Climate change: Double-edged sword for African trade and development

Abstract

African governments face increasing pressure from major export destinations, primarily former colonial and slave-owning countries, to be climate change compliant. This will certainly be on display at the upcoming December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which will seek to strengthen climate change rules agreed on in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and adopt new protocols on global climate change regulation. Climate change is a double-edged sword: on one side it is hitting Africa's agricultural sector with increased droughts, floods, extreme frost and wildfires; and on the other, African governments are being forced to respond to stringent regulatory regimes imposed by international export destinations. Currently, the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from the highly industrialised nations – the North – is estimated to be four times that of Africa and the rest of the developing world. Twin research questions were investigated in this article: (1) to what extent does climate change impact on African trade and development, and (2) how can African governments stay on a path of sustained trade and development in this era of climate change? The article argues that Africa's survival in these times of climate change compliance rests on a shift to greater intra-African trade, as individual nations move towards cleaner and more organic technologies to become full-fledged partners in the international climate change regulatory regime.     

Collective Action and Citizen Responses to Global Warming

This paper expands the relevance of the collective interest model of mass political action to explain collective-action behavior in the context of global warming and climate change. The analysis is an attempt to answer Ostrom’s call for a behavioral model of collective action that can be generalized beyond political protest to other collective-action problems. We elaborate, specify, and empirically test a collective interest model approach to citizen policy support, environmental political participation, and environmental behavior related to the issue of global warming. Key elements of the collective interest model—perceived risk, personal efficacy, and environmental values—are found to be directly, and positively, related to support of government policies and personal behaviors that affect global warming. We also discuss the links between the collective interest model and other important approaches to political behavior.

How Serious is the Global Warming Threat?

Despite the media’s and politicians’ insistence that the science of global warming is “settled”, there are good reasons to distrust climate model projections of future global warming. While the supposed scientific consensus is that mankind is very likely to blame for recent global warmth, this is mostly a statement of faith made from a position of relative ignorance about natural variability in the climate system. Since we do not understand what causes decadal- to century-scale natural climate variability, it has simply been assumed to either not exist, or to be relatively small. But even if predictions of catastrophic warming are accurate, the worldwide demand for energy is so large that there is little mankind can do without radically new energy technologies. Since it is only the wealthy countries of the world that can afford the R&D efforts to develop those technologies, punishing the use of fossil fuels, and the resulting negative impact on economies, might well delay the development of cost effective carbon-free energy sources that so many people are now calling for.

企业国际化的全球商务系统浅探

全球商务系统(GBS)要求企业在全球环境下确定公司的全球战略,结合公司组织结构,设计自身的管理与商务过程,最终建立适宜的技术平台。这一过程的关键是在成本收益核算的基础上析出核心商务处理及核心处理系统,最后选择适合的商务系统建设。     

新兴国家参与全球治理的成就与挑战——兼论中国的对策

进入21世纪以来,新兴国家的崛起对西方国家主导的全球治理体系产生重要影响。通过对全球治理的积极参与,新兴国家为国际社会提供了新的合作机制雏形和多样化的经济发展模式,提升了自身在国际事务中的话语权。但新兴国家在参与全球治理方面仍面临一系列现实挑战：国际格局尚未改变,受制于现有大国;新兴国家间差异大,磋商机制效力不足;各国经济存在短板,制约着其治理作用的发挥。作为新兴国家群体的一员,中国在参与全球治理进程中,应坚持发展中国家定位,以全球经济治理为主攻方向,注重新兴国家内部合作,并与西方传统大国积极协调,构建合理、公正、有效的全球治理体系。     

Is Politics Behind Trade? The Impact of International Trends and Diplomatic Action on Brazil's Exports during Globalisation

Although it is well known that domestic and international factors converge to affect a nation's foreign policy orientation and trade, their actual weights vary. Brazil's situation during globalisation sheds light on this issue. Through statistical and qualitative analysis, this article shows how structural factors, rather than diplomatic action, influenced the direction of Brazil's exports as the country became more integrated into the world economy. It was only under Cardoso's presidency that trade had an impact on bilateral diplomacy. The findings contradict conventional wisdom, which emphasises the state's role in driving Brazilian integration into the global economy.     

全球环境治理“领导者”的蜕变:加拿大的案例

加拿大长期以来曾是西方发达国家中积极领导全球环境治理的典范,一度也是全球气候治理的积极参与者,但是近年来却俨然蜕变为气候谈判中的"拖后腿者"。发生这种转变的原因究竟是什么?本文通过国际和国内、政治与经济多个层面的分析发现,除了美国因素以外,加拿大国内的经济形势变化和政治体制是导致其战略变化的主要原因。20世纪90年代以来,油砂大规模开发和原油出口(特别是对美国的市场依赖),导致加拿大在气候变化问题上处于比较劣势;而相关利益集团的游说,正好与加拿大松散的联邦制等制度因素相结合,导致了加拿大气候政策的转向。从这个层面上看,经济利益的变化和政治决策制度特征共同成为决定国家气候或环境战略的主要因素。在某种程度上,这一案例也反驳了发达民主国家因其制度因素必然成为全球环境保护积极支持者的命题。     

Corporate power,US drug enforcement and the repression of indigenous peoples in Latin America

Abstract

The question that motivates this article is: what are the mechanisms through which the prosecution of the drug war in Latin America lead to human rights repression? In answering this question, I theorise that drug enforcement is a coalition of actors that facilitates domestic and international consensus around prohibition as a mechanism for corporate expansion. Drug war infrastructure financing is likely to facilitate the expansion of corporate investments by resource-seeking industries that require greater land use, which encroaches on the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples. And, in response to indigenous resistance to corporate appropriation of ancestral lands, resource-seeking transnational corporations will collude with private security firms and paramilitary organisations to repress and eliminate indigenous resistance. In the process of accumulating capital in Latin America, transnational corporations, domestic security, and paramilitary organizations are the drug enforcement coalition’s mediators of terror.     

全球恐怖组织合作特征分析——基于社会网络分析的视角

运用社会网络分析方法,从整体结构、"小团体"、核心节点以及时间演化四个方面分析全球恐怖组织合作网络的结构特征,可以发现:合作已然成为恐怖组织间的发展趋势;合作网络具有无标度网络特征;网络内部派系分化明显;随着时间推移,网络规模不断扩大,整体联系降低,但节点的聚集程度上升。在制定打击恐怖主义措施时,应注意发动信息战,破坏恐怖组织间的合作;打击合作网络的集散节点,抑制网络的快速发展;分化瓦解合作网络,形成小规模的"派系网络";依据打击合作网络的性能要求,选取合作网络的特征节点作为打击目标。     

Purposefully Triggering Unintended Consequences: the European Commission and the Uncertain Future of the EU-ACP Partnership

ABSTRACT

The EU’s proposal to renew the EU-ACP Agreement in spite of a number of signals pointing in the opposite direction is, inter alia, the unintended consequence of independent decisions taken in three different policy areas (trade, environment, and foreign and security affairs). The common unintended consequence that the three decisions shared would not have materialised if the European Commission had not purposefully triggered it to justify its vision of future EU-ACP relations. These findings challenge the prevailing and superficial usage of the notion of the unintended as a synonym for unanticipated and undesirable, and demonstrate that unintended consequences do not necessarily presuppose lack of anticipation, but may well be the result of calculation by policymakers.