FNs Udviklingsprogram UNDP lancerer nu en bog med forslag til, hvordan globaliseringens negative sider kan tackles bedre og billigere, skriver organisationens nordiske kontor i en pressemelding fredag.
Prisen for at styre globaliseringen, så den kommer både mennesker og samfund til gode, kan reduceres drastisk ved at indføre nye financielle mekanismer. Det er hovedbudskabet i rapporten “The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges,” som præsenteres under det økonomiske topmøde World Economic Forum i Davos lørdag.
Problemer som krydser landegrænser
Bogen kommer med konkrete forslag til, hvordan internationale problemer som fattigdom, terrorisme, klimaforandringer og fugleinfluenza kan bekæmpes med nye såkaldte incitamentsbaserede metoder. Ideen med disse er, at der skal mere fokus på de mange økonomiske og samfundsmæssige fordele ved at investere ressourcer i styring af globaliseringen, før problemerne opstår.
Hvis det sker, vil man kunne mindske mængden af de ofte dyre risici, der følger med globaliseringen. Samtidig kan man bryde en ond cirkel med konstant mangel på ressourcer til at tackle problemer, der krydser landegrænser. Det vil ikke mindst være vigtigt i kampen for at nå 2015 Målene om halvering af den globale fattigdom.
Ifølge UNDPs chef, Kemal Dervies, er bogens anbefalinger særligt vigtige:
– Den voksende gensidige afhængighed mellem lande og de udfordringer, der følger heraf, gør det nødvendigt med en mere effektiv styring af globaliseringen. Der skal mere samarbejde til mellem det offentlige og det private, mellem staterne og de globale markeder, siger han.
Samarbejde mellem det offentlige og private
Ideerne til mere offentlig-privat samarbejde og øget risikostyring er centrale elementer i forfatternes forslag til, hvordan globale problemer kan løses hurtigere og billigere end er idag.
En af bogens 20 forfattere, Robert Schiller: – Der er behov for mere kreativ tænkning omkring både de risici og muligheder, globaliseringen medfører.
The New Public Finance er den tredje udgivelse i en serie om globale offentlige goder udgivet af UNDP. Hovedforfatteren til alle 3 udgivelser er Inge Kaul, som tidligere har været chef for UNDPs årlige udgivelse Human Development Report.
Den tidligere Nobel prisvinder i økonomi Joseph Stiglitz kalder den nye bog en ”banebrydende tekst, som indeholder de vigtige første skridt på et felt, som vil blive betrådt af flere og flere i de næste mange år”.
The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges
Description in 300 words.
This volume takes stock of how public finance has changed in response to the challenges – exigencies and opportunities – presented by globalization.
It finds that, at the national level, a major new role of public finance is to support the state in blending external and domestic policy demands, fostering policy harmonization behind national borders, preventing negative externalities from spilling over or external shocks from spilling in and undermining the countrys stability or the security of its people. Public finance plays a major role in channeling public and private resources towards making this type of international cooperation behind national borders happen.
But to be resolved effectively and efficiently, many global issues also require some form of cooperation with others abroad – international cooperation beyond borders.
Yet, the instruments that are being introduced into the international realm to deal with issues like global climate stability, terrorism, communicable diseases, or economic and financial crises, are increasingly those that reflect the new balance between markets and states, which has emerged throughout the world during the past several decades.
As a result, the nature of international cooperation is changing fundamentally; namely from being a predominantly intergovernmental process and concerned with “foreign” affairs to a multi-actor process, based on public-private partnering and concerned with common issues, that is issues, which straddle across the domestic/foreign divide and bind nations and their people together.
Written by eminent scholars and practitioners (including among others, Paul Collier, Peter Heller, Peggy Musgrave, Richard Sandor, and Robert Shiller), the volumes chapters discuss innovative yet practical policy instruments that have been devised to respond to todays global challenges.
They demonstrate that moving some of these innovations to wider adoption could generate considerable efficiency gains and lead to fairer and more sustainable globalization. However, while some tools are “ready” to move, others would require further research and policy debate, and perhaps, require revisiting some of he assumptions and concepts of conventional public finance theory.
Description in 50 words.
The book introduces global public finance. Written by eminent scholars and practitioners of public and private finance, its chapter analyses present a wide array of innovative yet practical financing instruments that have emerged nationally and internationally, in response to global policy challenges as global climate change, terrorism, communicable diseases, or global economic and financial crises.
Keeping Fiscal Storms at Bay—The New Public Finance shows how
January 2006, New York / Virtually everyday, the media reports about global challenges inflicting huge losses on the world.
– The tsunami catastrophe that struck Asia in December of 2004 claimed over 140.000 lives, devastated wide stretches of land and created economic costs of up to 14 billion US dollar.
– Global climate change could cost the world some 270 billion dollar a year—the equivalent of about 1,3 per cent of industrialized countries gross national product (GNP); and 1,6 per cent of developing countries GNP.
– The SARS outbreak in 2003 cost the world up to 140 billion dollar – this, despite the fact that it was “successfully” contained relatively quickly.
– The threat of terrorist attacks imposes a total annual cost of about 75 billion dollar in increased trade frictions alone.
– Computer hacking costs 200 billion dollar a year in productivity losses, business opportunities foregone and, more recently, increases in insurance premiums.
– Counterfeiting (falsknerier/piratkopiering) costs the world a further 450 billion dollar annually, and corrupt transactions, which undermine economic efficiency and productive investments, yet another 1 trillion dollar a year.
– Continued inaction on international trade reforms imposes an estimated global opportunity cost of up to 300 billion dollar per year.
– International financial instability costs developing countries an average of about 150 billion dollar a year in output losses.
– A full blown avian flu (fugleinfluenza) pandemic could cost the world up to 3 trillion dollar in just one year.
The list could go on and on…
What these examples show is that inaction – allowing crises to linger and deepen – is costly. Inaction is a “luxury” the world could ill afford.
Governments are increasingly feeling the pinch from the fiscal burden that these challenges place on their budgets. So are fiscal storms brewing on the horizon?
Are we headed for Armageddon? Not necessarily so, says the book “The New Public Finance”. It describes how new and innovative financing approaches and technologies are coming on stream that could provide affordable, self-sustaining and incentive-compatible solutions to many international cooperation challenges. How so?
The new policy approaches and financing instruments emphasize public-private partnerships and risk management. In the past year alone, some of these new instruments were already taken forward for implementation:
– Advanced market commitments for neglected diseases. In December 2005, the G7 Finance Ministers announced that they would work with others on developing a pilot advance market commitment to support research and development of vaccines for diseases which affect the poorest countries.
– Drought insurance for developing country farmers. In November 2005, Malawi in partnership with the World Bank introduced an innovative pilot drought insurance program for local groundnut farmers that would help them mitigate the risks associated with periodic droughts. The pilot program – currently being utilized by nearly 900 farmers – can be scaled up to other crops and other areas of Malawi and Africa.
– Greenhouse gas emission trading. Commencing with continuous electronic trading in December 2003, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) became the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary, legally binding rules-based greenhouse gas emission reduction and trading system. A little over a year later, the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) commenced operation in January 2005 as the largest multi-country, multi-sector greenhouse gas emission trading scheme world-wide.
– Macro securities to hedge against risk. In September 2005, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), announced the creation of derivatives based on indexes representing movements in US housing price values. These futures contracts are scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2006 and will, for the first time, provide market participants with an efficient hedging mechanism for real estate risk and allow them to effectively diversify their portfolios.
– Securitization of aid commitments. In September 2005, the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched a pilot International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm). This instrument would securitize future aid commitments by these donors in order to frontload an additional 4 billion US dollar over the next ten years to help tackle some of the deadliest diseases in some of the world’s poorest countries.
– This is a bold and penetrating compilation of papers on the most profound challenges of modern public finance – how to construct better partnerships between governments and private sector players and how to strengthen cooperation between nations in pursuit of common interests, notes Trevor Manuel, South Africas Minister of Finance.
Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer (finansminister) of the UK, and one of the primary proponents of public-private partnering and of the proposal for an international finance facility that would frontload the financing of foreign aid to the world’s poor, notes: – The New Public Finance shows how we can equip people and countries for the future… important reading for todays policymakers.
Mere information hos UNDPs nordiske kontor: Christine Drud, [email protected], 35467154 (mobil: 29452320) eller Kristian Sloth, [email protected], 35467158 (mobil: 30543486)
Kilde: www.undp.dk
