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    Corporation tax: why Janet Yellen’s call for a global minimum rate is a bad move

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    Sharif Mahmud Khalid, Assistant Professor in Accounting and Financial Management, University of Sheffield

     

    The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, is calling for governments around the world to support the US in setting up a global minimum corporation tax rate. She did not specify a rate but it comes at a time when the US government is trying to raise the nation’s internal corporation tax rate from 21% to 28%.

    Yellen said that imposing a global minimum would “make sure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations”, and that it would spur “innovation, growth and prosperity”.

    The new US administration has already been trying to reach international agreement over a digital tax for online giants such as Amazon and Facebook, pushing for the OECD to reach a deal by the summer. The Economist reckons that Silicon Valley’s “big five” paid just US$220 billion (£159 billion) in cash taxes in the past decade, representing just 16% of their pre-tax profits.

    Yet Yellen’s call for a global minimum corporation tax goes much further than this. And in my view it’s a bad idea: it would disadvantage developing countries and is probably not workable anyway.

    A race to the bottom?

    Yellen claims that a global minimum rate will end a “30-year race to the bottom” – but global practice points to a more mixed picture. In 2020, nine countries across five continents reduced their corporation tax rates by between one (Togo) and five percentage points (Greenland). Within the OECD, several countries have plans to cut their rates in the coming fiscal year or two: France is cutting from 32% to 25%, while Sweden is cutting from 21% to 20%. The Netherlands was also planning a cut, but has since changed its mind.

    Many other countries have kept their rates stable for many years however. Nigeria’s rate has been steady at 30%, while Brazil’s is an unchanging 34%. China’s rate has been 25% for more than a decade (but 15% for sectors that the government is trying to encourage, such as certain tech businesses). South Africa’s rate has been 28% for nearly a decade too, though it is coming down to 27% in 2022.

    Each rate is subject to drivers peculiar to the country in question and its economy, but none of these countries is “racing to the bottom”. Neither are they begging for a global minimum rate. There has been far more interest in a digital corporation tax, with some companies such as India, the Czech Republic, France and Turkey already introducing a levy.

    Threat to flexibility

    In developing and developed countries alike, multinationals are a source of foreign direct investment, which makes them attractive to governments. These corporations both hire workers and create many more jobs indirectly through everything from using local contractors to creating demand for consumer goods through the salaries they pay.

    Some countries have used their freedom to set corporation tax rates as a way to attract such business. There are examples of low corporation tax regimes around the world, from Ireland (12.5%) to Moldova (12%), from Paraguay (10%) to Uzbekistan (7.5%). In a world where there are huge disparities in the income levels of different countries, a minimum global corporation tax rate could crowd out those who are not especially attractive but for the fact that they can offer lower rates.

    For some corporations, it will also raise the cost of doing international business. Take the example of an American corporation with a presence in Ireland. Suppose the global minimum rate was set at 20%: such a company will have to pay 7.5 percentage points more of corporation tax on trading in Ireland than it does at present. Not only does this potentially make Ireland less attractive, it means that the costs will be passed on – be it to the company’s suppliers or its customers or whatever.

    More generally, a global minimum rate would remove the flexibility for different nations to pursue policies that best suit them. Take COVID-19, for example. With
    IMF and World Bank data suggesting that developing countries may experience a longer economic hangover than their developed counterparts, Ghana recently introduced a 30% tax rebate for companies in sectors such as travel, tourism and hospitality for the rest of 2021.

    This is comparable to the UK’s recent announcement that it was deferring a planned increase in corporation tax for several years to encourage business spending. Under a global minimum corporation tax rate regime, will independent nation states be able to proffer such initiatives?

    Finally, a global minimum rate will not end creative accounting. Each country’s tax code will still have its own set of complicated exceptions and exemptions, and companies will still pay specialist advisers handsomely to help them make the most of them. A global minimum rate will also do nothing to help with tax evasion, which was recently estimated to cost taxpayers almost half a trillion US dollars a year.

    In short, Yellen’s proposal is no magic bullet and it’s targeting a problem that is not what it appears. This is a battle that is not worth winning, and it will cause much collateral damage before it comes to an end.The Conversation

     

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only. 

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

    Main photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash  

    Powering Sustainable Food Systems

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    Agnes Kalibata,  Special Envoy for the United Nations Food Systems Summit

    Kristina Skierka, CEO of Power for All.

     

    NAIROBI – The 17 members of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate generate around 80% of global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. That means they have the power to pull the brakes on the climate emergency. As political leaders from the world’s richest countries gather for a US-hosted climate summit on Earth Day (April 22), they must use the occasion to acknowledge their shared responsibility to the planet and everyone on it.

    The countries most affected by climate change bear the least responsibility for the problem. Of the 16 most climate-vulnerable countries, ten are in Asia and five are in Africa, where millions rely on agriculture but lack access to the clean energy that they will need to power a more resilient and profitable future. For these countries, “building back better” will be a stretch. They are already being held back by developed countries’ own energy and agriculture sectors, which are the leading sources of GHG emissions.

    The period between now and the United Nations climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for world leaders to build a “climate-smart” framework for tackling the twin challenges of food and energy insecurity. This will be necessary to support developing countries in leapfrogging to a sustainable growth and development model.

    By convening its first-ever Food Systems Summit and its first High-Level Dialogue on Energy in 40 years, the UN has provided an ideal platform for all countries to commit to doing their part. To meet the agriculture challenge, we must devise solutions that sustainably fuel people, the planet, and prosperity, and account for the well-being and livelihoods of the world’s 500 million smallholder households, which are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

    Rising temperatures are already costing Africa an estimated 1.4% of GDP per year, as well as imposing adaptation costs as high as 3% of GDP per year. Because this burden falls predominantly on farmers, building resilience and expanding access to clean energy in rural areas is crucial. In the short term, smallholders must be empowered to manage the consequences of climate change; but in the long term, they also must be incorporated into a more sustainable agriculture sector.

    Over the past decade, decentralized renewable energy solutions like rooftop solar panels and mini grids have brought lighting and electrical appliances to hundreds of millions of households. But an estimated 840 million people are still living without electricity for basic appliances. With greater access to clean energy, more farming families could adopt technology to reduce the burden on human labor, which currently accounts for 80% of energy use on African agricultural land. And this, in turn, would make food systems more sustainable well into the future.

    But achieving these goals will require a significant increase in climate finance. Developing countries need more resources to expand and de-risk distributed renewable energy systems, and to make these technologies affordable for farmers. Smallholder farmers currently receive a mere 1.7% of climate finance. With just a fraction of the world’s resources, they are left to fend for themselves against increasingly frequent and severe heat waves, droughts, and floods.

    Fortunately, investing in clean-energy infrastructure in low-income countries offers an extraordinary return, easily paying for itself through future savings, resilience, and greater domestic economic activity. In Ghana, distributed solar energy is already emerging as a key source of power for local agro-processing facilities. And the Ghanaian government’s recent decision to halt exports of raw cocoa reflects preparations to scale up domestic processing in order to obtain better returns for farmers.

    Companies providing renewable-energy access are emerging as a significant employer across Africa and Asia. Every job they create brings the potential for up to five other income-generating opportunities in adjacent fields, such as crop irrigation on farms with access to ample electricity. These developments not only will improve food security by increasing farming efficiency and productivity, but will also build resilience against climate shocks and stresses.

    More broadly, there is potentially an $11.3 billion market for the use of decentralized renewable energy in irrigation, processing, and cold storage in Sub-Saharan Africa. But with the costs of the necessary technologies still too high for most farmers, the existing market is just $735 million – a mere 6% of what it could be. Similarly, affordable, clean electricity for refrigeration could help to reduce food loss and waste, which costs more than $310 billion per year, 40% of which occurs after harvest and early in the supply chain.

    Finally, donors and governments in high-income countries must provide more than lip service. Transforming low-income countries’ energy and food systems calls for an unprecedented level of cross-sectoral collaboration – internationally, regionally, and nationally. Some of this is already happening through Food Systems Summit Dialogues that are taking place across more than 100 countries. But these conversations will need to continue and grow in scope and scale.

    The 1,200 ideas that have already emerged from the Food Systems Summit open engagement process offer hope that the Pre-Summit in July in Rome and the Summit in September will yield concrete policies and commitments. At its core, the climate crisis is an energy crisis, and the climate crisis has contributed to a situation in which 690 million people go without enough food to meet their basic needs.

    By focusing on the food-energy nexus, the world has an opportunity to tackle both climate change and food insecurity, building a brighter future for everyone.

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    This article was originally published by © Project Syndicate 2021 and is not under a Creative Commons Licence.

    Main Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

    Social Capitalism

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    Edoardo Campanella, economist at UniCredit Bank & fellow at the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University in Madrid.

     

    MILAN – The COVID-19 pandemic has damaged the stock of physical and human capital. Firms have postponed or canceled investment projects, and laid-off or furloughed workers’ skills have deteriorated. The crisis, however, has boosted the oft-overlooked variable of social capital, elevating its role as a key source of economic growth.

    Popularized in the 1990s by Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam, social capital refers to “the features of social organizations, such as networks, norms, and trust that facilitate action and cooperation for mutual benefit.” A somewhat nebulous concept, it comprises the shared values, behavioral conventions, and sources of mutual trust and common identity that allow a society to function. The more social capital a group has, the greater its willingness and ability to act collectively in pursuit of valuable objectives.

    In other words, social capital is the glue that holds communities and nations together. Under the right conditions, repeated and mutually beneficial social interactions lead to faster economic growth, better health outcomes, and greater stability.

    In the case of the pandemic, social capital provided the first line of defense against the virus when vaccines and effective medical treatments had not yet become available. Here, individuals taking steps to prevent contagion provided a public good. Each conscious act aimed at reducing exposure to the virus lowered the probability of infection for the rest of the community. In the jargon of economists, those who reduced their mobility and social interactions internalized a negative externality that they otherwise would have imposed on society.

    A sense of attachment to a larger group induces people to tolerate the high individual costs of cautious behaviors. A large and growing body of academic research has shown that spontaneous social distancing is more likely in places with better-developed civic cultures. For example, a European cross-country comparison found that “a one standard deviation increase in social capital [led] to between 14% and 40% fewer COVID-19 cases per capita accumulated from mid-March until end of June [2020], as well as between 7% and 16% fewer excess deaths.”

    Moreover, places with high social capital tend to be more economically vibrant and civic-minded than places where people are isolated. Not surprisingly, in the early stages of the pandemic, the virus spread more rapidly in densely populated cities like Paris, New York, London, and Milan, because nobody realized what was coming. But as soon as the need for behavioral changes became apparent, inhabitants in more civic-minded areas adopted social distancing measures even before formal restrictions were imposed, and they were more responsive to subsequent state directives.

    Social capital also played a key role in powering economies through months of lockdowns and remote working. While digital technologies helped people to stay connected, it was social capital that kept those connections alive. Employees working from home remained productive because they had built up a sense of reciprocal trust, shared identity, and common purpose with their colleagues. And on that basis, many were able to develop entirely new (digital) working relationships.

    In most cases, companies ended up expanding their internal social capital during the pandemic. Having partly lost their ability to control their workers directly, they ended up empowering them. With more flexibility to manage their time and lives outside of work, many employees could take on even more responsibility and deliver higher-quality output. According to a cross-country survey by the Boston Consulting Group, 75% of employees maintained or increased their productivity despite the pandemic restrictions.

    In today’s hybrid workplace, social capital is clearly one of the most important factors behind such results. Unlike its physical counterpart (factories, equipment, and so on), social capital does not deteriorate with use – just the opposite. But like any other form of capital, it needs to be maintained and upgraded, and this will be especially true in the post-pandemic phase.

    In normal circumstances, our connections and relationships evolve and expand over time. Yet without appropriate measures to reactivate and reopen social networks, months of lockdowns and restrictions could exhaust some relationships or result in group segregation. Owing to what Putnam calls “bonding social capital,” people might become so attached to a specific group that they succumb to clannishness or tribalism. Indeed, populism and nationalism are social capital’s degenerate forms, and they have been resurgent in some places during the pandemic.

    Governments and corporations thus should try to build more “bridging social capital,” by leveraging the sense of responsibility, solidarity, and altruism developed during the COVID-19 crisis. This form of social capital links people across different groups, and will be necessary to prevent the next pandemic and to combat climate change. But civic mindedness alone will not be enough. Individuals will need to be convinced to internalize the negative externalities of their actions.

    With that goal in mind, governments should extend more autonomy to citizens, positioning themselves less as controllers and regulators and more as catalysts and facilitators. And corporations, for their part, should look for ways to foster a culture of reciprocal trust, invest more in the digital transition, and explore new ways to organize work.

    Viewed in these terms, COVID-19 could leave a positive legacy: a firmer base of social capital to underpin the responsibility and altruism that the world will need as it faces the challenges ahead.

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    This article was originally published by © Project Syndicate 2021 and is not under a Creative Commons Licence.

    Main Photo by Zdeněk Macháček/Unsplash

    How Africa can kickstart its COVID vaccine manufacturing

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    David Richard Walwyn, Professor of Technology Management, University of Pretoria

    Padmashree Gehl Sampath, Fellow, and Senior Advisor, Global Access in Action Program, Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University

    The uneven availability of COVID-19 vaccines has become an increasingly urgent and vexatious issue. But managing the problem of what’s been labelled “vaccine nationalism” is proving a hard nut to crack.

    Shortages of medicines and vulnerable supply chains for critical medicines are issues for nearly all developing countries. In Africa, in particular, there’s limited manufacturing capacity. Over 20 countries don’t have any capacity at all. And many regions continue to import at least 95% of their pharmaceutical requirements.

    Understanding why this is the case is key. After all, there is ample evidence that governments can be effective economic actors. This includes being able to exercise large influence on the manufacturing sector. They can, for example, build capacity through incentives, regulation and policy. Experiences from other countries show that public investment and public procurement in the domestic pharmaceutical sector can create capacity and markets.

    So why hasn’t this happened on the continent?

    Typically, these products are technology and capital intensive. They require highly skilled personnel and reliable supply chains for key raw materials and specialised equipment. And the initial investment in people and infrastructure necessitates long term stable markets with sufficient volume to justify the risk.

    The absence of this security, even in the continent’s larger markets, such as South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, limits expansion of this critical sector.

    We conducted a study to understand the extent to which gaps in the availability of financing were constraining the development of manufacturing capacity for vaccines and other health equipment. Our findings show how governments, firms and donor agencies should align their efforts to support diagnostics, vaccines and therapies as a critical resource.

    We identify a number of approaches that should be explored. These include joint plans for regional production hubs, pooled procurement, direct grants, periods of market exclusivity, international technology transfer and redirecting of international development aid.

    Investigation

    As part of the study, we looked at two case studies in South Africa: Ketlaphela Pharmaceuticals and the Biovac Institute.

    Ketlaphela is a state owned company. It was created to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients and medical products mainly for communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. It has yet to produce any pharmaceuticals.

    Biovac is public-private partnership between the South African government and a consortium of healthcare companies. Its capacity is small compared to the COVID-19 vaccine market. Nevertheless it holds three important lessons on how a country like South Africa can go about building this kind of capacity.

    Firstly, it provided long term market security. This was done through an effective 15-year contract with the National Department of Health. Second, it allowed Biovac to receive a price premium as a means of funding the company’s re-investment in vaccine manufacturing. And, lastly, it supported the establishment of a strong research and development capability.

    To understand how these experiences checked out with the broader realities of pharmaceutical production across Africa, we mapped funding flows for pharmaceutical projects on the continent. We also interviewed stakeholders, including civil society advocacy groups and industry experts. And we talked to diagnostics, vaccines and therapies manufacturers across the continent to understand the on-the-ground realities.

    Barriers

    Conditions for the financing of diagnostics, vaccines and therapies manufacturing across Africa are clearly very diverse. Some countries have liquid financial markets, readily available foreign exchange and sophisticated financial systems. Others face real constraints in terms of access to capital and foreign exchange.

    Similarly, we found that smaller producers faced different challenges to larger established producers.

    Nevertheless, we did find some commonalities.

    Companies reported clear discrepancies between political aspirations to reduce import dependency in healthcare, and day-to-day realities. In particular, businesses complained about factors that increased their cost of capital and made them less competitive. These were related to systemic or infrastructure failures that they had little control over. They included:

    • high electricity costs and unreliable supply,
    • lack of clean water,
    • port delays,
    • weak infrastructure, and
    • the limited availability of skilled personnel.

    Our interviews confirmed that these additional costs made it harder for local companies to break even and recover working capital in highly competitive markets.

    As a result, firms often retreated into narrower product categories. Or they closed, unable to compete without greater government support against Indian and Chinese companies.

    Some answers

    The study highlighted two critical areas as being fundamental in reforming the public support structures in favour of local companies.

    In the first place, governments must use public procurement. They can do so by providing longer term supply contracts with strong offtake guarantees (take-or-pay).

    Secondly, donor agencies need to review their procurement strategies and reconsider them in favour of local manufactures. These are presently based on accredited low-cost facilities, mainly in India and China.

    This is more easily said than done. Nevertheless, the essential take home from the interviews was that when local firms could produce good quality products, they needed to be able to access markets without being ‘crowded out’ by larger companies that had economies of scale and scope. This could help create a wider range of suppliers from developing countries in the long run.

    The role of international financing agencies is critical in building local resilience to global health emergencies. For instance, the Global Fund is responsible for financing and procuring 21% of the drugs for the treatment of HIV. Similar figures are reported for TB and malaria.

    Similarly, one of the objectives of Gavi’s Strategy for 2021-2026 (GAVI 5.0) is to shape healthy markets for vaccine products. This could be reviewed against these realities, especially given the supply constraints faced by the COVAX facility.

    These agencies have the market power to diversify sources of supply without undermining the cost of public health services. The entities could work with national governments to build local capacity and increase resilience.

    Unlocking financial support

    Interestingly, the mapping of funding flows showed that there is investment capital available in global financial markets. This includes capital for African diagnostics, vaccines and therapies investment.

    To the extent there are constraints on financing for manufacturing, this is not because of a global shortage of available capital. Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation and the African Development Bank have announced large commitments to support responses to COVID-19. Unfortunately, this funding has not yet been allocated to projects for African pharmaceutical manufacturing.

    Likewise, foundations are financing research and development, advance purchase commitments of vaccines and diagnostics, and other efforts to address COVID-19. But they too have not materially funded projects to produce in Africa.

    Given the devastating impact of the pandemic on the continent’s economies, international institutions and governments must work together to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing to African countries.The Conversation

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    Main photo Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexel  

    Humpback whales may have bounced back from near-extinction, but it’s too soon to declare them safe

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    Olaf Meynecke, Research Fellow in Marine Science, Griffith University

    The resurgence in humpback whale populations over the past five decades is hailed as one of the great success stories of global conservation. And right now, the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment is considering removing the species from Australia’s threatened list.

    But humpback whales face new and emerging threats, including climate change. Surveying whales is notoriously hard, and the government has not announced monitoring plans to ensure humpback populations remain strong after delisting. We need a plan to keep them safe.

    Australia’s whale season is about to begin. Each year between May and November, the mammals migrate north along Australia’s coastline from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to warmer waters. There, they breed before returning south.

    So now’s a good time to take a closer look at the status of this iconic, charismatic species.

     

    The resurgence of humpback whales is one of conservation’s greatest success stories. Photo by vivek kumar on Unsplash

    A host of threats

    Humpback whales live in every ocean in the world, and have one of the longest migrations of any mammal.

    Humpback whale numbers dwindled as a result of commercial whaling, which in Australia began in the late 18th Century. Whaling and the export of whale products was Australia’s first primary industry. Between 1949 and 1962 Australia’s whalers killed about 8,300 humpback whales off the east coast, until only a few hundred were left.

    The International Whaling Commission banned humpback whaling in the Southern Hemisphere in 1963. By then, humpback populations had fallen to about 5% of pre-whaling numbers. In the years since, some whaling continued, but has now largely ceased.

    Today humpback whales face new threats. These include:

    • underwater noise which interferes with whale communication
    • pollution
    • vehicle collisions
    • getting caught in fishing gear
    • over-harvesting prey such as krill
    • marine debris
    • habitat degradation
    • climate change.

    In particular, the effects of climate change – such as warming waters, shifting currents and ocean acidification – may affect the availability of prey that humpback whales need to survive.

    Combined, these worsening threats could disrupt humpback whales’ recent resurgence. Indeed, under one scenario, scientists predict the increase Australia’s humpback numbers could stall — or worse, start declining – in the next five to ten years.

    The humpback whales’ plight

    According to the federal government’s delisting assessment, humpback whales’ strong recovery suggests current threats are not a risk to the population. But this assessment has shortcomings.

    It states humpback whales on Australia’s east and west coast have reached, or are exceeding, the original population size – increasing by 10-11% a year over the past decade or longer.

    But this information is based on models using data collected prior 2010 for Australia’s west coast, and prior to 2015 for the east coast. This data isn’t readily available to the public and does not include recent population trends.

    The predicted population growth from these models doesn’t account for current and future impacts from major threats, including climate change. This is despite recent research and observations suggesting changes in the humpback population.

    For example, 2019 research showed potential shifts in calving locations, with newborn humpback whales now frequently spotted outside Australian tropical waters. This — along with the early arrival of migrating humpback whales in Australia in the past years — may be a first sign of changes in breeding and migration habits.

    It’s also important to compare humpback whale populations in Australia with those elsewhere, such as in the North Pacific. There, calving rates are declining, and whale abundance and distribution is showing marked shifts. The risk of entanglements with fishing gear is also rising.

     

    Whales can get caught in fishing gear. Photo by Andrew Bain/ Unsplash.

    The problem with counting whales

    The pre-whaling population size of humpback whales on the east and west coast of Australia is thought to be between 40,000 and 60,000. But information is limited and the actual number may have been much higher

    Today, the estimated numbers from population models are similar: roughly 28,000 on the east cost and up to 30,000 on the west coast. But counting humpback whales accurately is very difficult. For example, on the east coast of Australia humpback whales frequently move between populations and during a census may not be attributed to their original population.

    What’s more, conditions prior to whaling are not comparable with today’s conditions. Krill is a major food source for whales, and widespread whaling in the Southern Hemisphere caused krill numbers to increase. Research from 2019 suggests humpback whales’ fast recovery after whaling ceased may have been due to widely available krill.

    But krill numbers have declined or their availability has shortened in recent years due to threats such as climate change and industrial fishing.

    Every year humpback whales migrate from Antarctica where they feed, to breed in Australia and South-West Indian Ocean, including Mauritius. Photo by Derek Oyen/Unsplash.

    Proceed with caution

    Humpback whales off Australia’s coast will continue to have some protection under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, even if they’re taken off the threatened species list.

    Generally, all marine mammals are protected in Australian waters. But getting delisted means fewer resources devoted to their protection.

    Forecasting the complex interactions of today’s threats, in order to predict tomorrow’s humpback whale populations, is challenging. A cautionary approach should therefore be taken.

    In 2016, the US delisted some humpback whale populations. But before doing so, it established a ten-year monitoring plan to track population changes, threats and species abundance.

    If Australia proceeds with the delisting, it should follow the US’ lead. Humpback whales should remain listed for another five years so a monitoring plan can be developed. Federal and state governments must invest resources into this process, and react swiftly if changes are detected.

    A number of whale researchers and organisations concerned about the humpback whale delisting, including the author, prepared a detailed response to the proposal here.The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    Main Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    Quand le pétrole devient l’énergie du pauvre

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    0

     

    Philippe Copinschi, Enseignant en relations internationales à Sciences Po Paris, Sciences Po

     

    C’est une révolution silencieuse qui est en marche. Sur un marché automobile en plein marasme dans le sillon de la crise sanitaire – les ventes de voitures neuves ont plongé de 24 % en Europe en 2020 par rapport à 2019 – les ventes de véhicules électriques (VE, comprenant les véhicules 100 % électriques et les hybrides rechargeables) ont explosé en 2020. En particulier en Europe, dorénavant premier marché des VE au monde devant la Chine. C’est l’analyse que nous avons menée avec d’autres chercheurs dans un rapport publié par l’Observatoire de la sécurité des flux et des matières énergétiques.

    Alors qu’ils ne représentaient que 3 % des ventes d’automobiles en Europe en 2019, ils ont dépassé les 10 % de parts de marché en 2020, avec une nette accélération en fin d’année. En décembre dernier, leur part a ainsi atteint 20 à 25 % sur les principaux marchés européens (Allemagne, France, Royaume-Uni, et nettement plus sur les marchés pionniers du nord de l’Europe comme la Suède (50 %), les Pays-Bas (75 %) et surtout la Norvège, où ils contribuent désormais pour plus de 85 % des ventes – contre moins de 20 % il y a seulement 5 ans, et où les ventes de voitures à essence et diesel sont devenues insignifiantes, respectivement 5 et 2,5 % du marché en décembre 2020.

    Cette évolution spectaculaire, qui intervient alors même que le prix du pétrole est resté structurellement bas durant toute l’année 2020, s’explique par la combinaison de plusieurs facteurs.

    Coût en baisse, autonomie en hausse

    En moyenne, la batterie représente à elle seule plus de la moitié du prix d’une voiture électrique, mais les progrès technologiques continus ont déjà permis une réduction substantielle de leur coût de fabrication.

    Avec ce coût en baisse et une autonomie en hausse, les VE comblent progressivement leur manque de compétitivité par rapport aux voitures à moteur thermique, d’autant que la plupart des pays européens accordent de généreuses aides financières à l’achat et que de nombreuses municipalités réservent d’appréciables avantages aux conducteurs de VE : bornes de recharge mises à disposition, accès privilégiés aux voies de bus ou aux parkings, etc.

    L’autre facteur clé expliquant l’envolée des ventes de véhicules électriques tient à l’évolution de la législation européenne en matière d’émission de CO2 des voitures. L’abaissement continu – et annoncé longtemps à l’avance – des seuils d’émission autorisés pour les automobiles neuves pousse depuis plusieurs années les constructeurs à proposer une gamme toujours plus large de véhicules électriques : en 2020, près de 65 nouveaux modèles ont été mis sur le marché européen et ils devraient être autour de 100 cette année.

    Au contraire des aides financières gouvernementales ponctuelles qui ont un impact temporaire, la stratégie de l’Union européenne a permis le développement d’un écosystème complet de véhicules électriques en offrant aux constructeurs la prévisibilité à long terme indispensable pour engager les lourds investissements nécessaires.

    Cette conjonction de facteurs – financiers, réglementaires, industriels – permet au véhicule électrique de s’imposer désormais comme une nouvelle norme de la mobilité individuelle.

    Le pétrole détrôné

    Au rythme actuel, l’essentiel des nouvelles immatriculations en Europe sera électrique d’ici quelques années à peine. Il s’agit d’un changement radical de paradigme de la mobilité.

    Un siècle après s’être imposé comme l’énergie incontournable dans le transport, le pétrole va ainsi perdre une grande partie de son statut de ressource stratégique dont chaque gouvernement doit impérativement assurer le bon approvisionnement pour la sécurité et l’économie du pays.

    Le transport de marchandises, routier et maritime, dépend encore quasi exclusivement du pétrole – à 99 % pour le transport maritime (AIE), et en 2020 en Europe, les ventes de camion étaient à 96 % au diesel, même si les alternatives (gaz naturel, biocarburants, hydrogène, électricité…) gagnent en compétitivité.

    Quant au transport aérien, il devrait rester encore totalement tributaire du pétrole pour de nombreuses années.

    Pour autant, la capacité des sociétés de se mouvoir et des armées de mener des opérations militaires est progressivement en train de cesser de reposer exclusivement sur la disponibilité du pétrole. De plus, l’électrification de la mobilité routière, qui représente près de la moitié de la consommation globale de l’or noir, pourrait rapidement placer l’industrie pétrolière en surcapacité de production.

    Nombre de prospectivistes ont longtemps considéré que c’était l’épuisement inéluctable des ressources pétrolières qui allait rendre nécessaire la transition énergétique dans le domaine du transport.

    C’est en réalité le réchauffement climatique et dans une moindre mesure, la pollution de l’air, qui apparaissent comme les principales motivations derrière cette électrification de la mobilité. Comme aimait à le rappeler l’ancien ministre du pétrole saoudien, Cheikh Ahmed Yamani, « l’âge de la pierre n’a pas pris fin par manque de pierre », mais parce que l’homme a réalisé des progrès scientifiques lui permettant de développer des technologies plus performantes.

    Une ressource réservée aux plus pauvres

    Dans le monde inégalitaire dans lequel nous vivons, cela ne signifie pas pour autant que le pétrole cessera rapidement d’être consommé à grande échelle – en particulier dans les pays en développement où l’accès aux technologies de pointe est souvent limité.

    C’est en particulier le cas de l’Afrique subsaharienne, devenue depuis longtemps le réceptacle des vieilles voitures européennes et asiatiques ne répondant plus aux normes environnementales ou de sécurité de leurs pays d’origine.

    Mais l’or noir est très certainement en train de changer de statut : d’énergie stratégique pour laquelle les grandes puissances étaient prêtes à se battre, il s’apprête à devenir l’énergie du pauvre, celle qu’utiliseront les populations des États n’ayant pas les moyens d’acquérir les technologies les plus avancées.The Conversation

    Main photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash  

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    Cet article est republié à partir de The Conversation sous licence Creative Commons. Lire l’article original.

    What does it take to live in peace? Lessons from Mauritius

    By
    Naseem Aumeerally
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    Naseem Aumeerally, Senior Lecturer in English Studies, University of Mauritius

    Allegra Chen-Carrel, Programme Manager Sustainable Peace Project, AC4 Earth Institute, Columbia University (US)

    Peter T. Coleman, Professor of Psychology and Education, Columbia University (US)

    What does it take to live in peace? How can people from different groups live together without letting differences lead to deep fractures, divides, and violence? How can multicultural societies move from tolerating difference to deep reciprocity, where all not only survive side by side, but also form diverse relationships that help all people to thrive?  In this article, Naseem Aumeerally, Allegra Chen-Carrel and Peter Coleman explore what leads to positive intergroup dynamics and peace in the context of Mauritius. Their report, from which this article is derived, is part of a wider project by Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium of Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity: the Sustaining Peace Project, that strives to use interdisciplinary methods to glean insights into sustaining peace globally.

    The full report is available in French, English and Creole  

     

    Sustaining Peace Project

    According to international indices, Mauritius is the most peaceful nation in Africa and one of the most peaceful multicultural nations on the planet. Mauritius can thus offer insights into what drives peace, and into modes of resilience in the face of the challenges and threats to peace.

    As part of a collaboration between the University of Mauritius and Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium of Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity, this project is part of a broader initiative, the Sustaining Peace Project, that strives to use interdisciplinary methods to glean insights into sustaining peace globally. From this project a report was written on what it takes to live in peace in Mauritius. It offers lessons learned from focus groups with members of a Chagos refugee group, the Chinese community, the Creole community, the Franco-Mauritian community, the Hindu community, the Muslim community, LGBTQ groups, Mauritian women, and University of Mauritius students cutting across age, gender, class and region and 15 interviews with a variety of stakeholders about sustaining peace.  This articles summaries the report’s key findings.

    These interviews and conversations evoked an everyday peace- a peace where ordinary positive connections with others from different backgrounds highlight the micro-politics of peace.

    Many also described a tentative peace, a fragile peace ‘because of this sort of ethnical problem, racism, what you call here, communalism, and following this, a lot of exclusion, discrimination, and of course, poverty and the social ends associated with it’.

    Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020 Global Peace Index

    10 Keys to Sustaining Peace

    Common themes from the conversations in this study suggest several actionable keys to sustaining peace, listed below in order of the frequency they were mentioned:

    1. Transmit Wisdom- By sharing knowledge, values, and stories through formal education, the media, the internet, museums, and storytelling, it is possible to open minds, reduce prejudice, and ensure that the harms of the past are not repeated.
    2. Appreciate ‘Le Vivre Ensemble’– Participants expressed pride in the diversity of the country, and in the norms and policies supporting this multiculturalism.
    3. Normalize Non-violent, Non-confrontational Values- Social norms and taboos prohibiting the use of violence, and encouraging conflict avoidance, self-control and restraint allow people to build bonds across communities that bridge differences.
    4. Build Unifying Cross-Cutting Ties- Integrated workplaces, schools, and neighbourhoods allow people to build bonds across communities that bridge differences. Quote: We all live together. When there is a wedding, birthday, funeral, we support each other.
    5. Create an Overarching Identity- Despite the diversity in Mauritius, many pointed to a strong overarching identity as Mauritians. Quote: Whatever may be our ethnic origin, or colour of skin, we are all Mauritians.
    6. Protect the Safety of All People- No guns, no army, and a general respect for the rule of law, made Mauritians feel secure. This is not necessarily always true for all groups, particularly for some women and LGBTQ individuals.
    7. Develop Peace Within Yourself– Individual qualities such as respect, trust, faith, compassion, and benevolence, were viewed as critical to peace.
    8. Strive for Equity- Many described how ensuring that all groups have equal access to representation, power and resources is an important factor in achieving peace. Many participants described that this ideal is yet to be achieved, but believe working towards this is key to sustaining peace.
    9. Meet Basic Needs– Mauritius has a strong welfare state, serving as a social safety net, ensuring the majority of people have access to basic services such as healthcare, housing, and education.
    10. Remember the Past for a Better Future– Participants described how knowledge of past tensions and violence has inspired a fear of future conflict, which works to promote peace.
    Mauritian Bride – weddings are one of the spaces identified as bringing multicultural Mauritians together. Photo by Daniel Barrientos/Flickr, CC

    Challenges to Peace

    Participants in our study were also concerned about some pervasive and upcoming challenges to sustainable peace. Key themes that emerged include:

    • Communalism The primacy of in-group loyalties was considered as a major impediment to the elaboration of common civic objectives foundational to sustainable peace.
    • Politics: The cultivation of ethnic distinctiveness is further exacerbated by political manoeuvring. Corrupt practices and cronyism in local political culture were identified as social scourges which require regulation.
    • Colonial Legacies: The incomplete overhaul of colonial structures continues to have a negative impact on some sections of the population such as the Creole community.
    • Inequality: The increasing gap between the rich and the poor was identified as one of the growing forms of structural inequality in society.
    • Precarity: Decades of prosperity in Mauritius have resulted in unsustainable high levels of consumption. Participants were collectively alarmed by the potential environmental hazards facing the population of a small island-state like Mauritius.
    • Scarcity: Resources and opportunities remain scarce and are not accessible to everyone in the same measure.

    Some of the challenges which were evoked by the participants also constituted the peace characteristics of Mauritian society.

    • Cleavages: Numerous participants in the study stated that the homogenization of designated ethnic communities mutes any social discrepancies within ethnic groups as well as intersectional inequality.
    • Inaction: Failure to address existing and worsening tensions was attributed to what participants labelled as forms of ‘inaction’ characteristic of a culture of compromise and avoidance.

     

    Sheet metal homes in Mauritius. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor was identified as one of the growing forms of structural inequality in society, a potential challenge to peace. Photo by Historic Mauritius/Flickr, CC.

    Sources of Resilience

    In the face of these challenges, participants also identified several qualities and processes which have helped address issues.

    The existence of cross-cutting structures and ties in Mauritian society is one of the most significant sources of resilience among the population.

    Civil society actors and social activists within and across communities have played a critical role in developing and maintaining conflict resolution strategies.

    Cultural awareness across the population helps to manage challenges which might be encountered in living in a multi-ethnic and rapidly changing society.

    Effective conflict resolution strategies: People tend to respect and trust the processes of procedural justice and continue to turn towards institutions for distributive justice.

    Keepers of the Peace: Some religious and political leaders as well specific groups of women were identified as actively engaged in containing onsets of violence by cultivating practices of consultation.

    Individual Resilience Mindset: Empathy, forgiveness, wisdom and grit are harnessed by locals to address potential interpersonal and intergroup conflicts in everyday life.

     

    Recommendations

    Based on our findings from interview and focus group data, we offer the following recommendations:

    Build upon existing strengths

      1. Our data suggests that Mauritius excels at balancing a respect for difference with an overarching united identity. Events which bring all Mauritians together such as the Indian Ocean Games have been particularly effective in the past, and should continue into the future.
      2. The cross-cutting ties in neighbourhoods, schools, and informal institutions should be deeply valued and protected.
      3. Norms and laws which protect and value multiculturalism should continue to be celebrated.

    Address inequities

        1. A review of extant colonial structures should be put in place and gradually be replaced by fairer and more appropriate mechanisms.
        2. The Truth and Justice Commission, the Equal Opportunity Commission, and greater access to education are welcome measures but the recommendations of the different commissions need to be implemented.
        3. Creole participants advocated recognition through the support of national and global institutions.
        4. Additionally, platforms which would allow marginalised groups such as Creoles, LGBTQ and women to address issues of inequity and stigmatisation are suggested in the report.
        5. Ultimately, wider and targeted opportunities and access should be made available to people in underprivileged pockets.

    Develop more transparent and responsive public systems

      1. Regulatory mechanisms should be put in place to monitor and stem corruption and cronyism in politics.
      2. Electoral reform to tackle gerrymandering would help to promote a fairer sense of representation of different sections of the population.
      3. Greater transparency mechanisms particularly in relation to the outer Islands development was proposed.
      4. The quality of public services should be enhanced so that poorer people in particular are not mired in bureaucratic backlogs.

    Ensure a holistic and inclusive approach in decision-making processes

      1. Institutional bodies should engage with young people as well as the wider population who are invested in developing and implementing a sustainable environmental agenda.
      2. Communication and synergy between NGOs, institutions and the private sector would enable better identification, implementation and monitoring of social and economic goals.
      3. Economic development must be complemented with social, cultural and environmental blueprints which focus on the well-being of the population with respect to health, family and leisure.

    Continue to develop skills and platforms for addressing tensions

        1. There should be greater cooperation between local, regional and national bodies in addressing differences and conflicts.
        2. Peace education should be included within the curriculum so that children are sensitized to conflict resolution strategies at a young age.
        3. Women should be empowered to play a greater role and bring greater contribution to the maintenance and sustainability of peace.

    Foster shared and accurate historical accounts

      1. Shared, accurate and collective memories of national history should be crafted.
      2. A repertoire of the oral traditions of different cultures which recount the stories of solidarity and friendship should be recorded, preserved and disseminated.
      3. The importance of maintaining the important traditions and mechanisms for knowledge sharing such as transmitting wisdom through formal education, the media, the internet, museums, and storytelling should continue to be celebrated.

     

    Difficult conversations to be had

    Mauritius is on the brink of change and there is a feeling that the status quo cannot persist, but there seems to be a hesitancy around the process through which these changes may occur.

    There are difficult conversations to be had. One of the interrogations which recurred was about the best ways in which to open spaces for people who are having different experiences, and who cannot hear each other, or would not speak to one another about challenges out of a fear that these conversations might cause some break down of the peace.

    Since the focus groups and interviews were conducted, several participants have spoken about how refreshing it was to participate in these focus groups and have these conversations. A desire for a space for these conversations to continue into the future was palpable.

    Full report accessible in French, English and Creole  

    Main Photo Herr Oslen on Flickr, CC licence

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    Zoom burnout: be more productive, ditch those video calls – expert

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    Paul Levy, Senior Researcher in Innovation Management, University of Brighton

     

    Just as other brand names make their way into the dictionary, Zoom has now become a daily verb and a noun. We Zoom each other, we say “Let’s have a Zoom,” and we get Zoom fatigue. Now there’s Zoom burnout as well – a phrase that encompasses a lot more than the eye strain of too much screen time.

    Emerging research shows we get less done and we may end up unnecessarily replicating communication in our personal and working lives. A new study highlights the causes of this fatigue and how to deal with it.

    Too much Zooming can become mentally demanding. There’s a lot of evidence that when people are mentally tired, they tend to act less efficiently. Sustained performance on a mentally demanding task decreases over time.

    Also, when we’re fatigued, our working memory performs less well. We become forgetful, our listening quality degrades and recording Zoom meetings for later viewing simply creates more energy sapping screen time.

    The online meetings designed to get things done could be the very things harming our productivity, just at a time when margins are particularly tight and businesses are financially on the edge. And there’s some evidence that using audio only might be more productive than an overload of screen meetings.

    Zoom fatigue

    The new study highlights the psychological impact of spending hours each day on a range of video calling platforms. The study found people often reach “non-verbal overload” with too much eye contact. This means we need to work harder to send and receive all those non-verbal signals that are lost when many of us are just a head filling the screen.

    In face-to-face meetings, another study points out, non verbal communication flows naturally and “we are rarely consciously attending to our own gestures and other nonverbal cues”. This is one of the reasons many people can’t wait to get back to face-to-face. For others, Zooming is fine until the fatigue kicks in, then an unease arises.

    This is where the good old phone meeting could come in. The same study describes “a wonderful illusion that occurs during phone calls”. We’re no longer weighed down with non verbal overload or eye contact meltdown. We may even stretch, move around the room, even make a cup of tea as we speak.

    We tend to imagine we are getting 100% of the others’ attention on a phone call. The researchers conclude that “only a minority of calls require staring at another person’s face to successfully communicate”.

    Give up Zoom?

    Many experts are now calling for fewer Zoom meetings.

    Yet, evidence for seriously considering meeting over the phone comes from other academic work that goes back a lot further. Early studies comparing TV radio, newspapers and computer screens identified newspapers as enabling significantly highest recall of facts. Computer screens surprisingly performed closer to newspapers and better than TV and radio. So, one up for the screens? The problem is we tend to remember less when we have screen fatigue.

    Try switching to phone calls. Photo by Good Face on Unsplash.

    In contrast, a lot of research confirms how radio stimulates the imagination. “I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are clearer,” goes the old saying. Whether with the phone, radio or podcasts, our active imagination is more engaged actively listening than when we passively view. And we can become very passive when we’re screen exhausted.

    Some neuroscience research has confirmed that when our imaginations are active they can become more emotionally stimulated. Scientists have interpreted this as an indicator that the audio content requires active imagination on the part of the listener.

    One further piece of research becomes critical here, suggesting that imagination runs hand in hand with motivation. According to this view, imagination can make us more goal directed, more likely to get things done. Zoom fatigue can have the opposite effect. The imaginative process inherent in the audio call increases the likelihood that we’ll make good on our intentions.

    If this is true – and there needs to be more research in the problem – it will certainly be time to become more conscious of when and how often we meet on Zoom, for how long and for what purpose.

    Try holding some of your work meetings by phone. It might seem strange at first and take a bit of getting used to, but you might just find your meetings are more productive and satisfying. Your imagination might kick into gear and re-fire your motivation. I’m not saying banish all the Zooming, just re-balance your use of audio and screen.The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

     

    Main Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

    Charles Telfair Centre is an independent nonpartisan not for profit organisation and does not take specific positions. All views, positions, and conclusions expressed in our publications are solely those of the author(s).

    Mind the Gap: Five avenues to challenge gender bias and boost Mauritius’ recovery

    By
    Myriam Blin
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    Myriam Blin, Head of the Charles Telfair Centre, Charles Telfair Campus [1]

    In this article, Myriam Blin, Head of the Charles Telfair Centre reviews the gendered structures still permeating women’s lived experiences at home and at work. Despite tremendous progress on the gender front over the last 30 years, entrenched inequalities rooted in gender and cultural norms rouse fears that, unless gender responsive policies are implemented, the gender inequalities will be exacerbated in the current crisis, notably through four main channels: work burden, domestic violence, access to work and decision making. As we celebrate the 110th International Women’s Day on the theme Women in Leadership, she proposes five key sources of biases we can choose to challenge to support a gender inclusive economic recovery.     

     

    Covid-19 continues to be unquestionably devastating as we see the global death toll rising with multitudes of strains creeping their way out of the woodwork and making the economic outlook decisively uncertain. The unfolding crisis is having a deleterious impact on businesses and families across the world, but while the crisis affects almost everyone in one way or another, evidence is mounting that women are disproportionately impacted with regards to their work and wellbeing.

    Mauritius has seen tremendous progress in advancing women’s economic opportunities and reducing the gender gap over the last 30 years, yet, entrenched inequalities rooted in gender and cultural norms rouse fears that, unless gender responsive policies are implemented, the gender inequalities will be exacerbated in the current crisis.

    As we celebrate the 110th International Women’s Day on the themes Women in Leadership and  #ChooseToChallenge, I propose five key sources of biases we can choose to challenge to support a gender inclusive economic recovery.     

    Mind the Gap

    While Mauritius fares relatively well in gender responsive legislation, it only ranked 115 out of 153 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). There is increasing evidence that the gender gap in Mauritius is widening once more as the crisis cascades through four main channels: work burden, domestic violence, access to work and decision making.

     

    Four avenues constraining women’s access to work and leadership positions – Designed by Shaheen Beeharry

    Women’s work burdens

    Women’s traditional gender role confines her to the private sphere reflecting entrenched patriarchal values that assign home care responsibilities predominantly to women. In Mauritius, women’s perceived gender role within the home persists: 68% of Mauritians believe it is better if women (as opposed to men) take care of the household and 44% believe men have more rights to a job than women when jobs are scarce. In 2019, Mauritian women spent close to 20% of their time on household chores and unpaid care activities compared to just under 5% for men. Recent evidence also suggests that the crisis is worsening parental mental load, which disproportionately affects women compared to men.

    In times of crisis, households substitute what would have been purchased outside by producing these goods and services at home, a burden that disproportionately falls on women. The compounding of women’s work burden negatively impacts their well-being and their ability to stay in paid employment. Early data from the Continuous Mauritius Multipurpose Household Survey (CMPHS) shows that while women and men have both been affected by job losses, most men have remained on the labour market whereas women have largely exited with the activity rate among women declining by 2.7 percent between Q1 2020 and July 2020. The human cost is largely a female one as we see the severe economic downturn slowly eroding progress made in female labour force participation in the last decade.

     

    Extract from cartoonist Emmaclit’s comic on the mental load “You should have asked“.

    Home is not safe for everyone

    Twenty four percent of women in Mauritius have experienced some form of domestic violence (data from 2012) and in 2019 7.3% of Mauritians believed it is justified for a man to beat his wife. As men and women lose their jobs, as economic insecurity increases and mental health deteriorates, domestic violence escalates. Domestic violence is a product of a deeply unequal world that pre-dates the COVID-19, but the lockdowns intended to protect the public saw positive correlations with domestic violence, and for some women these safety measures turned into a death sentence. Mauritius has been no exception: between March and May 2020 there has been a 4% increase in the number of reported cases of domestic violence compared to the same period in 2019. Just for the month of May 2020 (post-lockdown) there has been a 47% increase in reported cases compared to May of the previous year – close to 93% of the reported victims were women.

     

    Women in the Workforce

    A 2018 world bank working paper estimated that 57 % of Mauritian women participated in the labour force compared to 89% of men. While female labour force participation has increased by 7 percentage points in the last 10 years, the data reveals a strongly gendered labour market:

    Key to the concept of empowerment is, arguably, the relation to human dignity, the dignity that comes from being productive and the freedom to express one’s potential.  Yet, gender norms and patriarchal values that assign women to traditional gender roles together with implicit and explicit bias pull women away from the labour market and leadership roles and pushes them into sectors and job functions that are more “compatible” with their homecare responsibilities. The current crisis is exacerbating the trend: a significant proportion of women are not returning to work after losing their employment or choose a less demanding and lower paid career path with greater flexibility to manage their increased work burden.

    Women and decision making

    With only 18% of parliamentary seats held by women, 5% of private sector leadership positions held by women and only 8.7% of board members being women, the Mauritius gender glass ceiling is very much alive and several inches thick. Thirty six percent of companies reported that “gender equality” was included in their internal policies for recruitment and promotion, yet the number of men in senior positions (C-suite) is almost five times higher than that of women.

    Firms that are diverse and inclusive outperform those that are not. Being diverse and inclusive does not simply mean ensuring that a certain number of women sit on leadership tables (evidence actually suggests that having a small minority of women on a leadership table has limited impact). It requires a systemic review of sources of bias and a collective plan that engage employees into the process of identifying how to address explicit and implicit biases at all levels of the organisation.

    With 10% or less of women in senior level teams at entities such as the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development Board or Business Mauritius, women continue to be excluded from economic recovery high-level decision-making.  Such exclusion only serves to undermine recovery efforts for society as a whole.

     

    Putting on Gender Glasses: Five avenues to challenge gendered structures in Mauritius

     

    1. Challenge gender norms at home and at work

    Women’s work burden, domestic violence, labour market barriers including the glass ceiling are all rooted in social constructions of what constitute the feminine and masculine. We have tools at our disposal to challenge these gender norms:

    2.      Challenge the idea of gender-neutral policies:

    Nothing is neutral and most certainly not the gendered implications of covid-19 in Mauritius. What is often conceived as neutral (i.e. having the same impact on men and women) is in fact masculine if decision making fails to take into account women’s specific socially constructed contexts. Eschewing neutrality in favour of improving understanding of the intersectionality of Mauritian women’s identities and experiences will allow government and corporate organisations to craft effective policy responses that achieve gender mainstreaming. A good start is implementing policies that ease women’s roles as primary caregivers:

    • Implementing extended paternal and paid maternity leave and make the government share the cost of maternity leave
    • Extending subsidised child-care facilities for children under the age 5.
    • Implementing flexible work practices that can ease pressure on women’s work burden. The COVID-imposed remote work has shown the potential of flexible arrangements which, with the right conditions, can boost performance up to 13%.

    3.      Challenge the current gendered leadership culture:

    Work is where men and women interact for a great proportion of their daily lives – it is both a perpetuator of gendered structures as well as a potential disruptor of social ones. Gender inclusion is not just good intrinsically, it is also good for the economy and the performance of an organisation.  Private organisations and government entities need to go further and fundamentally challenge their structures, work practices, systemic biases to profoundly transform organisational cultures and values for greater equitability. They have a responsibility to provide women specific support mechanisms, including mentoring and the implementation of quotas, to allow them a fair playing field in their career path. Programmes such as LeanIn, Champions of Change Coalition, the UNDP-AUC African Young Women Leaders Fellowship Programme are examples of starting points for creating networks of solidarity for female (and male) allyship.

    4.      Challenge the gap in gender related data:

    We can only truly assess and evaluate the extent and complexity of the gender gap if systematic and frequent gender disaggregated data is collected and shared: in the absence of data researchers cannot assess the complexities behind gender inequality, and NGOs and policy makers cannot make informed decisions. Mauritius does not collect data on 50% of GGGI indicators. Statistics Mauritius needs to up their game and implement a systematic policy of gender data disaggregation wherever relevant to allow for the theorisation of precarity in the context of Mauritius.  Similarly, the government, as undertaken in the UK and Denmark, could require public and private organisations to disclose their gender disaggregated pay statistics to help fight the gender pay gap.

    5.      Challenge the weak enforcement of gender related legislation

    Mauritius has fared relatively well on the Social and Institution Gender Index, but evidence suggests that there are structural weaknesses preventing the proper enforcement of the legislation, notably those pertaining to domestic violence, workplace harassment and employment discrimination (e.g. difference in promotions and earnings). HR departments, the police force and courts need to challenge their current practices and implement adequate processes and mechanisms to allow safe and effective reporting of incidences of violence, harassment, or discrimination across the relevant institutions.

     

    Allyship

    The empowerment of women is not solely a women’s issue but a societal one and it is important to note that the socialisation of gender stereotypes hurts men and women. Both sexes are bearers of social identities situated at a nexus of gender, class, age, race, ethnic-identity and religion, all of which add further complexity to the sources and processes of bias against women in Mauritius. Challenging norms, stereotypes and patriarchy are at the heart of any effort to fight gender inequality and it is through our combined efforts and the building of allyship between men and women that gender discrimination can become history. So, let us support our women and girls as the carriers of our collective futures as we seek to unlearn gender bias in order to build resilient economies that are kinder and fairer for everyone.

     

    [1] I would like to thank the two reviewers and the editor for their constructive and encouraging feedback. 

    Main photo by WIPO on Flickr, CC licence

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

    Hundreds of fish species, including many that humans eat, are consuming plastic

    By
    Charles Telfair Centre
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    0

     

    Alexandra McInturf, University of California, Davis

    Matthew Savoca, Stanford University

    Trillions of barely visible pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, from surface waters to the deep seas. These particles, known as microplastics, typically form when larger plastic objects such as shopping bags and food containers break down.

    Researchers are concerned about microplastics because they are minuscule, widely distributed and easy for wildlife to consume, accidentally or intentionally. We study marine science and animal behavior, and wanted to understand the scale of this problem. In a newly published study that we conducted with ecologist Elliott Hazen, we examined how marine fish – including species consumed by humans – are ingesting synthetic particles of all sizes.

    In the broadest review on this topic that has been carried out to date, we found that, so far, 386 marine fish species are known to have ingested plastic debris, including 210 species that are commercially important. But findings of fish consuming plastic are on the rise. We speculate that this could be happening both because detection methods for microplastics are improving and because ocean plastic pollution continues to increase.

    Researchers at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium have found microplastic particles from the surface to the seafloor, where they can be ingested by a wide range of sea creatures.

    Solving the plastics puzzle

    It’s not news that wild creatures ingest plastic. The first scientific observation of this problem came from the stomach of a seabird in 1969. Three years later, scientists reported that fish off the coast of southern New England were consuming tiny plastic particles.

    Since then, well over 100 scientific papers have described plastic ingestion in numerous species of fish. But each study has only contributed a small piece of a very important puzzle. To see the problem more clearly, we had to put those pieces together.

    We did this by creating the largest existing database on plastic ingestion by marine fish, drawing on every scientific study of the problem published from 1972 to 2019. We collected a range of information from each study, including what fish species it examined, the number of fish that had eaten plastic and when those fish were caught. Because some regions of the ocean have more plastic pollution than others, we also examined where the fish were found.

    For each species in our database, we identified its diet, habitat and feeding behaviors – for example, whether it preyed on other fish or grazed on algae. By analyzing this data as a whole, we wanted to understand not only how many fish were eating plastic, but also what factors might cause them to do so. The trends that we found were surprising and concerning.

     

    Plastic bag drifting in shallow water.
    Leopard sharks swim past plastic debris in shallow water off southern California. Ralph Pace, CC BY-ND

    A global problem

    Our research revealed that marine fish are ingesting plastic around the globe. According to the 129 scientific papers in our database, researchers have studied this problem in 555 fish species worldwide. We were alarmed to find that more than two-thirds of those species had ingested plastic.

    One important caveat is that not all of these studies looked for microplastics. This is likely because finding microplastics requires specialized equipment, like microscopes, or use of more complex techniques. But when researchers did look for microplastics, they found five times more plastic per individual fish than when they only looked for larger pieces. Studies that were able to detect this previously invisible threat revealed that plastic ingestion was higher than we had originally anticipated.

    Our review of four decades of research indicates that fish consumption of plastic is increasing. Just since an international assessment conducted for the United Nations in 2016, the number of marine fish species found with plastic has quadrupled.

    Similarly, in the last decade alone, the proportion of fish consuming plastic has doubled across all species. Studies published from 2010-2013 found that an average of 15% of the fish sampled contained plastic; in studies published from 2017-2019, that share rose to 33%.

    We think there are two reasons for this trend. First, scientific techniques for detecting microplastics have improved substantially in the past five years. Many of the earlier studies we examined may not have found microplastics because researchers couldn’t see them.

    Second, it is also likely that fish are actually consuming more plastic over time as ocean plastic pollution increases globally. If this is true, we expect the situation to worsen. Multiple studies that have sought to quantify plastic waste project that the amount of plastic pollution in the ocean will continue to increase over the next several decades.

    Risk factors

    While our findings may make it seem as though fish in the ocean are stuffed to the gills with plastic, the situation is more complex. In our review, almost one-third of the species studied were not found to have consumed plastic. And even in studies that did report plastic ingestion, researchers did not find plastic in every individual fish. Across studies and species, about one in four fish contained plastics – a fraction that seems to be growing with time. Fish that did consume plastic typically had only one or two pieces in their stomachs.

    In our view, this indicates that plastic ingestion by fish may be widespread, but it does not seem to be universal. Nor does it appear random. On the contrary, we were able to predict which species were more likely to eat plastic based on their environment, habitat and feeding behavior.

    For example, fishes such as sharks, grouper and tuna that hunt other fishes or marine organisms as food were more likely to ingest plastic. Consequently, species higher on the food chain were at greater risk.

    We were not surprised that the amount of plastic that fish consumed also seemed to depend on how much plastic was in their environment. Species that live in ocean regions known to have a lot of plastic pollution, such as the Mediterranean Sea and the coasts of East Asia, were found with more plastic in their stomachs.

    Effects of a plastic diet

    This is not just a wildlife conservation issue. Researchers don’t know very much about the effects of ingesting plastic on fish or humans. However, there is evidence that that microplastics and even smaller particles called nanoplastics can move from a fish’s stomach to its muscle tissue, which is the part that humans typically eat. Our findings highlight the need for studies analyzing how frequently plastics transfer from fish to humans, and their potential effects on the human body.

    Our review is a step toward understanding the global problem of ocean plastic pollution. Of more than 20,000 marine fish species, only roughly 2% have been tested for plastic consumption. And many reaches of the ocean remain to be examined. Nonetheless, what’s now clear to us is that “out of sight, out of mind” is not an effective response to ocean pollution – especially when it may end up on our plates.The Conversation

    Main Photo University of Colorado on Flickr

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    The Charles Telfair Centre is non-profit, independent and non-partisan, and takes no specific position. All opinions are those of the authors/contributors only.

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