Alex Evans is on a bit of a roll at the moment, with an excellent new paper on ‘Globalization and Scarcity: Multilateralism for a World with Limits’. It’s a great summary of the problems created by the threat of scarcity of food, land, water, energy, and ‘airspace’ (for greenhouse gas emissions). He confines his solutions to the implications for the

Today in the FT: “Sugar prices suffered their biggest one-day sell-off in 30 years on Thursday, tumbling by as much as 11 per cent after speculators pulled out from the market in the wake of dizzying gains. The sell-off, which came just hours after the sweetener hit a 30-year high, started after the European Commission granted further export licences for

The G20 summit takes place in Seoul today and tomorrow, the first such gathering in a non-G8 country. I’ve been following the G20 process from a distance and it’s fascinating – here’s a few reflections. The moment: the financial crisis of 2008/9 saw the G8 publicly hand over the reins of international coordination to the G20. What happens next? Will it

An intriguing new paper from Paul Segal at the University of Sussex kicks off with a great quote from Mr Getty “The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights”. Segal wonders what might happen if governments defied that prediction, and just handed over the income from oil, mining etc directly to poor people as unconditional cash transfers

Ever wondered how much global environmental damage is caused by human activity? A new study puts it at 11% of global GDP ($6.6 trillion), a third of it caused by the world’s 3,000 largest companies. The study was commissioned by two UN-backed initiatives, Principles for Responsible Investment and the UNEP Finance Initiative with a clear purpose in mind. They are trying

I spoke last night at an event in the House of Commons. It was held at Portcullis House, an architectural monstrosity next to Big Ben which despite its name is a new bit, so no-one’s been executed there. Yet. The subject was a BS (blue skies) session on ‘Beyond the MDG Summit: What next for global poverty reduction?’ The thread