SANDEE Blogs

Optimsation of land uses

Dou you think is possible to optimise the current land uses at the farm level and increase the incomes, at the same time to avoid the deforestation processes?

Why Copenhagen failed?

The climate change negotiations at Copenhagen ended in a farce. Rather than discussing on the complex issues of climate change mitigation and adaptation, the outcome of the negotiation was a vague statement of agreed principles; that too by only a few countries. Why is it that the most-talked about climate negotiation conference could not deliver as per the need and expectations? The reasons are many. Firstly, United Nations should be blamed for managing the climate change negotiations so inefficiently for past couple of years since Bali. The Bali Action Plan had begun the process of weakening the principles of UN Convention and the Copenhagen Accord takes the process further. If one looks at Accord with a trend line in mind and not in isolation, then one can easily see the weakening of the governance structure as far as United Nations is concerned. Secondly, the so-called “developed” countries have been far too rigid in their stance. United States (US) has been ignoring legally binding targets of carbon emissions since ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Any now the US has completed abandoned this system stating that its domestic policies and programs have already been designed to take climate change into account. It disagrees on the „per-capita‟ principle for carbon emissions and feels that following such an approach would harm its economy. On the other hand, the European Union (EU) has been pushing the system of emission-trading relentlessly. Although quite successful in reducing the emissions in EU, such an approach has not produced significant positive results to implement at a global scale. Thus, there are few nations which do not want to have any legally-binding targets and on the other hand there are few nations which have adopted a rigid approach for dealing with climate change. The result however is chaos and no consensus could be reached for one single approach that could fit the needs of different countries. Thirdly, many of the “developing” countries have been far too weak in making their position clear as far as climate change is concerned. Worst, it is ambiguous for many countries like ours. These so-called Annex II countries which are currently witnessing an economic boom in-spite of global downturn have feared of the economic impacts of their position. Very few nations have been able to give strong statements as far as the position of developed countries on climate change is concerned. To cut the long story short, the phenomenon of climate change is still not adequately understood and the potential impacts are still considered to have less probability. The global governance is currently too weak to take any strong and significant steps to combat climate change. Countries have still not come to a point where they can all stand up together and realize that the impact of climate change will have catastrophic impacts on all: may it be a developed country or a developing one. The global downturn hasn't helped anyone either. Many nations are looking to rebuild their economy and thus the climate change currently occupies a lower position in their priority list. However, it is disheartening to see that such an opportunity to make a significant change has been ignored and it can only be hoped that mankind realizes this fact before it becomes too late.

Useful websites for Researchers

Michael Roberts reproduces John Cochrane's tips for empirical work. He links to Greg Mankiw's advice to doctoral students of which the most useful to Sandee researchers may be John Cochrane's paper on how to write an empirical paper in economics.

John Cochrane on how to write an empirical paper in economics

Via Michael Roberts, some tips for doctoral students from Greg Mankiw on finding a research topic, writing a paper, etc. I thought the one by John Cochrane may be particularly useful for Sandee researchers.