The Empathic Civilization is the first book to explore how empathetic consciousness restructures the ways we organize our personal lives, approach knowledge, pursue science and technology, conduct commerce and governance, and orchestrate civil society. The development of this empathetic consciousness is essential to creating a future where we think and behave like the whole world matter.
Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of seventeen bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. One of the most popular social thinkers of our time, Rifkin is the bestselling author of The European Dream, The Hydrogen Economy, The Age of Access, The Biotech Century, and The End of Work.
This lecture is part of the @Google series of talks and took place on January 25, 2010.
Global food demand will double between now and 2050 as the world’s population reaches 9.2 billion.
How can the increased demand for food be met in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner?
The Panelists
William H. Gates III, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USA
Ellen Kullman, Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, DuPont, USA
Nguyen Tan Dung, Prime Minister of Vietnam; Chair, 2010 ASEAN
Patricia A. Woertz, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), USA; Co-Chair of the Governors Meeting for Consumer Industries 2010; Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010
This panel is moderated by Prannoy Roy, Chairman, New Delhi Television (NDTV), India.
Economist Felix Salmon of Reuters has a compelling article based on a conversation with Dan Barber, a leader in the locavore movement and the chef of the Blue Hill Farm.
Every so often at Davos you have a short, startling conversation which completely changes the way you think about a subject — and I just had one of those standing next to Dan Barber, the chef of Blue Hill Farm. He’s a very smart, very funny guy, who’s passionate about food on every level from preparing the ingredients of the dishes in his restaurants to the logistics of feeding the planet.
I bumped into Barber as we were milling around the Davos conference center, waiting for the panel on “rethinking how to feed the world” to begin. I asked him what he thought of the food in Switzerland; he compared in unfavorably to what he was fed by the airline on the way over here. “I haven’t seen a vegetable since Thursday,” he added, looking a bit overwhelmed by the number of things that the Swiss seem to be able to do with bread, cheese, and bit of veal.
When the panel started, I could almost see the steam coming out of Barber’s ears. It featured two heads of state; two agribusiness CEOs; a representative from the World Bank; and Bill Gates. All of them looked at food mainly as a matter of logistics and problem-solving, and they seemed to do so with real good will and good motives. (Well, maybe not the CEO of ADM.) But they were all very much bought into a model which looks, to Barber’s eyes, incredibly shaky.
Essentially the problem is that the people on the panel have internalized the principles of comparative advantage and free trade to the point at which they are more or less incapable of thinking any other way. In a Ricardian world it makes sense for Ohio to overwhelmingly grow corn and soy, since growing corn and soy is what it does best. And because of economies of scale, it makes sense to grow just one type of each, on farms of mind-boggling size. Ohio can then trade all that corn and soy for the food it wants to eat, and everybody is better off.
Except in reality it doesn’t work like that. Monocultures are naturally prone to disastrous outbreaks of disease, which can wipe out an entire crop. The panel at Davos has a favored method of dealing with such things: the development of disease-resistant crop strains, often through high-tech and patentable genetic modification. Bright research scientists create clever transgenic crops, and then people like Bill Gates and the World Bank try to get them broadly adopted while setting well-intentioned staffers to work minimizing potential problems with IP licensing. Innovation through agricultural technology is the obvious and necessary solution to the problem of global hunger.
Barber isn’t anti-science, nor is he anti-innovation. But he knows (and the panelists know too) that a system of globalized agriculture can break down, as we saw during the commodity boom of 2008. As the price of soy and rice and wheat soared, exporters started hoarding rather than selling, and importers couldn’t obtain necessary supplies at any price. As the World Bank’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala noted, Ukraine had 5 million tons of surplus wheat, but the international food markets were very thin, and it was extremely difficult to get that wheat exported. The system didn’t work like it was meant to: when put to a real-world test, it broke down.
Shifts in supply and demand, as well as challenges posed by climate change, will exert ever greater pressure on both corporate and national energy planning over the next decades.
What is needed to tackle the interlinked issues of energy security, economic growth and climate change?
Panelists
Fatih Birol, Chief Economist, International Energy Agency, Paris; Global Agenda Council on Energy Security
Robert D. Hormats, US Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs
Lars G. Josefsson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vattenfall, Sweden
Jim Leape, Director-General, WWF International, World Wide Fund for Nature, Switzerland; Global Agenda Council on Climate Change
Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry of India
This panel is moderated by Armen Sarkissian, President and Founder, Eurasia House International, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Energy Security
The G20 is focused on preventing a repeat of the financial crisis, but the next global crisis to threaten the global economy is likely to be off the radar screen of policy-makers, as have previous ones. What warning signals need our urgent attention? In partnership with the World Economic Forum, CNBC hosts this debate focusing on the challenges and choices to be made to prevent the next great global crisis.
The panel is subtitled: Back to the Future.
Panelists
Barney Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts (Democrat), 4th District; Chairman, Financial Services Committee, USA
Jacob A. Frenkel, Chairman, JPMorgan Chase International, JPMorgan Chase & Co., USA
Lord Levene, Chairman, Lloyd’s, United Kingdom
Anand G. Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, India
Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics, Harvard University,
Zhu Min, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China, People’s Republic of China; Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System
This panel is moderated by Maria Bartiromo, Anchor, CNBC’s Closing Bell; Host and Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC, USA; Young Global Leader; Global Agenda Council on Systemic Financial Risk.
A word: the panel does not get started until the 11:25 minute mark due to live television issues.
World Population Day was July 11th. Yesterday, Colombia reached 45 million inhabitants. When I was born in 1960, there were 16 million Colombians. In 1900, there were 4 million Colombians. By standards in the developing world, Colombia is a success story.
Investing in Women is a Smart Choice
No one knows yet what the full scale of this global economic crisis will look like. We do know that women and children in developing countries will bear the brunt of the impact. What started as a financial crisis in rich countries is now deepening into a global economic crisis that is hitting developing countries hard. It is already affecting progress toward reducing poverty.
Policy responses that build on women’s roles as economic agents can do a lot to mitigate the effects of the crisis on development, especially because women, more than men, invest their earnings in the health and education of their children. Investments in public health, education, child care and other social services help mitigate the impact of the crisis on the entire family and raise productivity for a healthier economy.
Protect the gains achieved
Investments in education and health for women and girls have been linked to increases in productivity, agricultural yields, and national income — all of which contribute to the achievement of the MDGs. Investments by governments worldwide have raised school enrolment rates, narrowed the gender gap in education, brought life-saving drugs to people living with AIDS, expanded HIV prevention, delivered bed nets to prevent malaria, and improved child health through immunization.
In comments to a Senate Appropriations panel, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted that steps taken over the next 18 months to defeat the Taliban militias will ultimately decide whether the war in Afghanistan is being won or lost. Secretary Gates added the war had intensified in 2006 — in large part as a result of Pakistan’s peace deals with militant groups that pushed the Taliban back over the Afghan border and that the United States had failed to adequately commit the necessary resources.
”As this problem became worse in terms of the violence caused by the Taliban coming across the border from Pakistan, I think that it’s self-evident that we were under-resourced to deal with it,” Gates told a Senate Appropriations panel.
He added, however, that the Pakistani army has since stepped up its battle against extremists in the Swat valley and elsewhere in the nation’s northwest provinces. He called it ”an extremely important development.”
Gates is taking a closer look at the Afghan conflict this week. He heads to Europe later Tuesday to discuss the war with NATO allies and other nations with troops fighting in Afghanistan’s volatile South.
He and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen told senators they’re more optimistic now than in recent months about efforts to combat insurgents and extremists along the remote Afghan-Pakistan border.
But, Mullen said, ”I think the next 12 to 18 months will really tell the tale.”
Gates emphasized that he did not mean the Afghan campaign would achieve success in that time, but rather that officials hoped to ‘’see a shift in the momentum” by then.
”It’s very important for us to be able to show the American people that we are moving forward … to show some shift in momentum,” Gates said. ”This is a long-term commitment, but I believe the American people will be willing to sustain this endeavor if they believe this is not just a stalemate.”
He also described himself as ”very sensitive” about the number of U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. The Pentagon chief previously has said he is reluctant to sent many more soldiers to Afghanistan beyond the 68,000 already planned. There are 58,000 U.S. troops there now.
With more than 20,000 policymakers and industry representatives meeting for the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, issues of water scarcity are proving problematic for the host country. Anita Mcnaught reports from Turkey.
One of the major accomplishments of the Council is its contribution to increasing the awareness of global water issues and the political mobilization it has reached through the World Water Forum. Serving as stepping-stones towards global collaboration on water problems, the Forum is a unique platform where the water community and the policy and decision makers from all regions of the world can link together, debate and attempt to find solutions to achieve water security.
The Council’s World Water Forum, organized every three years in close collaboration with the authorities of the hosting country, is the largest international event in the field of water. It primarily serves four main purposes:
* To raise the importance of water on the political agenda
* To support the deepening of discussions towards the solution of international water issues in the 21st century
* To formulate concrete proposals and bring their importance to the world’s attention
* To generate political commitment
Over the years, the Forum has led the movement from the World Water Vision, a unique prospective exercise on the future state of global water resources whose results were presented at the 2nd Forum, to the establishment of concrete actions and commitments derived from the 3rd Forum.
With the 4th World Water Forum, on the path to the achievement of the water-related Millennium Development Goals, whose deadline was set as 2015, the Council will look to establish mechanisms of cooperation and coordination to transform a global vision into concrete actions that integrate local knowledge.
The Istanbul Forum is the fifth international plenary. The World Water Forum, a seven-day arena aimed at addressing the planet’s deepening crisis of freshwater, opened on Monday, drawing record-breaking participation by politicians, specialists, corporate executives and activists.
The forum, held only every three years, will address problems of water scarcity, the risk of conflict as countries squabble over rivers, lakes and aquifers, and how to provide clean water and sanitation to billions.
The world’s population, currently more than 6.5 billion, is expected to rise to nine billion by mid-century, placing further massive demands on water supplies that are already under strain.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the number of people living under severe water stress is expected to rise to 3.9 billion by 2030, amounting to nearly half the world’s population. Most of these will live in China and South Asia.
That tally does not include the impacts of climate change. Global warming may already be affecting weather patterns, changing the time and place where rain and snow fall, say some experts.
Around 2.5 billion people today do not have access to decent sanitation, defying one of the targets of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Hydrologists say the crisis is rooted in excessive irrigation, leakage of urban water supplies, pollution of river water and unbridled extraction of water from nearly every type of source.
The Water Forum, running in Istanbul until Sunday, begins with a mini-summit of a small number of heads of state and government, invited by host Turkey. It concludes with a large ministerial gathering aimed at crafting guidelines for smarter management of water and resolution of water conflicts.
Outside the political dimension, the conference is also a gathering place for companies involving in the multi-billion water industry.
Between 92.4 billion and 148 billion dollars are needed annually to build and maintain water supply systems, sanitation and irrigation, according to a major document, the third World Water Development Report, that was issued in the run-up to the Istanbul forum.
China and developed countries in Asia alone face financial needs of 38.2-51.4 billion dollars each year.
How this investment is mustered — and the accountability of corporations in water, a key ingredient for life — are among the big questions facing the conference.
Around 28,000 people are expected to attend the conference, the fifth in the series, according to an organization official. “It breaks the record,” she said.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, is reviving a family planning programme to encourage parents to consider having fewer children. Egypt’s population growth rate is two and a half times that of China, and about the same as India.
The government is aiming to bring down the average family size from 3 children to 2 by 2017. Amr El-Kahky reports for Al Jazeera.
A new report says global poverty and hunger are increasing dramatically. The non-profit US group Bread for the World says the global economic crisis could do even more damage and that in 2008 at least 100 million more people fell into endemic poverty. From the Hunger 2009 report:
Most poor people reside in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, in the poorest countries of the world, where it is not uncommon for a third or more of the population to be living in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty, $1.25-per-day-or-less poverty, is almost always accompanied by hunger, illiteracy, poor health, and early death.
With a global hunger crisis threatening to undo much of the progress achieved since 2000, now is the time for countries to recommit to the MDGs and make their promise come true. The steep rise in food prices in recent years is proving to be a setback for scores of developing countries. Prices have come down slightly since the summer of 2008, but that is small consolation for those struggling to survive. It is an especially serious challenge in the poorest countries, those least able to provide assistance to their populations. Under ordinary conditions, poor people spend more than half of their income on food. The rise in prices creates still greater hardship, forcing people to cut back on food or change their diets to eat less nutritious foods, or cut back on other expenses such as health care and education.
The problems of development are interlinked, and so must be the solutions. Consider the role of agriculture in reducing poverty and furthering development. One way to reduce hunger is to increase agricultural productivity, particularly for smallholder farmers, because up to 75 percent of poor people live in rural areas and the vast majority of them rely directly or indirectly on farming for their livelihoods. Better harvests provide families with cash to pay for basic goods and services. Poor families in countries with school fees need the extra money in their pockets to provide their children with an education. For girls, the longer they stay in school, the later they marry and have children, and that can positively affect maternal health, family size, and household income. More than 70 million primary school-aged children do not go to school, and 55 percent of them are girls. Female literacy is considerably lower where poverty rates are high. In the Sitamarhi District of India, almost two-thirds of the population is living below the poverty line. About 25 per cent of female residents are literate, far below the state and national levels. The literacy rate for men in the district is double that for women.
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has released its “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.” It is the fourth unclassified report produced by some of the nation’s keenest global anaylsts on developing trends in the world. From the introduction of the report:
It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible “futures,” we offer a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.
Some of our preliminary assessments are highlighted below:
The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.
China and India are likely to emerge atop a multipolar international system as the US economic and political clout declines over the next two decades.
I would add Brazil to that latter prediction. I would also add while a transfer of wealth from West to East is occuring there is also one from energy-poor to energy-rich. One transfer of wealth not occuring is from North to South however and I am not yet sure if a reallocation of wealth internally in the United States from rich to poor will occur or if we will continue on our present trajectory of ever-widening income inequality (it has actually narrowed modestly during the last four years but that’s from a declining stock market not from a progressive tax scheme or other redistributive policies). If income inequality does continue to widen both between North and South and within the United States then I would expect social pressures to build if not explode. I also wonder how nations like China and India will handle widening social inequality and if their own demise might not be in their socio-economic policies that favour the few over the many. Brazil has actually fared better in terms of lifting the poor out of endemic poverty though it has a long way to go.
You can download a copy of the NIC Global Trends 2025 report here (pdf). Below the fold a section of the report on Europe: (more…)