Monthly Archives: July 2015

Reducing inequality…in national wealth

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The next in the blog series from Newcastle University Societal Challenge Theme Institutes giving recommendations for targets and indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, is from Dr Andrew Walton, Lecturer in Political Philosophy in School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.

In the current proposal for the Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 10 states the aim to ‘reduce inequality within and among countries’.  For many (good) reasons, much articulation of this goal has focused on its first component – reducing inequality between co-citizens within countries.  But it is important also to consider what should be the appropriate target for the second component.  What should be our aim and measure in reducing inequality amongst countries? My suggestion is to lessen the gap in per capita national wealth – the value of each country’s financial and physical assets.

Measures of (in)equality

The basic idea of measuring (in)equality involves comparing the circumstances of certain actors.  Thus, any conceptualisation of equality must specify an answer to two questions:

  1. Which actor should be compared?
  2. What aspect(s) of their circumstances should be compared?

There are different ways to conceptualise and measure (in)equality historically [1]:

Model Actor Aspect(s)
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Countries Final value of goods & services produced within nations’ borders
GDP/capita ‘Average’ citizen (country ÷ population) Final value of goods & services produced within nations’ borders
Income Persons or households Disposable income / expenditure
Wealth Persons or households Assets, including financial holdings and physical goods, such as real estate

Perhaps obviously, these models ask us to think about (in)equality in rather different ways.  For example, on current figures using GDP suggests that China is better-off than Switzerland, whereas GDP/capita suggests the opposite [2].  Similarly, both GDP and GDP/capita suggest that Brazil is a relatively well-off country, but measuring income and wealth highlight that it is home to individuals who are worse-off than almost the entire populations of similarly well-off countries [3].

What these differences highlight is that asking which model we should use to measure (in)equality pushes us to explore deeper philosophical questions about our underlying reasons for being concerned with (in)equality, and to find a measure that is tailored to these concerns.  My suggestion here is that some of our underlying concerns point in the direction of exploring how countries compare in per capita wealth [4].

Why compare countries and why compare them per capita?

For many people it will seem obvious that there is something important about whether their country is well-off.  It is sometimes thought important for ensuring that their country is respected by others and very commonly because it has a significant impact on whether its citizens have comfortable lives.

Some argue that comparing national circumstances is a mistake. They suggest that, ultimately, it is only the welfare of people that matters and, as noted above, cross-country comparisons can hide that some individuals within countries are badly-off.  Advocates of this view might argue that Goal 10 should be collapsed into one goal: measuring (in)equality amongst individuals worldwide.

We should reject the conclusions of this argument.  Because the SDGs also consider (in)equality within countries and have other goals targeting aspects of individual welfare, they will not overlook the worry mentioned above.  Meanwhile, because one thing that benefits people’s welfare is to participate in the collective decisions and development of their nation, even this individual-centred view can acknowledge the importance of a world involving country groupings and, thus, the additional relevance of cross-country comparisons.

However, we should accept the point that countries are, in essence, valuable only insofar as they benefit their populations and our comparisons between them should reflect this concern.  It is for this reason that our cross-country comparison should focus on a per capita measure, which looks at how some aspect of a country’s circumstance relates to its people.

Why compare wealth?

Some possible ways we could make per capita inter-country comparisons would be the following:

Model Actor Aspect(s)
GDP/capita ‘Average’ citizen Final value of goods & services produced within nation’s borders
Wealth/capita ‘Average’ citizen Assets, including currency, stock, bond holdings and physical goods, such as land, natural resources, and rights to global commons
Capabilities ‘Average’ citizen Human development indicators, such as life expectancy, education, income

A reasonable case could be made that reducing inequality between countries in any of these respects would be a worthwhile target.  Nevertheless, I proposed at the beginning of this post that the goal should be to focus on wealth/capita.  Two related points support this view.

First, neither GDP/capita nor capabilities takes full account of the aspects of a country’s circumstance that affects the welfare of its population.  To take two clear examples, currency reserves and natural resources, which are considered in wealth/capita, but not these other measures, both allow a country to provide its population with economic security and future consumption [5].

Second, many of the assets that countries hold are a matter of luck.  For example, no country did anything to entitle it to the oil or gold that lies within its borders and, indeed, much of their economic wealth arises from the fortunes of the market.

In cases where there is a good that many actors desire and which no actor is entitled automatically to own, it seems sensible to distribute that good equally.  If Isaac and I are sat beneath a tree feeling hungry when an apple falls on his head, it seems reasonable for us to share it.  Similarly, insofar as it is valuable for countries to hold financial and physical assets and their current holdings have arisen from good fortune, there is a reason to aim for equalising their shares.

Moving towards international equality

A more fully fledged case for measuring inter-country (in)equality in terms of per capita national wealth is that achieving parity in this regard can, under certain conditions, represent a truly idealistic aim.  There is a moral argument that a distribution of assets is fair if it mirrors what each relevant actor would have bought with equal purchasing power in the context of all goods being priced at a market-clearing equilibrium [6]. Such a distribution, in the international context, would entail equality in per capita national wealth and it is fair because it reflects the equality of all parties in their access to these goods and allows them to shape their holdings according to what they believe is worth having.

Realising this aim is perhaps a more long-term project than for the framework of the SDGs.  Nevertheless, it helps show the value of building our understanding of (in)equality in national wealth and beginning to reduce it, whilst casting light on some important steps for moving towards this goal:

Pursue (the second component of) Goal 10 by:

  • Establishing a national wealth index and collect data on countries’ standings.
  • Setting a target of reducing inequality in per capita holdings.

Connect these targets and their longer-term aim to:

  • Adding impetus to Goal 16.7 of ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making, in order for countries’ choices about asset holdings to reflect the collective interests of their people.
  • Helping articulate Goals 17.10-17.12 on shaping international trade towards an equal and equilibrated market.

Dr Andrew Walton is lecturer in political philosophy at Newcastle University. His main research interests are in global justice, liberal-egalitarian and socialist thought and questions of justice in public policy.

 

[1] The essential ideas used to construct this table are taken from Milanovic, B., Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

[2] These figures can be found via UN, ‘National Accounts Main Aggregates Database’, available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/selbasicFast.asp [Accessed 17th June 2015].

[3] See, for example, Credit Suisse, ‘Global Wealth Report 2014’, available at https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4 [Accessed 17th June 2015].

[4] This suggestion is elaborated in more detail in Walton, A., ‘On the Currency of International Equality’, forthcoming.

[5] It is worth noting that Capabilities also seems to point towards important aspects of human welfare.  However, many other SDGs will pursue these kinds of concerns anyway, leaving space for the second part of Goal 10 to speak to the concerns I mention here.

[6] This view is most commonly associated with Dworkin, R., Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

 

Labour’s future lies in co-operation and solidarity, not managerialism and party politics

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David Webb is a Lecturer in Town Planning at Newcastle University. His research has explored the governing principles behind urban management, in particular New Labour’s ‘top down’ housing market renewal programme. More recently, his interests lie in co-operative influences on the heritage conservation movement and the cultural heritage of co-operation.

This May’s election news was crushing for the Labour Party and the left. And yet the political promise of the leadership contenders looks uninspiring. In choosing its next leader, to inspire a comeback, Labour faces a choice between a left wing stalwart ready to stick to their principles and debunk the myth that Britain’s economic fortunes were caused by state ‘profligacy’ or a return to the Blairite vision of a socially tempered devotion to market governance. But there is another way, perhaps the only route available to Labour if it wishes to exploit the opportunities created by a politically fractured and polarised UK: cooperation and solidarity.

Working together

The Guardian’s election round-up offered a shrewd analysis of the relationship between the SNP’s landslide and the appeal of Labour to swing voters in the south. The SNP’s rise may not, it seems, have just been exploited by the Conservatives and the Murdoch press. It could actually have been actively encouraged as part of a deliberate electoral strategy. This amounts to a divide and rule approach aimed at undermining the solidarity of those opposed to the Tory party alliance of landed interests and financiers. But political pluralism can be used to strengthen solidarity as well as break it. The roots of solidarity do not lie in us all thinking the same, but in strengthening core values through mutual working while allowing freedom and diversity to flourish.

Co-operative working could be the key to realising strength from political diversity. As Johnston Birchall argued in the 1980s, in his book ‘Building Sustainable Communities’ , co-operatives are a highly malleable form of organisation capable of appealing as much to individualism as to collectivism (Birchall, 1988). Phillip Blond, architect of the Conservatives’ ‘Big Society’, also understood this. He hoped to use co-operatives as a means of promoting Anglican Conservatism and ‘family values’ over corrosive privatisation (Blond, 2010). With retrospect, Blond’s agenda never seriously challenged the Tory party’s neoliberal core. But the Coalition did demonstrate the ability of co-operatives, in different guises, to appeal across the spectrum, with 75% of neighbourhood planning initiatives having taken place in Conservative controlled areas (Geoghegan, 2013).

Co-operative Socialism, on the other hand, gave birth to the Labour Party, with many more members of the First International supporting Proudhon and Bakunin’s mutualism than Marx’s problematic dictatorship of the proletariat. John Ruskin and William Morris both demonstrate the potential for co-operatives to have a romantic appeal to the affluent classes, these days obsessed with local food and organic produce. Co-operative working, then, is a word than can be mobilised in conservative or radical guises to respond to the political challenges being faced.

Right to left

A retreat to the left by Labour now will lose them the election in 2020: they simply cannot match the weight of tabloid papers and Conservative ministers insistent on pinning austerity on reckless spending policies. All Blair’s new public sector management tools offered was a double whammy of conformist, bureaucratic service delivery and preparations for future privatisation.

Labour needs a new concept that will allow it to start on the right and draw the electorate to the left. This is, in fact, what David Cameron has been doing with his discourse on austerity. During the 2010 election he was much more circumspect about the causes of the economic crash. This time, backed up by a raft of neoliberal converts in the Lib Dems, he went all guns blazing to pin austerity on profligate state spending. Ed Miliband, meanwhile, offered an inconsistent message that veered between apologising for his party’s economic record and offering price control policies in areas like energy that came across as more of the same.

There have been occasional Conservative attempts to challenge market concentration which the Labour party might learn from. Their plans to increase house building will not work because of market concentration in land ownership and the development industry. But rather than confront these industries with regulation, gentle efforts have been made to encourage new market entrants, focusing on areas such as custom build where new building technologies and approaches already have the potential to challenge the big players. Labour could do the same, continuing the Coalition’s encouragement of co-operative local service delivery and exploring a range of ways to promote co-operative energy producers, house builders and utilities providers using innovative organisational forms rather than giant nationalised companies.

Co-operatives can be deployed as a means of market regulation, as a replacement for some rail services for example, thus helping to highlight the inherent failures of heavily regulated, privately delivered services. They have the potential to reduce the huge expenses currently directed at regulating bodies, contractual arrangements and business failures not to mention profit margins. But they also have the potential to maintain a basically neoliberal form of market delivery: something that will be essential in Labour’s early fight back against the Tories. In the longer term, examples like the anarcho-communist village of Marinelada in Spain show that radical forms of organisation can provide realistic and sustainable solutions (Hancox, 2013).

Rebuild

Co-operation has one last virtue that may prove crucial in 2020, which is that an alliance around co-operative principles may be stronger than a party system where Labour expends valuable resources fighting against the Greens and the SNP. If the south wants light touch regulation, give it to them by using co-operative thinking to inspire ethically conscious consumerism and regulation through local accountability. If Scotland wants progressive Socialism, then encourage a form of co-operative ownership of large public services and infrastructure akin to the Netherlands’ housing association sector. Solidarity from diversity. Yes, this is a vision that has neoliberal tinges, and that is why it offers the best base from which to rebuild.

 

References

Birchall, J. (1988) Building communities : the co-operative way Routledge & Kegan Paul: London.

Blond, P. (2010) Red Tory : how the left and right have broken Britain and how we can fix it Faber and Faber: London.

Geoghegan, J. (2013) Poorer areas see few neighbourhood plan applications. Downloaded 21st July 2015 from: http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1175787/poorer-areas-few-neighbourhood-plan-applications

Hancox, D. (2013) Spain’s communist model village.Downloaded 21st July 2015 from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia

Salmon fishing on the Tweed

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A north east listening project

On the radio and online we are witnessing renewed concern to record local memories of cherished landscapes before they are lost forever. Examples of how this can be done include the BBC Listening Project and the National Trust Sounds of our Shores – a crowd-funded sound-map of people’s favourite seaside sounds. These examples build on classic Mass Observation recordings of everyday life (1937-1970) – notably Pub Conversations.

Inspired by this approach, Dr Helen Jarvis and postgraduate student Tessa Holland (both from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology) are collecting impressions of the once-thriving salmon fishing industry in Berwick upon Tweed; both to stimulate public debate on this disappearing livelihood, and to record the wealth of local knowledge involved.

Salmon fishing on the tweed

The project involves a series of ‘pop-up’ citizen-led story-telling events that coincide with the town celebrating 900 years of history, with collaboration from fishing communities and local history experts representing Our Families (a Berwick Record Office, Heritage Lottery funded project for Berwick 900). Participating in a summer of fishing-related feasts and festivals, including the crowning of the Salmon Queen, offers the ideal opportunity to raise awareness of the issues at stake.

The salmon fishing project moves to Berwick Town Hall, with a storytelling booth, from 17th to 19th July.  After this time the exhibition will be held at the Watchtower Gallery until August 16th.

Poster for exhibition

Salmon fishing on the Tweed

Written accounts of net fishing on the Tweed exist from the 1200s, but the skills and knowledge of the river date back to before records began. Net and coble fishing is a traditional way of life which made Berwick-upon-Tweed famous and the industry once provided jobs for around 800 local people. The local significance of the industry is captured in pictures and memories of customs such as ‘blessing the salmon’ at the opening of the Tweed salmon netting season, midnight on 14th February. The vicar of Norham ended the custom in 1987 when the fishery in his parish closed.

Blessing the salmon

Blessing the salmon, 1946, by permission of Berwick Record Office.

Loss of the nets

Chronic disinvestment and loss of the nets began in the 1980s, when many of the fisheries were bought out and closed down. Indeed, this experience – of close-knit community ties and generations of fishing expertise dismantled at a stroke – resonates with text-book accounts of deindustrialisation in heavy industries such as coal and steel. In each case, powerful commercial and political interests claimed economic competitiveness and new technology as motivation for consigning ‘outmoded’ industries to the past.

Since the Tweed Act of 1857 the right to catch and sell wild Tweed salmon is only held by net fisheries; rod-caught salmon cannot be sold commercially, so without the nets, there is no legal source for the wider, non-angling public. The rights to work these dormant fisheries are now held by the Tweed Foundation. Only two net fisheries remain active today – one at Paxton, and one at Gardo (near Berwick Old Bridge). The Paxton fishery now works in partnership with the Tweed Foundation to fish only for educational and scientific purposes. This explains why, despite the undisputed potential for a premium brand of locally caught wild salmon to put Berwick on the map, none is available to buy at the fishmonger or eat in local restaurants. The irony is that Berwick is closely identified with ‘slow food’ and ‘slow living’ civic organisations that promote locally produced, sustainable food and cultural heritage.

Berwick old bridge

Prospects for renewal?

Despite its decline, powerful local attachments to salmon fishing traditions continue to shape the cultural heritage and landscape of this market town. From stories recorded so far, we learn that, in the past ‘thousands of people would go to watch the netting of the salmon – all through the season’ and this made the river a site of spectacle. This hints at some of the non-economic benefits that have been undermined by loss of the nets.

It is too early to report on the impact that public dialogue might have in reviving the last remaining fishing stations – and it is beyond the current scope of the project to make policy recommendations. But it is provocative to consider novel examples of government policy for small towns, like Berwick, which need to attract and retain residents, jobs and tourist income. In France, the government subsidises cafés that provide music and entertainment, justifying this by the combined stimulus to jobs and spending in public spaces – that in turn foster a convivial public life (Banerjee 2001). Is it far-fetched in this context to regard net fishing as a form of entertainment?

Dr Helen Jarvis, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

SDGs need to align with global policies for biodiversity

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Dr Philip McGowan is a Senior Lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation in the School of Biology at Newcastle University. He has worked for many years in international species conservation. In this blog, part of the cross Societal Challenge Theme Institute series giving recommendations for targets and indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Dr McGowan argues the SDGs need to align with the global policies already in place on biodiversity in order to genuinely protect our planet.

Comma butterfly or Polygonia C Album on summer lilac

Goal 15 requires the protection of the terrestrial environment by stopping the deterioration of biodiversity, using resources wisely and restoring ecosystems where needed. Goal 14 has similar requirements for the oceans. These join a plethora of global commitments and processes intended to promote conservation and ensure a sustainable environment, and lessons suggest that they are hard to address. To avoid the SDGs becoming just another set of commitments to be met, clever thinking would help chart the course for policies and action to fill a range of these commitments and lead to genuine protection for our planet.

Global commitments for biodiversity

The importance of biodiversity to humans and the survival of our planet — and the seriousness of its currently observed deterioration — has resulted in a range of global political commitments known as Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). These include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (181 Parties), the Convention on Migratory Species (154 Parties and Member States), Convention on Biological Diversity (196 Parties), the Convention on Combatting Desertification (195 Parties) and the World Heritage Convention (161 Parties), to name a few.

All are concerned with the deterioration of biodiversity, whether it is species, habitats or the processes that lead to degradation and, as the numbers in brackets above indicate, many countries have signed up to these conventions. In addition, many governments felt a need to strengthen the interface between science and policy, in the manner that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done for that subject, and consequently, the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was established recently and now has 124 member states.

Thriving coral reef alive with marine life and shoals of fish, Bali.

This attention on biodiversity is welcome and very badly needed, especially given suggestions that we are heading for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history [1]. It is an important statement by governments that biodiversity conservation, which was a target in support of Millennium Development Goal 7, is now raised to the level of a Goal with its own set of contributory targets. There are some significant challenges ahead, however, in determining how best to pursue this bold Goal, especially in light of the wide range of other commitments that countries have. Two examples illustrate this.

Connect SDGs with biodiversity goals in place

The adoption of the SDGs surely marks time to streamline all these global goals and targets so that political, social and scientific efforts are most effectively directed to where they will have the biggest gain on our ability to look after the planet. Although some of the conventions above are mentioned in the SDGs’ preamble, the wording of the goals and their targets could show much stronger convergence with these other processes. For example, much of our concern about species is ultimately captured by Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 (CBD), which commits the CBD’s Parties to: By 2020 the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained.

This target replaces the Convention’s ‘2010’ target of Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss, which was also one of the targets by which the Millennium Development Goal 7 Ensure Environmental Sustainability was to be measured. Although the status of species continues to decline, we do know that conservation action can stop extinctions [2]. Some conventions address the particular needs of species and can play a role in halting extinctions, but clearer synergy between these MEAs would be hugely helpful in maximising the benefit of political commitment, maintaining and increasing civil society input and making the most of scarce resources.

There are elements of the CBD’s other targets (known as ‘Aichi Targets’) that are captured in the targets for Goal 15 (and indeed Goal 14), but there are also many areas where they do not overlap. If prioritisation becomes necessary, which of these targets (in both the SDGs and the CBD) might make the most significant contribution to planetary sustainability? Which should governments pay most attention to? How can conservation policies and actions be best aligned effectively to stem the deterioration in biodiversity? Indeed proposed Target 15.1 suggests that actions should be in line with other international agreements, but clearer guidance for achieving this is needed.

Measuring trends in biodiversity is difficult

The second example that illustrates the challenge in meeting Goal 15 lies in the wording of the Goal itself and the targets proposed for it. There are two points. First, it is interesting that some habitats have been singled out for mention, whilst others have not. For example, there is specific mention of managing forests sustainably, when there is evidence that grasslands have experienced a much more significant decline in extent since 1700 [3]. Secondly, the wording of the Goal and contributory targets do not make for easy measurement. As noted above, the CBD has a clear commitment to stop the extinction of species and the SDG has expanded this to halting the loss of all biodiversity.

Grassland in the Philippines. Grasslands are experiencing rapid decline.

Grassland in the Philippines. Grasslands are experiencing rapid decline.

Given that the CBD defined biodiversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”, it is clearly not an easy task to measure this and conclude that there are no further declines. Hence the shorthand use of species in many cases, and habitats in others, to reflect the declining state of biodiversity. Is that still enough, given our increasing understanding of the variation and interactions between species and ecosystems?

All in all, the commitments made under the SDGs are to be welcomed but the real work comes in aligning these bold new responsibilities with existing commitments and aspirations of many of the world’s governments. There is much to be gained from developing synergies amongst the objectives and workplans (whatever they are called in each case) of these MEAs. The challenge is to translate the political aspirations that are captured in the wording of Goal 15 (and indeed Goal 16) and targets into indicators that can be measured and reflect appropriate metrics by which to assess the status of biodiversity.

[1] Barnosky et al. 2011 Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction arrived? Nature 471: 51-57.
[2] Hoffmann, M. et al (2010) The impact of conservation on the status of the world’s vertebrates. Science 330: 1503-1509
[3] Boakes et al. 2010 Extreme contagion in global habitat clearance. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 277: 1081–1085.

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