Just in time for the weekend, here are some of the links that fascinated, entertained and depressed me this week (in no particular order):
1. Richard Muller, climate "skeptic", concludes the world is warming,
2. The Daily Show's take on the Muller story and science skepticism in general (the second segment is particularly funny though the whole show is worth watching),
3. Mitt Romey on Global Warming (not to be confused with America Warming),
4. News that 2010 levels of GHG are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago and China's emissions now exceed US emissions by 50%,
5. Mark Halle of IISD and his Rio+20 perspective,
6. And lastly, Tim Haab of Environmental Economics nicely summarizes why "Blaming economists for our current economic situation is like blaming psychologists because people are crazy". His post is in reaction to an "Occupy Walkout" of Greg Mankiw's Ec10 class this week.
Happy Reading!
Friday, 4 November 2011
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
More on coffee and cocoa
More on challenges facing the coffee and cocoa sectors.
From CIAT on impact of climate change on cocoa
By 2050, a rise of 2.3 degrees Celsius will drastically affect production in lowland regions, including the major cocoa-producing areas of Moyen-Comoe, Sud-Chttpand Agneby in Cote d'Ivoire, and Western and Brong Ahafo in Ghana. Farmers in these areas are particularly vulnerable since cocoa production is often their primary source of income.
"Many of these farmers use their cocoa trees like ATM machines," said CIAT's Dr. Peter Laderach, the report's lead author. "They pick some pods and sell them to quickly raise cash for school fees or medical expenses. The trees play an absolutely critical role in rural life."
And
Example from CIAT of Climate Smart Agriculture from a smallholder in Kenya
Film on its impact on coffee in Colombia
From CIAT on impact of climate change on cocoa
By 2050, a rise of 2.3 degrees Celsius will drastically affect production in lowland regions, including the major cocoa-producing areas of Moyen-Comoe, Sud-Chttpand Agneby in Cote d'Ivoire, and Western and Brong Ahafo in Ghana. Farmers in these areas are particularly vulnerable since cocoa production is often their primary source of income.
"Many of these farmers use their cocoa trees like ATM machines," said CIAT's Dr. Peter Laderach, the report's lead author. "They pick some pods and sell them to quickly raise cash for school fees or medical expenses. The trees play an absolutely critical role in rural life."
And
Example from CIAT of Climate Smart Agriculture from a smallholder in Kenya
Film on its impact on coffee in Colombia
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Taxing fat
Dave Pannell posts on the Danish fat tax - he argues that it is ineffective, regressive and potentially with high transaction costs. On the plus side, the revenue raised could be used to make it less regressive.
Are there parallels with a carbon tax?
Greg Mankiw argues that a carbon tax is not regressive as the poor use less on carbon than the rich (who own more cars for example). Although presumably proportionally more of their income is spent on meeting basic needs which are carbon related expenditures (like food and heating).
Mankiw and Hansen both argue the regressive element of carbon can be reduced through paying dividends to the poor from the revenue raised.
Are there parallels with a carbon tax?
Greg Mankiw argues that a carbon tax is not regressive as the poor use less on carbon than the rich (who own more cars for example). Although presumably proportionally more of their income is spent on meeting basic needs which are carbon related expenditures (like food and heating).
Mankiw and Hansen both argue the regressive element of carbon can be reduced through paying dividends to the poor from the revenue raised.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Coffee and Climate Change
Last week I attended a conference in Lausanne organized on the topic of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Kenyan Coffee Sector. Attending the conference were representatives from all parts of the coffee supply chain, from producers to traders to brands as well as standard setters, NGOs, governments, international organizations, and academics. Having all of these players in the same room was enough to convince me of the severity of climate change for the coffee sector.
The context for such a conference is straight forward: coffee yields per hectare have been shrinking in the past years in the face of more variable climate. (For instance, variation in rainfall is directly related to variability in production). Incomes have been falling, coffee quality has become less reliable, and producers are going out of business. Because falling coffee yields and quality affect actors all along the value chain, the coffee sector as a whole has an interest in addressing climate change and helping producers adapt to its impacts. Producers need to adapt to changing climatic conditions. Industry needs to secure long-term quantity and quality of their product, as well as respond to national, regional and international climate legislation. And standards organizations need to incorporate climate change into the sustainability aspects of their work. While the impacts for each actor may be different, they all agree that intervention is necessary.
In this regard, a number of cooperative projects have been carried out in the past few years including the Development Partnership (PPP) between Sangana Commodities Ltd. and the German International Cooperation (GIZ) to support Kenyan coffee smallholders in adapting to climate change and incorporating climate change mitigation where possible. The project worked to support coffee producers to adapt their production to the changing climate, namely through the development of an additional component to the existing 4C Code of Conduct taking into account climate aspects. Coffee is a very versatile plant and with adequate support, producers can learn to adapt their production systems.
In addition to the 4C climate module, other standards systems such as Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified have also been actively involved in helping producers adapt to and mitigate climate change impacts. For instance, UTZ Certified is piloting a project where waste water from coffee production is converted into biogas through the use of bio-digesters. The biogas is either used for electricity or heat , or in large scale operations generates CO2 credits to offset emissions downstream in the value chain. Other projects have focused on the use of the Cool Farm Tool, developed by the University of Aberdeen with financial support from Unilever. This online, open source tool uses the PAS 2050 methodology and assists farmers in calculating the carbon footprint of their production. All farmers have to do is enter the data into the tool which then calculates their carbon footprint for them.
Overall, some interesting conclusions came out of the conference:
The context for such a conference is straight forward: coffee yields per hectare have been shrinking in the past years in the face of more variable climate. (For instance, variation in rainfall is directly related to variability in production). Incomes have been falling, coffee quality has become less reliable, and producers are going out of business. Because falling coffee yields and quality affect actors all along the value chain, the coffee sector as a whole has an interest in addressing climate change and helping producers adapt to its impacts. Producers need to adapt to changing climatic conditions. Industry needs to secure long-term quantity and quality of their product, as well as respond to national, regional and international climate legislation. And standards organizations need to incorporate climate change into the sustainability aspects of their work. While the impacts for each actor may be different, they all agree that intervention is necessary.
In this regard, a number of cooperative projects have been carried out in the past few years including the Development Partnership (PPP) between Sangana Commodities Ltd. and the German International Cooperation (GIZ) to support Kenyan coffee smallholders in adapting to climate change and incorporating climate change mitigation where possible. The project worked to support coffee producers to adapt their production to the changing climate, namely through the development of an additional component to the existing 4C Code of Conduct taking into account climate aspects. Coffee is a very versatile plant and with adequate support, producers can learn to adapt their production systems.
In addition to the 4C climate module, other standards systems such as Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified have also been actively involved in helping producers adapt to and mitigate climate change impacts. For instance, UTZ Certified is piloting a project where waste water from coffee production is converted into biogas through the use of bio-digesters. The biogas is either used for electricity or heat , or in large scale operations generates CO2 credits to offset emissions downstream in the value chain. Other projects have focused on the use of the Cool Farm Tool, developed by the University of Aberdeen with financial support from Unilever. This online, open source tool uses the PAS 2050 methodology and assists farmers in calculating the carbon footprint of their production. All farmers have to do is enter the data into the tool which then calculates their carbon footprint for them.
Overall, some interesting conclusions came out of the conference:
- In the coffee sector, adaptation of climate change impacts should have a higher priority than mitigation. The coffee sector is responsible for less than 0.1% of global GHG emissions while climate change is already having serious negative impacts on the livelihoods of coffee producers in developing countries.
- Coffee brands and consumers tend to view mitigation more favourably than adaptation since mitigation projects sell, while adaptation requires investment. However, through partnerships with other actors along the supply chain, modest investment in adaptation for coffee producers has been possible.
- Much more investment will be needed to scale up adaptation projects to the necessary level. The supply chain will need to continue to work together and with local government authorities to come up with innovative solution and more importantly, agree on exactly where the needed funding will come from.
- Finally, regarding mitigation in the coffee sector, it will be difficult to engage coffee producers when there is no clear benefit for them to measure and reduce their carbon footprint. Explaining the technical terminology, improving the ease and reducing the cost of data collection (for example through use of the Cool Farm Tool) can all prove beneficial. Above all though, mitigation projects need to be made inclusive of producers (e.g. generation of carbon credits that could be sold to fund adaptation projects).
Steve Jobs
From his Stanford Commencement Speech - three lesson for life
1. You have to believe the dots will connect in the future
2. You got to find what you love...the only way to do great work is to love what you do...keep looking don't settle
3. Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of being afraid of what you do...death is life's change agent...Don't follow dogma, it is other people's thinking...don't live other people's lives...stay hungry, stay foolish
1. You have to believe the dots will connect in the future
2. You got to find what you love...the only way to do great work is to love what you do...keep looking don't settle
3. Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of being afraid of what you do...death is life's change agent...Don't follow dogma, it is other people's thinking...don't live other people's lives...stay hungry, stay foolish
Monday, 19 September 2011
Rearranging chairs on the Titanic
Part of my job is to coordinate a UN agency's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Strategy. This is part of a UN wide initiative. At the annual meeting of all the Environmental Focal Points of the UN recently at FAO in Rome, I had the chance to share some ideas and hear what other UN organizations are doing to reduce emissions. The Greening the Blue website presents some of these.
Giving up business class
Here is a non official, voluntary idea - instead of the business class we are entitled to in the UN, we will forego the privilege to travel business and head to the back of the plane instead.
Like international chef David Chang, I really LOVE travelling business class but travelling business has around twice the carbon footprint than economy because of the extra space taken up in the plane.
Today, I will blog about the environmental case for going economy and why you shouldn’t worry too much about how much paper you print…
Why is climate change a serious issue?
On current projections, the Earth will be around 9C warmer in places by the end of the century. This means mass extinctions of species (50%+) are likely. For humans it also means billions of people living (and dying) in misery through destroyed agriculture, coastal flooding, lack of water, increased spread of tropical diseases.
The very scary thing though is feedback effects (already being observed) when increasing temperatures unleash further emissions of gases such the release of methane from the tundra of Siberia which further speeds up the warming effect and melts more tundra…(a vicious cycle).
So on current projections of economic growth, there is, as like to say, a nonnegliable risk of catastrophe….or put another way, it is possible that Plant Earth will not be somewhere worth living in the life of our children and grandchildren.
Why bother being a climate altruist?
Taking voluntary actions like flying less or taking the bus to work are seen as futile acts to many. Paul Krugman argues that climate altruism is pointless because you are simply freeing up space for someone to emit carbon. This is partially true and a strong argument for why we need carbon taxes to make markets work in favour of the environment not against it.
But change isn’t happening fast enough - bottom up initiatives are needed to signal to those in power that we will vote for them if they introduce strong green measures.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
How do we know what is the best action to take to reduce emissions? Everyone is telling us what is best. Supermarkets label food for its carbon to reduce our shopping basket’s carbon footprint. At work we are reminded to reduce printing and turn off lights. But are these actions really that effective or do they just make us feel like we have done something useful?
Simple calculations reveal where we should concentrate our efforts where we work:
In one UN organization (fairly representative of many), emissions per staff member per year are coming from
Lighting an office - around 0.1t CO2 eq
Paper - around 0.2t CO2eq
Travel - one business class to South Africa from Europe equals 3.0t CO2 eq (the per staff average is 9t CO2eq from travel in many UN agencies)
If just one flight to Africa emits 50 times more carbon than a year’s worth of printing, doesn't it makes sense to think more about alternatives to flying than fretting about lights and paper?
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Training on project design
Results orientated Project Design
This week I attended an in house training on project design. It was a big commitment of time but valuable for learning more on how to strengthen project design.
This type of exercise should help us to move towards stronger results based management and strengthening accountability in Aid for Trade delivery (see my July in house blog after the A4T Review).
Here are some snapshots of the discussions. It is far from exhaustive - just several “takeaways” that I found interesting.
Outcome and outputs
What is the difference?
There was an exercise to work out what the difference between outcomes or outputs. It became evident that there was a grey area (and thus confusion) between the two. The training was useful to clarify the difference.
The definition used initially in the training was:
Output: a deliverable from the project in terms of a product (e.g. a market guide) or a service (e.g. a training event)
Outcome: the effect of using the output (e.g. a company enjoys greater sales from having used the guide or attending a training event).
Confusion arose due partly to the definition used by the OECD in which the output is not just a deliverable but it “may also include changes resulting from the intervention”. Outcome is described as “the likely…effects of an intervention’s outputs”. There is strongly similarity between these two definitions making it more likely that we will interpret definitions differently.
Committing to outcomes entails risks
We learnt from Irene that one agency (GIZ) does not commit to outcomes – presumably as such a commitment think that means unacceptable levels of risk – an agency has considerably more control over achieving outputs than outcomes.
However, as someone pointed out, it is surprising that the German parliament accepts this. Generally speaking, the taxpayer is paying for outcomes (“poverty reduction “ educating women” “ protecting children from diseases”). Indeed, the MDGs are stated outcomes and the UN and donors are signed up to delivering these.
Agencies making commitments on outcomes (like the UN) have therefore to make a risk assessment of the linkage between outputs and outcomes and preparing the appropriate indicators and baselines for measuring if they have been achieved. Also:
• Sharing best practice and experience, publishing evaluation etc. ensuring feedback loops helps us to learn about these linkages.
• To what extent do linkages vary according to different economic, social and cultural contexts?
• Buy-in or co-financing to the project from national stakeholders can demonstrate that outputs lead to positive outcomes.
• Evaluations of cost effectiveness should measures the ratio between inputs and outcomes (not outputs).
• “the more specific (in defining the outcome and outputs) you are, the better you can manage a project”
Indicators
The value of my Friends and Links
An indicator is a factor that shows evidence of an outcome being achieved. (e.g. sales increase of an entrepreneur). We reviewed weak and strong indicators, again from project documents.
The IMDIS type indicators explain outputs but are not so useful indicators of outcomes. For example reporting on the number of workshops organized does not tell us anything about outcome (i.e. companies learning about market trends and changing their business strategy as a result).
Related indicators being used by projects like “Number of buyers contacted” also provide an incomplete picture. The number of buyers is not that informative. For example, when an agency takes companies to a trade fair, we want to know the quality of buyers’ enquiries (i.e. ones that lead to business) from buyers, not the number of enquiries. One high quality enquiry can be worth more in terms of sales or a long term partnership than 10 vague or low value enquiries.
Social networking indicators are analogous. Having lots of “Friends” on Facebook doesn’t tell me anything about the quality of those friends. Similarly, a job-seeking graduate would prefer to be to one influential executive than 10 low level employees.
Assessing risk
We reviewed risks and assumptions from project documents according to
• measures for the level of probability (of the assumption holding) and
• the likely impact on the project if the assumption doesn’t hold.
If you can apply a quantitative value (say from 1-4), multiplying the two gives a rating of risk, thus allowing Management to get a snapshot of risk. An appealing idea, but shouldn’t be a substitute for careful analysis of the risks and assumptions.
Re-planning
Logframes do not need to be written in stone.
They can be revised during implementation. If, for example, external factors changed (e.g. if market conditions change).
In the 90s changing the logframe was viewed negatively by evaluators. Now evaluators take the reverse opinion, that changes are welcome, shows that project is flexible and adaptive to changing conditions (e.g. in the market, socio-economic conditions). Do we have the scope for that, particularly with respect to what we have agreed with donors? Yes, if they are agreeing to outcomes – how we get there (the type of activities and outputs or the “road” we follow) should allow for flexibility. The mid-term evaluation is an opportunity to re-evaluate the planned outputs and even outcome.
Poorly designed projects can be approved for political, disbursement pressures. However, the organization will pay the price later (outcomes not achieved, financial problems etc)
A step too far? Applying logframes to family life
We heard from several participants anecdotes that logframes were being applied to personal lives, including:
• An assessment of whether it was a good idea to get married – risks and assumptions revolved around the fact the two were from very different cultures. His fiancée wasn’t impressed.
• Used for planning a family weekend
• Used for resolving a family conflict between in-laws (“Outcome”: harmony between in laws “Outputs” Built capacity of in-laws to show kindness and understanding etc etc?)
Other takeaways
“we must be in learning mode, not punishment“
“project management is a learnable skill”
“evaluation is mainly a learning exercise, not policing”
Having a scoring system based on a World Bank type checklist would be “instructive and bring transparency” to the review process.
This week I attended an in house training on project design. It was a big commitment of time but valuable for learning more on how to strengthen project design.
This type of exercise should help us to move towards stronger results based management and strengthening accountability in Aid for Trade delivery (see my July in house blog after the A4T Review).
Here are some snapshots of the discussions. It is far from exhaustive - just several “takeaways” that I found interesting.
Outcome and outputs
What is the difference?
There was an exercise to work out what the difference between outcomes or outputs. It became evident that there was a grey area (and thus confusion) between the two. The training was useful to clarify the difference.
The definition used initially in the training was:
Output: a deliverable from the project in terms of a product (e.g. a market guide) or a service (e.g. a training event)
Outcome: the effect of using the output (e.g. a company enjoys greater sales from having used the guide or attending a training event).
Confusion arose due partly to the definition used by the OECD in which the output is not just a deliverable but it “may also include changes resulting from the intervention”. Outcome is described as “the likely…effects of an intervention’s outputs”. There is strongly similarity between these two definitions making it more likely that we will interpret definitions differently.
Committing to outcomes entails risks
We learnt from Irene that one agency (GIZ) does not commit to outcomes – presumably as such a commitment think that means unacceptable levels of risk – an agency has considerably more control over achieving outputs than outcomes.
However, as someone pointed out, it is surprising that the German parliament accepts this. Generally speaking, the taxpayer is paying for outcomes (“poverty reduction “ educating women” “ protecting children from diseases”). Indeed, the MDGs are stated outcomes and the UN and donors are signed up to delivering these.
Agencies making commitments on outcomes (like the UN) have therefore to make a risk assessment of the linkage between outputs and outcomes and preparing the appropriate indicators and baselines for measuring if they have been achieved. Also:
• Sharing best practice and experience, publishing evaluation etc. ensuring feedback loops helps us to learn about these linkages.
• To what extent do linkages vary according to different economic, social and cultural contexts?
• Buy-in or co-financing to the project from national stakeholders can demonstrate that outputs lead to positive outcomes.
• Evaluations of cost effectiveness should measures the ratio between inputs and outcomes (not outputs).
• “the more specific (in defining the outcome and outputs) you are, the better you can manage a project”
Indicators
The value of my Friends and Links
An indicator is a factor that shows evidence of an outcome being achieved. (e.g. sales increase of an entrepreneur). We reviewed weak and strong indicators, again from project documents.
The IMDIS type indicators explain outputs but are not so useful indicators of outcomes. For example reporting on the number of workshops organized does not tell us anything about outcome (i.e. companies learning about market trends and changing their business strategy as a result).
Related indicators being used by projects like “Number of buyers contacted” also provide an incomplete picture. The number of buyers is not that informative. For example, when an agency takes companies to a trade fair, we want to know the quality of buyers’ enquiries (i.e. ones that lead to business) from buyers, not the number of enquiries. One high quality enquiry can be worth more in terms of sales or a long term partnership than 10 vague or low value enquiries.
Social networking indicators are analogous. Having lots of “Friends” on Facebook doesn’t tell me anything about the quality of those friends. Similarly, a job-seeking graduate would prefer to be to one influential executive than 10 low level employees.
Assessing risk
We reviewed risks and assumptions from project documents according to
• measures for the level of probability (of the assumption holding) and
• the likely impact on the project if the assumption doesn’t hold.
If you can apply a quantitative value (say from 1-4), multiplying the two gives a rating of risk, thus allowing Management to get a snapshot of risk. An appealing idea, but shouldn’t be a substitute for careful analysis of the risks and assumptions.
Re-planning
Logframes do not need to be written in stone.
They can be revised during implementation. If, for example, external factors changed (e.g. if market conditions change).
In the 90s changing the logframe was viewed negatively by evaluators. Now evaluators take the reverse opinion, that changes are welcome, shows that project is flexible and adaptive to changing conditions (e.g. in the market, socio-economic conditions). Do we have the scope for that, particularly with respect to what we have agreed with donors? Yes, if they are agreeing to outcomes – how we get there (the type of activities and outputs or the “road” we follow) should allow for flexibility. The mid-term evaluation is an opportunity to re-evaluate the planned outputs and even outcome.
Poorly designed projects can be approved for political, disbursement pressures. However, the organization will pay the price later (outcomes not achieved, financial problems etc)
A step too far? Applying logframes to family life
We heard from several participants anecdotes that logframes were being applied to personal lives, including:
• An assessment of whether it was a good idea to get married – risks and assumptions revolved around the fact the two were from very different cultures. His fiancée wasn’t impressed.
• Used for planning a family weekend
• Used for resolving a family conflict between in-laws (“Outcome”: harmony between in laws “Outputs” Built capacity of in-laws to show kindness and understanding etc etc?)
Other takeaways
“we must be in learning mode, not punishment“
“project management is a learnable skill”
“evaluation is mainly a learning exercise, not policing”
Having a scoring system based on a World Bank type checklist would be “instructive and bring transparency” to the review process.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
