2 August, The Guardian, The truth about the people and numbers in loud and furious migration debate. David Cameron referred to a ‘swarm’ from Calais. But migration is happening across the globe, and the motives are more complex than stereotypes suggest. ‘You have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs,” David Cameron said last week. Leaving the language aside, there is some truth in this. But it also misses out a lot. This is not a British problem. It is a European problem and a North African one and a Middle Eastern one. It is not going to be solved by a few miles of barbed-wire fencing or, as the prime minister emerged from Friday’s “emergency meeting” to say, “more dogs”. Why do all the people coming across the Mediterranean want to come to Britain? Read More here
Category Archives: People Stress
27 July 2015, The Conversation, Don’t panic! Traffic congestion is not coming for our cities: There is a new fear on the block. Not just ISIS, home invasions, wind turbines and the budget deficit, but now we must fear … traffic congestion. The Infrastructure Australia report on the future needs of our cities emphasises the growing problem of urban traffic congestion all over the country. It is echoed by the State of Australian Cities report. Congestion, it warns, will overwhelm our futures, making them unlivable, uneconomic and ungovernable as we fight for every piece of road space. But do we have to accept that congestion trends will overwhelm us? Is it really right to fear congestion? The fear: According to the IA report travel times are going to increase by at least 20%. The total cost of such congestion will increase from A$13.7 billion a year to A$53.3 billion by 2031, an increase of nearly three times. The loss of time will apparently cripple us.
The public policy reaction to fear is to jettison economic analysis and throw money at it. No benefit-cost ratio is needed as we need to act now or it will overwhelm us. Kneejerk reactions like this are usually regretted in hindsight but at the time we have no choice, it must be done. In this climate of congestion-fear big roads are not being assessed, just announced. The congestion peril is coming. We must honour the Abbott government’s election commitments to around A$40 billion of high-capacity roads such as the East-West Link in Melbourne (now discredited and dropped by the Victorian Government), the Connex West system in Sydney (causing similar pain with communities subject to its impact) and most recently the Perth Freight Link (which looms as the biggest election issue facing the Barnett government that never actually wanted it). All of these roads have benefit cost ratios that make them very questionable. Read More here
22 July 2015, The Conversation, Who’s on the outer? Uncovering poverty’s many faces: Despite a long history of research into poverty, no consensus yet exists on what constitutes being “poor” or “disadvantaged”. Measures of household wealth don’t go far enough in identifying those most at risk of being excluded from society. Nor do such measures explain the level of exclusion they face. Significant numbers of people are at risk, however. Our research suggests that more than one in two people with a disability or long-term health condition and nearly half of people aged 65 and above experienced social exclusion in 2012.
A better way to measure poverty? Monitoring changes in the prevalence and characteristics of poverty is crucial to keeping track of whether a society is really successful in tackling this problem. Traditional measurements have too narrowly focused on incomes and whether households can afford a minimum acceptable standard of living. Broader concepts have emerged more recently. These recognise that socioeconomic disadvantage is much more complex. One more useful method is the concept of “social exclusion”. Read More here
20 July 2015, WRI, An opportunity not to be wasted: The waste sector permeates almost every aspect of our society, and its mismanagement can lead to serious problems. Worldwide, we generated 1.3 billion tons of waste in 2012, which accounted forabout 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This volume is project to rise to 2.2 billion tons by 2025, with most of the increase expected in cities in the so-called emerging economies like Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa. The waste management utility sector is in the eye of the storm, and its evolution will be crucial to humanity’s response to various environmental challenges. As discussed in my previous blog in this series, the utility ecosystem is unable to respond to our social and environmental challenges because of entrenched interests, archaic infrastructure, systemic rigidities, and corporate inertia—all of which are painfully evident in the solid waste sector. Read More here