A shaky truce remains broadly in place among rival Libyan forces fighting for control of Tripoli. However, a durable ceasefire to bring an end to the current bout of conflict, which was initiated by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ (LAAF) offensive on the capital in April 2019, has not been reached. In recent weeks attention has focused on talks hosted in Moscow and Berlin, with the former aimed at agreeing a ceasefire and the latter seeking to reach agreement among international actors to bring an end to external military support for Libyan warring actors, and to craft a way forward for future intra-Libyan talks. Yet, there has been little emphasis on Libyan actors – beyond Haftar and prime minister Fayez al-Serraj – in this process.
 
This roundtable will bring together experts and policymakers to discuss means of de-escalating the conflict and seeking a lasting resolution through the development of interconnected intra-Libyan social and security negotiation tracks. Mr Usama Otman Essed of the Libya Center for Strategic and Future Studies (LCSFS) will present his research group’s ideas on these issues and discuss their ongoing efforts to promote dialogue among social and security actors.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Drawing on his experience as governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker will outline the importance of forging strong global partnerships to fuel business growth and build prosperous local economies. Governor Walker will consider how mutually beneficial partnerships can be developed within the global community and the impact of these on local communities.

LIVE STREAM: This event will be live streamed. The live stream will be made available at 18:00 GMT on Wednesday 11 February.

ASK A QUESTION: Send questions for the speaker by email to questions@chathamhouse.org or using #CHEvents on Twitter. A selection will be put to him during the event.

Even though most African states have signed and ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global treaty to limit tobacco use, African states have been slow to pass and implement tobacco control policies like regulations on sales, smoke-free environments and taxes. This article examines how the ineffectiveness of local tobacco-control advocacy contributes to this suboptimal outcome. It asserts that the disconnect between the global tobacco-control advocacy network and local advocates shapes this ineffectiveness. With funding and direction predominately from the Bloomberg Initiative, local advocates emulate the funders' goal of achieving quick, measurable policy results. Their reliance on the network drives African advocates to strive to pass legislation, even in difficult political climates, and to remake their agendas when funders change their priorities. They also emulate the network's focus on evidence-based arguments that stress epidemiological data and biomedical interventions, even when this issue frame does not resonate with policy-makers. Financial dependence can draw local advocates into expectations about patronage politics, undermine their ability to make principled arguments, and lead them to downplay the ways that their home country's socioeconomic and cultural contexts affect tobacco use and control. Based on key informant interviews with African advocates, media analysis and the case-studies of Ghana and Tanzania, the article broadens the study of philanthropy in global health, it adds an African perspective to the literature on global health advocacy, and it deepens knowledge on power dynamics between external funders and local actors in the realms of health and development.

The international community’s response to the Syria crisis has been unsatisfactory on many fronts, and humanitarian aid and development is no exception. While there has been renewed emphasis by development organizations on the importance of engaging local actors − notably highlighted in the new Sustainable Development Goals − the reality is this has been woefully lacking in practice. And Syria is simply one example of many where the failure of UN agencies and other humanitarian actors to partner with local actors has hampered the response to humanitarian crises.

Double standards

The problem is that international agencies usually have high and unfair expectations from Syrian individuals and organizations, requiring them to speak the ‘language’ of development, meet international standards, and demonstrate a wide range of expertise. However, these demands are not reciprocated by international organizations and experts being expected to have the same depth of knowledge of the local context in which they are operating. In addition, while Syrian actors are expected to be neutral, impartial and politically unaffiliated, foreign aid appears to be driven − explicitly and unashamedly − by the political objectives of the donor countries.

There is a double standard at work. In many cases, international ‘experts’ on Syria have little local knowledge, but there are no channels to measure or question their level of expertise. At the same time, including local Syrians in decision-making is seen as a threat to predetermined objectives, rather than as an asset.

Syrians could add an indispensable source of knowledge and context to international agencies, as well as add local credibility. But too often they are brought on board to be part of the humanitarian and development picture or to get their simple feedback for evaluation and needs assessment reports to satisfy donors’ requirements, rather than employed as an integral component of designing and implementing projects. Though some of this is down to a pretext of lack of capacity, it raises the question of whether there is an international political willingness and genuine organizational courage to involve Syrians at programming, decision and policy making-levels.

The importance of local

The Syrian example is not isolated. While there is now a debate to encourage engaging local actors, this does not happen in practice. The Local to Global Protection Initiative study reported that local and national humanitarian actors received only 0.2% of the overall direct global humanitarian response in 2013.

Moreover, the international humanitarian and development systems are designed, together with foreign aid policy, to be self-contained and to exclude local actors. This allows donor governments to use the systems as political tools for leveraging control. It is equally difficult for both outsiders as well as insiders to understand how the system really functions. The UN-led coordination structure is one example of the heavy international architecture that remains unable to reform itself, learn from its previous mistakes, or to engage with local actors.

And that engagement matters. The Independent Research Forum emphasized in its brief in February 2014 how engaging local researchers and implementing bottom-up participatory learning can make countries better prepared to achieve the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Those goals, as well as the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit, highlight the importance of including local actors in the humanitarian and development responses.

Moving forward

Fortunately, such initiatives are creating a momentum within the development community to make radical changes through bottom-up approaches that put sustainability into practice. But if the Sustainable Development Goals want to affect real change, there will have to be a significant drive to move from rhetoric and ‘intentions’ to reality and actions. Currently it seems that the international community prefers to simply maintain the current status quo. It only takes a brief reflection on how many Syrians are included in every project or programme and how many Syrians are in positions to contribute at the policy and decision-making levels to realise the scale of the impetus required to change this system. To make that change might provide an opportunity for Syrians to restore some of the ownership to the outcomes and decisions of their conflict.

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The pressure of the coronavirus pandemic is adding to a widely held misconception that trade in food products is bad for the environment due to the associated ‘food miles’ – the carbon footprint of agricultural products transported over long distances.

This concept, developed by large retailers a decade ago, is often invoked as a rationale for restricting trade and choosing locally-produced food over imports. Consuming local food may seem sensible at first glance as it reduces the carbon footprint of goods and generates local employment. 

However, this assumption ignores the emissions produced during the production, processing or storage stages which often dwarf transport emissions. Other avenues to address the climate change impact of trade are more promising.

Demystifying food emissions

In the US, for example, food items travel more than 8,000 km on average before reaching the consumer. Yet transport only accounts for 11 per cent of total emissions with 83 per cent – mostly nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions – occurring at the production stage.

US Department of Agriculture data on energy use in the American food system echoes this finding, showing that processing, packaging, and selling of food represent ten times the energy used to transport food.

In practice, it may be preferable from an environmental perspective to consume lamb, onion or dairy products transported by sea because the lower emissions generated at the production stage offset those resulting from transport. Similarly, growing tomatoes under heated greenhouses in Sweden is often more emissions-intensive than importing open-grown ones from Southern Europe.

Seasonality also matters. British apples placed in storage for ten months leads to twice the level of emissions as that of South American apples sea-freighted to the UK. And the type of transport is also important as, overall, maritime transport generates 25 to 250 times less emissions than trucks, and air freight generates on average five times more emissions than road transport.

Therefore, air-freighted Kenyan beans have a much larger carbon footprint than those produced in the UK, but crossing Europe by truck to import Italian wine might generate more emissions than transatlantic shipments.

Finally, one should take into account the last leg of transport. A consumer driving more than 10 km to purchase 1 kg of fresh produce will generate proportionately more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than air-freighting 1 kg of produce from Kenya.

Shifting consumption towards local foods may reduce GHG emissions in sectors with relatively low emissions intensities but, when non-carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account, this is more often the exception than the rule.

Under these circumstances, preventing trade is an inefficient and expensive way of reducing GHG emissions. Bureau et al. for example, calculate that a global tariff maintaining the volume of trade at current levels until 2030 may reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 3.5 per cent. However, this would be roughly seven times less than the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and cost equivalent to the current GDP of Brazil or 1.8 per cent of world GDP.

By preventing an efficient use of resources, such restrictions would also undermine the role of trade in offsetting possible climate-induced production shortfalls in some parts of the world and allowing people to access food when they can’t produce it themselves.

Reducing the climate footprint of trade

This is not to say that nothing should be done to tackle transport emissions. The OECD estimates that international trade-related freight accounted for over 5 per cent of total global fuel emissions with shipping representing roughly half of it, trucks 40 per cent, air 6 per cent and rail 2 per cent. With the projected tripling of freight transport by 2050, emissions from shipping are expected to rise between 50 and 250 per cent.

Furthermore, because of their international nature, these emissions are not covered by the Paris Agreement. Instead the two UN agencies regulating these sectors – the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization – are responsible for reducing these emissions and, so far, significant progress has proven elusive.

Regional or bilateral free trade agreements to further stimulate trade could address this problem by exploiting comparative advantages. Impact assessments of those agreements often point towards increases in GHG emissions due to a boost in trade flows. In the future, such agreements could incorporate – or develop in parallel – initiatives to ensure carbon neutrality by connecting carbon markets among contracting parties or by taxing international maritime and air transport emissions.

Such initiatives could be combined with providing additional preferences in the form of enhanced market access to low-carbon food and healthier food. The EU, as one of the chief proponents of bilateral and regional trade agreements and a leader in promoting a transition to a low-carbon economy could champion such an approach.

This article is part of a series from the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, designed to promote research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade. It is adapted from the research paper, Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade, authored by Christophe Bellmann, Bernice Lee and Jonathan Hepburn.