theglobaljournal.net: Latest activities of group #01

Design Can Change the World

2012-05-15T10:33:15Z

As a child, Yves Béhar dreamed of becoming a writer. Inspired by the battle scenes covering the Turkish carpets in his parents’ home and the French bestseller Papillon he devoured in his youth, Béhar’s wild imagination took on a life of its own. He concocted crazy stories that detailed his own “escapes” from prison and imagined the lives of the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash that took place when B.har was just five.

These stories of survival and risk had a level of adventure that was in stark contrast to Béhar’s childhood in Switzerland. His dual cultural upbringing by his Turkish father and German mother infused him, on the one hand, with the Swiss need for consistency, a strong work ethic, and attention to detail, and on the other hand, the poetry, warmth, and storytelling culture of Turkey.

Just by looking at the designs that Béhar and his team create at his San Francisco design firm, fuseproject, you can see imagination and Turko-German synergy at work. The Mission One motorcycle aims to visualize what it means to “ride the wind,” while while the Vue watch Béhar created for Issey Miyake is a whimsical piece that only allows the user to see the current hour, as the last hour (and the next) fade in and out of view. Just as the motorcycle is a metaphor for ultimate liberty, the watch is a statement on the meaning of time and the dislocation of past and future.

The world is a better place because Béhar renounced a decision to take the safe path, preferring the one that catapulted him around the world. If he hadn’t taken the leap of faith to pursue design and ended up at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, what is known to the world as the $100 laptop might not exist today. The idea was the brainchild of MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte, who, after traveling to a Cambodian village in 2002 and watching children play with laptops, thought: “What potential could be unleashed if every child in the world had access to a computer?” This thought led to the per Child initiative and the creation of the XO laptop, designed by Béhar. Many critics said that not only was a $100 laptop an impossible dream, but also questioned the priority of computers when many children didn’t have food or clean water. Design Continuum, the firm initially brought on to create the laptop, hit a wall. Then, in 2005, fuseproject came in and labored for two years to create what is today considered a resounding success. More than one million laptops have been distributed to children around the world, and a new, all-plastic tablet screen design, which is semi-flexible and extremely durable, is expected to be released this year. This third generation model transforms from horizontal book mode to portrait mode, and includes the added element of multitouch so that multiple children can use the same laptop at once.

Uruguay may have earned the prize for the most comprehensive rollout of the One Laptop per Child initiative in the world. The country’s Plan Ceibal is an education reform initiative with the goal of providing one computer for every student and teacher. Now that this goal has been accomplished at the primary school level, high schools are next in line to receive the computers. Uruguay’s example proves that a low-cost, highquality laptop for every child is indeed possible.

Béhar believes that for technology to take hold in society, children need to lead the way. “Adults have a hard time adapting to anything new,” said Béhar in a recent phone conversation with The Global Journal. “The reason why we are able to get kids a laptop that goes beyond the conventions of the technology products we use today is because kids have an unadulterated, open mind. Technology has taught adults all these bad habits and complicated ways. When you can remove the layers of complexity and can bring in elements of customization and uniqueness that allow kids to take part in its creation, kids become the greatest adopters of new ideas.”

His most recent effort at fusing education and design is evident in See Better to Learn Better, a free eyeglasses program conceived in partnership with the Mexican government. The goal of this program is to give away 300,000 glasses every year, ensuring that the 11 percent of kids in Mexico who can’t learn because they can’t see, and who are stigmatized because they wear glasses, are given a real chance at education. The frames of the glasses are made from an almost unbreakable plastic and the two-part design of the frames allows kids to choose their favorite colors and shapes.

“It really changes their world when children see you created something specifically for them and you thought about how it will fit into their lives functionally, emotionally, and aesthetically,” Béhar said. “Good design treats people well from an ergonomics standpoint, a usage standpoint, an environmental standpoint, and a health standpoint.”

One of Béhar’s greatest gifts is his ability to marry the world of luxury and privilege with that of low-cost design. He has traveled to countries with a culture of hand-me-downs and no technology community to speak of, in order to prove that high value can be delivered at any cost. While he has partnered with companies like high-end Bluetooth creator Aliph to create the best-selling Jawbone headset, and the venerable hippycrunchy footwear company Birkenstock, it is his collaborations like those with Negroponte and the Mexican government that have proven Béhar’s mantra: design should be both sustainable and attainable.

To read the full report, order a copy of The Global Journal.

The Spanish Solar Phenix

2011-12-23T18:09:48Z

From Rise to ruin, rising again.

Unlimited sunlight dazzles the eye, blurring the line of the horizon. The silhouettes of chimneys and their smoke hats tremble the waves of heat. In this high valley of Spain’s Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha, the town of Puertollano has long stimulated the imagination and continues to attract visionaries. It was here that Don Quixote (in spite of his faithful Sancho Panza) tilted at windmills. Indeed, there is some- thing strange about this place. First, its name: from “puerto” and “llano,” although this town has no port and is not in the middle of a plain but set in rather mountainous terrain. It’s not for nothing that Puertollano is also called “City of Two Lies.”

It is a small town in a region that was for centuries a no man’s land—located between Christian Spain in the north and the Moorish caliphate in the south. After the Reconquista, it was settled by people from the north at the encouragement of the Spanish crown, only to be devastated 100 years later by the Black Death that left only 13 survivors. How did Puertollano survive to become a center of coal mining and petrochemicals, then endure through the collapse of those industries to emerge, less than a decade, as an internationally recognized technology hub for renewable energy and, as of this year, home of the largest photovoltaic plant in the world? Paradox, indeed.

Amid the weeds, stand the once-proud brick chimneys where storks now nest. At the foot of the imposing conical mass of the largest piles of tailings are imposing redbrick buildings, pierced by high openings in their alcoves, that made up the Peñarroya thermal power plant and electric power station. Now under renovation, these buildings will soon house the city’s Congress Center.

The Puertollano landscape is also the story of petrochemicals. The strange silhouette of the Puertollano plants can be spotted from afar, lit by the flames that escape from their flares and the smoke veils that rise to merge with the occasionally accumulating black clouds. The other mill on the horizon is the Elcogas Thermal Power Station, whose permanent feature since 1996 is the emission of a column of steam resulting from coal gasification. Gone is the image of coal heaps, reminding us that though the new alternatives are not renewable energy, they are still clean energy.

Puertollano’s story really began in 1873, with the opening of the first coal mines. The size of the deposits attracted investors, mostly French. They established new mining companies, including the Peñarroya Mining and Metallurgical Company, a name that marked the memory of the mine. An industrial complex and its profusion of chimneys made its permanent appearance in the landscape of Puertollano. A railroad, a veritable groove in the heart of the city, was built to transport the coal; in turn, it also brought new immigrants to the mines. Some of these immigrants were French, sent by their company, and established in the French Colony district, but there were also Portuguese and Italian immigrants. Gradually, the worker presence grew and contributed to a population boom. Until 1975, the mining process had been largely housed underground, employing up to 2,000 Penarroya miners. The influx of a new labor force encouraged the Spanish company Encasur to introduce open pit mining at its new Emma Mine a huge black crater several hundred meters in diameter in the middle of the plain. In 1953, the petrochemical industry came to town. The business—albeit a latecomer—was booming and employed 6,000 people. It proved so dominant, in fact, that its resulting “monoculture” eventually became worrisome. Times changed again and, in 1992, the mine trains were replaced by the Spanish high-speed train, the Alta Velocidad Espanol (AVE), a long, white snake that silently connects Madrid to Seville and puts Puertollano less than an hour from the capital.

To read the full report, please order a copy of the magazine.

(Photos © Pascal Dolémieux)

A Tale of Two Cities

2011-04-15T07:57:07Z

There is no such thing as coincidence. Geneva and New York are the two world capitals of “Global Issue Players,” with members of this formidable tribe thick on the ground in both cities. And so, it is only logical that The Global Journal should have headquarters in both cities in order to cover the news concerning this growing global elite. Just as the Cold War created a heyday for press correspondents congregating in Western Europe and America, so does the current demand for global transparency in media give rise to the importance of both Geneva and New York.

The cities are natural twins—both are open cities in the best sense (as ports of entry and of call) and both promise refuge to the citizens of the world. Manhattan is quite literally the foot that fits the Lake LeÅLman shoe (take a map and have a look).

The truly dynamic link between these two cities are people, their views of the locations as varying as their own personalities. An Asian Diplomat in Geneva, passing an Australian on his way to Peshawar, would quote an African Diplomat: “Geneva is the kitchen for diplomatic menu served in New York”; a U.N. Blue Helmet peacekeeper may think of New York and Geneva simply as his two base camps; a geographer might notice the abundance of water surrounding each (always a good omen for a settlement) and draw lines between the Rhône and the Hudson, the East River and the Arve; a refugee might express her gratitude for the Geneva Convention; a soldier, his thanks for Henry Dunant’s fight to establish the Red Cross. Every GIP would recall the birth ninety years ago of a certain institution in Geneva in a French-style palace called the Hotel National, and a second birth in New York in 1949—that of the United Nations.

Geneva and New York are complementary in their differences. The former is graced with a calm that allows for reflection; the latter throbs with an energy that encourages voices to call out, bringing people together. At the heart of Europe,

Geneva’s population is half foreign-born; New York, at the proverbial heart of the Americas, is the very symbol of the cultural melting pot with over 200 languages and nationalities in its schools and upon its streets. Together, Geneva and New York embrace the whole world and open themselves to all.

Both cities are the creatures of extraordinary osmosis, products of the commitment of men and women who have been affected by world events and its thousand-and-one construction projects. Both are seemingly unlikely frontrunners in the quest for peace—who could expect this turn of events from the early, violent Swiss guards (mercenaries on the payroll of the kings of Europe) or the insolent American colonists? Every region in the world has its own claim to fame and to infamy and the paths that result from such histories, though varied, prove that each individual on our planet has a right to make sense of his own life and events. Waging peace often requires a much more bitterly fought and drawn-out war than we sometimes realize. May the other major capitals of the world rejoice in having these two headquarters of global negotiation, because the path to world harmony still largely lies ahead of us.

Today, Global Issue Players, with two privileged spots in which to meet and work, cover the world as members of local, regional, national, private, and public elites. GIPs inspire and drive the international organizations, the NGOs, the diplomatic corps, the multinationals, the institutes, and the universities. Attracting both young talent and those of experienced seniority, the ranks of the Global Issue Players continue to grow. They are the vanguard of global governance, building the future locally, brick by brick, and safeguarding the world of tomorrow. It is high time that the media took a closer look at them, their doubts, their certainties, their accomplishments, their questions, their limits, and their acts of courage. This is The Global Journal’s goal.

The Iceman Cometh

2011-04-12T10:36:54Z

Climatologist Jean Jouzel offers a cool assessment of climate change’s heated debate

by Marielle Court

Organized right-wing sceptics are fighting bare-knuckled the existence of climate change, and with their own scientific experts, hacked emails at Copenhagen’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting, and allegations against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it published unsubstantiated data that exaggerated the melting rate of the Himalayan glaciers, what can we expect for the future of the climate debate?

Now that tensions between the global warming believers and naysayers have subsided a bit, what are your views on the controversy surrounding climate change?

Even if things appear calm, if the actions of those who don’t believe in global warming are less visible, some people still think it is possible to build strategy while denying the research findings. No, I’m really not sure that the final deniers’ offensive is over. But we in the scientific community simply want to move ahead.

In this trench warfare, did science lose face with the general public?

The idea that scientists do not all agree can result in the population tuning out, imagining that there is no problem. It’s up to scientists to regain public confidence. Our role is to provide arguments that invalidate the arguments of the naysayers. We are doing this point by point.

Has the environment in general and climate change in particular suffered from being a passing fad?

Perhaps we lowered our guard too much. Not to mention that the opposition has often built a case on arguments devoid of any scientific basis but that have worked with the public. For example, when they say that long-term projections are impossible since we can’t even predict weather beyond a week, or when they point to a cold winter in a country to denounce global warming.

...

To read the full article buy the magazine.

The Spanish Solar Phoenix

2011-04-12T10:36:08Z

The El Pino district

From rise to ruin, rising again

Unlimited sunlight dazzles the eye, blurring the line of the horizon. The silhouettes of chimneys and their smoke hats tremble the waves of heat. In this high valley of Spain’s Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha, the town of Puertollano has long stimulated the imagination and continues to attract visionaries. It was here that Don Quixote (in spite of his faithful Sancho Panza) tilted at windmills. Indeed, there is something strange about this place. First, its name: from “puerto” and “llano,” although this town has no port and is not in the middle of a plain but set in rather mountainous terrain. It’s not for nothing that Puertollano is also called “City of Two Lies.”

It is a small town in a region that was for centuries a noman’s land—located between Christian Spain in the north and the Moorish caliphate in the south. After the Reconquista, it was settled by people from the north at the encouragement of the Spanish crown, only to be devastated 100 years later by the Black Death that left only 13 survivors. How did Puertollano survive to become a center of coal mining and petrochemicals, then endure through the collapse of those industries to emerge, less than a decade, as an internationally recognized technology hub for renewable energy and, as of this year, home of the largest photovoltaic plant in the world? Paradox, indeed.

View from Puertollano from the monument El Minero (The Miner)

A History Marked by Energy

Wedged between two mountains, Puertollano nestles in the pass between two valleys. The city would never have existed if it had not been synonymous with power, in both senses of the word. Its development over two centuries has been built on the exploitation of new energy sources. At the entrance to the city via the road from Madrid stands a metal tower once used for coal mining, a symbol of the past. A bit farther, on the top of a hill overlooking the city, a black silhouette stands guard: a bronze sculpture in neorealist style that was erected in 1983 through...

To read the full article buy the magazine.

Hijacking Microfinance

2011-04-12T10:36:00Z

How capitalist greed infiltrated a humanitarian motive

In recent years, the idea of giving small loans to poor people became the darling of the development world, hailed as the long elusive formula to propel even the most destitute into better lives. Actors like Natalie Portman and Michael Douglas lent their boldface names to the cause. Muhammad Yunus, the economist who pioneered the practice by creating Grameen Bank to lend small amounts to basket weavers in Bangladesh, won a Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2006. The idea even got its very own United Nations year in 2005.

But the phenomenon has grown so popular that some of its biggest proponents are now wringing their hands over the direction it has taken. Drawn by the prospect of hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more. “We created microcredit to fight the loan sharks; we didn’t create microcredit to encourage new loan sharks,” Yunus recently said at a gathering of financial officials at the United Nations. “Microcredit should be seen as an opportunity to help people get out of poverty in a business way, but not as an opportunity to make money out of poor people.”

The fracas over preserving the field’s saintly aura centers on the question of how much interest and profit is acceptable, and what constitutes exploitation. The noisy interest rate fight has even attracted Congressional scrutiny, with the House Financial Services Committee holding hearings this year focused in part on whether some microcredit institutions are scamming the poor.

Rates vary widely across the globe, but the ones that draw the most concern tend to occur in countries like Nigeria and Mexico, where the demand for small loans from a large population cannot be met by existing lenders. Unlike virtually every Web page trumpeting the accomplishments of microcredit institutions around the world, the page for Te Creemos, a Mexican lender, lacks even one testimonial from a thriving customer—no beaming woman earning her first income by growing a soap business out of her kitchen, for example. Te Creemos has some of the highest interest rates and fees in the world of microfinance, analysts say, a whopping 125 percent average annual rate.

The average in Mexico itself is around 70 percent, compared with a global average of about 37 percent in interest and fees, analysts say. Mexican microfinance institutions charge such high rates simply because they can get away with it, said Emmanuelle Javoy, the managing director of Planet Rating, an independent Paris-based firm that evaluates microlenders.

...

To read the full article buy the magazine.

Earthly Powers

2011-04-12T10:35:46Z

Todd Stern, the United States climate envoy, in charge of brokering an international deal on climate, photographed at the State Department, Washington. D.C.

The United States Major Economies Forum

by Joe Conason

When the world’s leaders left Copenhagen under a cloud of disappointment last December, the prospect of an unprecedented planetary disaster loomed on history’s horizon. How could the threat of rising temperatures be averted if, as many environmentalists had declared, the fifteenth conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) represented the last best chance to save the earth? Bitter debate between advanced and developing countries again delayed vital progress. Once more, the United Nations proved defective as an institution for resolving the most pressing disputes among nations. Under the roles governing the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties or COP15, no binding agreement could be approved unless every member agreed—and every member would never agree on anything that truly needed to be done.

Humanity was trapped in a carbon cul-de-sac. Several months before that spectacle unfolded, however, Barack Obama and his peers had quietly set forth on a parallel path toward a sustainable future. Without abandoning the U.N. process, the American president had brought together leaders of 17 major industrial and developing countries in March 2009 to discuss practical means for addressing climate change with technology and money. Arrayed around the same table were representatives of the most prolific current sources of greenhouse gas, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with representatives of those that will soon reach or surpass that level, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa (the E.U. and Denmark were als invited). Aiming for both candid dialogue and concrete solutions, the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), as the group is formally known, was unable to save the Copenhagen summit. But it has become far more important in the wake of that debacle.

...

To read the full article, buy the magazine.

Beyond Fissable and Fossil

2011-04-12T10:35:39Z

Helène Pelosse Interim Director-General, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

An interview on the birth of a new agency

On June 8, 2010, one year after HeÅLle`ne Pelosse took the job as Interim Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the new organization received the 25th ratification of its statute. “IRENA’s ratification truly is a record breaker—it is the fastest ever witnessed for such a process,” says Pelosse. The speed, she says, indicates the seriousness of the need for new energy solutions. A total of 144 countries and the European Union have already signed IRENA’s mandate. A French citizen born in Canada, Pelosse has spent the past year setting up the new agency in Abu Dhabi. She has extensive experience working in both national and international government bodies devoted to renewable energy.

What has IRENA’s first year been like?

One year ago, I was the sole staff of IRENA and now there are 40 people working with me! When I look back at this first year of activity, I am very proud of what we have achieved, but I know there is a lot more to do. We had to get through the usual start-up process, build support functions, define the working process, and then we started to recruit renewable energy experts. One of my biggest challenges was—and still is—to manage the flow of applications coming our way. When I see the hundreds of resumes we receive, I am confident that we are attracting talent. The screening process takes time because we want the best applicants for the jobs. Still, we do it faster than any other international organization.

Have you achieved your goal of creating a genderbalanced team? Has there also been an effort to build a group that is balanced internationally?

So far so good—we are 52 percent female! One of my commitments, as well as promoting renewable energies, is to empower women. Gender balance has been wishful thinking for years and I think that when women are in power, they have to make it happen, otherwise, who else will? It is important to me; I owe this to my grandmother. As a female scientist in the 1950s and the only female on the governing council in a French city in the 1960s, she was also keen on promoting women. She died, 96 years old, a few days after my election. As for the international balance, we have 21 nationalities on board!

What do you see as IRENA’s achievements so far? To date, how many countries have ratified IRENA?

One of IRENA’s achievments so far is that we have raised the interest of 144 countries and the E.U. And 25 have already ratified its treaty, which...

To read the full article buy the magazine.

Of What Use is Global Governance?

2011-04-12T10:35:28Z

Lamy ponders the Triangle of Coherence

by Pascal Lamy, Director, World Trade Organization (WTO)

I define global governance as the system assisting human society to achieve common objectives in a sustainable (i.e., fair and just) manner. Growing interdependence means that our laws, standards, and values, as well as the other social mechanisms that shape human behaviour, need to be analyzed, discussed, understood, and articulated in the most coherent way possible. This, in my opinion, is the condition for truly sustainable development in economic, social, and environmental terms. Today, three levels of governance meet these requirements, if unevenly. To illustrate this, imagine the three physical states of matter: gases, liquids, and solids.

Today, three levels of governance meet these requirements, if unevenly. To illustrate this, imagine the three physical states of matter: gases, liquids, and solids.

Gas is the coexistence of particles devoid of hierarchical differentiation. In my analogy, the gas state of governance is the international system, composed of sovereign states organized in a logic that is essentially horizontal with a decentralized accountability mechanism. Most international organizations, e.g., the World Trade Organization (WTO), operate in this mode.

An example of the liquid state is the European Union, the very incarnation of an international organization of integration in which Member States have agreed to relinquish sovereignty in order to strengthen the coherence and effectiveness of their actions.

The solid state, finally, can be seen as the nationstate, the holder of “hard power,” able to compel individuals to pay taxes or to respect the speed limit, i.e., real force.

Our challenge today is to establish a system of global governance that provides a better balance between leadership, effectiveness, and legitimacy on the one hand, and coherence on the other, to bring the system of global governance out of its gas state.

What are the specific challenges of global governance, and what are the first obstacles to overcome?

The initial challenge of global governance is to identify leadership. But who is to lead? Should it be a superpower? A group of national leaders? Chosen by whom? Or should an international organization lead? In accord with classical legitimacy, the identification of leadership involves choice by vote among the representatives of the community. This implies that the system has the political ability to deliver a public message and proposals that bring together coherent majorities and give citizens the feeling that they are participating in a debate. Because legitimacy depends on closeness between the individual and the decision-making body, the second specific challenge of global governance is its inherent distance, which causes the so-called “democratic deficit” and lack of accountability. In sum, it means fighting the widespread perception that international decisionmaking is too remote, lacking in responsibility, and not directly accountable.

As for legitimacy, coherence is unique to the nation-state and is transmitted to specialized international organizations with a limited mandate in which these states are members. In theory, this should not be a problem: the coherent action of nation-states within the various fields of international governance should result in coherent global action. In practice, however, states often act inconsistently at the international level.

The distance from power and the multiple levels of governance are a challenge in terms of efficiency. Nation-states resist (more or less strongly) the transfer or sharing of power within the framework of international institutions. Often national diplomatic systems do not reward international cooperation: I know few diplomats whose careers have suffered for saying “no.” Saying “yes” is definitely more risky. The resolution of global problems by applying traditional models of national democracy has its limits. And the credibility of national democracy itself is threatened if global governance fails to attain its own democratic credentials and if citizens feel that the issues that affect them daily, because they have become global, are avoided by the political will they express at the polls.

A new paradigm of global governance exists, and its name is Europe.

If there is one place on earth where new forms of global governance have been tested since the Second World War, it is in Europe. European integration is the most ambitious supranational governance experience ever undertaken. It is the story of interdependence desired, defined, and organized by the Member States. In no respect is the work complete—neither geographically nor in terms of depth (i.e., the powers conferred by the Member States to the E.U.), nor, obviously, in terms of identity. Secondly, the European paradigm is a special case. It is the result of the geographical and historical heritage of the European continent, a continent ravaged by two world wars and the Holocaust, which claimed millions of lives. Europe is a continent of nightmares that gathered the survivors of the era into a collective dream of peace, stability and prosperity. But we should, today, use great caution in drawing universal values from the experience provided by this specific place and time.

The European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s was created out of the political will to overcome these nightmares and to see peace take root in what French Prime Minister Robert Schuman called “de facto solidarity.” The men and women of that era placed their commitment in a concrete project: to combine the two essential pillars of the economies of the time, coal and steel. To these two elements they added a third: the creation of a supranational institution sui generis—the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community.

The essence of the E.U. is already at the heart of this first initiative: the creation of an area of joint sovereignty, a space in which members agree to manage their relationship without the constant need for international treaties. What characterizes the paradigm of European governance is, thus, the combination of three elements: political will, a defined goal, and an institutional structure. The method of governance employed is certainly a major technological leap from Westphalian principles. One innovation is the primacy of E.U. law over national law; another is the existence of a commission with a monopoly on legislative initiative; a third is the creation of a court whose decisions are binding on national courts; a fourth is the creation of a bicameral parliamentary system with, on one side, the Council that represents member states, and on the other, the European Parliament that represents the citizens. These are major institutional innovations, of course. However, they are a supplement, not a substitute, for agreement on a specific collective objective. And global governance is not absent from this objective, at least if we are to believe Jean Monnet, chief architect of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, when he wrote, “The sovereign nations of the past are no longer the framework in which today’s problems can be solved. And the community itself is merely a step toward the organizational forms of tomorrow’s world.” From this point of view, how is the European system performing today in terms of leadership, consistency, efficiency, and legitimacy? In terms of internal leadership, European governance is doing well, as illustrated by the creation of the internal market of the early 1990s or the euro in the late 1990s. These are two examples of successful synergy between will, the identification of objectives, and the creation of an institutional machinery.

In terms of external leadership (i.e., the ability to influence world affairs), the outcome is weaker, due to the absence of the three basic ingredients already mentioned. International trade is an exception in that it has brought together these three ingredients for the past 50 years into a single trade policy aimed at opening trade, with one negotiator speaking with one voice and through one mouth.

In terms of consistency, then, Europe is doing reasonably well, thanks notably to its institutional structure. Indeed, the principle of collegiality that governs the functioning of the Commission, the monopoly of legislative initiative conferred on the Commission in most areas of community competence, the expanding powers of the European Parliament, and the strengthening of community expertise (including through the Treaty of Lisbon) are the vectors of greater coherence in the E.U.’s actions.

But the fact remains that the blurred boundary between the national and community domains, characteristic of all federal systems, remains a source of inconsistency. Some examples are the poor level of coordination in such areas as macroeconomic policy or budgetary issues, which the present crisis has brought to the forefront, or in other sectors such as energy and transport.

In terms of efficiency, here again Europe has achieved quite remarkable results, thanks to the action by

European Court of Justice, which enforces the rule of law, the extension of voting rights to the majority, and the ability of the Commission to ensure compliance of European rules.

If there is one area where Europe gets poorer results, it is legitimacy. We are seeing a growing gap between European public opinion and the building of the E.U. Despite ongoing efforts to adapt European institutions to the demands of democracy, democratic sentiment remains outside the institutional arena of the E.U. The reasons for European “frigidity,” as

Elie Barnavi, professor and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, has called it, are still mysterious and deserve more attention from intellectuals. Look at what remains a blind spot in the construction of the E.U., its anthropological dimension, at the heart of which lies a complex relationship between identity and belonging, between the representation of history, geography, and everyday life. It is as if human societies, that have built so many of their myths upon war, cannot manage to invent a myth built upon peace.

European integration’s rapid development over the past 60 years offers us useful lessons for global governance.

The first is that institutions alone cannot achieve a goal, nor can political will in the absence of a clearly defined common project. A well-thought-out common project does not get results, either, if there is no institutional machinery. Dynamic integration requires the combination of all three elements. But even when all three are present, the lack of legitimacy—real or perceived—may persist. The fundamental problem is that supranational institutions like the E.U. require longterm commitment from national leaders, and that is often incompatible with short-term national politics driven by domestic electoral demands.

The second lesson is the importance of the rule of law and enforceable commitments. Global governance must be rooted in the commitments made by stakeholders in the various laws and regulations backed up by mechanisms that ensure compliance. These principles are at the heart of the multilateral trading system that, for over 60 years, has regulated trade between nations and whose system of binding dispute settlement compels Member States to honour their commitments. Enforceable commitments are also central to the governance structures that the international community seeks to establish concerning climate change and non-proliferation.

The third lesson concerns the principle of subsidiarity, whereby action should be carried out at the level of governance guaranteeing the greatest efficiency. This is one of the points of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, in which he states, “The governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice.” The international system should, indeed, not be overloaded with issues that can be more effectively addressed at the local, regional, or national level.

The final lesson for global governance that we can derive from European integration is that insofar as the demos policy is essentially national, the legitimacy of global governance would be greatly enhanced if international issues were more integrated into the national political debate, i.e., if national governments were held accountable for their behaviour at the international level. To establish the legitimacy of international organizations, it is not enough that states are represented by elected governments at the national level, nor that decisions within an organization are taken by consensus on the principle “one state, one vote,” as is the case at the WTO. It will require erasing the borders of democracy between the local, national, and global. National actors—political parties, civil society, parliaments, trade unions, and citizens—must ensure that the issues relevant at the global level are debated at the national and local levels. The good news is that many of these issues are already being examined and we need not wait for a big bang in global governance. The economic crisis we are experiencing has accelerated the transformation of global governance toward a new architecture characterized by what I call a “triangle of coherence.”

The first side of this triangle is the G20, which replaces the old G8 and which provides political leadership and policy guidance. The second side of the triangle includes the intergovernmental organizations and their affiliated NGOs, providing expertise in terms of rules, policies, programs, or reports. The third side of the triangle is made up of the G192, the United Nations, providing a comprehensive framework of legitimacy that allows those responsible to answer for their actions.

Today, globalization is a major challenge to our democracies, and our systems of governance must address this challenge. If our people feel that global problems are insoluble, our democracies risk being weakened and eroded from within by populism with xenophobic tendencies. And even if our citizens believe that global problems can be solved, democracy will be at risk if they feel left out of the decisionmaking process. Today, more than ever, our systems of governance, whether in Europe or globally, must give citizens the means to shape tomorrow’s world, the world they want their own children to inherit.

Model of the future WTO headquarters

R.K. Pachaury: "IPCC Shows Its Hand"

2011-04-11T10:24:36Z

The trump card over poverty, disease, and hunger is. . . climate change.

The last year has been a momentous one for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate science, and not always for the most welcome reasons. The belated discovery of a mistake in our AR4 report led to considerable controversy, as did the uncovering of somewhat unfortunate email correspondence from some prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.

It was, and is, inevitable that such incidents would lead to criticism and—quite rightly—to both internal and external examination. However, at times in the last six months it has become apparent that many people either do not know, or have forgotten, what the IPCC actually is, what it was formed to do, to whom it reports, and what its current mandate is. Without that starting point—of understanding based in current and historical knowledge—there is a danger that the wrong conclusions can be drawn about the organization’s future.

...

To read the full article buy the magazine.