Michael Webber

How LCA studies deal with uncertainty

In recent years many workers have examined the implications of various sources of uncertainty for the reliability of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Indeed, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) has recognised the relevance of this work by including several cautionary statements in the ISO 14040 series of standards. However, in practice, there is a risk that the significance of these uncertainties for the results of an LCA could be overlooked as practitioners strive to complete studies on time and within budget. This paper presents the findings of a survey of LCA studies we made to determine the extent to which the problem of uncertainty had been dealt with in practice. This survey revealed that the significance of the limitations on the reliability of LCA results given in the standards has not been fully appreciated by practitioners. We conclude that the standards need to be revised to ensure that LCA studies include at least a qualitative discussion on all relevant aspects of uncertainty.

The golden age illusion : rethinking postwar capitalism

Reassessing common interpretations of postwar economic history and geography, this book focuses on the evolution of the global economy from the 1950s to the present. It is a thorough integration of theoretical and empirical work, drawing data from around the world, with detailed studies of two advance industrialized nations--Japan and the United States; two semi-peripheral economies--Australia and Canada; and three newly industrializing countries--Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan. The authors build on standard models of economic change to incorporate new developments in regional dynamics: they use nonlinear, nonequilibrium, and evolutionary arguments to frame discussions of profit rates, technological change, and interregional capital flows. In assessing traditional explanations of postwar economic growth and crisis, the work highlights the geographic form of postwar growth, globalization. It clearly illustrates the failure of traditional theories to adequately account for the emergence of selected newly industrializing countries. The authors conclude with a new interpretation of the global slowdown--one that emphasizes the endogenous nature of capitalist crises and demonstrates how the newly industrializing economies expanded as a result of that slowdown.

Environmental resettlement and development, on the steppes of Inner Mongolia, PRC

Abstract The World Bank, other development institutions and a few countries, like China, have elaborated resettlement policies which envisage Resettlement with Development (RwD). However, the understanding of Development embodied in the discourse of RwD is confused. After distinguishing between the concepts of development as outcome and development as process, we investigate two projects of environmental resettlement in Inner Mongolia, PRC. The planning and implementation of these projects reveal the states interpretation of RwD. There has been some Development (outcome) in some places, notably improvements in material well-being. However, the processes of development have been more extensive, involving increased participation in markets for produce and labour. The state, we conclude, identifies involvement with markets as the principal means of achieving material Development outcomes.

Will OPEC lose from the Kyoto Protocol

A range of energy-economy models forecast losses to members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) should the Kyoto Protocol come into force. These forecasts are a powerful influence in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations. They are used by OPEC to advance the agenda on the impacts of response measures, covertly arguing for compensation for lost oil revenues arising from implementation of the Protocol. This paper discusses this issue, and explores the key assumptions of these models and their uncertainties. Assumptions about carbon leakage, future availability of oil reserves, substitution, innovation, and capital turnover are considered. The paper suggests that losses will not affect OPEC countries equally, and that these losses are not likely to be as substantial as the models forecast. A range of policy measures are proposed to lessen any impact the Protocol may have on OPEC.

Development for Whom? Rural to Urban Resettlement at the Three Gorges Dam, China

Abstract When farmers are dispossessed of their lands to make way for a development project it is often inevitable that there will not be enough land to go around. It is unlikely that parcels of fertile land are lying vacant in the surrounding areas awaiting distribution. It therefore becomes necessary for people who previously derived their livelihoods from the land to move into cities. This research explores what happens to a sample of such people and whether they are able to restore their livelihoods. It examines the Three Gorges Dam resettlement in Chinas Hubei province and discovers that while the Chinese government has devised an inspired toolbox of benefit-sharing initiatives, the gains accrue to a minority who live in the most amenable location of the Three Gorges area. It concludes that the availability of capital through benefit-sharing initiatives does not guarantee its productive use.

Sustainability: Transfer project cannot meet China's water needs.

Almost one year ago, Beijing began to receive water channelled by the South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project. The biggest inter-basin transfer scheme in the world, the SNWD project has the capacity to deliver 25 billion cubic metres of fresh water per year from the Yangtze River in China’s south to the drier north by two routes — each of which covers a distance of more than 1,000 kilometres. The project connects four major river basins, three megacities, six provinces and hundreds of millions of water users and polluters. Its success is already in question. Reservoir and canal construction costs have reportedly reached US

Involuntary Rural Resettlement: Resources, Strategies, and Outcomes at the Three Gorges Dam, China

80 billion, and more than 300,000 people have been displaced. Pollution and environmental fallout, as well as high maintenance costs and water prices, make the project unsustainable both ecologically and socially. And the transfer of water does not address the underlying causes of water shortages in the north, namely pollution and inefficient agricultural, industrial and urban use — the effects of which we have been studying over the past decade. North China could be self-sufficient in water without the transfer of water from the south. But the necessary steps — among them, improving local pollution monitoring and building better irrigation infrastructure — are inadequately implemented. Increasing supply is viewed as the main solution to water scarcity because of the conflicting roles of the Chinese government as both entrepreneur and regulator. Incentives for economic growth in China still outweigh incentives for pollution control and limits on water extraction, despite ever stricter

Making capitalism in rural China.

This article analyses the effects of resettlement on farming households in two villages within the area inundated by the Three Gorges Dam, China. The article also proposes a political-economic framework within which to understand the resettlement program and its implications for households. The households brought a variety of resources into the resettlement—land, savings, their labor, social ties, and communal resources—resources that became less during the resettlement process. Apart from extensive borrowing, largely to fund a major investment in new housing, the households’ responses tended to reflect constraints imposed on them by the resettlement rather than their ability to exploit new opportunities. As a consequence, farm incomes fell after resettlement, particularly in the village where more land was lost. The loss of farm income was not made up by increased off-farm income through paid work or self-employment. The households in the two villages have thus become more vulnerable to further external shocks than they were before the resettlement.

The Places of Primitive Accumulation in Rural China

This stimulating and challenging book explores the duplicitous nature of development in China. On the positive side, it brings longer and healthier lives; fewer children dead before they are five years old; more comfort and security from famine and disaster; more education; more communication; more travel; less war. But from another, darker perspective, development brings violence to some people – those who are in the way of the new things, those who cannot adapt to the new ways – and it threatens old knowledges, habits and societies as it disrupts old power structures.

Explanation, prediction, and planning : the Lowry model

abstract “Rural” is a category of enduring significance in China. The trajectories of social change in China’s rural areas reflect local dynamics and new forms of economy that encroach from local or distant cities and international sources. One indicator of change is the separation of people from their means of production: the development of the preconditions for capitalist production. Using information from villages scattered across China, this article identifies the sources of this separation and poses a theoretical question: can these changes be comprehended in a nondeterministic manner? The article demonstrates that the principal means of separating rural people from their means of production have been market based and largely local (reflecting forces within China), supplemented, however, by forcible dispossession. It also shows that the processes that drive primitive accumulation do not simply reflect an economic logic; they include environmental modernization, ethnic politics, nation building, and personal motives. The extraeconomic bases of economic change imply that primitive accumulation is not a process on a path to a known end point or to a predictable geography.