Alarm over damage from mining and resource use

Martin Khor

That the world faces multiple environmental crises is widely acknowledged. Much attention has been paid to climate change in recent years, as well as deforestation and biodiversity loss.

But also worthy of concern is how the extractive sector – mining, oil, gas – is running out of resources, and the often immense ecological damage caused in getting these resources out of the ground.

And there are also social consequences, as when the lands of local communities are poisoned, or when local people have to move out to make way for the industry.

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New business for new renewables

Sunita Narain

It was a trade exhibition abuzz with the restrained chatter of busy suited executives at company stalls making contacts and finalising deals. Nothing out of place except that this trade was about renewable energy technologies, which have unconventional reasons for growth. First, these technologies are seen as the most economical and feasible source of energy for millions of people unconnected to the electricity grid and having no electricity to light their houses or cook their food. This energy poverty is disabling and needs to be eradicated. Introduction of decentralised and improved technologies paves the way to catapult the poorest of the households into the most modern systems. Secondly, these technologies—from wind and solar to biomass—provide cleaner low-carbon energy options to combat climate change. These are future systems critical for survival of all.

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Remembering Alice Amsden: Alice Amsden and Asian Development

Matías VernengoAlice Amsden

Professor Amsden, author of Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (1989), has passed away. Her contributions to the understanding of the Asian late development experience were essential to debunk the neoliberal views, already dominant by the late 1980s, according to which the export-led experience in Asia was market driven, in contrast with the State-led Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) in Latin America. She argued that South Korea actually distorted prices (with tariffs, quotas and credit subsidies), that is, got prices wrong, and growth did not result from efficient allocation of resources by market forces. Further, the state intervened directly in production, as a banker and did active industrial policy picking up winners and promoting the consolidation of big national groups, the chaebols.

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India's Bilateral Investment Treaties: Worst fears realised

Jayati Ghosh

The Government of India has signed at least fifty Bilateral Investment Treaties – we do not know exactly how many because the information is still not in the public domain. In addition, there are at least ten ”Free trade” agreements or ”Economic Partnership” agreements that include investment chapters or clauses relating to bilateral investment protection, and more than twenty more such agreements are currently being negotiated, according to the website of the Ministry of Commerce.

Bilateral investment treaties have been viewed with serious reservations by independent analysts for several reasons. They can have far-reaching and typically negative implications for host country governments and citizens, because of the sweeping protections afforded to investors at the cost of domestic socio-economic rights and environmental standards.

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India’s Bilateral Investment Treaties: Worst fears realised

Jayati Ghosh

The Government of India has signed at least fifty Bilateral Investment Treaties – we do not know exactly how many because the information is still not in the public domain. In addition, there are at least ten ”Free trade” agreements or ”Economic Partnership” agreements that include investment chapters or clauses relating to bilateral investment protection, and more than twenty more such agreements are currently being negotiated, according to the website of the Ministry of Commerce.

Bilateral investment treaties have been viewed with serious reservations by independent analysts for several reasons. They can have far-reaching and typically negative implications for host country governments and citizens, because of the sweeping protections afforded to investors at the cost of domestic socio-economic rights and environmental standards.

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Remembering Alice Amsden: Catching up or Falling Behind?

Mehdi Shafaeddin
This piece is dedicated to the memory of Professor Alice Amsden, who passed away last week.

Professor Amsden’s preoccupation was the analysis of the process by which some developing countries have managed to industrialize and accelerate their pace of economic development. The Republic of Korea, Taiwan Province of China and the so-called emerging economies (The Rest) were her main case studies. She was a visionary, and also believed in the need for tailor-made strategies for specific developing countries rather than one-size-fits-all economic policies. Nor did she believe in pure reliance on market forces as advocated by neo-liberals and reflected in an analysis of the question of “catch-up” in a recent issue of the Economist.

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Remembering Alice Amsden: Viva Alice!

Lyuba ZarskyAlice Amsden
World renowned development economist Alice Amsden passed away last week.

Alice Amsden was an intrepid thinker and I add my voice to the chorus of those inspired by her intellectual trailblazing. But I want to share a personal experience that sheds light on Alice’s inspiring character.

In the early 1980s, I was living in a fifth floor apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan with my partner, Peter Hayes. Alice lived down the hall. One morning, we were awakened by a loud commotion outside. I threw on my bath robe and peered out my door. I heard Alice yelling and saw that her door was open. I edged my way down the hall and in a second, a man flashed down the stairwell, clutching something under his arm. Alice screamed that she had been robbed and I should call the police—and then she tore down the stairwell in hot pursuit.

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Remembering Alice Amsden: an intellectual force

Calestous Juma, guest bloggerAlice Amsden
World renowned development economist Alice Amsden passed away this week.

It is with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Professor Alice Amsden. Alice was a true intellectual force and made remarkable contributions to our understanding of emerging economies.

She was widely recognized as one of the world’s leading visionaries. In 2003 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from GDAE at Tufts University. The prize recognizes scholars whose work has helped to broaden economics to better understand urgent contemporary issues. She has made important contributions to our understanding of the role of building productive capabilities as a foundation for innovation.

A few of us who came to work with her closely also knew her as a person of irrepressible character who maintained very high standards. She challenged herself as hard as she challenged others. She pursued her research with remarkable vigor.

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Remembering Alice Amsden

Kevin P. GallagherAlice Amsden
World renowned development economist Alice Amsden passed away this week.

Alice Amsden seared through conventional economics and political science with her analyses of East Asian development in the later part of the 20th Century. She will long be remembered as one of the best development economists, and political economists, of her time.

Her book “The Rise of the Rest: Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies” crystallized a lifetime of work that blended theory, quantitative analysis, and careful field work on “late development.” Other landmark books were “Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization” and “Beyond Late Development: Taiwan’s Industrial Upgrading.”

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Governments Agree on Voluntary Rules to Control Land Grabs

Sophia Murphy, guest blogger

Three years of negotiations on guidelines to govern the tenure of land, fisheries and forests (commonly referred to as the Voluntary Guidelines, or VG) came to a successful close on Friday, March 9 in Rome. Under the auspices of the newly reconfigured Committee on World Food Security (housed at the FAO with a secretariat shared among the FAO, the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development, or IFAD), the negotiations were contentious and important.

Ninety-six governments, accompanied by UN agencies, civil society organizations, farmer organizations and private sector representatives worked through three rounds of negotiations over as many years to come to agreement. The talks were chaired by the United States, whose negotiators earned the praise of the participants for their commitment to finding agreement across often significant divides. The conclusion of the VGs (see the FAO press release) marks an important step towards providing some protection for small-holders and communities around the world, who have found their productive assets (arable land, or fishing waters, or forests) under siege by a wave of investor interest from private companies and wealthy food importing countries.

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