This is the way to kindle, not to quench

Unfortunately, one way to assess the political importance of blogging around the world is through the growing number of blogger arrests. Since 2003, 64 citizens unaffiliated with news organizations have been arrested for their blogging activities.

For the overwhelming majority of us, writing a blog is a hobby. For a brave few it is a more serious occupation or calling with a higher personal cost. But blogging will continue to grow (look at the WordPress figures for example), affect us (see one view in “Net Libertarianism” in the TLS), and bloggers will keep the pressure on rogue regimes and defend the freedom of expression everywhere.

See the full story from the World Information Access Project and download the 2008 WIA Report here.

“This is the way to kindle, not to quench” [COR III, i]

Spot-the-economist

Spot the economist – purity (RHS) v efficacy (LHS) … ?

Purity

Football environment

Euro 2008 kicks off this weekend and promises some intriguing group stage encounters (not least Holland v. Italy, Holland v. France, France v. Italy, Spain v. Russia, Czech Republic v. Portugal, and Germany v. Croatia). And the games can only get better in the following knock-out stages. Sometimes it is argued that this competition is stronger than the World Cup, insofar as the weather tends to be kinder both on players and pitches, and there are fewer weaker teams. In the betting, Italy, the current World Cup holders, are rated behind Germany and Spain, but this a competition that has a habit of producing unexpected winners – for example the Czechs (1976), Denmark (1992) and Greece – the current Cup holders – (2004). Part of me is backing Spain, part takes refuge in Eduardo Galeano’s sentiments (post) that it is enough to enjoy the game.

The reason that I’m cheering on the Spanish is, of course, that none of the British representatives have made it to the Euro 2008 finals, in the year in which two English teams contested the UEFA Champions League final and Rangers reached the UEFA Cup Final, and when 13% of the players taking part in Euro 2008 practice their trade in the Premiership. Of the 16 nations competing, only Italy & Russia do not have at least one current Premiership player in their squads. The globalisation of professional football is largely the consequence of the EU’s regulations on the free movement of labour: no amount of posturing by UEFA on the numbers of home players per team is going to be successful. Ironically in the Champions League final both Chelsea and Manchester Utd fulfilled Blatter’s ’six-plus-five’ principle (which would limit a team’s “foreign” players to five).

The number of home-based players in each nation’s squads is shown the graph, and is contrasted with the number of all players in each country’s domestic leagues: 96% of Russia’s squad play in their domestic clubs (and 8% of all the players in the tournament play in Russia), whereas only one Croatian plays in Croatia (and no one else does). Unsurprisingly the big football nations – Germany, Italy, France & Spain – have a high percentage of domestically-based squad members as well as sharing a large proportion of foreign players in their respective leagues [Data source: BBC].

Will this make any difference to their chances of success? The second graph contrasts the current odds (from William Hill: 4-1 Germany; 11-2 Spain; 7-1 Italy, Portugal; 15-2 France; 12-1 Croatia, Holland; 16-1 Czech Republic; 22-1 Greece; 25-1 Switzerland; 28-1 Russia, Sweden; 40-1 Romania, Turkey; 50-1 Poland; 100-1 Austria) with the number of players in the finals who play in each nation’s leagues (thereby assuming that this is an indicator of performance). The relationship looks quite close – without getting drawn into any statistical tests – but the actual results are likely to depend upon the players’ form and the quality of management. Let us remember that during qualifying England made the fundamental error of promoting the #2: see post No Easy Matches.

The Premiership is probably the most international league in the world (in terms not only of players, but also sponsorship, worldwide tv coverage), and yet the overwhelming majority of the England team would most likely be drawn from the top four clubs (less if Arsenal is one of these). The question then – accepting the positive impacts of globalisation on British football – is how sustainable is the modern game given the clubs’ level of indebtedness and cost structures, and arguably the increasing inequalities between clubs, and the lower divisions. The issues is not about players’ nationalities, but rather the linkages between the advantages of globalisation and ensuring that domestic football can generate new talent and decent national teams (i.e the financing of domestic football, benefit-sharing arrangements and the “rules of the game” in the widest sense). Perhaps this is where the Germans, Italians, Spanish & French are doing better?

But there is a lesson here for the World Environment Day too: strengthening local capacities is the key to help countries lever to their advantage the benefits from globalisation. Both the agricultural and forestry sectors in developing countries have been relatively neglected by multilateral and bilateral donors. The success of efforts to create new carbon markets to support avoided deforestation will depend upon the quality of local institutions and knowledge to match initiatives and funding to tackle the drivers of deforestation whilst supporting farming systems. Implementing such environmental service programmes – and wider reforms needed to decarbonise the world’s economy – will be by necessity a step-by-step experimental process based on enduring partnerships, but one that has hardly begun:

Juan Bautista Alberdi, an Argentine constitutionalist and liberal, noted in 1837 that “Nations, like men, do not have wings; they make their journeys on foot, step by step.” Latin America, long susceptible to the utopian mirages of revolutionaries and caudillos and still not immune to them, has struggled to absorb this truth. But … durable mass democracies have emerged across the region…[Brazil's] leadership in nonfossil fuels and the unparalleled biodiversity of its Amazon rain forest make it a natural leader in the 21st-century struggle with global warming. (NYT)

UPDATE: 25 June

The first graph shows the four semi-finalists came from the top-5 rated nations (which is better than the match makers managed). I’m sure that Eduardo Galeano enjoyed the romance of the plucky and skillful Turkish performance, as well as Richard William’s sympathetic sport writing – here

we haven’t had rain, we’ve had too much rain

As Benjamin Zephaniah wrote: ‘A few years ago if u said yu were Green / Yu were really seen as Red’ [Me green poem, in City Psalms, Bloodaxe Books, 1992].

Now the British Council has published “Feeling the Pressure. Poetry and science of climate change”, a short anthology of new poems (downloadable, see below), described as a “weather report, a British snapshot of intellectual and emotional reaction to things as they stand at the end of 2007:

It’s noticeable how many of the poets have adopted a rather oblique approach, almost seeming to shy away from direct statements about the predicament we face. Is that a lack of confidence in the facts? A loss of nerve? I don’t think so. It is more a refusal to jump on the bandwagon of self-satisfaction like those corporations preening themselves on account of their ever so slight ‘green’ credentials. There are no token gestures among these poems. The poets are more honest than that; they do not claim to have solutions or even some special understanding. What is striking throughout all the contributions, however, is the way in which the science of climate change has clearly entered the language and permeated the way we think [Paul Munden].

The contributions are really good, with the poems grouped in 5 sections, each introduced by short prose contributions by scientists. My own favourite poem is the editor’s “Mitigation”.

Now hopefully the British Council will assist a similar publication from scientists and poets in the those countries that have already suffered from, or will be most likely to be disproportionately affected by, climate change.

Feeling the Pressure. Poetry and science of climate change. Edited by Paul Munden. British Council, 2008. www.britishcouncil.org/switzerland-climate-change-anthology.htm

Just how much did you pay for that forest?

Johan Eliasch — the sports gear tycoon, ex-Conservative Party deputy treasurer, Gordon Brown’s deforestation adviser and founder of the Cool Earth, which runs a scheme to buy rainforests, sponsored in turn by donations — is back in the news (although oddly not in the UK press).

Le Monde reports that the new Environment Minister, Carlos Minc (an environmentalist, and founder of the Green Party), who replaced Marina Silva, has launched an enquiry into the actions of Cool Earth.

Les services brésiliens de renseignement ont décidé de lancer une enquête sur un homme d’affaires suédois, Johan Eliasch, qui aurait mis l’Amazonie à prix pour 50 milliards de dollars, rapporte le journal O Globo de lundi.

“M. Eliasch a suggéré en 2006 et en 2007 à des hommes d’affaires d’acheter des parcelles de terre en Amazonie, affirmant qu’il faudrait ’seulement’ 50 milliards de dollars pour acquérir toute la forêt amazonienne”, a rapporté le quotidien carioca, citant l’Agence brésilienne de renseignement (Abin).

L’Abin a transmis ses informations au ministère de la Justice et à la Police Fédérale.

Le nouveau ministre brésilien de l’Environnement, Carlos Minc, s’est dit “choqué” par la nouvelle et a d’ores et déjà affirmé qu’il ordonnerait l’ouverture d’une enquête dès qu’il prendra officiellement ses fonctions, mardi.

D’après le journal brésilien, Cool Earth fait déjà l’objet d’une enquête pour l’achat présumé de 160.000 hectares dans l’Etat amazonien du Mato Grosso, dans le centre-ouest du pays.

Les agents brésiliens ont fait le rapprochement entre ces achats de terres et des déclarations récentes d’hommes politiques britanniques sur la nécessité de protéger l’Amazonie

“Les Anglais ont une fois de plus privilégié la préservation de l’environnement au détriment de la souveraineté nationale. Ils partent du principe que des pays comme le Brésil ne sont pas capables de protéger leurs forêts”, ont souligné les services brésiliens de renseignement dans leur rapport sur Cool Earth.

Deforestation trends

Looking at the Top Search enquiries that bring people to these blog pages “deforestation” & “deforestation trends” or “data” are topics that score highly (although admittedly the blog receives few search enquiries…). I’m more interested myself in the drivers of deforestation, and seeking policy solutions and, as appropriate, those economic instruments that might change the incentives to clear forests or make their management more viable, whether by local communities or companies. But nonetheless here are the results of my own search for more information on deforestation:

First stop, the Beeb on the trends in the Amazon: clear and concise data, and good graphics too. This is an exemplary example of how to get the data and arguments across.

Next: FAO Forestry “Facts and Figures” which is not the most imaginative site but it gives an overview of trends and you can follow the source (the FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005), which can be downloaded – - and includes the global spreadsheet, with data on a country basis, which is really useful if you need to analyse the data yourself:

MONGABAY.COM provide the same data, but presented more attractively, plus lots of other information and news updates. For example, the tropical deforestation data here.

CIFOR host a Forest Spatial Information Catalog (sic)  a “one-stop access to spatial publications, maps and other documents that will simplify the ability of all levels of visitors to find forestry related data“, which does seem comprehensive; however, the site does not appear to have been updated recently, and I cannot get the maps to open. Much of the data is sourced from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

WWF have lots of in-depth information on different forest ecosystems, for example here on tropical & subtropical moist forests, with downloadable images and maps (see for example, below), and detailed descriptions of each “ecoregions” (within which there are further sources to explore).

Remember that deforestation is very much open to interpretation, see for example my earlier post.

Cigarettes, coffee and strong drink

The market for the printed book is now global; the opportunities for the digital book are almost unimaginable. To be a writer in the English language today is to be one of the luckiest people alive.

…it remains the paradox of the world wide web and the global economy that, while this has been the decade in which millions have found a voice through the internet, only a minority has discovered an audience. Self-expression has been democratised, but books and writers still face that age-old struggle to achieve a readership. How they do that remains a mystery, but in the alchemy of literary success, ‘word of mouth’ remains essential.

Robert McCrum the literary editor of “The Observer” makes some interesting comments on the rapid changes that the world of books has experienced in the transitional decade bridging the 20th to the 21st century. And as an occasional blog writer both these quotes strike close to home! The revolution in book selling – the emergence of global book markets (Amazon) and new technologies (digitization) – will assuredly, as he says, result in an ‘iPod moment’.

McCrum sees the positive developments (in rich countries, and in particular the UK): that the printed book is more than holding its own, in part because of the arrival of new writers (”Zadie Smith generation” – for example, Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali, & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) who are being strongly marketed on a global scale, and in part because of the emergence of on-line book selling (Amazon started in 1995), which translates into fast delivery to book readers, better pricing, a new lease of life to back catalogues, and developing new book markets. Its a customer focus but with corporate clout – best exemplified by Harry Potter, a world-wide best seller. The rise of book festivals and repackaging of literary prizes reveals how consumerism and celebrity have merged, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘the reading public’. There has been a proliferation of book blogs and book reviews, and an increase in sales of magazines such as  The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, & The Spectator; but whether this counteracts the tendency to narrow choice as publishers seek ‘winning’ talent rather than nurturing new authors remains to be seen. Likewise, it is difficult to balance the closure of small local independent bookshops with the rise of book sales in supermarkets, railway stations, & airports. Free e-book downloads have become ubiquitous for out-of copyright books (such as provided by Project Gutenberg & The DailyLit). Books are also going green: the average paperback liberates 3kg of CO2 in its manufacture; which of course can be offset by financing tree planting (at eco-libris). Increasing books are printed on certified paper; J.K. Rowlings started with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (although rumour has it that the publisher may have jumped the gun …).

Where do these changes and the uncertainty that surrounds some of them leave book publishing, writers and readers in Africa? The relative lack of disposable income remains the main constraint for book buyers and sellers to enter local let alone global book markets. When we lived in Accra, Ghana, there were only a couple of dedicated bookshops, and a good second-hand bookshop in Osu, plus the university bookshop at Legon. It is much worse if you are in Monrovia, Liberia. Francophone West and Central Africa have benefited at least in the past from large expatriate populations (Abidjan was great for books in the mid-1980s).

Nigerian greats

Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka are great Nigerian writers. They are contemporaries whose writings have followed broadly parallel paths – initially in the footsteps of Cyprian Ekwensi & Amos Tutuola – drawing upon Igbo (Achebe) and Yoruba (Soyinka) oral traditional and folklore, then reflecting on the impact of European colonialism (in particular for Achebe a focus on Christianity) on African societies and institutions, and more recently on post-Independence experiences, not least the insidious effects of corruption and self-appointed and dictatorial Presidents-for-Life on national development.

Both encouraged new writers and literary spaces: Achebe was the founder & editor of the literary magazine Okike, Soyinka edited Transistion magazine. The critical and commercial success of Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” (according to Wikipedia it is the most widely-read novel in modern African literature) effectively subsidised the Heinemann African Writers Series for many years.

Both have also been activists; their initiation was the Biafran war: Achebe as a supporter of and fund-raiser for succession, Soyinka as a peace-broker. Achebe forsook fiction for some 20 years following the civil war; Soyinka was imprisoned by the federalists for almost two years having been betrayed by (then) General Obasanjo at the onset of the war. Both made important contributions by reframing the political question about disappointing realities and failings of post-independence nation states. The question being not: can we afford democracy? Rather: how much can we afford not to develop democratic institutions, what is the cost in peoples’ livelihoods? Their activism, academic and literary lives and achievements are perhaps without parallel on the continent.

Admittedly, neither wrote directly about forests. But these icons of African literature juxtaposed rural and urban life, past and present, and drew upon the imagery of forests and the bush in their early work. In Achebe’s breakthrough novel “Things Fall Apart” the doomed protagonist Okonkwo clears the bush to make yam farms, collects medicinal plants from the forest to cure his daughter Ezinma, and acts in a group of masked spirit whose leader is “Evil Forest” in a ceremony to resolve a family dispute. Achebe followed “Things Fall Apart” with “No Longer At Ease” (1960), “Arrow of God” (1964) and “A Man of the People” (1966), and lastly with the equally acclaimed “Anthills of the Savannah” in 1987. Similarly, Soyinka’s play “A Dance of The Forest” (which was the winner of a contest for the official independence day play in 1960) features the “Forest Head” a godlike figure, and is somewhat fatalistic –  the present being depicted as no better than the colonialist past. The play is unsparing in its criticism of the nefarious nature of post-colonial Nigerian politics, and was unsurprisingly unpopular with the emerging political elite.

Soyinka’s “A Play of Giants” (1984) an entertaining but casual satire on African despots and their sycophants and apologists, contrasts with Achebe’s “The Trouble with Nigeria” also published in 1984 (”The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership“); and with Soyinka’s later work “Open Sore of a Continent” (1996) — a critique of the continuing crisis of Nigeria personified by the abject Abacha dictatorship, whose epilogue deals with murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 — for which Soyinka was accused of treason by the regime (earlier post on Ken Saro-Wiwa here).

Achebe’s polemic on Conrad’s racism may have in part cost him the Nobel prize for literature (but at least he is in good company), which was still deservedly awarded in 1986 to Soyinka, the first African winner -  later followed by Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer & J.M.Coetzee.

Which of these two giants is your favourite can perhaps only be decided by the beer test.

African committments

The Centre for Global Development (CGD) have published their Commitment to Development Index for Africa, which looks beyond development assistance funding to gauge rich countries’ engagement with Africa.  The summary chart below is based on the average  of country scoring (0-10) across seven policy areas.

The index builds on the CGD’s global index – - indeed the investment, environment and technology policy areas are the same, which to some extent undermines their usefulness in the CDI for Africa. Other quibbles might include, inter alia, the lack of linkage between the policies and actual growth and/or poverty reduction, (i.e. what has been the impact of investment policies?), the narrowness of the environmental indicators (forestry is reduced to tropical timber imports; the US scores 0 for not signing up to Kyoto, but gets no credit for implementing the Clean Air Act), the UK scores well for intervening in Sierra Leone, but does not appear to lose much for supplying arms and munitions to the continent.

Such indices are inherently subjective, but the CGD is exemplary in providing both the technical briefs which describe the methodologies used to derive the scores, and a spreadsheet file containing the data, calculations and data sources.

The results show the disparities in rich countries’ committment to development in Africa – in spite of signing up to initiatives such as the millennium development goals and debt cancellation. Even top-placed Sweden scores less than average (5) in four policy areas. It would be interesting in future editions to include emerging economies such as China, India, & Brazil in the index to measure the quantity and quality of their aid, trade agreements and other support to the continent.

UPDATE: 21 June

British arms export sales — a record £10bn — amount to a third of all worldwide export orders for military equipment.

Survival lessons – Part 1

Existence well what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future, The present is well out of hand.

Joy Division, “Heart and Soul” (1980).

As the fallout from the subprime crisis continues, the credit losses and write downs to date of London’s big banks have been neatly compiled by Here is the City (and shown above in US$bn). On a per employee basis the three biggest losers are the Mizuho Financial Group ($2,750,000 per employee), UBS ($1,681,818), & Citi ($1,363,333) respectively. Whether firms can survive given such a poor performance is a moot point.

The recently published Living Planet Index – a census of the animal kingdom, albeit based upon only 4,000 species – purports to show a dramatic and unprecedented loss in biodiversity in the period from 1970-2005 (The Independent): land species have declined by 25 per cent, marine life by 28 per cent, and freshwater species by 29 per cent.

Extinction has a dynamic like financial capitalism – it is part of an evolutionary struggle, in which life today has come at the cost of the death of almost everything that came before – and both species (literally) and bankers (figuratively) live and die seeking a balance or compromise between growth and stability.

Public concern about the fate of the planet suffers from overkill. Many who once cared about the environment now share a Voltairean sentiment that the easiest way out of the crisis might be to strangle the last panda with the guts of the last blue whale. However, today’s cataclysm is no different from many others… Few plants and animals live for long. The descendants of a very few, transformed by natural selection, make up the world today.

Steve Jones, “Almost Like a Whale. The Origin of Species Updated” (1999).

But whilst the world is basically full — new species will have to push out their predecessors — human action since the advent of industrial revolution has had a profound impact. [And sometimes we create unexpected niches for a wildlife renaissance - the Iron Curtain becomes a biological corridor or green belt across Europe]. We are essentially shoving many species into a situation whereby there are too few individuals to avoid utter extinction.

Governments are now intervening in financial markets – to protect the public from the banks’ excesses (and to save the banks themselves from the excesses of global financial markets). Regulation has proven insufficient (it tends to focus like generals on the last battles) and the rewards from financial globalisation of the past 5-10 years seem too slim given the costs: the challenge is to improve regulation, but its effectiveness will be will only be shown by the next financial cycle. The convalescence of the banks has begun, but the recovery from a slowdown in consumption and economic growth will take a while.

Biodiversity loss has also been asymmetric – and the policy response has been vapid. Can anything effective be done? Prince Charles has called for a fund of US$15bn a year to pay for a “global insurance policy” to halt deforestation. Such a global commitment would be a fillip: but getting the incentives right (plus concomitant transparency and accountability in carbon markets) for avoided deforestation is more of a challenge than finding the cash.