Throughout history, most production processes relied on a steady stream of resource processing of raw materials extracted directly from nature. However, those resources are not renewable at least not as much as we need them to be to sustain the production cycles.

One of the possible solutions to that problem may be found in the model of circular economy, which emphasizes the use of waste materials in the production process. That should effectively reduce the amount of raw materials we need to take from nature and divert most waste from landfills.

But even though that alternative sounds pretty appealing, its not without challenges. With that in mind, RTS wanted to talk about some of the resource processing difficulties people might come across in the next two decades as people slowly transition to a circular economy.

The current state of affairs is far from sustainable. According to a recent report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, G20 countries account for about 75% of global resource use and 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. In the past three decades, annual material consumption has increased from 37 billion tons in 1990 to 88 billion tons in 2017. Naturally, the countries that are the main drivers of that change should take on the responsibility of pushing for a more resource-efficient economy model.

The report mentioned illustrates the wasteful nature of the past and current production models. However, it also leaves space for a more hopeful future. More than anything else, the document shows that material processing industries need to change as soon as possible.

On the one hand, people need to reconsider the amount of raw resources theyre using during production processes. Then, theres the question of the methods companies are using to process those materials. Its not enough to recycle metals, plastics and paper products. Instead, people have to expand their reach by improving processing methods and making them more accessible.

As mentioned, the circular economy model aims to close the linear mode of production into a loop. Instead of using new materials from nature, people would simply divert waste materials from landfills to processing plants. Of course, material efficiency strategies dont begin and end with the production of goods.

Instead, people need to consider their daily use of materials such as the fuel vehicles use. Until now, many have considered car ownership to be the end goal of a young professionals life. However, moving toward a more sustainable future would include a move toward ride-sharing practices and using public transportation. So while many usually talk about resource processing in terms of industrial manufacturing cycles, a circular economy would require concessions on an individual level as well.

According to a report from the International Resource Panel, taking steps towards establishing a circular economy would have several positive effects in the long run. For one, doing so would reduce the use of raw natural resources by as much as 28% by 2050. Moreover, it would also result in a significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions. This would naturally affect the planets climate as well.

Before anyone can see the benefits of a circular mode of production, they need to implement certain changes on a global scale. The International Resource Panel has long advocated for a complete reimagining of the way we manufacture goods. To do that, we need to change the way we value resources we have already used.

Instead of considering items spent once people are done with them, they should make an effort to repair, refurbish and reuse them. When theyre no longer useful to a plant, they should be put back in circulation by donating, selling or recycling them. That should help these objects retain value even when they lose their original purpose. But, establishing the circular economy will take more than individual actions.

Rather, governments and multinational entities alike need to incentivize industries to incorporate those values too. Instead of participating in an endless cycle of resource extraction and waste creation, companies need to invest in recycling. Unfortunately, the main obstacle that stands in the way of achieving that goal is the fact that companies dont have a reason to transition to sustainable resources.

After all, the extraction of raw materials remains cheap and widely accessible. The use of natural resources is too ingrained in manufacturing processes to disappear with the kind of incentives the EU and other governmental bodies have proposed. With that in mind, people need to make sure manufacturers have easy access to recycled goods.

To that end, recycling needs to be easily available to individuals as well as companies. Whats more, using sustainable resources during the production process needs to be financially accessible to manufacturers.

As established, the goal of a circular economy is the preservation of natural resources and the elimination of waste. Due to this, people can understand why the industry around resource processing needs to develop quickly.

If manufacturers can choose between raw material extraction and sustainable resources, their decision wont be based on environmentalism. Rather, theyll go for the cheaper option. Thats why there are tax benefits for going green but clearly, those kinds of incentives are still insufficient.

So what can people do to make sure the following two decades bring everyone closer to the circular economic system our planet needs? As individuals, people need to make their voices heard through voting and community organizing. People need to get behind the scientific community, which has been advocating for a transition to sustainable resources for decades.

This move toward a more sustainable future will ultimately reduce the cost of production and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, itll also create countless jobs. People just have to clear any hurdles that stand in the way of the future everyone deserves.

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Plant Engineering | Resource processing challenges that ...

Mapped: Economic Freedom Around the World

How would you define a countrys economic freedom?

The cornerstones of economic freedom by most measures are personal choice, voluntary exchange, independence to compete in markets, and security of the person and privately-owned property. Simply put, it is about the quality of political and economic institutions in countries.

Based on the Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Organization, we mapped the economic freedom of 178 countries worldwide.

The index uses five broad areas to score economic freedom for each country:

In 2021, the global average economic freedom score is 61.6, the highest its been in 27 years.

But from Mauritius and smaller African nations being beacons of hope to East Asian and Oceanic countries epitomizing economic democracy, every region has a different story to tell.

Lets take a look at the economic freedom of each region in the world.

Even though the U.S. and Canada continue to be some of the most economically free countries globally, some markers are suffering.

The regional average unemployment rate has risen to 6.9%, and inflation (outside of Venezuela) has increased to 5.2%. The regions average level of public debtalready the highest globallyrose to 85.2% of its GDP during the past year.

Across many Latin American countries, widespread corruption and weak protection of property rights have aggravated regulatory inefficiency and monetary instability.

For example, Argentinas Peronist government has recently fixed the price of 1,432 products as a response to a 3.5% price rise in September, the equivalent to a 53% increase if annualized.

More than half of the worlds 38 freest countries (with overall scores above 70) are in Europe. This is due to the regions relatively extensive and long-established free-market institutions, the robust rule of law, and exceptionally strong investment freedom.

However, Europe still struggles with a variety of policy barriers to vigorous economic expansion. This includes overly protective and costly labor regulations, which was one of the major reasons why the UK voted to leave the EU.

Brexit has since had a major impact on the region.

Even a year later, official UK figures showed a record fall in trade with the EU in January 2021, as the economy struggled with post-Brexit rules and the pandemic.

Dictatorships, corruption, and conflict have historically kept African nations as some of the most economically repressed in the world.

While larger and more prosperous African nations struggle to advance economic freedom, some smaller countries are becoming the beacon of hope for the continent.

Mauritius (rank 11), Seychelles (43) and Botswana (45) were the top African countries, offering the most robust policies and institutions supporting economic self-sufficiency.

From property rights to financial freedom, small African countries are racing ahead of the continents largest in advancing economic autonomy as they look to build business opportunities for their citizens.

When Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords last year, there was a sense of a new paradigm emerging in a region with a long history of strife.

A year into the signing of this resolution, the effects have been promising. There have been bilateral initiatives within the private sector and civil society leading to increasing economic and political stability in the region.

Central Asian countries once part of the Soviet Union have recently starting integrating more directly with the world economy, primarily through natural resource exports. In total, natural resources account for about 65% of exports in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and more than 90% in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Despite this progress, these countries have a long way to go in terms of economic freedom. Uzbekistan (108), Turkmenistan (167) and Tajikistan (134) are still some of the lowest-ranked countries in the world.

Despite massive populations and strong economies, countries like China and India remain mostly unfree economies. The modest improvements in scores over the last few years have been through gains in property rights, judicial effectiveness, and business freedom indicators.

Nearby, Singapores economy has been ranked the freest in the world for the second year in a row. Singapore remains the only country in the world that is considered economically free in every index category.

Finally, its worth noting that Australia and New Zealand are regional leaders, and are two of only five nations that are currently in the free category of the index.

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Mapped: Economic Freedom Around the World - Visual Capitalist

This is a guest opinion post from Tram Vo, Co-director + Founder,MOBI.

The convergence of multiple rapidly maturing technologies, such as AI, IoT, and blockchain, permits any connected entity whether a person, vehicle, device, package, piece of infrastructure, or data set to communicate and autonomously participate as an independent economic agent in transactions. These usage-based (pay as you go) economy-of-things transactions will:

These transactions the exchange of value, goods, and data between entities in the economy of things will produce a multi-trillion-dollar pay-per-use ecosystem weve termedThe New Economy of Movement.

The New Economy of Movement requires a new way of identifying people and things, one which is blockchain-based, self-sovereign, decentralized, and machine readable. These are known asdecentralized identifiers(DIDs).

DIDs give individuals and organizations the power to own and control their digital identifiers, breaking the reliance on third party authenticators and centralized authorities. In a decentralized system, DIDs are embedded inVerifiable Credentials(VCs). Those VCs may be created by trusted entities, such as government agencies, businesses, universities, or employers and issued to a holder of the VC. If we think of the DID as a global ID, then VCs are like digital passports, or unique stamps which serve to attest to specific information about an entity associated with a specific DID.

In the New Economy of Movement, Web3 federated networks and decentralized platforms are needed to manage DIDs and VCs to enable trusted data sharing and business automation. MOBIs Web3 infrastructure consists of three member-owned and operated layers collectively the MOBI Technology Stack (MTS) needed to verify decentralized transactions between connected entities. Each layer with a different architecture and function, together forming a holistic approach to Web3 applications developed for decentralized connected ecosystems.

The three layers are illustrated below. The foundational layer is the MOBI consortium, which createsstandardsto identify connected entities and shared business processes. The middle layer ismobiNET, a layer-two, protocol-agnostic digital infrastructure to provide trusted decentralized identity (DID) services. The top layer isCitopia, a trustless decentralized platform to onboard DIDs and enable VC issuance for business automation; monetizing assets such as infrastructure, services, and data.

Beginning with Vehicle Identity (MOBI VID, a vehicles digital twin based on the internationally accepted vehicle identification number, or VIN) in 2019, MOBI has published thirteen blockchain-based standards (including nine in 2021) outliningsustainabledecentralized solutions fordigital identitymanagement,supply chain,vehicle electrification,mobility data, and mobility-related IoT commerce. The most recent of these theMOBI Trusted Trip(MTT) Standard is perhaps the most important pillar of the New Economy of Movement.

For a trip to be useful to entities in a decentralized usage-based ecosystem, it must be trusted by all entities in the transaction. The MTT Standard links an entitys DID with its timestamped location in the form of VCs and enables the linkage to be certified throughout any trip in a trusted network. It is the key to decentralized privacy-preserving pay-per-use mobility.

MTT Verifiable Credential is based on W3Cs DID and VC Specifications. Using DIDs allows holders, on their own terms, to share trusted data with other verified entities without disclosing identity-related information and other selective attributes. MTT allows a holder of such credentials to prove to verifiers that it was present, completed a trip, used a resource, provided a service, or performed other relevant activities while safeguarding their Personally (or organizational) Identifiable Information (PII). MOBI Trusted Trip is the key primitive of the multi-trillion-dollar New Economy of Movement.

Linking decentralized identities with reliable and immutable location tracing, provenance, and chain of custody for data, people, and devices enables business automation and interoperability in the economy of things. This includes a huge new class of automated pay-per-use services in The New Economy of Movement. Specifically, MOBI Trusted Trip enables marginal cost pricing where users are charged based on the additional cost, including social cost, of what they consume for many new classes of transactions such as:

Movement reveals our most valuable preferences and behaviors. Web3 holds the potential to expose new dimensions of our personal data, while giving us the tools to control, protect, and monetize it. Web3 business models will upend and outcompete todays dominant Web2 centralized platforms as quickly and decisively as those Web2 platforms replaced the platforms that dominated earlier industrial and digital eras.

MOBI participants and other adopters will enjoy access to the cutting-edge markets, customers, and business models made possible in the New Economy of Movement. More importantly, the architectural and business decisions made by Web3 pioneers, including the MOBI community, will determine the experience of future users.

Will Web3 realize the original web vision of decentralization, equal access, and fairness? Or will it strengthen the market power of centralized platforms? We hope that the MOBI community, through their contributions to the New Economy of Movement, can positively influence the outcome.

Originally posted here:

Web3 digital infrastructure for connected vehicle and IoT commerce in the New Economy of Movement - Ledger Insights

Mexico City, Mexico This years political moves surrounding Mexicos lithium reserves have tested the limits of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors (AMLO) pledges to keep the countrys most precious natural resources firmly in Mexican hands.

In October, AMLO unveiled a sweeping energy reform bill that included nationalising Mexicos lithium deposits as a strategic mineral a move that threw into doubt Chinas ability to lock in a critical reserve of lithium to support its green energy transition plans.

Also known as white gold and the new oil, lithium is a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries that are used for green energy storage, including powering electric vehicles.

Chinas Ganfeng Lithium had set its sights on upping its stake in a massive lithium mining project in Mexicos Sonora state by buying all the concessions held by its partner in the project, United Kingdom-based mining and exploration giant Bacanora.

After the news of AMLOs nationalisation plans hit the markets in October, the government scrambled to assure firms with active lithium mining permits in Mexico that they would be exempt from any new legislation. That, in turn, was interpreted to apply to Ganfeng, because construction had started on the Bacanora Sonora Lithium deposit in February.

Last week, Mexican regulators made good on that theoretical grandfather clause and without fanfare gave the green light to Gengfengs takeover of Bacanoras Sonora lithium mining concessions.

The official exemption illustrates that AMLOs government is willing to concede some of Mexicos natural resources to a foreign economic power. It also reveals what analysts see as a vector of tension between AMLOs quest for Mexican strategic mineral sovereignty and the much larger geopolitical race surrounding lithium.

Not everyone was supportive of Ganfengs takeover of Bacanoras Sonora lithium mining rights.

A cohort of individual shareholders in Bacanora who call themselves the Think BIG Bacanora investors group, has campaigned against the takeover.

Think BIG spokesperson Dawood Patel, told Al Jazeera that they were originally promised that Ganfeng would not try to monopolise the Sonora lithium reserves that had proven to be larger with every survey. He also said that private shareholders had been recommended by Bacanoras board to accept Ganfengs offer, even though a significant proportion of the risks associated with mining exploration had already been mitigated, allowing Ganfeng to solely profit.

We feel the Board and Ganfeng only spoke about partnerships and production to keep us small shareholders invested until Ganfeng could take control at an opportune moment, Patel said, adding that his group is also concerned about the geopolitical risks in allowing one of the worlds largest lithium resources to fall under the control of a single country.

This is a resource that the world including Mexico should benefit from, he said.

Ganfeng did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

As economies around the world decarbonise, the race has only intensified to lock in lithium supply chains.

Ganfeng, which supplies Tesla with lithium, accounted for 24 percent of the global output of lithium hydroxide last year, according to China Minmetals a substantial increase of the 18 percent market share it commanded in 2019.

With warnings of potential lithium shortages looming, Mexicos lithium deposits, as well as those in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, have become prime prizes in the ever-heating competition between Washington and Beijing for economic supremacy and influence over the most powerful industries of the near future.

Margaret Myers, director of the Asia and Latin America Program at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said that China will rely on lithium in order to ensure that it grows efficiently in the coming years.

As such, lithium in Latin America is a critical mineral for its (Chinas) own growth, and also a potential choke point with the US or with other countries that may rely heavily on lithium, as well as rare earths and other tech essential minerals.

AMLO had already taken steps to reduce any potential fallout from grandfathering a Chinese company against his high-profile pledges to nationalise strategic minerals.

As talk of nationalising lithium ramped up in October, Mexico hosted an international mining conference in Acapulco, during which the Mexican federal geological service downplayed the significance of the Sonora lithium deposit, describing it as in reality, clay and saying that claims of large reserves of lithium in Mexico had been exaggerated.

That balancing act, analysts have said, is born of AMLOs need to maintain Chinese investment in Mexico.

Carlos Flores, an expert on Mexicos energy sector, told Al Jazeera that Mexico and China have been growing closer in recent years.

Chinese companies, for example, are responsible for the refurbishment of one of the lines of Mexico Citys subway, he said. [They] are also in charge of the construction of one of the sections of the Mayan Train (Tren Maya) located in the Yucatan peninsula. There is also one Chinese company that invested in renewables in Mexico, they own wind farms.

But Myers noted that China is nevertheless very concerned by AMLOs efforts to potentially nationalise certain sectors of Mexicos economy, or to impose regulations that would make certain sectors unprofitable and untenable for Chinese companies.

This is evident among oil companies, she said. [Chinas] CNOOC, in particular, has assets in Mexico.

At the same time, said Meyers, of all of the countries in Latin America, especially the major economies, Mexico is the least dependent on China economically speaking noting that the vast majority of Mexicos trade is with the United States, while the extent of Chinese investment in Mexico is minuscule in comparison to whats coming from the US.

So in Mexico, China just doesnt have the sort of leverage in Mexico that it does in other places, she said.

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Mexicos lithium and the global race to lock in white gold - Al Jazeera English

Carbon pricing is among the most prominent policy instruments being used or considered by governments to reduce emissions today. Proponents argue that carbon pricing may allow us to reach internationally accepted temperature targets at minimal cost (Borissov et al. 2019, Gollier and Tirole 2015, Rausch et al. 2011).

However, most studies suggest that carbon taxes will negatively affect output and could be regressive (Grainger and Kolstad 2010, Mathur and Morris 2014, van der Ploeg et al. 2021), though some emerging empirical studies challenge this (e.g. Klenert and Hepburn 2018, Metcalf and Stock 2020, Shapiro 2021). Mitigating factors that can reduce output losses or reduce rising inequality have received substantial attention in the literature, particularly the mechanism for redistributing carbon-tax revenue.

What has received less attention is the mitigating role of policies that promote education quality. Better quality education has the potential to (1) improve the supply skills needed to enable green technological innovation in response to carbon pricing, leading to lower output losses and higher reductions in carbon emissions; and (2) reduce inequality resulting from carbon pricing by ensuring that green skill acquisition is accessible to all.

Emerging research suggests that green technological change relies on human capital. For example, the role of education and skilled labour for the transition to green growth in the report of the Commission on Carbon Pricing (Stiglitz et al. 2017) explains that production using clean technologies is human capital-intensive so education decisions become closely interlinked with the energy transition (Yao et al. 2020). At the same time, shortages of skilled labour may constrain the decarbonisation process of an economy (OECD 2017). Human capital has also been linked to firms better adapting to climate change and environmental regulations (Lan and Munro 2013, Pargal and Wheeler 1996).

Carbon pricing through its impact on human-capital accumulation may not only be the cornerstone of climate policy but may also act as a development policy, fostering technology switches and education of the labour force. However, if green technological change relies on higher-skilled workers and, as a result, is skill-biased, then the increased demand for higher-skilled labour resulting from carbon taxes may further widen the earnings gap between high- and low-skilled workers.

In a recent paper (Macdonald and Patrinos 2021), we consider how education quality interacts with carbon pricings effect on emissions, output, and wage inequality. Education quality as a determinant of the elasticity of skill supply in the economy may act as a mitigating factor both for the impact of carbon pricing on emissions reduction and on economic outcomes, including wage inequality and output.

This argument is parallel to skills and automation: if automation complements higher-skilled workers productivity, then the elasticity of skill supply for example, through the quality of education enhances the economic benefits of automation and mitigates its costs (Bentaouet Kattan et al. 2020).

We test the hypothesis that cognitive skills, as an indicator of overall human capital, are associated with a lower reliance on emissions in aggregate production technology and estimate the subsequent mitigating effect of education quality on carbon pricings effectiveness and economic consequences, including wage inequality.

Using data on workers cognitive skills and their industrys emissions for 21 European countries, we find that cognitive skills are associated with lower emissions per output and faster reductions in emissions per output across time. All three measures of cognitive skills in the OECD dataset literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving were associated with reduced emissions per unit of output (see Figure 1). We found this association to be true within countries, controlling for level of education, and primarily associated with the cognitive skills of professional and managerial occupations, which would be most involved in innovation and adaption.

Figure 1Association between one-standard-deviation-higher cognitve skills of employees and average annual growth rates in industries' CO2emissions per unitof value-added in percentage point terms

Notes: Estimates using OECD PIAAC data 2012 merged with EU EmissionsAccounts by Industry for 2012 to 2019. Observations are 67,877 workers in 21 countries for numeracy and literacy skills; 44,446 workers and 17 countries for problem-solving skills. Associations estimated using linear regression models controlling for education level, sex, age and fixed effects for each country.Source: Macdonald and Partinos 2021.

Variation in the reduction of reliance on emissions across industries and within countries is likely the result of technological change, either through innovation or adaption. The association between cognitive skills and reduction in reliance on emissions by industries is consistent with skill-level as an enabler of innovation or technology adoption. This is further supported by the finding that the association between skills and reduced reliance on emissions are predominantly among managerial and professional occupations, which are most involved in innovation and driving technological change.

These findings are also consistent with green technology which enables production with fewer emissions being skill-biased: workers with a higher level of literacy skills contribute more to reducing the production functions reliance on emissions relative to capital.

To understand how education quality can interact with carbon pricing, we estimate a general equilibrium macroeconomic model for 15 European countries and predict the marginal effects of an increase in the price of carbon on output, emissions, and wage inequality defined as differences in wages that children from wealthy and poorer households earn when they reach adulthood to capture inequality of opportunity. Using the OECD PISA data for each country, we estimate the overall ability of households to acquire cognitive skills for their children as well as differences in ability between richer and poorer households to acquire cognitive skills. Higher-quality education systems are, in our model, able to provide more cognitive skills for a given level of investment in education and can do so more equitably.

Our estimated baseline models predict that a carbon tax reduces emissions but also negatively affects output, consistent with standard macro models of carbon pricing. A carbon tax also increases wage inequality which, in our model, is a result of green technological change being skill-biased and the inequality in skill acquisition between richer and poorer households measured in PISA.

We then study how the marginal effects of a carbon tax for each country compare between the baseline education quality regime as measured in PISA and each of two counterfactual education quality regimes. In the first counterfactual, we compared how the marginal effects of a carbon tax would change if each country had the same level of education quality as Finland the country with the highest level of education in our estimates. In the second counterfactual, we compared how the marginal effects of a carbon tax would have changed because of changes in the quality of education measured in PISA across time (see Figure 2).

Figure 2Projected annual percentof GDP saved according to countries' current education quality (compared to Finland's, as measured in PISA)if a carbon tax were used to reduce emissions by 55%

Note: Estimates not statistically significant for Denmark, Greece, and Norway. Source:Linearised projection based on marginal effects presented in Macdonald and Patrinos 2021.

For both simulations, we found that improvements in education quality (1) strengthened the marginal effect of a carbon tax on reducing emissions, (2) reduced the negative effect on output, and (3) reduced the positive effect on wage inequality. The magnitude of effect varies by country depending, in the first scenario, on the difference in education quality between Finland and the country in question and, in the second scenario, by how much education quality has improved (or declined) across time.

By projecting the changes in the marginal effects, we can offer a sense perspective of the impact. For example, in the early 2000s, Poland implemented a significant education reform that improved its education quality substantially. The reform, which raised the age of streaming into vocational programmes among other policy changes, had few recurrent cost implications but a large impact on cognitive skills. In our estimated model, if Poland increased its carbon tax to achieve the EUs carbon reduction targets, the loss in GDP would be a quarter of a per cent less thanks to the increase in education quality from the reform.

Our findings that cognitive skills are associated with industries that are more efficient in terms of emissions per output and, subsequently, that education quality plays a mitigating role is consistent with greener technology requiring a higher level of skills than existing technology. These findings also echo the literature showing that firm-level human capital improves environmental compliance and practices, and higher educations association with reduced emissions at the macro level. Green technology is skill-biased. However, our model does not explain why this would be the case, and the topic deserves further research.

Our model could be extended in several ways in future research. First, labour mobility could be added to understand how the variation in education quality across the EU may affect the impact of carbon pricing. For example, countries with lower-quality education systems may have higher elasticity in skill supply by attracting foreign-trained labour; however, the presence of low-quality education systems within the EU may lower the elasticity of skill supply for the EU as a whole.

A second extension of the model would be to include other mitigating factors, such as progressive or otherwise targeted redistribution of a carbon tax, and compare the strength of the mitigating effect with increased education quality.

Finally, a third extension is to transform the framework into a growth model and examine steady-state growth outcomes. This would allow us to better understand how the elasticity of skill supply affects carbon pricings impact on annual changes in carbon emissions and other macroeconomic outcomes including output.

Carbon pricing to reduce emissions that is accompanied by improvements in education quality will result in better environmental and economic outcomes. In this context, investing in education quality is not to change the values or behaviours of consumers but rather to enable technological change that can reduce emissions. Human-capital investment should improve cognitive skills and enable technological change to mitigate the costs and enhance the benefits of increased carbon pricing.

Borissov, K, A Brausmann and L Bretschger (2019), Carbon pricing, technology transition, and skill-based development, European Economic Review 118: 25269.

Bentaouet Kattan, R, K Macdonald and H Patrinos (2020), The role of education in mitigating automations effect on wage inequality, Labour 35: 79104.

Gollier, C, and J Tirole (2015), Negotiating effective institutions against climate change, Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy 4(2): 528.

Grainger, C A, and C D Kolstad (2010), Who pays a price on carbon?,Environmental and Resource Economics 46(3): 35976.

Klenert, D, and C Hepburn (2018), Making carbon pricing work for citizens, VoxEU.org, 31 July.

Lan, J, and A Munro (2013), Environmental compliance and human capital: evidence from Chinese industrial firms, Resource and Energy Economics 35(4): 53457.

Macdonald, K, and H Patrinos (2021), Education quality, green technology, and the economic impact of carbon pricing, Policy Research Working Paper No. 9808, World Bank.

Mathur, A, and A C Morris (2014), Distributional effects of a carbon tax in broader US fiscal reform, Energy Policy 66: 32634.

Metcalf, G E, and J H Stock (2020), Measuring the macroeconomic impact of carbon taxes, AEA Papers and Proceedings 110: 101106.

OECD (2017), Boosting skills for greener jobs in Flanders, OECD.

Pargal, S, and D Wheeler (1996), Informal regulation of industrial pollution in developing countries: Evidence from Indonesia, Journal of Political Economy 104(6): 131427.

Rausch, S, G Metcalf and J Reilly (2011), Distributional impacts of carbon pricing: A general equilibrium approach with micro data for households, VoxEU.org, 10 June.

Shapiro, J (2021), Pollution trends and US environmental policy: Lessons from the last half century, VoxEU.org, 2 December.

Stiglitz, J E, N Stern, M Duan, O Edenhofer, G Giraud, G M Heal, E L La Rovere, A Morris, E Moyer, M Pangestu and P R Shukla (2017), Report of the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, World Bank.

van der Ploeg, R, A Rezai and M Tovar (2021), Carbon tax recycling and popular support in Germany, VoxEU.org, 2 November.

Yao, Y, K Ivanovski, J Inekwe and R Smyth (2020), Human capital and CO2 emissions in the long run, Energy Economics 91.

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Education quality, green technology, and the economic impact of carbon pricing | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org

All roads lead to the brain. Depression and anxiety, loneliness, Alzheimers disease, learning disorders, substance misuse disorder, long-haul COVID (i.e., brain fog), the toxic effects of air pollution on the brain, and even deaths of despair are all brain-based challenges. These issues typically fall through the proverbial cracks given they cut across policy areas and sectors of government. We need a coordinated approach to manage and ultimately prevent these issues: Such an approach will boost economic dynamism through reduced suffering, optimized brain performance and productivity, and new industries.

Brain-based challenges all involve brain health and wellness at an individual and societal level. They all represent internal or external disruptions whether biological, economic, structural, environmental, or social. Collectively, they were reducing life expectancy in the United States, long before the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. The pandemic, in turn, has made all of these brain-based issues profoundly worse.

Brain function and the myriad of conditions that influence it are rarely considered in current economic or public policy approaches. This may in part be due to scientific advancements in the brain sciences outpacing economic and policy change. It is also a result of the siloed and growing knowledge of the brain and economics rarely converging to inform the development and implementation of policy.

Our collective failure to connect neuroscience and social policy may be most conspicuous in matters of social justice. Increasing homelessness, mass incarceration, and deaths of despair are all driven, in part, by untreated brain disorders. With the rising threat of automation, workers who are not brain ready for the knowledge economy will face job losses, loss of purpose, despair, and fall further behind. Further, over a dozen institutions within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) engage in brain research, which results in imperfect coordination, artificial siloes, resource waste, and redundancy. This is particularly troubling given many of the fundamental brain disease mechanics are shared across many disorders, and dysfunction in mood and cognition is common among brain challenges across the lifespan.

A new approach to improve economies and societies is long overdue. To this end, we have developed a novel asset, Brain Capital, which we believe can inform better policy development. Brain Capital incorporates brain health and brain skills and drives economic empowerment, social resilience, and emotional connection. As brains are indispensable drivers of human progress, Brain Capital provides an opportunity to invest in these valuable assets and nurture healthier, more resilient, and flexible brains. And yet, remarkably, Brain Capital is not captured by any existing measure of gross domestic product (GDP).

Download the full policy brief

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Build brains better: A proposal for a White House Brain Capital Council to accelerate post-COVID recovery and resilience - Brookings Institution

Five years after its implementation, the Tsai governments flagship policy initiative aimed at boosting engagement with South and Southeast Asian countries has delivered some encouraging economic results. But observers say that to fulfill the policys goal of developing more comprehensive relations, a greater focus on people-to-people ties is needed.

Taiwans Executive Yuan reported this September that overall trade between Taiwan and the 18 countries targeted under its New Southbound Policy (NSP) reached US$68.4 billion in the first half of 2021, a 32.14% increase from the same period last year. Trade in agricultural goods also experienced significant growth of 12.3%, which included a 31.7% rise in Taiwanese exports of fertilizer, pesticides, and farm machinery and equipment to the NSP countries.

In addition, approved or planned investment by Taiwanese businesses in NSP markets saw major increases between January and June this year. Sixty projects totaling US$2.24 billion were applied for or given the green light during that time, a year-on-year increase of 58.8%. Government-approved investments from NSP countries in Taiwan came to US$297 million; while a comparatively small amount, it represented a 57.5% increase from the first half of 2020.

For Taiwan and the Tsai Ing-wen administration, whose stated purpose for the NSP was in part to reduce economic overreliance on a single market, China, these numbers appear to indicate that the policy has been a smashing success. Of note is that the impressive growth in trade and investment has occurred despite a global pandemic that continues to impede economic recovery around the world.

Much of that growth can be traced to the consistent movement of Taiwanese business operations out of China due to issues such as the U.S.-China trade dispute, the emergence of COVID-19, and the Chinese governments increasing hostility toward foreign and Taiwanese business interests. While a significant portion of capital has been directed toward Taiwan, Southeast Asian countries particularly Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia have been the recipients of an increasing amount of investment by Taiwanese businesses.

According to Alan Hao Yang, a professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at National Cheng Chi University, this movement is part of a global trend, as countries look to diversify their supply chain networks as a way to mitigate risk and increase resilience to shocks like another pandemic. The idea is not to terminate their Chinese factories but rather to set up another network in neighboring countries like Vietnam due to [its status as an] emerging market and its abundant labor force, he says.

Yang, who also serves as executive director of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF), a think tank that focuses on Taiwans relations with ASEAN and South Asian countries, says that while this years trade and investment numbers have indeed been impressive, theyre not large enough to meet the goal of weaning Taiwan off of the Chinese market. And in any case, the aim of the NSP is not solely to bolster commercial ties with the programs countries.

As President Tsai has mentioned, it is imperative to engage comprehensively with neighboring countries, he says, referring to the NSPs four pillars of promoting economic cooperation, conducting people-to-people exchanges, enhancing resource sharing, and forging regional links.

Over the past five years that the NSP has been in effect, Taiwan has made significant efforts to engage its regional partners in a number of different areas. Considerable effort has gone into talent training, particularly in attracting students from NSP countries to study in Taiwan. The Ministry of Education (MOE) in late November reported that while the total number of international students enrolled in Taiwanese schools fell by 30,000 in 2020 due to the pandemic, those from NSP countries decreased by only 2,000. Furthermore, such students constituted 56% of the foreign student population in Taiwan last year, a nearly 30 percentage point increase from 2016, the year the NSP was launched.

In addition, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reported that 75% of students that came to Taiwan in 2017 through the MOEs International Programs of Industry-Academia Collaboration in Taiwan continued on in Taiwan after their studies. The scheme, which combines targeted degree programs with internships in related industry areas, is available exclusively for students from NSP countries.

Yet while a growing number of students from ASEAN and South Asian countries are choosing to come to Taiwan to pursue educational and career opportunities, the reverse cannot be said of Taiwanese students. Huynh Tam-Sang, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities and research fellow at Taipei-based think tank Taiwan NextGen Foundation, cites MOE data showing that last year fewer than 1,000 Taiwanese students chose to pursue a degree at Southeast Asian universities. In comparison, 23,700 went to the U.S. for their studies and 9,500 to Japan.

In order for Taiwanese to gain a deeper understanding of Southeast Asia and vice versa, Huynh says that the government needs to better incentivize its students, researchers, and scholars to engage in academic exchanges with educational institutions in NSP countries. These can be short-term programs, around six months, or they can be one to two years, he says, adding that cultivating a pool of young Taiwanese that are familiar with the local customs and bureaucracy around the region can also help Taiwanese firms minimize the costs and challenges of doing business in NSP markets.

Another issue is that the vast majority of international students and aspiring talent coming to Taiwan through the NSPs flagship education programs are from Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, countries that are home to substantial ethnic Chinese populations and with which Taiwan already maintains deep ties. However, some say that more needs to be done to engage those countries that have not traditionally been on Taiwans radar but have nonetheless been identified as key partners under the NSP.

One such country is India. Relations between Taiwan and Asias largest democracy have warmed significantly since they established representative offices in each others respective territory in the mid-1990s. Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the TAEF and an expert on Taiwan-India relations, cites such developments as the establishment of the Taiwan-India Parliamentary Friendship Association in 2016, as well as activities organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) in India, as demonstrating the two sides desire to further institutionalize their relationship.

Hashmi says that economic and commercial development has long been the focus of relations between India and Taiwan. However, she noted in a recent report for the French Institute for International Relations that several previous attempts to accelerate that development were less than successful. As a result, bilateral trade and investment between the two sides have remained relatively low compared with other countries in the Indo-Pacific. In her report, Hashmi noted that overall trade between India and Taiwan in 2020 totaled US$5.6 billion, a small fraction of the approximately US$89 billion in trade Taiwan conducted with ASEAN last year.

One issue she raises is that while the work of TAITRA and other organizations set up to foster better commercial relations between Taiwan and India is important, formal mechanisms like a free trade agreement are needed to really drive the economic relationship forward.

Furthermore, Hashmi notes that the traditionally risk-averse approach of Taiwanese businesses has caused them to invest in places they are more familiar with, namely China and Southeast Asia. She suggests that these companies look to the examples of Singapore and Japan, whose firms have been making inroads in India for several years.

Although on paper the NSP has not yet garnered the kinds of economic results that Taiwan and India might have hoped for, Hashmi explains that the policy and the outreach it encourages have succeeded in expanding the breadth and depth of cultural and people-to-people ties. Given the increased attention paid to Taiwan by the Indian government and public in recent years, thanks in no small part to Taiwans skillful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its offers of medical equipment and assistance to India, the time seems ripe for the two sides to build on their mutual goodwill.

Most observers agree that the main impediment to Taiwan further deepening ties with its NSP partners is intervention by China, whose expansive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) allocates significant resources toward economic development projects in South and Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the desire of regional leaders to avoid antagonizing China has caused them to take a more cautious approach to dealing with Taiwan.

China is paying attention to Taiwans every move, says Yang of the TAEF. They target the areas where we have an advantage. And because they are a larger economy, they have a lot of resources to fully promote those areas and then squeeze our diplomatic and other space in the region.

Joyce Juo-yu Lin, professor emeritus of the Graduate Institute of Southeast Asian Studies at Tamkang University, says that Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan, released this March, seeks to incorporate Taiwanese overseas businesspeople (known in Mandarin as Taishang) into the BRI, but that is not easy to accomplish.

Chinese state-owned enterprises are huge in scope and have lots of power, she says. But the Taishang are overwhelmingly small and medium-sized enterprises, which makes it much harder to compete in the targeted markets. So now these Taiwanese businesses that want to diversify their overseas investment are increasingly looking to the American market. [U.S. President] Bidens infrastructure bill, which was recently passed by Congress, makes the U.S. very attractive for the Taishang.

In addition, Lin says, Taiwans exclusion from the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), trade pacts that combined include virtually every other Asia-Pacific country, has further discouraged Taiwanese enterprises from expanding into those markets.

In spite of the challenges, Lin is determined to put her three decades of observing the region, including a stint in the early 1990s as Southeast Asia correspondent for the China Times, to use in bolstering engagement. Earlier this year, she founded the South and Southeast Asia Association Taiwan, a nonprofit that aims to promote industry, government, education, and research ties between Taiwan and its regional neighbors through the integration of area research, political and economic development, trade and investment, and social and cultural resources.

I think we can enhance mutual understanding between Taiwan and the ASEAN member states, as well as South Asian countries, Lin says. Because the more relations that are established and the deeper they become the more important that understanding will be.

The global shortage of semiconductors also presents opportunities for Taiwan in NSP countries. India, for example, has expressed interest in working with Taiwan to develop its own chipmaking capabilities. In November, Indian media reported that the country was in talks with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), as well as other major chip producers, to invest in India under a massive incentive program coordinated by Prime Minister Narendra Modis office.

The TAEFs Yang says that while developing economic engagement can be considered the main theme of the NSP, it spills over into other dimensions, including social resilience and other areas where Taiwan has comparative advantages. He says that over the past few years, the TAEF has promoted the notion of Taiwans warm power its willingness to share knowledge, experiences, and resources with NSP countries which has endeared them to Taiwan.

As these countries continue to refer to Taiwan and increase their curiosity about Taiwan and Taiwanese people, they will learn more about our position and challenges, which are common to their countries as well, he says. Our suffering and responses are quite useful for their reference.

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New Southbound Policy Offers New Prospects for 2022 - Taiwan Business TOPICS - Taiwan Business TOPICS

US Summit for Democracy. (Photo: via Social media)

By Jim Miles

The US Summit for Democracy has come and gone without too much fuss. It was a strange little show with the leader of the so called free world being those democratic countries that for whatever reason support US dictates attempting through rhetoric and probably a few winks and nods to maintain its establishment as the groups leader. From what I saw in the MSM it really amounted to little and may well have shown how weak the supposed leadership is.

It did however raise the very good question of what democracy is. From its etymological roots, it simply means essentially power by the people although even that has various interpretations, none straying far from that simplicity. As for practical applications, there are many different routes that can be taken, different levels of democracy depending on initial premises. For example, the idea that capitalism is the main pillar of democracy is a premise that allows all kinds of actions that are decidedly non-democratic. To present arguments as to what democracy leads into a mess of philosophical arguments leaving no verbiage unturned in pursuit of its definition to support politicians practical applications.

It is therefore not a good argument to get into. Instead what makes more sense is to look at how societies apply their laws domestically in practical situations towards their citizens and with foreign affairs against others. In other words, the following is more a look at actions taken that are definitely non-democratic, a view that seriously limits the understanding of democracy as power by the people.

Freedom and Democracy

There needs to be a differentiation between freedom and democracy. While the two go together well, freedom can be had without democratic control, according to the whims of the government, and according to the perhaps unseen aspects of domestic control (laws and belief systems) that are disguised as freedom. An example of the latter would be the theorized rugged individualism as propounded by many US authorities which really indicates that, if one cannot make it in society it is all your own fault and not societys.

Domestic

There are some big obvious practical issues that deny democracy. Probably the biggest is racism in its many forms. Different laws for different sections of the population based on race or ethnic background are decidedly non-democratic. This includes various reservation systems as applied to all the British colonial heritage countries, mainly the Five Eyes, the imperial system as exercised in Canada, the US New Zealand, and Australia. It includes apartheid states like Israel, and formerly South Africa.

Domestic spying is another form of non-democratic action. Still, with the Five Eyes, their nominal designation is based on their actions of spying on foreign countries, including those within the group one of their main purposes is to avoid the legal entanglement of a government spying on its own people. Other countries are not so constrained and any government that has a security system for internal security certainly spies on its citizens. Canadas government has its Communications Security Establishment (1946) and its better-known component, CSIS. The USas various spy and policing agencies, the FBI being the best known, keeping records on many of its citizens mainly for political reasons. Israels Shin Bet works hand in hand with the military to control the indigenous Palestinian population.

Along with those spy organizations goes a highly militarized police force. These forces are used to control opposition street-level (democratic) protests against mostly corporate actions supported by governments. This comes back to reservations and apartheid as much of the use of militarized police is to control domestic protests originating from land and resource arguments from indigenous populations. Accompanying this on various levels are outright murder, torture, inhumane treatment, and outright deniers of humanitarian law. Examined in this light, the Five Eyes and Israel are decidedly non-democratic.

Election laws and rules have a large impact on the application of democracy. For all its self-vaunted mastery of democracy, the whole US system is clearly non-democratic. They put on a great show with constant year-round electioneering and much less governing for the people. The current system of the Electoral College was mainly established to keep the rabble, the factions from having any say in governance. The gerrymandered districts effectively assure certain areas of remaining with a particular party and are usually based on race or ethnic background although in Ireland it contains the religious component as well (although that is mostly ethnic-immigrant Scots versus indigenous Irish). Many other smaller seemingly innocuous laws limit democracy, some being simply outright petty and stupid, such as Georgias law against giving water to voters.

One of the larger factors in the US is the huge amount of money corporations are allowed to spend on elections as determined by Citizens United in which donations of money are considered free speech and corporations are people. Supposedly intelligent people believe this stupidity mainly as it serves their own power and finances. There is no peoples power when corporations are usually able to buy their favored candidate. The combination of predatory financialization (meaning most of us to live in debt servitude of some kind) to some bank or other) and corporate militarism (spending huge amounts of money liberally distributed throughout the country for political gains) certainly do not give power to the people.

Corporations

The corporate world straddles the domestic and foreign affairs realm. Basically, corporations are non-democratic by nature. Their purpose is to make profits and protect owners against financial losses as well as externalized costs such as environmental damage which includes the poisons of resource extraction, the removal of land from public or indigenous jurisdiction, and the creation of an impoverished workforce.

Much of that profit recently has come from the huge amounts of Quantitative Easing supplied by the US Government in liaison with the Federal Reserve (a series of private banks supposedly directing the economy). The stock markets and commodities markets are all manipulated and serve mostly the wealthy who benefit most from the tax cuts, low-interest rates, and government subsidies.

Corporations can be simply about business, but as seen above, corporations are also well tied into the security apparatus of the country, from the militarized police forces to laws that generally protect the rights of corporations over the rights of citizens, in particular indigenous citizens. Further, many that appear to be superficially benign are highly involved in the production of equipment and materials for various spy agencies and military agencies. Boeing, Kodak, Intel, General Electric, Amazon, Facebook are all well known domestic names with strong ties to the military and security apparatus of the US Israeli corporations are highly militarized as is the state and its field-tested security and military equipment is sold around the world to various other governments acting in a non-democratic manner.

Canadas corporations act decidedly in a non-democratic manner in certain situations apart from the externalized costs. Mining, forestry, and energy companies frequently intrude on indigenous land and retain special rights also to public lands. With the ultimate control of all land-based on the sovereign as per millennia-old racist laws, governments and corporations operate together against the will of the people.

Foreign Affairs- Economic

Apart from domestic non-democratic actions, actions taken within or against other countries are frequently non-democratic. It is a combination of military and economic actions that are used to deny the sovereignty of other nations even if many are nominally democratic.

Free trade is one of the more obvious non-democratic sets of rules globally. Designed in secret without public input, seldom if ever voted on either by referendum or representatives[1], these agreements are designed to give freedom only to the movement of money and profits. Any impedance to that movement is generally fought not in the courts but in private arbitration structures that abide by the decisions of the theoretical experts chosen by the aggrieved complainant, usually a large international corporation.

The agreements have nothing free for the workers and end up weakening workers rights. There is nothing free for the environment and quite the opposite pretend losses due to environmental laws are liable to lawsuit compensation against governments. Which adds to the point that people are not able to sue governments, in some cases governments cannot sue corporations, yet corporations are free to sue governments.

The global financial institutions are not democratic by any definition. Mostly controlled by the US the US or EU based international corporations (banksters et al) democracy is not available to those coming under the dictates of the IMF and World Bank [2], nor the larger constraints of the SWIFT settlement system or the rulings of the global oversight Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

Beyond the manipulations of financial institutions is the use of sanctions. Sanctions can be applied in a positive manner as exemplified by the BDS sanctions that worked to eliminate apartheid in South Africa [3] and are currently being used to support Palestinian rights in occupied Palestine (being all of Israel). Both of these uses developed from grassroots initiatives, truly democratic actions against oppressive non-democratic regimes.

Using sanctions as an economic/military weapon has become the main method of international relations with the US. Arguably better than outright war, they cause enormous suffering mostly to the citizens of the countries they are applied to. What is currently working against them is the indigenous resistance against ceding to the demands of the sanctions. Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria are all surviving the sanctions imposed by the US and its allies of the west, establishing a resistance to empire supported by other countries with more resources.

Russia to a degree has actually benefited from sanctions as it, fortunately, has a large resource base and has become a strong agricultural center. It has also divested itself of ties to US debt obligations and on a debt to GDP ratio is probably one of the strongest economic countries in the world. Counter to desires, sanctions have also pushed Russia and China much closer geopolitically creating a new multipolar world that does not necessarily make it all democratic, but it puts a preventative in place against US military and economic aggression.

Foreign Affairs Military

There is not much really needed to say about how military interventions and occupations are anti-democratic. Having ones country destroyed by someone elses military on any pretense simply denies democracy. The supposed right to protect mantra used by the US and NATO on several occasions has proven to be a total disaster which arguably is one of the hoped-for outcomes as these disasters are profitable for the corporate militarized world and ideal to shape a failed country that needs submit to imperial desires.

The US/NATO are the primary guilty party for all kinds of military interventions used to serve the purpose of the empire. Yugoslavia/Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia are all current examples of either direct western military interference or subsidized military manipulation. There are many other smaller events occurring globally, directed and supported by the US and allied (MI6, Mossad, CSIS) covert services. It is tiring to repeat it, but it is significant with over 800 military bases around the world in over 125 countries, U.S./NATO/EU foreign policy is mainly determined by illegal military interventions.

Democracy Now?

Contemporary geopolitical currents make global democracy a highly contentious issue. The US empire is continually looking for a bad guy as required by the military-industrial-financial community in order to maintain their power over the people of the world. They are currently acting aggressively against both China and Russia with two areas Ukraine and Taiwan being possible flashpoints for some kind of war, while continuing their smaller aggressive actions in areas of geopolitical interest Ethiopia and Yemen being two of many current hotspots.

Beyond wars, the current world of financial manipulations has led to huge inequalities within countries and between countries. Structured mostly on debt manipulations of one kind or another, the US economic system is slowly having its impact reduced, but its overall enormity mostly due to the global reserve nature of its currency keeps it powerful. But power built on debt and large manipulations of economic factors could also lead to an equally enormous collapse.

Finally, one of the more discussed but practically ignored situations is climate change. Lots of greenwashing occur but until the grassroots of society change and demand change to the overall debt-burdened consumer society powered by economic structures and military structures, climate impacts will simply be absorbed and placed under the rubric of disaster capitalism, and the corporate interests will harvest their profits until flooded or burned out.

In sum, democracy is a wonderful ideal, superficially widespread, but with major aspects of society that truly deny it. Many places have personal freedom, but limited also for many by economic, social, educational, and other civic structures, many racist, many class-oriented. Until the non-democratic aspects of the financial world, the military world, and global climate change are dealt with, democracy will be a commodity in name only.

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When Democracy is Commodified: On the US Summit for Democracy and Other Ruses - Palestine Chronicle