Since 2010-11, Cuba has engaged in legal and constitutional reform intended to provide a greater role for private enterprise and foreign investment in the country's state-run economy. New rules have been introduced to provide greater scope and guarantees for foreign investment and adjustments have been made to allow private ownership of land – and in a handful of cases 100 per cent share in ownership of investments.

At the same time, Cuba remains subject to US sanctions and an embargo regime that has left foreign investors weary when deciding whether or not to invest in the country. To what extent have these changes provided the security and confidence for foreign investors to seize on Cuba’s efforts to engage internationally around a range of industries including infrastructure, hospitality, hydrocarbons and small and medium enterprise.

Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba's minister for trade and investment since 2009, will discuss the most recent changes in Cuba, their implications for development and investors and the viability of the official Economic Development Zone situated at Mariel.

The US and Americas Programme would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Cities are strong engines of growth and job creation accounting for some 85 per cent of global GDP. By 2030, more than 60 per cent of people worldwide will live in cities and they will be on the front lines of managing issues transcending borders such as climate, migration and sustainability. International organizations like the United Nations are striving to meet these challenges but relying on traditional multilateral agreements is growing ever more unpredictable. If cities and local governments are key to global prosperity, how can their power and influence be harnessed to accelerate impact for their citizens?

Drawing on the pioneering work of New York City in the area of foreign policy leadership at a municipal level, Penny Abeywardena will discuss how the influence of subnational leadership and diplomacy is more important than ever as national governments are abdicating their responsibility at the multilateral level. How can the Sustainable Development Goals be localized among cities on policy issues that impact communities? And what can large cities, beyond the capital, do to remain influential and harness job growth?

 This event will be preceded by an informal sandwich reception from 12.30pm-1pm. The roundtable discussion to follow will take place from 1pm-2pm.

This event is corporate members only.  If you'd like to attend, please RSVP to Linda Bedford.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

Trade and investment between the UK and Latin America is woefully underdeveloped. Latin America’s agricultural powerhouses Brazil and Argentina only accounted for a total of 1.6% of the UK’s agricultural market across eight sectors in 2018, all of those areas in which Argentina and Brazil have substantial comparative advantages. 

Conversely, UK exports to the large Latin American economies remain far below their potential.  To cite a few examples, in 2018 in the electrical equipment sector, the UK only exported $95.7 million of those products to Brazil, making the ninth largest economy in the world only the 42nd export market for those goods from the UK; Mexico only imported $91.4 million of UK-made electrical goods, placing it directly behind Brazil as UK’s market for those goods.

As we look to the future, any improvement to the relationship will depend on two factors: 1) how the UK leaves the EU and 2) whether Latin American agricultural producers can improve their environmental practices and can meet the production standards established by the EU and likely maintained by a potential post-Brexit Britain.

In the first meeting of the working group,  Chatham House convened a range of policymakers, practitioners and academics to explore this topic in depth, identify the key issues driving this trend, and begin to consider how improvements might best be made. Subsequent meetings will focus on specific sectors in commerce and investment.

We would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.  Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events.

Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

The investment community is increasingly seeking to assess the alignment of their portfolios with the Paris Agreement. In a recent update to their Two Degrees of Separation report, Carbon Tracker assessed the capital expenditure of listed oil and gas producers against ‘well below’ 2C targets, and for the first time, against short-term actions at the project level.

The speaker will present the key findings of the report and will argue that every oil major is betting heavily against a low-carbon world by investing in projects that are contrary to the Paris goals.

This roundtable discussion will further explore the report findings and consider what investors, regulators and oil and gas companies can do to encourage alignment  with the Paris Agreement ahead of 2020.  

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Air pollution has been classified as a cancer-causing agent with evidence showing an increased risk of lung cancer associated with increasing levels of exposure to outdoor air pollution and particulate matter.

Air pollution is also known to increase risks for other diseases, especially respiratory and heart diseases, and studies show that levels of exposure to air pollution have increased significantly in some parts of the world - mostly in rapidly industrializing countries with large populations.

In coordination with London Global Cancer Week partner organizations, this event outlines the evidence linking air pollution and cancer rates in London and other major cities.

Panellists provide a 360° picture of the impact of the rising incidence of cancer across the world, the challenges the cancer pandemic poses to the implementation of universal health coverage and the existing UK contribution to strengthening capacity in cancer management and research in developing countries.

Climate change and energy transition are re-shaping the extractive sectors, and the opportunities and risks they present for governments, companies and civil society. As the central governance standard in the extractives sector, the EITI has a critical role in supporting transparency in producer countries.

This workshop will bring together experts from the energy and extractives sectors, governance and transparency, and climate risk and financial disclosure initiatives to discuss the role of governance and transparency through the transition. It will consider the appropriate role for the EITI and potential entry points for policy and practice, and the potential for coordination with related transparency and disclosure initiatives. 

Please note attendance is by invitation only.

The UK will host the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November 2020 in Glasgow. In the run up, Chatham House is organizing a monthly briefing series targeted to:

• The diplomatic service based in London, in particular, staff of the London embassies who are reporting on climate change issues.
• Senior UK government civil servants, officials and politicians engaged in climate change.
• Academics, experts, business representatives and NGOs.

The first briefing in the series focuses on the results from COP25 held in Madrid in December 2019 and what this means for 2020.

This briefings series offer an opportunity to discuss, in an informal setting, the most pressing and complex climate issues of the day with UK and international government officials and experts.

Summary

• Agricultural subsidies, a mainstay of government policy, have a large part in shaping production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects as regards poverty, food security, nutrition, and other sustainability concerns such as climate change, land use practices and biodiversity.
• There are multiple types of direct and indirect support provided by governments to various actors in the agricultural sector; and in terms of political economy, there are complex dynamics underpinning the policies that sustain these subsidies.
• Overall, subsidies targeting producers have the most significant effect on production, and the greater trade-distorting effect. These subsidies promote domestic production and discourage imports, leading to overproduction that is largely disposed of on the international market, with the help of export subsidies. This can tend to intensify negative environmental agricultural practices, such as cultivating marginal land, unsustainable types of intensification, or incentivizing excessive pesticide and fertilizer use.
• On the other hand, producer subsidies that are not tied to output of a specific commodity (i.e. delinked) have far fewer distorting impacts and could help to deliver sustainable outcomes. For example, this type of subsidies can require crop diversification or be linked to conservation of permanent grassland.
• Subsidies that enable transfers to consumers, for example through food stamp programmes, also serve to delink production from consumption, can foster healthier diets, can play an important role in delivering food accessibility and security among low-income groups, and can represent one of the less trade-distorting subsidies.
• If subsidies are to be reformed to help promote healthier diets and encourage more sustainable production, it is essential to understand not only the type and amount of support that key countries provide, but also the domestic dynamics that can shape such policies.
• While price support, input subsidies or investment aids remain the central pillars of programmes in large developing countries such as Brazil, China or India, other economies – notably including the EU and Japan – focus on direct payments, support for general services and set-aside schemes, as well as significant border protection. The US, for its part, has tended to focus on subsidized insurance schemes and food programmes for poorer consumers.
• If subsidies are to deliver policy objectives, their design and implementation should delink production from consumption. For example, consumer subsidies designed to deliver nutrition and food security, or payments for environmental services to enable more environmentally friendly production systems, could prove to be the most effective, least trade-distorting means of achieving more sustainable and equitable agricultural production.
• The political economy of food means that the removal of subsidies is often highly sensitive, and tends to be met with significant resistance. However, reform that delinks support from production through a gradual transition process could ultimately prove successful in delivering effective subsidy schemes.
• Effective subsidy schemes must by design be truly result- and performance-based, supported by robust and objective indicators. At the same time, engaging multiple actors along key commodity value chains – including leading importing and exporting countries, traders and transporters – could lead to the development of international, commodity-specific arrangements that are able to deliver effective nutrition and sustainability goals.

As the UK leaves the EU and the formal negotiations on the future relationship begins, this workshop will discuss any immediate changes and review the short and medium term impacts of Brexit on the energy sector. 

The workshop will look to cover:

• The implications for UK business and system operations of the UK leaving the Internal Energy Market.
• Current and future investment trends in the UK energy system.
• The trade of electricity and gas over inter-connectors.
• The need for the development of a new EU-UK operational framework mechanism.
• The UK's EU withdrawal agreement and the operation of the Single Electricity Market (SEM) across Ireland. 
• Options for the UK outside of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the impact on carbon prices.

This workshop is part of a programme funded by the UK Energy Research Centre on Brexit and the UK’s Net Zero Energy Policy being run by the University of Warwick and Chatham House.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Air pollution has been classified as a cancer-causing agent with evidence showing an increased risk of lung cancer associated with increasing levels of exposure to outdoor air pollution and particulate matter.

Air pollution is also known to increase risks for other diseases, especially respiratory and heart diseases, and studies show that levels of exposure to air pollution have increased significantly in some parts of the world - mostly in rapidly industrializing countries with large populations.

In coordination with London Global Cancer Week partner organizations, this event outlines the evidence linking air pollution and cancer rates in London and other major cities.

Panellists provide a 360° picture of the impact of the rising incidence of cancer across the world, the challenges the cancer pandemic poses to the implementation of universal health coverage and the existing UK contribution to strengthening capacity in cancer management and research in developing countries.