Charles van der Haegen's List: CT Core Group

in academie.eu

"Tajikistan faces an energy crisis every winter. The mountainous country, just north of Afghanistan and west of China, has devised a potential solution – build a hydroelectric dam across its churning Vakhsh River. And not just any dam, but potentially one of the world’s tallest, at a slated 335 meters, or slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Tajikistan’s government plans to relocate 42,000 people whose homes are on land that will be flooded by the Rogun Dam project. But, some of the 1,500 families who have already been resettled are struggling to build new homes, no longer have enough land to farm or regular access to clean water, and face other serious problems.

The government has suspended resettlement while the World Bank conducts feasibility studies on the dam. Francesca Corbacho, a Human Rights Watch fellow releasing a report on the dam, “We Suffered When We Came Here,” talks with Amy Braunschweiger about using this window to convince Tajikistan, and the World Bank, to make changes to the relocation plan."

An example of a trial for Citizen particuipation?...

"Draft Guidelines on environmental and energy State aid for 2014-2020
Policy field

Competition: State aid
Target group

Public authorities, citizens, companies and organisations are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from the national authorities dealing with state aid rules.
Period of consultation
From 18.12.2013 to 14.02.2014

Objective of the consultation

The objective of the consultation is to gather Member States, stakeholders and citizens at large opinions on the draft guidelines on environmental and energy aid for the period 2014-2020. "

"The KIP International School

The School is comprised of a network of experiences, organizations, specialized centres and universities of interested countries, who intend to work together to construct new knowledge and develop new tools for planning and managing development processes. It is based on existing structures that are involved in development practice, in research for innovation and in building capacities of development actors.

The School provides support to all actors who are working to achieve the goals and values that the international community agreed on through the principal United Nations summits of the past twenty years (Millennium Platform), recognizing the serious difficulties they encounter. While on one hand, the platform indicates a path towards an equitable, participatory, and environmentally sustainable development, on the other, the reality everywhere continues to be characterized by excessive competition leading to exclusion, poverty, social tensions, pollution, irrational use of natural resources and other dangerous imbalances.

Even those governments and actors most committed to implementing the Millennium Platform find that the ideas and models of action available to them are inadequate, resulting from the very cultural patterns that the Platform wishes to overcome. For these reasons, the International School aims to help identify new tools for understanding the complex and contradictory dynamics of development and new ways to plan and manage it.

The idea of creating a School, involving the best experiences being taken forward by public administrations, institutions, universities, research centres and social actors in different countries, was first put forward in a meeting between Edgar Morin and a group of experts who inspired the human development cooperation programmes that started with the United Nations PRODERE Programme in 1989."

"Published on May 22, 2013

An influential panel will debate the role designers must take in driving a sustainable manufacturing model.

Listen to the podcast of the full event including audience Q&A: http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/f...

Follow the RSA on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/thersaorg
Like the RSA on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thersaorg

Our events are made possible with the support of our Fellowship. Support us by donating or applying to become a Fellow.

Donate: http://www.thersa.org/support-the-rsa
Become a Fellow: http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/apply"

"Schwarz, author of the 'Sustainist Manifesto' talks about how Sustainism will shift our agendas for innovation, social change and design."

Also the author of Divided we stand?

""Groups of all sizes make better decisions when all voices are heard, so we’re building a system that makes it easy and efficient for anyone to participate in decisions that affect them."

Exciting News!

After nine months of hard work developing Loomio, we’re excited to move into a new phase where we can start bringing new groups on board.

We’ve learned a lot from our first 1000 users and we’re really proud of what we’ve built so far – a user-friendly tool that makes it easy and efficient for groups to make good decisions together online.

If you’re part of a group that wants to get in the door and start making good decisions together online, click here!"

"Should we be concentrating regulatory attention on Systemic Risk?
Posted January 1, 2013 by riskviews
Categories: Regulatory Risk, Systemic Risk
Tags: Business, The Economy

Think of it somewhat like the town that just suffered a very bad winter season with huge snowfalls that they were unprepared for clogging up everything for weeks on end. They spend the spring fixing up and deciding what to do. Their conclusion is to have all town employees carry snowshovels at all times and to keep snow plow trucks patrolling the streets all day and all night through the entire summer. Sometime in early fall, they decide that was a waste of time and sell all the shovels and trucks by the end of the fall.

RISKVIEWS does not think that our situation will include any systemic risks that we will anticipate. We will not repeat the exact same mistakes. Systemic risk oversight will in the end be a fixed Maginot Line defense.

What we need is

to figure out how to distinguish between creation of wealth by new innovation and by extraction from past innovation so that we can encourage the former and discourage the later. The former widely distributes increases in wealth while the latter concentrates it. The former creates growth while the latter captures the benefits of future growth now – which means that we will not have them later.
to understand leverage better. Look at the Minsky Financial Instability Model myself. Often, we are not honest with ourselves on the extent of debt. RISKVIEWS favors full disclosure over regulations. For example, firms should disclose the amount of debt that is implicit in derivative positions. And disclose the counterparties for that debt.
to figure out how we are going to find the next big thing that will employ all of the people who are now permanently, structurally unemployed. We can keep hoping for something that increases wealth, something that merely decreases wealth less than the current situation or something that decreases wealth but employs people.
to orient research into how to operate an economy in the long term with much less or no growth. Most of our economic expectations are built off of a constantly growing economy. With population about to start falling, we will necessarily experience much less growth. We don’t collectively even have any idea of what the shift to large retired populations will do to our economies.

The regulators need to focus on whatever is within their purview that gets in the way to accomplishing those things.

For the town above, that means storing the snow shovels to the winter and looking at the problems of the summer heat. They still need to keep an eye out for the next winter. But that does not mean it needs to be a primary focus NOW.

"

article montrant l'exemple des chemins de fer sut path dependency et technological Lock-in

"Public Funding for Public Elections

Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th Seminar About Long-Term Thinking. In a lawyerly fashion he laid out evidence of a new type of corruption that is disrupting the American republic, and he offered a remedy for that corruption. Lessig has a very distinctive visual style of using slides that punctuates, word for word, the clear logic of his argument.

He said the type of corruption rampant in the US Congress is not the old type of bribery, where congressional representatives had safes in their offices to hold the cash they received for voting in certain directions. That is now illegal and eliminated. This new type of corruption is more subtle, indirect and harder to outlaw. Corporations legally donate money to the election campaigns of legislators, who in turn tend to vote in favor of the interests of those corporations. Non-profits like Maplight can graph the evidence that a representative voting in favor of a particular corporate-friendly law will receive 6 or 10 or 13 times the funding than someone who opposes the law. He cited studies that showed the ROI (return on investment) of lobbying to be 1,000%. It was one of the sanest expenses for a corporation. But the distortion is not just one sided. The issue that Congress spent the most time on in 2011 -- a year when US was waging two wars, dealing with a near economic depression, and revamping health care -- was the bank swipe fee. Who should pay the credit card use fee -- the banks or the stores? There were corporations on both sides of this minor argument, but each side was promising campaign funds, so this was the issue that got all the attention of the officials. But the real money to be made in Congress is the relative fortune to be made as a lobbyist after leaving office. The differential in wages between a staff member and a lobbyist has escalated a hundred fold in the past 40 years. Now 43% of staff go on to become lobbyists. The promise of a well-paying job working for corporate interests later is enough to warp voting now.

None of this is illegal, but Lessig argues that we have a constitutional argument for eliminating it. The Constitution talks about the republic being "dependent on the people alone." But now it is dependent on corporate funders, and more and more JUST on corporate funders. His solution is to return the republic to being dependent on the people alone. His solution is an innovative kind of campaign finance reform. Give every voter a $50 campaign voucher. The $50 comes from the tax pool. It can be given to any candidate who accepts only money from the vouchers (and maybe a limit of an optional voluntary $100 per single voter). Thus all campaign money would come in very small amounts from The People. Lessig calculates that the total amount of money raised this public way would be 3 times the amount raised by private means in the last election cycles, and therefore more than adequate. But it would break the grip of corporate influence over what is voted up. The result would not be harmonious utopia, but the usual give-and-take compromises of politics -- which the US has not seen in decades. The issues that people cared about would return to the agenda.

Lessig spent the remaining time and some of the question and answers talking about the real-politic necessary to pass this reform. A similar public financing scheme works in places like Sweden, where one elected legislator told Lessig he had never had to worry about where his funding came from. But the US has a fierce free-speech component not found elsewhere, and ironically, since spending money is viewed as a type of free speech, this complicates reform. As a free-speech advocate himself, and a constitutional lawyer, Lessig talked candidly about the difficulties of reform. He ended by saying that it would probably be a generational task. Overcoming institutional racism and sexism took more than one generation, and returning the republic to the "people alone" could take just as long, although in this case, the republic might not last that long without reform.
-- by Kevin Kelly "

"In the heart of the Silicon Valley, legal doctrine is emerging that will determine the course of civil rights and technological innovation for decades to come. The Center for Internet and Society (CIS), housed at Stanford Law School and a part of the Law, Science and Technology Program, is at the apex of this evolving area of law."

"A web-based monograph
This site addresses a series of topics in the philosophy of social science. What is involved in "understanding society"? The blog is an experiment in thinking, one idea at a time. Look at it as a web-based, dynamic monograph on the philosophy of social science and some foundational issues about the nature of the social world."

"Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes author Parag Khanna for a discussion of his new book, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance. In the interview, Khanna analyzes the complex ecosystem created by globalization exploring the implications for governance by states and international institutions. He explains how a new diplomacy has become the defining feature of international interactions involving a diverse array of actors in the public and private sectors. He discusses the implications of these changes for U.S. foreign policy, highlighting the increasing importance of regional actors and the intricate modalities by which global resources take effect at the local level. Finally, he offers his reflections on Wiki-leaks, the Afghan/Pakistan conflict and the changes occurring in the Middle East."

"Dave Ingram

Riskviews is produced by

David N Ingram, CERA, FRM, PRM
Executive Vice President
Willis Re

This blog is an outside business activity. As such, Willis Re does not review or approve materials presented herein. By viewing or participating in discussion on this blog, you understand that the opinions expressed within do not reflect the opinions or recommendations of Willis Re, but are the opinions of the author and individual participants.

Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice

Dave is a member of Willis Re’s Value Based Capital Management team based in New York. Value Based Capital Management offers insurers a practical way to use ERM to identify specific actions and strategies that will enhance the value of their firm.

The commentary on this blog are solely the responsibility of Dave Ingram and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his employer.

Dave was previously the Senior Director, ERM in the Insurance Ratings Group of Standard and Poor’s, New York. In that position, he spearheaded S&P’s initiative to incorporate ERM as one of the primary ratings criteria and the development of the framework for reviewing economic capital models. Dave also was co-author of the criteria that S&P is implementing to add consideration of ERM practice into all corporate ratings.

In addition, Dave was a Consulting Actuary with the New York Office of Milliman for 7 years. He consulted on risk management and risk analysis. Dave also has more than 20 years of actuarial and general management experience in the insurance industry where he served as corporate actuary, business unit head, planning officer, ALM actuary and pension actuary for a major US insurance company.

Dave has authored over 40 published articles relating to ERM. His paper “Risk and Light” won the 2009 Best Practical Paper award at the ERM Symposium. He has spoken on ERM at over 100 events organized by PRMIA, GARP, SOA, CAS, IAA, ASTIN, Groupe Consultatif, World-Bank, Goldman Sachs, and S&P in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and South America. He has been the founder and Chair of the SOA Risk Management Task Force and the first Chair of the 3000 member Joint SOA/CAS/CIA Risk Management Section. He is a member of the board of ERM-II. He founded the International Network of Actuarial Risk Managers. Dave is currently the chair of the Enterprise and Financial Risks Committee of the International Actuarial Association.

Dave is a graduate of Lehigh University with a BA in Mathematics and a concentration in journalism."

"Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are "The Good Book", "Ideas That Matter", "Liberty in the Age of Terror" and "To Set Prometheus Free". For several years he wrote the "Last Word" column for the Guardian newspaper and now writes a column for the Times. He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He writes the "Thinking Read" column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.
In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society. He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, the Patron of the United Kingdom Armed Forces Humanist Association, a patron of Dignity in Dying, and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
Anthony Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He has served as a Trustee of the London Library and a board member of the Society of Authors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge, in 2010 was a judge of the Art Fund prize, and in 2011 the Wellcome Book Prize. He supports a number of educational charities and is a sponsor of Rogbonko School in Sierra Leone."

"About the Project

The idea of civic conversation in the City was first raised by the philosopher Anthony Grayling when presenting the opening lecture in the GCPH seminar series in November 2004. Central to the idea of civic conversation is that it opens up dialogue for the multiple perspectives which combine to make a community. Grayling introduced this through the idea of the ‘polis’, a more or less integrated, self-aware community of people identifiable at least in part by its shared ethos and values.



The civic conversation approach finds its strength in an inclusive process, providing space for input from stakeholders, experts, non-traditional and even maverick views. It offers the hope of a city robust and effective in the face of uncertainty and change, not mer"

What would it mean for a country to change profoundly? What real news would we get of that and how would it feel to its citizens? Would it necessarily be a good thing? A few months ago, when the Greek crisis made it clear that being a member of the eurozone did not mean having access to unlimited credit on equal terms with countries like Germany and France, Italy was suddenly in trouble. Snoozing for years in a debt-funded decadence, all at once the country found lenders demanding unsustainable interest rates, as if this were some shaky third-world economy trying to borrow in a foreign currency. Very soon something would have to give. The consequent change of government and drastic budgetary measures have been described well enough in any number of newspapers. What interests me more than the numbers or the markets is the question of how these developments might actually change, over the long term, the way Italians relate to each other and to the state.

Very Interesting, albeit desperate analysis of change possibilities in Italy, from Tim Parks.

"This is a very important book, in the process of being translated from the Italian:

Enrico Grazinni:

“The thesis of this book is that, to overcome the current dramatic economic and ecological crisis, it is necessary to create and develop a polycentric economy based on common goods and not just on market monoculture or state intervention1. We firmly believe that neither the spontaneous market forces nor a public intervention alone can solve the problems created by this double crisis. Quite the contrary, things could even get worse. It is necessary to promote a different type of economy based on the sharing and the self management of common goods, that is, those goods that need to be shared by communities due to their very nature – such as science, the Internet, information, the environment, air and water, currency, natural resources, means of communication, transport, etc.. It is also necessary to encourage economic democracy and the workers’ participation on company boards to thwart speculation and develop a stronger, fair, sustainable economy.”"

" Multiple or plural rationality theory, aka “cultural” theory, opens up the portfolio rationalities guiding economic theory and policy. In traditional economies this space is filled by the market vs. state alternatives. As organisational principles, cultural theory contends, this dichotomy leaves out important alternatives which should also be included when considering solutions to economic problems. In a recent workshop seminar at the renowned London School of Economics book author, anthropologist, mountain climber, former professional soldier, and organisation theorist, Michael Thompson presented his new book (Organising and Disorganising. A Dynamic and Non-Linear Theory of Institutional Emergence and its Implications. Triarchy Press, Axminster 2008) and his case for cultural theories applications. As empirical examples he used a number of recent solutions to difficult decision problems, such as the Brent Spar fiasco, the new construction of the Emirates Stadium in London and how Nepalese tribes and Swiss Alpine villages deal with water use and forestry. In this way, Thompson shows that the inclusion into the decision realm of unconventional actors and unconventional instruments enabled stable and sustainable solutions to heavily contested problems."

"Alan Page Fiske
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
324B Haines Hall, Box 951553, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553
310 206-7719
afiske@ucla.edu"