Tag Archives: ORF

In the News, Water / Climate

Samir attends the SANSAC Climate and Security Roundtable, 2010

August 6, 2010, New Delhi
Link to original website

Summary of discussion
Chair: Fergus Auld, UK Cross-Government Climate Change and Energy Unit, India

International Alert convened a roundtable meeting, kindly hosted by the British High Commission in New Delhi, with the generous support of the EU, to generate a critical discussion on the inter-linkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia and to identify the institutional and governance level knowledge and capacity gaps to promote effective responses to these risks.

The meeting was an opportunity to take forward discussion in India on the relationship between climate change, resilience and security. Bringing together institutional representatives and civil society experts, the discussion addressed the complexities of responding to climate change in conflict-affected contexts in South Asia and the institutional responses to dealing with such risks. In particular, the group explored:

  1. Where human (and indeed state) security should fit into the climate change policy discussion?
  2. What the link between climate change and violent conflict means for development policy?
  3. The specific issues to be addressed in fragile communities.
  4. The best ways to move the debate with not only the necessary sense of urgency but also awareness of the depth and breadth of the issues and the appropriate policy responses. 

Background:
As more people become aware of and motivated by the links between climate change, conflict, peace and security, both the possibility of and the necessity for clarity about these links increases. Regardless of the scarcity of data, the climate change and security dialogue is moving ahead and shaping thinking and policy as it goes. Alongside this is concern from some quarters about the so-called ‘securitisation’ of climate change. A pragmatic response to this means ensuring the climate change and security dialogue is as informed as it can be by appropriate actors keying into the dialogue to embed sustainable development and peacebuilding priorities into the core of the debate.

Key issues discussed:

  • What is the value of the climate change and security discourse? Is it a distraction from adaptation and mitigation priorities?There are three particular risks in the climate change and security nexus:

i)         Just as security fears can mobilise people and change, sensationalist scenarios demobilise, especially when they turn out not to justified by the evidence.

ii)       Treating conflict and security issues as if they will produce direct threats from one country against another, or even one group against another, which is the language of military security will distort the debate and the policy response; at worst, the response will be inappropriate and wasteful.

iii)      Basing the argument on an over-simplified linkage could generate policies that miss their targets in other ways and simply lead to confusion and uncertainty about what the problem is and why anyone should care.

Yet the discourse exists and will continue to move in some cases with more policy leverage than the adaptation or ‘common but differential responsibility’ for mitigation discourse. As such, the three risks above notwithstanding, engaging in the security discourse is a vehicle for getting critical development and governance concerns to the policy table.

  • What is the nature of the causal link between climate change and security?

Policy cannot and should not be based on a straightforward cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and violent conflict or political instability. There is a lack of research findings on the topic and what there is does not offer robust conclusions. And there are good reasons for this: namely that causality is always complex. Armed conflicts not only have several different causes but several different types of causes. These are often conflated, blurring the differences between background or root causes, the immediate trigger, the role of the external actors etc. The fact is that simple cause-and-effect is rarely if ever enough to explain the origins of a conflict.

Given this lack of clear causal link, the sparse research literature on climate change and security contains some that declares that no link can be proven. But the fact that no link can be proven is not the same as saying none exists. A real limitation of studies so far is that they work by reflection on the past – whereas the key point to understand about climate change is that the future will be different from the past.

Perhaps the largest security risk of climate change is the most preventable one. That is the risk that climate change policy itself will be the most destabilising factor in fragile communities. The reasons are three-fold:

i)         New financing mechanism on climate change strive towards ‘national ownership’, but where the state government is an actor in the conflict and is party to structural exclusion and marginalisation, this essentially provides an additional ‘point resource’ for elite capture and for the perpetuation of existing systems of exclusion and inequity.

ii)       Lack of adequate consideration of the knock-on consequences on interventions to address climate change can have inadvertent negative consequences which could stoke instability. The rapid switch from food to fuel crops in the ill-informed bio-fuels experiment which lead to global riots in 2008 is a case in point. There are many more trip wires of unintended consequences in the path low carbon development which need to be understood from a conflict sensitivity perspective, particularly around REDD and hydro.

iii)      Any action involves a trade-off and creates new winners and losers. A shift in priority to narrow and technical adaptation or mitigation responses will entail others issues – perhaps basic services such as health or education – being pushed down the agenda. In already fragile communities where governance is weak and basic service delivery is poor, such a shift could rupture an already weak social contract between citizens and the state.

  • How to address the lack of empirical evidence?

The evidence base for climate and security interlinkages is necessarily weak; there has been too little time since the effects of climate change began to receive adequate attention for research data to have accumulated of the kind needed for large-scale quantitative studies that can reliably depict trends. Further, the state of knowledge in the natural sciences does not let us attribute specific events such as flood or drought to climate change, nor does it offer any policy relevant predictions of impacts at the regional level. As such, there is a case for turning instead to case studies. While limited in their generalisability, developing a broad geographic spread of case study evidence which drill deep down to understand community level perhaps offers the best solution to the knowledge gap in the interim.

Conclusions:
There was strong consensus that the solution to the risk of climate change policy itself becoming a security threat is linking dialogues. This entails much more local level research into climate change and security links and risk transmission pathways (such as rural-urban migration, food insecurity, service delivery failure), addressing governance capacity constraints to ‘joined-up’ programming, and advocacy to move the debate beyond concerns that the security dialogue will hijack the climate change dialogue, and instead to bring the dialogues together.

Next steps:
Interested parties are to remain part of an ongoing dialogue process in India, and also to link into the regional climate change and security dialogue. Specific aims of this dialogue process would be to bring development and human security concerns, lessons and good practice to the heart of the climate change and security debate. Alert is happy to facilitate the dialogue. ORF have offered to host the next meeting. In the meantime, all participants are welcome to share resources through the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change web-space (www.sansac.org).

 

List of participants:
1.       Ranu Sinha, Operations Analyst, Water Resource Management, World Bank

2.       Samir Saran, Senior Fellow and Vice President, Observer Research Foundation

3.       Rob Donkers, Environment Minister Counsellor, EU delegation India

4.       Mansie Kumar, EU Delegation India

5.       Uttam Sinha, IDSA

6.       Gitanjali Nandan, First Secretary, Australian High Commission

7.       L Vijayanathan, Senior Adviser, Environment, Climate and Energy, Norwegian Embassy

8.       Karolina Hedström, Regional Crisis Response Planner – South Asia, EU India

9.       Deepti Mahajan, Research Associate, Resources and Global Security,Teri

10.   Fergus Auld, First Secretary Climate Change and Energy, DfID India/British High Commission

11.   Clare Shakya, Senior Regional Climate Change and Water Adviser – Asia, DfID India

12.   Janani Vivekananda, Climate Change and Security Adviser, International Alert

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In the News

Samir featured in Hindustan Times article “Business and Barbs”, 2009

by Gaurav Choudhury
September 11, 2009, New Delhi
Link to original website

Here they are in the heart of Delhi, a maze of narrow corridors and shops where clones of the world’s sophisticated inventions can be bought after a good haggle: palm-sized iPods, sleek touch-mobiles, glitzy wristwatches. Don’t let the image mislead you. It’s a theatre of war. The 900-odd shops in the Old Lajpat Rai market are filled with cheap unbranded Chinese goods, as are thousands of markets across India, part of the same onslaught of consumer goods that China made across the world, and is now threatening millions of Indian craftsmen, businessmen and traders.

“The audio clarity in a Chinese mobile handset is even better than a Nokia phone,” said Narender Kumar, who runs a retail outlet of mobile handsets at the crowded market in Old Delhi. “About 90 per cent of the phones we keep are made in China,” he said, pulling out a Sycee Tong mobile phone that resembles a Nokia 6300 in shape and features. “While the Nokia set would cost Rs 7,000, the Chinese is priced at Rs 2,000.”

All that has made China — which fought a war with India in 1962 — its largest trading partner and the single largest source of imports, with a share of over 10 per cent of India’s total imports of $287.75 billion in 2008-09. From Barmer to Bangalore, thousands of Chinese engineers, computer hardware professionals and even unskilled workers are also working in India. And Indian companies like NIIT and Infosys are swiftly becoming the backbone of China’s computer software ambitions, with dozens of centres sprawling the nation.

It is an economic relationship that is soaring. One is the world’s factory, the other the global back-office. The two neighbours, housing nearly 37 per cent of world’s people, are also the hottest growth economies. If China sizzled with a 9 per cent growth in 2008, India grew at 6.7 per cent — at a time when the US, EU and Japan were reeling under recession. And yet, it is a relationship fraught with disputes, some niggling, some serious.

India is trying to crack down on the flood of counterfeits and cheap products using globally agreed-upon laws to prevent dumping, a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another at a price below what it charges in its home market. China has accused India of adopting anti-trade measures, allegations New Delhi denies. In turn, it has blamed Beijing of imposing non-tariff barriers to prevent access to its market. There have also been instances of Chinese firms selling medicines under the “Made in India” label in Africa.

In June, the Nigerian Government Drug Regulatory Authority seized a large consignment of fake anti-malarial generic drugs labelled “Made in India” but allegedly produced in China, said an Indian commerce ministry official who declined to be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media.  The tablets could have affected some 6,42,000 customers.

China remains out of bounds for Indian basmati rice exporters. India also believes that the Chinese government is blocking entry of fruits and vegetables on grounds not necessarily economic. New Delhi had sought market access for 17 fruits and vegetables including mango, guava and pomegranates. Only three have been allowed. This year, India has so far launched 38 anti-dumping investigations over goods as varied as sodium nitrite, sodium carbonates, tyres and even the seemingly innocuous Vitamin C drug. As many as 22 of these pertain to products originating in China.

India has also put quality restrictions on mobile phones, dairy products and toys in a measure primarily aimed at blocking the flood of cheap imports from China. India’s Directorate-General of Foreign Trade said mobile handsets without the International Mobile Equipment Identity number, which helps authorities track the sale and use of the phones, can’t be imported. While no official estimates are available, industry sources estimate that close to one million such phones enter India every month from China. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MoC) has expressed “serious concerns” over India’s intensive trade probes. “China hoped that India could show prudence and restraint in using trade remedies… it could pose a threat to bilateral trade,” MoC said in its web site. India shrugs off the criticism.

“Anti-dumping duties are imposed after a process of thorough investigation,” Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar told HT. “Initiating the process of inquiry does not hinder imports.” He said even after final anti-dumping duties were imposed, they ended up affecting less than 1 per cent of the total trade. But in the big picture, as China-India relations go, all’s good, analysts say. In October last, the commerce departments of both the countries set up an expert group to promote cooperation. “Any nuance in India-China relations should be looked through the nuance of security and history,” said Samir Saran, vice president of the Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

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In the News, Non-Traditional Security, Politics / Globalisation

TruthDive.com covers ORF’s Latin America event, August 2011

August 2, 2011, New Delhi
Link to original website
Envoys of Latin American countries today sought mutually beneficial cooperation with India. Participating in an interaction at Observer Research Foundation, envoys from 17 countries from Latin America said their countries are keen to strengthen economic relations with India. “We want better, mutually beneficial relations with India. We have got lots of natural resources, especially oil and other energy resources. But we don’t want to be just provider of resources. We want you to cooperate in our development also,” said Columbian Ambassador Juan Alfredo Pinto Saavedra.

Saavedra, the coordinator of the group of Ambassadors of the Latin American countries, said the US and the Europe used resources from their countries for their development, but did not help them in the development. “While they used our resources, we remained poor,” he said. He wanted India and China to be different in their approach to Latin American countries.

Besides the Columbian Ambassador, Ambassadors from Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama, Costo Rica, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Dominican Republic attended the interaction. The other countries were represented by high level diplomats like Deputy Chief the Missions and Charge d’ Affaires. The Ambassadors were given a presentation on the ORF Report on India’s non-traditional security threats, titled “Navigating the Near” by Samir Saran, Vice President, Observer Research Foundation.

This study was done by ORF for the Integrated Defence Staff, the Ministry of Defence. Chairing the meeting, M. Rasgotra, a former Foreign Secretary and now President of the ORF Centre for International Relations, said Latin American countries enjoyed good sentiments in India. He said India would be keen to have mutually beneficial cooperation with them.

Former Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath and ORF Director Sunjoy Joshi also took part in the meeting.

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In the News, Water / Climate

Samir attends the Renewable Energy and International Law (REIL) roundtable in Cambridge, 2011

June 20-21, 2011, UK
Link to original website
Feature in Global Energy Review, July 12, 2011
Feature in Business Weekly, June 13, 2011

Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) is co-hosting the prestigious Renewable Energy and International Law (REIL) roundtable in Cambridge from 20-21 June.

REIL is an informal network of international climate change and clean-energy experts. Its members include policymakers, private investors, technology developers and academics, all working to increase the use of cleaner and more efficient energy solutions.

Delegates taking part in the roundtable include Bob Simon, Chief of Staff of the United States Senate Energy Committee; Brad Gentry, Director of the Yale Centre for Business and the Environment; Melinda Kimble, Senior Vice President of the United Nations Foundation; Samir Saran, Vice President of the Observer Research Foundation in India; Richard Kauffman, Chairman of Levi Strauss & Co; and Eomon Ryan, Leader of the Green Party in Ireland.

The event, which is being held at the University of Cambridge’s Moller Centre, will focus on strategies to address climate change and the development of the low carbon economy. Topics for discussion include financing clean technology; the convergence of food, water, and energy issues; and sustainable energy access.

“With long-term international political processes finding it difficult to come to agreements, it is ever more important to be thinking creatively about solutions to climate change and access to energy. REIL brings together key influencers from across the climate change policy and finance world. In particular it offers a unique opportunity for public and private sector delegates from the UK and US to share innovative thinking and approaches to tackling issues within the energy sphere. The group of people meeting in Cambridge for this workshop will examine some of the key challenges that we face and demonstrate that a solution is possible and can be found,” said Dr Aled Jones, Director of Anglia Ruskin’s GSI.
REIL members convene regularly, with an annual roundtable held at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. This year, REIL are holding their first ever roundtable at Cambridge University in partnership with the Cambridge Centre on Science and Policy (CSaP) and Anglia Ruskin University’s GSI.

The synergy between REIL, CSaP and GSI is strong, with CSaP acting as a networking organisation dedicated to building relationships between policy makers and experts in the fields of science and engineering.

The GSI is a research institute based at Anglia Ruskin that encompasses a broad portfolio of areas and interests including environment, built environment, technology, tourism, business practice, education and health.

The roundtable will comprise discussions on the following subjects:  

  • Financing Clean Technology (including proposals for Green Investment Banks)
  • Convergence of Food, Water, and Energy Issues
  • UNFCCC: From Cancun to Durban
  • Technology
  • Sustainable Energy Access
  • Financing Energy Efficiency

Event chairs:

  • James Cameron (Founder and Vice Chairman, Climate Change Capital)
  • Bradford Gentry (Director, Yale Center for Business and the Environment, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies)
  • Leslie Parker (Managing Director, REIL)
  • Martijn Wilder (Partner and Head of Global Environmental Markets Practice, Baker & McKenzie and Adjunct Professor, ANU)

Timings
Monday 20 June: The meeting will start at 10am and finish with dinner in Trinity Hall.
Tuesday 21 June:  Day two of the meeing will start at 9.30am and finish at 5pm.
Please note that attendance is by invitation only.  There is no fee associated with attending the workshop and dinner.

Location:
The Møller Centre
Management Training & Conference Centre
Churchill College, University of Cambridge
Storey’s Way
Cambridge
CB3 0DE
United Kingdom

Company: Reil (Renewable Energy & International Law)
Website: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/news/climate-change-event.html

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BRICS, In the News

Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brazil reports on BRIC Summit of Think Tanks

April 14-15, 2010
Link to original website
Link to IPEA

Consumption dream based on the American way is unsustainable 
Participants in the BRIC Summit of Think Tanks demand radical change in the productive sector and new global governance 

The researchers who participated in the BRIC Summit of Think Tanks agreed unanimously that the citizens of their countries have consumption dreams based on the American way of life. For many, this is a dream that the planet will not stand. The debates led to the conclusion that the way out entails new global governance and a radical change in the productive sector, with lower production of private automotive vehicles and more investments in public transportation. Who will volunteer to try to lead a new world order?

The Indian researcher Samir Saran, from the Observer Research Foundation, noted that U.S. president Barack Obama has demonstrated political will to lead the transition to clean energy in the world. He quoted part of a speech delivered by the U.S. president: “We know that the leaders in the new energy matrix may lead the 21st century economy”.

According to Chinese researcher Zhang Yuyan, from the Institute of World Economics & Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, BRIC nations must unite to take the lead and “avoid that tariffs on carbon emissions be used as protectionist measures by developed countries”. The researcher believes that relations between the BRIC countries and other emerging nations should safeguard the right to quality of life to all citizens.

 

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In the News, Water / Climate

Bangladesh Online Research Network report on ORF’s water security report, 2011

Bangladesh, 2011
Link to original website

Water Security in South Asia: Issues and Policy Recommendations
This brief is largely based on several discussions organised at Observer Research Foundation over a period of time. These discussions were enriched by the presence of some of the well-known experts on water issues in the country, like former Union Minister for Water Resources, Dr. Suresh Prabhu, current High Commissioner of Bangladesh, Tariq Ahmad Karim, Mr. Sunjoy Joshi, Director, Observer Research Foundation, Ms. Clare Shakya, Senior Regional Climate Change and Water Adviser, DFID*, India, Mr. Samir Saran, Vice President, ORF and Dr. Dinesh Kumar, Executive Director, Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy, Hyderabad.

It is estimated that by 2030, only 60 per cent of the world’s population will have access to fresh water 1 supplies . This would mean that about 40 per cent of the world population or about 3 billion-people would be without a reliable source of water and most of them would live in impoverished, conflictprone and water-stressed areas like South Asia.

Water is already an extremely contentious, and volatile, issue in South Asia. There are more people in the region than ever before and their dependence on water for various needs continues to multiply by leaps and bounds. The quantum of water available, for the present as well as future, has reduced dramatically, particularly in the last half-acentury. This is due to water-fertiliser intensive farming, overexploitation of groundwater for drinking, industrial and agricultural purposes, large scale contamination of water sources, total inertia in controlling and channelising waste water, indifferent approach to water conservation programmes and populist policies on water consumption. SOURCE: Observer Research Foundation

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Politics / Globalisation

Samir attended Cambridge Central Asia Forum roundtable on Kazakhstan, OSCE and New Opportunities, 2010

February 12, 2010, UK
Link to roundtable summary
For more information on the Cambridge Central Asia Forum, please visit this website.

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In the News, Non-Traditional Security

NewKerala.com covers ORF report launch on non-traditional security

Latin American countries keen to strengthen relations with India 
April 16, 2011
Link to website  

Participating in an interaction at Observer Research Foundation, envoys from 17 countries from Latin America said their countries are keen to strengthen economic relations with India. “We want better, mutually beneficial relations with India. We have got lots of natural resources, especially oil and other energy resources. But we don’t want to be just provider of resources. We want you to cooperate in our development also,” said Columbian Ambassador Juan Alfredo Pinto Saavedra.

Saavedra, the coordinator of the group of Ambassadors of the Latin American countries, said the US and the Europe used resources from their countries for their development, but did not help them in the development. “While they used our resources, we remained poor,” he said. He wanted India and China to be different in their approach to Latin American countries.

Besides the Columbian Ambassador, Ambassadors from Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama, Costo Rica, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Dominican Republic attended the interaction. The other countries were represented by high level diplomats like Deputy Chief the Missions and Charge d’ Affaires.

The Ambassadors were given a presentation on the ORF Report on India’s non-traditional security threats, titled “Navigating the Near” by Samir Saran, Vice President, Observer Research Foundation. This study was done by ORF for the Integrated Defence Staff, the Ministry of Defence.

Chairing the meeting, M. Rasgotra, a former Foreign Secretary and now President of the ORF Centre for International Relations, said Latin American countries enjoyed good sentiments in India. He said India would be keen to have mutually beneficial cooperation with them. Former Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath and ORF Director Sunjoy Joshi also took part in the meeting.

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BRICS, In the News

Sri Lanka’s TOPS.lk covers BRIC discussion on climate change

April 16, 2010
Link to website  

BRAZIL: Representatives from think tanks of the BRIC countries(Brazil, Russia, India and China) discussed ways to fight climate change at a seminar here Wednesday. The seminar, called BRIC Think-Tank Summit, gathered members of think tanks from the BRIC countries to examine the global economic situation and the role of BRIC countries in the post-crisis global transformation.

World countries need to take joint action to fight climate change, said Indian representative Samir Saran from the Observer Research Foundation. Chinese representative Wu Enyuan, with the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the developed countries had a bigger responsibility on carbon emission reduction as the current climate change is a result of some 150 years of industrialization process of the developed nations.

But he said the developing countries, including the BRIC nations, should take their fair share of responsibility as well, and adopt measures to fight global warming. “China has fulfilled its responsibility by taking practical actions in either energy conservation or environmental protection,” he said, adding that other BRIC countries have also committed themselves to carbon emission reduction. Brazil’s representative Eduardo Viola said that implementing these measures is more important than holding discussions.

Russian representative Nikolai Mikhailov said climate change unveiled the notion that human beings can treat nature as they want without caring about the consequences.Only a radical change in their attitude could make a difference, he said.

The two-day seminar was held on the eve of the second BRIC summit scheduled for Friday in the Brazilian capital.

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BRICS, In the News

Philippine News cover BRIC countries’ think-tanks discussion on climate change

April 15, 2010
Brasilia, Brazil
Link to original website

Representatives from think tanks of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) discussed ways to fight climate change at a seminar here Wednesday. The seminar, called BRIC Think-Tank Summit, gathered members of think tanks from the BRIC countries to examine the global economic situation and the role of BRIC countries in the post-crisis global transformation

World countries need to take joint action to fight climate change, said Indian representative Samir Saran from the Observer Research Foundation. Chinese representative Wu Enyuan, with the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the developed countries had a bigger responsibility on carbon emission reduction as the current climate change is a result of some 150 years of industrialization process of the developed nations. But he said the developing countries, including the BRIC nations, should take their fair share of responsibility as well, and adopt measures to fight global warming.

“China has fulfilled its responsibility by taking practical actions in either energy conservation or environmental protection,” he said, adding that other BRIC countries have also committed themselves to carbon emission reduction. Brazil’s representative Eduardo Viola said that implementing these measures is more important than holding discussions. Russian representative Nikolai Mikhailov said climate change unveiled the notion that human beings can treat nature as they want without caring about the consequences. Only a radical change in their attitude could make a difference, he said.

The two-day seminar was held on the eve of the second BRIC summit scheduled for Friday in the Brazilian capital.

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