La poppa del Nicholas, autore della revisione del limite del Regno Unito su clima-cambia l'economia, ha alcune parole taglienti circa la banca. Prima che dirigendo in India per continuare un progetto di ricerca del villaggio, l'ex economista principale della banca del mondo parli con John Crace.

Quando Poppa del Nicholas parte di sinistra la scuola de Londra di economia (LSE) in 1993, ha assicurato i colleghe che sarebbe indietro nell'accademia in due o tre anni. Quattordici anni più successivamente, infine è trasportato su quella promessa con suo ritorno al LSE come il primo supporto della scuola Sedia di IG Patel. “Mai realmente ho avuto molto di un programma di carriera,„ lui offro via spiegazione. “E le occasioni interessanti hanno continuato a potare in su.„

Non potete discutere con quello: economista principale sia alla banca europea per ricostruzione che allo sviluppo (EBRD) e Banca del mondo e capo del servizio economico del governo britannico al Ministero del Tesoro porti ad interessare Cv, ma ancora disconcerting piuttosto per sentire un economista principale ammettere a tale flessibilità circa raggiungere un obiettivo. Non minimi quando ci è così poca stanza per la manovra nelle sue proprie prescrizioni globali.

Sostenga nell'ottobre 2006, poppa ha trasportato un invito di wake-up delle 700 pagine al mondo con la pubblicazione di suo governo-sostenuto Rassegna dell'economia del cambiamento di clima. Il messaggio era chiaro ed intransigente: riscaldamento globale è una realtà ed i governi hanno dovuto atto immediatamente per attenuare le conseguenze. Ma è stato preso a cuore? La poppa comincia diplomatico funzionando con le storia di successo -- precisare il presidente George W Bush degli Stati Uniti accettazione riluttante del problema, l'impegno europeo alla a rapporto di riproduzione di 20% nelle emissioni entro 2020, il gruppo di otto (G8) impegno alla a rapporto di riproduzione di 50% entro 2050 e spodestare dagli elettori del ministro principale australiano, clima-cambi John Howard scettico.

Tuttavia la poppa è informata che non è più una questione di vincita della discussione. La battaglia ora è di convincere i governi per trasformare nella retorica dell'impegno le azioni. E quello è detto più facile di quanto fatto quando state chiedendo ai politici di rompere l'abitudine di un corso della vita e di comportarti nell'interesse di lunga durata. Ma la poppa insiste che non hanno scelta. "If we do nothing, then there's a 50% chance of global temperatures increasing by five degrees within the next century," he argues. "That would be catastrophic. If we act now, we can reduce that risk to about 4% or 5%. Governments have to understand we must keep working on this for the next four decades, so there is no excuse for the necessary measures to be delayed or derailed by short-term economic fluctuations."

The economics of climate change is still a relatively new subject and Stern readily accepts that his review was very much a work in progress. Yet he utterly rejects some of the criticism he got at the time for painting the worst-case scenario. "If anything, I was far too cautious," he says. "We now know that emissions are much higher than I assumed, that the carbon cycle -- the earth's ability to absorb CO2 -- is much weaker and that the risks of increased temperatures for every level of greenhouse gases are much greater. I could have underestimated the costs of inaction by up to 50%."

Although Stern tends to speak the language of economics, with climate change reframed in terms of "risk assessment" and "future discounting", he doesn't ignore the ethical issues. Getting people to understand they have to pay for the damage they cause while developing more environmentally friendly solutions is not just a simple cost-benefit analysis; it's a moral choice. No one would dare to seriously suggest that someone who was born in 2005 was worth 50% less than someone who was born in 1970, yet Stern insists that is the only realistic interpretation of arguments in favour of taking action later rather than sooner.

So even if he's too much of a statesman to point the finger at any one person or government in particular, he's not about to let anyone off the hook. You just have to pick your way through his velvet words to find the steel behind them. "I think we got the [annual] cost of action just about right at 1% of [global] GDP," he smiles. "But that depends on governments implementing good policy." The key word here is “good”. Stern knows all too well how things can go wrong when people take their eye off the ball, and the current economic crisis is a case in point.

While many analysts have treated the collapse of the British bank Northern Rock and the global investment firm Bear Stearns as a financial problem caused by a prolonged period of reckless lending by banks, Stern argues that the problem is systemic. Financial institutions can only operate within the economic framework laid down by their governments. And for various reasons -- including a tendency to assume that a long period of growth will go on forever, and a desire to keep interest rates low to stave off a recession in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the dot-com bubble -- governments allowed a culture to develop that tacitly encouraged banks to take greater lending risks.

"There were two different market philosophies at play," Stern explains. "One was that the deregulation of the financial sector was a good thing; the other was the government was responsible for avoiding major systemic collapses -- neither of which was silly on its own, but if taken together and pushed to the extreme could be interpreted irresponsibly as ‘anything goes and the government will bail you out, regardless’. And this partly explains what happened when a level of complacency crept in. Some financial regulation is essential. First, though, the government has to put out the current economic fire, and the hard thing now is that combating the threat of recession with low interest rates might recreate exactly the same conditions that gave rise to the crisis."

You get the feeling that, reduced to its basics, economics is a straightforward game of truth and consequences for Stern, who is now 61 years old. And that isn't a bad way of trying to understand his own career path, either. His father was a German Jew who escaped to the United Kingdom after Kristallnacht, a Nazi pogrom in 1938. Nicholas grew up in the west London suburb of Brentford in the postwar period -- hence his decision to become Lord Stern of Brentford when he was appointed to the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament, in 2007.

Stern studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, before going on to teach at the University of Oxford. He was immediately picked out as a high-flyer, going on to plum jobs at Warwick University and the LSE, but academia was never going to be quite enough. From early on in his career, he had been interested in the economics of the developing world -- much of his early research work was based in Kenya and India -- and he was never going to be able to resist when the opportunity arose to work on the reconstruction of the former Soviet republics for the EBRD. In 2000, he followed the Nobel prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz -- whom he had known since they had worked together in Kenya in 1969 -- as chief economist of the World Bank, an institution he wholeheartedly defends.

"It's true that its system of appointments could be improved," Stern says, "as it's clearly wrong that the US should choose [the bank’s] president. But to claim the World Bank is just an extension of US foreign policy is just wrong. I worked very closely with [former World Bank president] Jim Wolfensohn -- who was a Democratic appointment [nominated by former US president Bill Clinton] -- under a Republican administration [led by Bush], and the bank was very much its own institution with its own priorities."

Stern certainly did enough to attract the attention of the UK’s now-prime minister Gordon Brown, and in 2003 he was asked to join the Treasury when Brown was chancellor of the exchequer -- "I was a civil servant, not a part of the government" -- first in supervising the amalgamation of the Inland Revenue and the customs and excise departments, and then as director of policy and research for the Commission for Africa. From there it was a giant leap to his public-sector swansong -- the report on climate change. So how does it feel to be out of the limelight, tucked away in an office on the fifth floor above the LSE library?

"It's very important that there should be cross-fertilisation between government and academia," he says. "Both parties can benefit from having a better understanding of how the other works. But -- you know what? -- it's rather nice to be back here." Not that he's going to be entirely anonymous, as he will head the newly created India Observatory as well as chair a new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, which is being funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

In late March 2008, Stern was off to India to continue a research project charting the economic transformation of the Uttar Pradesh village of Palanpur, which he began more than 20 years ago. Better still, he's even managing to get in a few days holiday at the end of it.

"My wife and I are planning to stay on a tea plantation and go watching birds and rhino," he says. Most of all, though, he's clearly hoping he won't bump into anyone who'll start quizzing him on whether he's offset his carbon emissions. "I get enough of that at parties at home."

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

J.I.C. Technology says it plans to invest in three separate alternative energy projects in China.

Guangzhou-based P&G has donated RMB7.5 million to China Education Development Foundation to push China's national school health education program to a new level.

China's Food Nutrition Tag Management Rule will be formally enforced on May 1 to guide consumers' choices of food and to promote meal nutrition.

To make consumers quickly get used to the days without free plastics bags, 17 shopping malls and supermarkets in Beijing, including Wangfujing Department Store, Cuiwei Plaza, Wal-Mart, Chaoshifa and Wu-mart, jointly launched an initiative under the theme of "Using Less Plastic Bags and Protect the Earth's Environment".

The international NGO Human Rights Watch recently published a report on the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics that states that the "corporate sponsors of the Olympics risk lasting damage to their brands if they do not live up to their professed standards of corporate social responsibility by speaking out about the deteriorating human rights situation in China." The report targets the 12 highest-level corporate benefactors of the Beijing Games, known as the TOP sponsors ("The Olympic Partner"): A

China’s growth has largely depended on having a large number of its population willing to relocate to the cities to lend their hands to building buildings, stitch, stamp, sweep, sweat, lift, etc. For myself, the migrant community is one that I have found fascinating for many reasons, one of which is that their sacrifices often go [...]

As the Olympics approaches, the Chinese capital's fragile water supply is in the spotlight. Gaoming Jiang explains how to prevent contamination risks in Beijing’s water – and ensure an adequate supply.

An environmental volunteer I know in the town of Chicheng, Hebei province, recently emailed me to say that an elementary school was dumping excrement directly into a local river. The school paid about 1,000 yuan (US$143) to have the waste from its toilets taken away and dumped into the Hei River, which feeds into the Miyun Reservoir, from which Beijing draws much of its water. My friend, outraged, made a video of the process to show as evidence of the pollution entering Beijing’s drinking water.

Beijing suffers from a severe lack of water: the quantity of water available per head is only one-thirtieth of the global average. Guanting Reservoir, the first major reservoir to be built after 1949, drew water from a 43,000-square-kilometre basin. Once completed, it provided a total of 39.6 billion cubic metres of water and irrigated 1.1 million mu (734 square kilometres) of land. However, upstream industrial and economic activity reduced the flow and polluted the water. The quality of the water fell to class five or worse, which forced Beijing to stop drawing water from Guanting in 1985. The city now takes its water from the Miyun and Huairou reservoirs. But the outlook for the Miyun Reservoir is not good: the amount of water it can supply is plummeting, and it suffers from an excess of nutrients. As well as the dumping of excrement, this is also caused by the surface run-off from fertilisers and pesticides.

Although Beijing is improving its protection of water sources and has had some successes, there are still major problems, particularly when it comes the city’s poor use of funds. Liu Baoshan, chair of the city’s rural affairs committee, says that of the 150 million yuan (US$21.5 million) fund to protect water sources, only 80 million yuan (US$11.5 million) was actually used for this purpose. Of Beijing’s 547 minor river basins, 266 remain untreated. At the current rate of progress – treating 20 rivers a year – it will take 13 years to even complete even the first stage of the process. This will not quickly improve Beijing’s water sources – as is needed – particularly when, in some cases, “treatment” actually makes the problem worse. The project will also fail to deal with problems further upstream and out of reach of the Beijing government.

The protection of upstream water sources in China tends to mean the creation of forests; little attention is paid to pollution from agriculture or animal and human excrement. Beijing plans to spend 100 million yuan (US$14.3 million) between 2007 and 2011 assisting Zhangjiakou and Chengde, in Hebei province, to complete a 200,000-mu (134 square kilometres) project to protect water sources. Other measures include extending a project designed to protect Beijing and Tianjin from sandstorms to cover restoration of vegetation and the protection of water sources. But there are no projects aimed at reducing pollution from manufacturing, agriculture and the general population – including the question of excrement.

In fact, excrement is a useful agricultural resource; currently, it is even a scarce one. Modern agriculture has replaced organic fertilisers with chemical alternatives and pesticides. This presents a major challenge to the protection of water sources. Policies must also account for the interests of local people in poor areas. Beijing could, at no great cost, change the way upstream agriculture operates and encourage the use of organic fertilisers instead of chemicals; the use of straw to feed livestock; dung to fuel methane power generation; and the by-products used as fertiliser – rather than being dumped into rivers. Beijing’s consumers could enjoy organic products produced upstream, the farmers could have a secure income and the rivers would be cleaner.

Based on studies and discussions with experts, I recommend that Beijing focuses its efforts in the following way:

First, establish an Environmental Security Reserve for Beijing water sources that includes the Miyun, Guanting and Huairou reservoirs, which can ensure water quality and adequate water supplies in accordance with the State Council’s guidelines on environmental protection. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Water Resources, and with close cooperation between the city of Beijing and the provinces of Hebei and Shanxi, a unified mechanism should be established to solve the current problems of decentralised management. Once this is established, land use can be adjusted and planned scientifically.

Second, use market mechanisms to link water consumption downstream with water protection upstream, forming a positive feedback mechanism. Upstream areas should change traditional land use patterns, reduce population and livestock pressures and free up large areas of land for forests and grasslands – areas that currently produce agricultural products instead of water. Compensation for this will be provided from Beijing’s water bills. Any remaining agriculture should be organic, using human and animal excrement as fertiliser, which will increase income from the land while reducing and ultimately abandoning the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

Third, ecological management must be linked to poverty alleviation and wealth creation. The challenges faced in protecting water sources are manmade problems. We should take the initiative by helping these areas solve energy problems with methane production technology and a more distributed infrastructure. We must also help with hygiene by building waste and water treatment plants. This will ensure the areas have adequate vegetation coverage, produce enough water, and it will guarantee that the water flowing into reservoirs is clean.

There is no time to waste in protecting Beijing’s water sources: it is an issue that impacts on the safety of Beijing’s residents, our national image and the success of the Olympics. We must act soon. Everyone involved should work closely together to create a program for sustainable water use, solve these problems and improve the environmental quality of the areas providing the capital’s water.

Gaoming Jiang is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and a member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group.

Homepage photo by pretty.face

Human Rights Watch, Apr.17, 2008- (New York, April 17, 2008 )  With fewer than four months remaining until the start of the Beijing Games, corporate sponsors of the Olympics risk lasting damage to their brands if they do not live up to their professed standards of corporate social responsibility by speaking out about the deteriorating human rights situation in China, Human Rights Watch said today. “Shareholders and consumers who care about human rights should not let Olympic corporate sponso

To welcome the World Intellectual Property Day and show China's achievements in anti-piracy as well as its determination in intellectual property rights protection, the National Eliminate Pornography and Illegal Publications Work Team has held an activity in the 31 municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions across the country to destroy pirated and illegal publications.