Stanford University

Environment

FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.

Trade on Human Terms: Transforming Trade for Human Development in Asia and the Pacific

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Against the backdrop of export-led growth of some economies -- most notably China and India -- human development issues in Asia tend to be overlooked. The 2006 report Trade on Human Terms, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, finds that trade has contributed to further increasing the inequality both between and within countries. In addition, it warns that many of the region's open economies, particularly the East Asian success stories, are creating far fewer jobs, especially for youth and women, and experiencing "jobless growth." Many of the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific are now net importers of agricultural products; food security has thus become an emerging issue.

While Asia and the Pacific have embraced globalization, the regions poor are being left behind and will be so without determined action by governments. The report recommends that those countries adopt bold new policies that harness trade and economic growth, suggesting an "eight-point agenda" that includes investing for competitiveness; adopting strategic trade policies; restoring a focus on agriculture; combating jobless growth; and others.

Dr. Hafiz A. Pasha will discuss the findings and recommendations of this ground-breaking and thoughtful report which can be viewed at:

Asia - Pacific Human Development Report 2006

Dr. Hafiz A. Pasha is UN assistant secretary-general and UNDP assistant administrator and director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific. He has served as the commerce and trade minister, minister for finance and economic affairs, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, and education minister in three government administrations in Pakistan.

Prior to his government work, Dr. Pasha was the vice chancellor/president of the University of Karachi and dean and director of the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, Pakistan.

Dr. Pasha has published extensively in the fields of trade, public finance, social development, and poverty reduction. He has an M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Pasha was recently awarded the Congressional Medal of Achievement by the Philippines Congress in recognition of his work on poverty reduction, achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the Asia-Pacific countries and his role in leading UNDP's response to the 2004 tsunami tragedy.

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Hafiz A. Pasha UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific Speaker The United Nations Development Programme
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Report of the Committee on Technology Innovation and Venture Capital

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Recognizing that new technology is the driver of growth in the emerging environment of a knowledge-based society, the Indian Planning Commission convened a committee on Technology Innovation and Venture Capital. The Committee undertook a number of tasks, most notably:

  1. to examine innovation and technological dynamism in both the modern and traditional sectors in India;
  2. to examine the relationship between research, entrepreneurship, and financial markets;
  3. to examine the policy environment for venture capital;
  4. to make recommendations, which would lead to basic industrial research and development being converted into new ventures; and
  5. to suggest policy changes to encourage the flow of venture capital for facilitating start-ups and new ventures.

This report is the result of the committee's investigation.

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Policy Briefs
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Planning Commission, Government of India
Authors
Rafiq Dossani

Rising Demand, Trade Prospects, and the Rise of China's Horticultural Industry,

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The main question that we examine in this chapter is whether policy makers, farmers, and traders in China have met and will be able to meet the growing demand for high-valued fruits and vegetables. Such questions, of course, have great implications for producers of fruits and vegetables in the US and other nations. To answer these questions, we explore three main issues. First, we briefly describe changes to China's policy approach to managing agriculture. The objective of this inquiry is to understand how the environment within which producers make decisions has changed during the past two decades. Second, we track the changes in agricultural supply in China. In this section we seek to understand how producers have responded over the past ten years to rising demand in both the domestic and external economies. Finally, we examine both enabling factors and constraining elements that will either push China towards or inhibit China from becoming the major supplier of horticultural products domestically and globally.

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Working Papers
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Scott Rozelle

Hindering Trade or Protecting the Developing World? Assessing the Impact of the Biosafety Protocol for the Case of China

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Uncertainties about the effect of Biosafety Protocol (BSP) on global agricultural trade have caused concern among those with a stake in agrifood imports and exports. The primary goal of this paper is to analyze the effects of the BSP on both importing countries with a specific emphasis on China and exporting countries of soybean and maize. The results show that in absolute terms the BSP will require large investments internationally and will induce compliance costs. The BSP will increase the international price and domestic production in importing countries, and lower international trade and domestic production in the exporting countries. In absolute terms the impacts are large, amounting for each commodity into the tens of millions of dollars and varying largely among different scenarios. But in the percentage the impacts are small. Much smaller impacts are found in China because China has already invested in a system that provides almost all of the services that is contained within the BSP. Other developing nations may need more helps; and that it will be more costly.

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Working Papers
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Scott Rozelle

Vietnam's Uniqueness in a Globalized World

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Ambassador Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh is a member of Viet Nam's law-making body, the National Assembly, representing the southern coastal province of Ba Ria Vung Tau. In her position as Vice-Chair of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee, her mission has been to develop and enhance Viet Nam's relations with the countries of North America (particularly, the United States) and Western Europe. She travels frequently to the United States and Europe and regularly interacts with senior government and business leaders both abroad and in Viet Nam. She has also represented Viet Nam in international conferences among world leaders to discuss issues with global implications. She is widely recognized as an effective spokesperson for Viet Nam.

Prior to holding her current position, Mme Ninh served, for over two decades, as a diplomat in Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specializing in multilateral institutions (the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, Francophonie, The Association of South East Asian Nations) and global issues (international peace and security, development, environment, governance, human rights, etc.) As advisor to Viet Nam's Minister of Foreign Affairs, she was responsible for key international efforts on behalf of Viet Nam, such as the holding of the Summit of French-Speaking Countries in 1997 in Ha Noi. From 2000 to 2003, she was Viet Nam's Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and Head of the Mission to the European Union in Brussels.

Mme Ninh grew up in France, was educated at Sorbonne University and Cambridge University and started her career as an academic. She taught English and English literature at Paris University in the late 1960s and later at Saigon University until 1975.

Born in Hue, Central Viet Nam, into a traditional family, she developed her political commitment to the National Liberation Front for South Viet Nam early on during her student days in Paris. Since then, she has been consistently active in social issues, with a special interest on gender. She served a term on the Central Executive on the Viet Nam Women's Union.

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Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh Vice-Chair of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Speaker
Lectures
Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum

The Sun Finally Rises

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After a decade of gloom, the sun seems at last to be shining brightly on Japan. Its economy has now grown at a respectable pace for four years and the clouds of deflation seem finally to have broken. International factors were the proximate cause of this improvement, but below the surface fundamental changes have also started to occur in the structure of the domestic economy. These changes are largely benign in nature, though they do raise questions about Japan's fiscal health, its ability to fund the twin US deficits, and the trajectory of its relations with its neighbors. The purpose of this speech is to explain how these dynamices will unfold and what they mean for Japan, East Asia, and the United States.

Robert Madsen is a Senior Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies. He also advises such private equity firms as Unison Capital and the Robert M. Bass Group and was Asia Strategist at Soros Private Funds Management, which undertook leveraged buyouts and corporate restructuring in Europe and East Asia. From time to time he consults for several government agencies, including in the past year an economics ministry, a foreign ministry, an intelligence agency, and a central bank. Madsen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a Masters Degree, with Distinction, and a Doctorate in International Relations. He additionally holds a J.D., with Distinction, from Stanford Law School and is a member of the California State Bar.

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Robert Madsen Senior Fellow Speaker Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Daniel Sneider says China's embrace of KMT leader sends message to Taiwan

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News Type
Commentary
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Shorenstein APARC Pantech Fellow and San Jose Mercury News foreign affairs columnist Daniel C. Sneider, warning that a growing rift between China and Taiwan could inadvertently force a conflict that might drag in the United States, discusses his interview with Kuomintang party chairman Ma Ying-jeou.

The Middle East seems to occupy all the attention of our foreign-policymakers these days. But there are other parts of this globe that are probably more important, and potentially no less dangerous.

One of these is the Taiwan Strait. That narrow passage of water separates China from Taiwan, in Chinese minds a renegade province that must eventually be returned to its control.

The Chinese communist leadership dreads the prospect that Taiwan's democratically elected government might make the island's de facto independence a legal reality. China's heated military buildup in recent years is largely focused on creating the muscle to intimidate Taiwan and to seize the island if that fails.

A war across the Taiwan Strait makes the American top-five list of security dangers. The U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan is ambiguous, but it is not hard to imagine us being drawn into a conflict. And a war in the strait could easily expand to include Japan.

That is why the mayor of Taipei, Taiwan's capital city, got such a rousing welcome last week in Washington. Ma Ying-Jeou, or Mayor Ma as he is popularly known, does not threaten to upset the apple cart of cross-strait relations by pushing Chinese buttons with talk of independence, as the Taiwanese government loves to do.

Sitting down with Ma for breakfast as he made his way home to Taiwan, I could see why he was received with open arms at senior levels of the Bush administration. Ma, the leader of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, is the front-runner in polls to win the 2008 presidential elections. He is articulate, a Harvard Law School graduate with movie-star looks and a reassuring message for Americans.

"We support maintenance of the status quo, which is also U.S. policy,'' he told me.

A KMT-led government would not waver from the "Five Nos,'' a pledge made by President Chen Shui-bian not to take steps toward a declaration of independence. He offers in addition a program of ``Five Dos'' should it return to power.

First, the KMT hopes to resume negotiations with the mainland, based on a 1992 agreement that while there is one China, there are different interpretations of what that means. Second, it will try to reach a peace agreement, lasting from 30 to 50 years. Third, the KMT would expand the already massive economic ties between Taiwan and the mainland into a possible cross-strait common market. Fourth, the KMT would try to create a formula to allow Taiwan to participate in international affairs, including global organizations, short of being an independent state. Last, it would expand cross-strait cultural and education exchanges.

Ma downplays the threat from Beijing these days. "Their goal is no trouble,'' he told me. "They are not interested in unification right now.'' But, he said, the Chinese do worry about "the further drifting away of Taiwan.'' That drift, he fears, could inadvertently force a conflict that might drag in the United States.

That charge is aimed at the government in Taipei. And it is a concern shared by U.S. officials who are visibly unhappy these days with Chen. The warm reception for Ma was intended to send that message to Taipei -- and also to Beijing, ahead of the visit next month of Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

Reassuring as Ma's words may be, there are reasons to be cautious about his message and his prospects.

Taiwanese nationalism may rattle the status quo, but so does China's military buildup. As does the failure of Taiwan to adopt a significant U.S. defense package, offered five years ago, to counter that buildup. The KMT blames the current government for this impasse but the party, which now controls the legislature, has blocked passage of the budget.

Deepening economic ties with China are a market reality, as Taiwan's electronics industry shifts production to low-wage China. But ultimately that could make them another Hong Kong, a satellite of Beijing that must bend to its political will.

Taiwanese are deeply divided. The KMT, the party of mainlanders who fled to the island after the communist victory in 1949, ruled Taiwan for decades as the exiled government of China. But democracy, which came in the 1990s, brought to power native Taiwanese who want to preserve their separate identity.

Ma may prove to be a political leader who plays better in Washington than back home. But if Taiwanese embrace his vision of the status quo at the ballot box, all the better. Ultimately, his mandate must come from Taiwanese, not Americans.

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Chinese Agricultural Transition: Trade, Social and Environmental Impact

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The project studies the impact of China's current economic transition on its agricultural economy with special reference to the consequences of trade liberalization and of changing trade flows. The project will track impacts on social conditions and on the environment in China's rural areas as well as on markets in the rest of the world, with particular emphasis on the EU. For this, the research considers (a) the dynamic, rapid pace of the transition; (b) the size and geographical diversity of the country; and (c) the effect of the changes on the rest of the world. The research opts for a quantitative approach, supplemented by qualitative investigations, and focuses on three themes: trade, social conditions, and environment. On trade, the research aims to account for the size of China's trade and take a closer look at trade between the EU and China with scenario simulations over the period 2000-2030, by establishing a linkage between (a) the Chinagromodel, a spatially explicit equilibrium model that comprehensively depicts China's farm sector in 2433 counties, while connecting these through trade and transportation flows; (b) the GTAPmodel of world trade; (c) FEA-27, a model of EU-agriculture for 27 members states. The research on social conditions proceeds by linking geo-referenced household surveys to a population census of China and a detailed geographical data set, relying on a suitable adaptation of poverty mapping methodology, so as to trace impacts at household level. Finally, we use agro-ecological assessment tools to quantify the environmental pressures resulting from intensified livestock industry as well as from intensified horticulture production. Findings on the three themes are subsequently integrated to arrive at policy suggestions that account for efficiency, equity and sustainability considerations. Throughout the project, a policy dialogue and dissemination program, conducted in both China and the EU, maintains communication with policy makers.

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Publication Type
Working Papers
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Authors
Scott Rozelle
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