We *Should* Read the Back of the Brownie Box

Just by coincidence, I learned about how “controversy swirls around harsh anti-obesity ads” in Georgia, part of a five-year, $25 million anti-obesity effort and hosted at strong4life.com. Then I read about a consultant explaining to board members of the Natural Resources Defense Council being told: “Environmentalists were always yammering to consumers about the back of the box. And, guess what? Nobody wants to listen.”

We better start reading the back of the brownie box to deal with obesity…and the back of energy bills, land lease agreements, environmental regulation and other fine print so we can begin to figure out how we get by in a world of limited resources. The NYT article, Environmentalists Get Down to Earth, gets me re-engaged. But what if the consultant is right and we don’t want to listen to the truth about complex problems that are too hard to solve today and are not the priority for the short-term?

The solution presented in the article are bite-size and fit on the front of the box:

• Fight global warming by focusing on immediate, local concerns;
• Reinvigorate the grass roots through social media and street protests; and
• Renew an emphasis on influencing elections.

Those don’t do it for me. First, if everyone goes local, nobody is thinking about the bigger picture. Issues about sustainability are not going to fit into small manageable boxes with tags about “economy and jobs”, “environmental protection” and “energy security”. This is very apparent in another NYT article on the boom impacts of a New York county benefitting from gas drilling in neighboring Pennsylvania. And one NYT editor actually highlighted the paper’s own inability to see the “big picture” of shale gas as one of the key issues requiring more effort on the part of the paper itself.

Social media has some strengths and weaknesses. Attracting new interest is great, but if we make our political choices as easily as we can “like” a new cause that we know little or nothing about, we won’t be having any serious debate soon. It takes more back-of-the-box reading.

A renewed emphasis on elections seems right, if not glaringly obvious with the upcoming US election, but this renewed emphasis has to be through informed debate. Since starting to work in sustainability, I have become very sensitive to the half-truth and only telling part of the story. I can only hope people will demand more.

I liked the Georgia campaign and think it serves as a good example for other groups. I thought the commercials were direct and made an impression. But they don’t seem to tell me what to think. I obviously need to look further. I wish more commercials about the environment (from anti- and pro- sides) pulled me to their sites where I could see the headings “learn”, “ask” and “get started”, rather than bashing me over the head with the obvious answer.

Oil vs. Wind vs. Pipelines vs. Solar, etc.

Op-Ed in the NYT — “A Shortsighted Victory in Delaying the Keystone Pipeline” — outlines some of the tough trade-offs that will be forced upon decision-makers thinking about energy. Who decides? Intuitively, one would say “democratically elected government”, but federal, state or local? The Keystone Pipeline and the bubbling conversation around shale gas and hydraulic fracturing (featured in the Times magazine last week) are bringing these debates to a head. Obama may have postponed the debate by delaying the decisions, but, as the Op-Ed makes clear, the decision won’t be delayed forever.

To be certain, energy policy cannot and should not disregard local opinion and opposition. Those who are affected most by energy development deserve a special role in shaping its course. But that should not be taken to an extreme that makes effective national energy policy impossible.

I guess that is unarguable, but trust there will be plenty of opinions on how people define “extreme”.

Cash For Everyone

How Africa can extract big benefits for everyone from natural resources – cash transfers, so the Guardian post says. I am a bit skeptical that this would provide any quick fixes either for poverty alleviation or reducing corruption, and sparsely populated Alaska may not be a great example to follow. But certainly any idea to distribute benefits more equitably is good for the debate on how to use natural resources around the world.

Via DFID blogger Hannah Ryder, found that the evidence from its Cash Transfers Evidence Paper still needs a bit more research. But some interesting trends. The executive summary includes the following current priorities for data and analysis on cash transfers that:

• identifies the challenges and opportunities associated with different contexts and intended beneficiary groups;
• supports cost-benefit analysis that enables policy-makers to make more informed comparisons between cash transfer design options (and with investments in other sectors);
• deepens understanding of the political economy of cash transfers;
• tracks whether and under what circumstances transfer delivery supports access to and use of financial services;
• goes beyond specific transfer programmes to support the design and evolution of integrated social protection systems, linking cash transfers with policies for service delivery, accountability and labour-intensive growth;
• integrates cash transfers and other instruments (e.g. insurance) within multi- sectoral strategies to enhance resilience to climate variability.

(This is a good tag to look back at previous thoughts on “natural resources” and “development” in the Guardian blog.)

TEDx Brussels 2010 – Paul Collier

Here’s the punchline of the talk:

“There is no substitute for building a critical mass of informed citizens within each of the societies that have these valuable resources and are currently poor.”

TEDx Brussels 2010 – Paul Collier – How the Bottom Billion can harness the Resource Boom?

And more from the Natural Resource Charter website.

CommDev (and In-Flux)

A missed gem on my Resources list. I came across CommDev again when I found this relatively new (slow blogging plagues me)  resource on the massive challenge of in-migration and in-flux on major projects: A Handbook for Addressing Project-Induced In-Migration. A little planning goes a long way. It is still in draft form so I am sure comments will be welcome before a final draft.

Big Dams: Bulldozers and Sustainable Development 101

The debate for me isn’t electricity or no electricity for the Gilgel Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia, recently highlighted on the BBC’s Crossing Continents. It is about electricity with appropriate study of the impacts or electricity that makes the same mistakes as similar projects. The key question is: What’s appropriate? Might it be slower? Yes. More costly? In the short-run, for sure; but in the long-run, how can anyone possibly know?

Are these appropriate studies? I have no idea at first glance, but it serves as a very current course/case study. Here’s an advocacy side from International Rivers. I was really curious to see that Facebook also has a flurry of activity on this topic.

And this allows us to consider public consultation, but the radio show clearly highlights that a lot of people don’t feel like they have been heard.

This is a complex story, but very worth exploring. Unfortunately, the key actor, the Italian contractor, isn’t interviewed on the radio program. The report mentions that the World Bank isn’t funding this, but one might ask where the money is coming from.

Anyone who has additional information? Please share!

China vs. West in Africa

So my heading is a bit over dramatic. This is an interesting development. Being interested in sustainable development, I don’t think it is important to worry about the nationality of the investment. But I do worry about how responsible it is.

I was please to read this article today, “As Chinese Investment in Africa Drops, Hope Sinks” (also a bit over dramatic). While I don’t find lost hope something to celebrate, the article pleases me since it shows that natural resource extraction won’t be simply a race to the bottom when it comes to environmental and social development. There are glimmers that exploitation, regardless of nationality, will be rejected by Guinea.

Hamidou Condé works bare-chested under the relentless sun, digging a hole for the foundation of a new hospital being built by a Chinese company, yet another symbol of Chinese-Guinean friendship.

Mr. Condé, 35, who has two wives and four children, said that he had been digging in the hard rock with a shovel, pick and ax for two months, but that he had yet to receive any pay from his Chinese taskmasters.

“We work like slaves,” Mr. Condé said. “And like slaves we are not paid. The Chinese bring nothing good to Guinea.”

I would venture to say many African countries don’t “still need the the West’s help after all”, they need responsible investment. For Mr. Condé’s sake, I hope the drop in commodity prices is a good reminder that process matters, especially in a downturn when investors are tightening their belts.

More WRI Resources on Engagement

The World Resources Institute has recently published a report called “Breaking Ground: Engaging Communities in Extractive and Infrastructure Projects”. The report is a well-referenced follow on from a previous report, “Development Without Conflict: The Business Case for Community Consent”, and is the first good practice document I have seen that makes a note of the fact that there is an economic crisis upon us. (Also good to see WRI using video – see video of author, Kirk Herbertson, giving the executive summary himself.) The report, importantly, acknowledges a crucial, if somewhat obvious point: “Despite the abundance of existing reports and manuals that provide guidance on community engagement, much of the publicly available information on how project proponents engage communities reveals great difficulty in applying guidance effectively”.

Alas, the devil is in the details.

The report is useful on many levels and, even if I can’t agree with all its points or even the full framework, I think it is a very good starting point for getting into devilish details.

As an element of praise, I think the report clearly highlights the importance of preparing communities before engaging, the first principle of the framework. This is a crucial step that often gets overlooked and often not from malice, but just from the difficulty of trying to see a project from different points of view. The fourth principle on including traditionally excluded stakeholders also speaks to a key theme.

But I thought the report focused a bit too much on indigenous communities, which is in no way saying that issues related to indigenous peoples are not a crucial topic in extractive industry projects. I simply kept thinking there was a danger of people thinking these issues are only related to indigenous peoples in less developed countries when in fact they are just as important to non-indigenous communities in high income countries. I also don’t think the term Free, Prior and Informed Consent is the best way to make the business case. Language and translation plays such a key role in extractive projects. The word “consent” makes it seem like everyone has to agree, even if the report states this isn’t the case. I think stakeholders still interpret it this way.

I would welcome other opinions on the document (or even disagreements with mine, which are much more interesting).

OK! Resources Cause Conflict – Now What’s the Business Role?

While I guess it can’t hurt to have an additional paper drawing attention to the role of natural resource managment in peacebuilding, I was somewhat disappointed with the lack of emphasis on the private sector in the UN Environmental Programme’s new report, ” From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment”. Contrary to the Forward section, I don’t think it is contorversial that natural resources and conflict are often linked. Many organizations, including the UN, have been making the case for many years. I hope the next research paper on the topic will address the sixth bullet of recommendation No. 5: “More systematic efforts are needed by the UN and national governments to engage the private sector in the development of policies on natural resources and the environment”.

It was the only reference to business or the private sector in the paper.

I still think this type of idea is needed more often.

Also, Paul Collier offered more good ideas in a paper for the EITI in October: “Implications of Changed International Conditions for EITI”.

ICMM Case for Partnerships at Local, National and Global Levels

Catching up on overdue reading over the weekend…

ICMM’s Kathryn McPhail won the Bronze Award for the International Finance Corporation (IFC)/Financial Times (FT) essay competition for her essay, “Sustainable Development in the Mining and Minerals Sector: The Case for Partnership at Local, National and Global Levels”. While always a good source of materials, I found this document of the Resouce Endowment Initiative to be one of the better articulated cases about the importance of of companies working with government at the sub-national level. I was shaking my head a lot.

I am impressed by the ICMM process, which appears to use a transparent methodology that it keeps open to input from a wide variety of stakeholders.