n Why analyse and manage risks?
n Can we avoid risks?
n If not, how much risk dare we accept?
n Core concepts
Colloquial definition:
n A risk is “a chance of a loss or injury or damage…..”

Definitions used in risk assessment and management:
n Actuarial definition: Level of risk = (frequency x consequences) for a hazard, or across a set of hazards
n Risk manager’s definition: Level of risk = frequency x exposure x vulnerability

What is a Risk?
A risk arises when there is a threat to what we regard as an acceptable level of
n Safety, health, and well being
n Security (physical and material)
n Performance, efficiency, service
n Reliability, effectiveness
n Awareness, understanding
Threats can arise from, for example:
n Physical hazards
n Accidents
n Breakdown of plant and equipment
n Failure of systems (including human systems!)
n Uncertainty

Most threats arise from circumstances that combine several of the above!


Why analyze and manage risks?
n To understand what we’re up against
n To take appropriate action to reduce risks to acceptable levels
n In so doing, to provide assurances about safety, performance, and reliability
Can we avoid risks?
In most cases no - but we can try to:
n Reduce some of the risk (by controlling the frequency of, exposure to, and vulnerability to hazards)
n Transfer some of the risk (to a party willing to take on the risk)
We then have to accept the residual risk!
How much risk dare we accept?
Risk acceptance depends on a range of factors
including:
n Level of risk – may sometimes be more strongly influenced by concerns over impact rather than frequency
n Frameworks of values and beliefs
n Circumstances – vulnerability and resilience
n Choices available
n Awareness of the full level of risk – what are all the potential impacts of hazards, events, or uncertainty?

This has important implications
Often (especially in the context of water systems) we are asked to assess and to manage risk on behalf of others - this requires approaches that are:
n rigorous and systematic
n make best use of data and expertise
n democratic
n transparent
n can support decision making
n well understood in terms of their limitations
Core issues relating to the concept of risk
n Risk is bound up with probability and uncertainty – there is a likelihood of rain tomorrow, but will it rain?
n Risk involves loss (and opportunity) – someone’s loss can be another’s gain
n Perceptions of risk vary – why aren’t we all scared of flying?
n People accept different levels of risk – why don’t we all bungee-jump?
Core issues relating to analysis of risks
n Assessment or analysis of risks is rarely precise and often imprecise
q Actuarial methods – based on the interpretation of failure/impact datasets
q Observational methods – based on available evidence and expert judgement
n There is often an irreducible level of uncertainty which we have to accept
n Since perceptions of risk vary, we need to avoid bias in analysis
n There is no universal measure of risk – parameters and values vary between different risks and stakeholders

Core issues relating to risk management
n Actions can be taken to reduce, to share, or to transfer risks - but risks can rarely be eliminated
n There are theoretical, practical, and cost limitations on our ability to reduce risk:
q Inherent irreducible uncertainty
q Complete control may not be feasible
q The cost of complete protection may not be affordable
n Differences in perception and attitude influence arrangements to share or to transfer risks
n Risks can be shared or transferred through:
q rules and agreements
q insurance
q legislation

Nature of uncertainty
Uncertainty can arise from:
n random influences
n incomplete information
n lack of precision (fuzziness)

Examples of types of uncertainty
Random influences
Incomplete information
Fuzziness
Changes in the weather
Climate change effects
Lack of precision in data
Variation in water flows, levels, quality
Limitations to model formulation
Lack of precision in descriptions and models
‘States’ in the physical world
The condition of buried infrastructure
Lack of precision in observations
Human responses (eg reaction times)
Likely human behaviour
Unclear understanding of preferences and values

Applying concepts of risk assessment and management to water systems
Applications to water systems
n General conceptual models and their application to:
q Water supply systems
q Flood risk management
n Related issues:
q Risk based decision making
q Sustainability
Conceptual model of risk creation- the risk triangle
-Event frequency
-Exposure to hazards created
-Vulnerability to hazard’s effects
Conceptual model of risk
Causes: natural or man-made
State depends on:
• preparedness
• physical condition
• exposure to drivers
• vulnerability to hazards
Impacts: loss, damage and disruption
Response:
• control drivers
• modify state
• mitigate impacts
Conceptual model of risk propagation:
Sources–Pathways–Receptors’ model

Sources of hazards find pathways to receptors (which through their exposure and vulnerability to hazards are changed). Risks arise from unacceptable changes in receptors.
System and feedback
Water systems are inherently dynamic:
n Positive feed-back occurs when, say (at a DSIR scale), consumers reduce demand for water in the face of a water shortage to help restore the balance between supply and demand
n Negative feed-back occurs when, say (at a SPR scale), overtopping of a flood embankment causes erosion of the embankment leading to embankment failure and more flooding
Implications are:
n Feed-back loops need to be identified and understood
n Can provide opportunities for good risk management
n Limits the application of linear sequential models
n Require systems models
Drivers-state-impacts-response system for water supply
Drivers: environment, weather & climate, social economic, attitude
State depends on:
• available supplies
• water quality
• asset condition
• operational constraints
• vulnerability & flexibility
Impacts: disruption, loss, damage, change in attitude
Responses – typically focus on
Safety, reliability, and efficiency:
• control drivers (eg reduce demand)
• modify state (eg increase supply,
More flexible operations)
• mitigate impacts (eg contingency measures)

Examples of risks that may need to be managed
Impacts
People
Environment
Economy
Disruption
Lack of continuity of water supply
Distortion of a natural flow regime
Rescheduling use
Loss
Loss of security of water supply
Loss of environmental minimum flows
Loss of output (agricultural or industrial)
Damage
Damage to public confidence
Damage to sensitive habitats
Damage to consumer confidence
Changes in attitude
Rising public expectations
Attitudes to the environment
Customer preferences
Examples of measures of risks
Impacts
People
Environment
Economy
Disruption &
loss
Frequency, duration, numbers affected?
Frequency, duration, systems and numbers affected?
Frequency, duration, cost of rescheduling use, output lost?
Damage
Frequency, degree of damage to public confidence?
Frequency, duration, timing, degree of environmental damage?
Frequency, degree of damage to consumer confidence?
Changes in attitude
Degree of change in public expectations, where, how prevalent?
Degree of change in attitudes to environmental systems, where, how prevalent?
Degree of change in customer preferences, where, how prevalent?
Drivers, state, impacts, response model for a flood risk management system
Drivers: environment, climate, socio-economics, laws and directives, politics
State depends on:
• flood producing processes
• existing flood defences
• available resources
• inherent robustness & resilience

Impacts
Flooding, damage, loss or injury, disruption
Responses – typically focus on equity, integration, and sustainability:
• control drivers (eg manage flood regime and public expectation)
• modify state (eg increase security of flood defence systems,
Integrate management of flooding, ensure good governance)
• mitigate impacts (eg emergency measures, flood relief)
Examples of risks that need to be managed
Impacts
People
Environment
Economy
Flooding
Exposure to physical hazards
Exposure to flooding
Constraint to economic opportunity
Loss
Loss of life and possessions
Loss of environmental systems
Loss of infrastructure; economic output; and value
Damage
Injury, damage to public health
Damage to sensitive habitats
Damage to infrastructure
Disruption
Loss of sense of well-being and security

Disruption of activities, operations and services

Risk based decision making
n First consider any legal targets or agreed requirements for risk control levels
n Compare cost of risk reduction with benefits gained – a ‘utility’ criterion
n Evaluate level of risk against ‘equity’ criteria –what is a fair distribution of risk?
n Consider ‘political’ criteria – these tend to be driven by people’s attitudes and expectations
Examples of risk related evaluation of criteria
Impacts
People
Environment
Economy
Disruption &
loss of water supply
Customer level of service targets
Environmental targets or minimum needs
Customer level of service targets and security of supply targets
Damage to consumer confidence
Desired degree of public confidence
Significance and value of habitats affected, extent of damage, resilience
Desired degree of consumer confidence
Changes in public attitudes
Willingness to pay, social and political preferences
What is a sustainable attitude to, and set of values regarding the environment?
Customer satisfaction
Impacts
People
Environment
Economy
Incidence of flooding
Vulnerability of population affected by flooding
Significance of designated habitats and areas of environmental value
Value of lost opportunity
Loss from floods
Unacceptable levels of losses compared with cost of risk reduction
‘Expected’ loss of environmental systems compared with cost of risk reduction
‘Expected’ loss of output (agricultural or industrial) compared with cost of risk reduction
Damage from floods
Unacceptable levels of damages and poor health
‘Expected’ damage to sensitive habitats compared with cost of risk reduction
‘Expected‘ damage to infrastructure compared with cost of risk reduction
Disruption due to flooding
Unacceptable level of disruption and loss of sense of security

Extent to which activities, operations and services could be disrupted

Three related challenges
Risk analysis is often used to support decisions:
n made in the face of complexity
n made in the face of uncertainty
n that seek sustainable solutions

… this requires the integration of risk analysis with techniques to aid decision making!
Decisions in the face of complexity
n Understand the systems involved – human (political, social, economic, technical) and environmental (climatic, physical, ecological, etc), their boundaries, and their interactions
n Understand the basis of the analysis in each of these areas – these can be highly specialised
n Involve stakeholders in the decision making process
n Decisions often involve multiple (sometimes conflicting) objectives and criteria – these require tradeoffs to be explored and resolved
n Decisions often involve different value systems – these need to be identified and reconciled
n The basis of the final decisions need to be clear and auditable
Decision in the face of uncertainty
n Consider sources of uncertainty and their implications – will we ever reduce fuzziness or eliminate random effects?
n Determine where and how uncertainty could be reduced – it may be worth postponing a decision
n Consider the implications of making the wrong decision – is it worth the gamble?
n Consider applying the precautionary principle – avoiding a direct gamble, but in itself a gamble!
n Try to identify choices that are adaptive, flexible, and resilient – as a ‘hedge’ against uncertainty

Sustainability
n Balance social, environmental, and economic factors – recognising that each has different units of value
n Work within rather than against natural systems – to reduce exposure to hazards and unforeseen change
n Recognise the dynamics of systems and interactions between systems – look out for negative feed-back loops!
n Recognise the indeterminate aspects of natural systems and human behaviour

… look for solutions that are adaptive, flexible, robust and resilient!
Why analyse risks
To assess, identify, and to understand better:
n Sources of risk
n The extent of risk exposure
n The degree of vulnerability
n The range of consequences
n Levels of risk

…all of which we can then evaluate against risk acceptance criteria in order to make decisions about how best to manage risks
Why do we manage risks
To control risks to levels that are acceptable to us and/or to others regarding:
n Safety, health, and well being
n Security (physical and material)
n Performance, efficiency, service
n Reliability, effectiveness
n Awareness, understanding
The risk assessment and management process
1) Identify hazards and sources of risk
2) Assess frequency of occurrence
3) Assess consequences (which depend on exposure and vulnerability)
4) Estimate levels of risk and uncertainty
5) Compare levels against acceptance criteria
6) Evaluate implications
7) Decide how best to respond
8) Take actions to manage risk