Le financement des biens publics mondiaux
As always, this issue of the Revue d’économie financière offers readers a broad panorama of the debates, challenges and future prospects of a critical subject, this time the management of global public goods. It goes into such depth that this summary cannot hope to cover all the issues dealt with in it.
Charlotte Gardes-Landolfini (IMF) starts out by reminding us that the world is facing an unprecedented “polycrisis” that is “affecting the supply – and sustainability – of the world’s public goods: the climate, nature, financial stability, etc.”, going on to stress the extent to which the “growing interconnection is leading to both an increase in common critical challenges and a variety of dilemmas to resolve them” (our translation throughout). The Director of Research at the CNRS, Gaël Giraud, has opted to use the definition of ‘global common goods’ developed by Elinor Ostrom in preference to the one promoted by the World Bank in the early 2000s, as he considers it less ambiguous, particularly as it makes it easier to take account of the interactions between various players, both private and public, concerning the goods in question. In this way, he reiterates that multinationals or private initiatives, such as one undertaken by French doctors with their development of a platform (Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative - DNDi) to offer treatments to impoverished patients in the countries of the South, may in certain situations be party to the problems affecting common goods, while deserving some involvement in the way these are resolved with, carrying with it the need identified in 2002 by the former European Vice President of the World Bank, Jean-François Rischard, to invent new hybrid international institutions.
The researcher Ruchir Agarwal (Harvard Kennedy School) and the Norwegian diplomat John-Arne Røttingen list the risks and threats caused, deliberately or unconsciously, by “clandestine destroyers” with the starting point of six specific examples: the Covid-19 pandemic, biological and chemical weapons, geo-engineering (management of the sun’s rays and the capture and storage of carbon), artificial intelligence, nuclear proliferation and cyber-threats. Not downplaying the fact that State actors may also indulge in destructive behaviour, the authors stress that “non-State players may create, exploit or block threats to global public goods in many ways”. “They may, for instance, create or accentuate threats by selling products from wild species transmitting animal disease, deploy AI systems presenting social or existential risks or use nuclear weapons, leading to mass destruction. They could also exploit these threats by benefiting from related illegal goods or services, disrupting information systems or manipulating these matters for political or ideological purposes. They also stand in the way of solutions to global public goods by watering down standards or rules, opposing the responsible authorities or resisting the implementation of preventative measures”, the authors argue, making the case for “collaboration platforms” to be established and reinforced between various non-State players, such as multinationals, non-government organisations and citizens, both nationally and internationally. They consider that this increased involvement, together with the development of codes of conduct, incentive mechanisms and sanctions, could help to offset the “lack of governance and effective global coordination mechanisms”.
In addition to the problems of governance, a number of articles stress the inadequacy and extreme fragmentation of funding currently available to preserve global public goods. The chairman of the French Development Agency, Philipe Le Houérou, highlights the capacity surrounding environmental and climate funds and calls for streamlining of the hundred or so funds in question.
“We are all familiar with planet Earth, we desperately need to start taking a closer look at planet Sea”, writes Robert Calcagno, Director General of the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco, in an article stressing the challenges surrounding the ocean. The author explores the territorialisation of the high seas following the 1994 entry into force of the Montego Bay convention and the extension to 200 nautical miles (370 km) of the exclusive economic zone, but also the efforts made to set rules in the remaining 64% of the high seas, where acts of pollution and predation are constantly on the rise. The author takes heart from the signature in March 2023, following 15 years of discussions, of the Treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), as it contains a commitment to protect 30% of the ocean and allows for the creation of protected marine parks in the high seas. But it still needs to collect 60 ratifications in order to enter into force, “which could take several years”. (Olivier Jehin)
Association Europe-Finances-Régulations. Le financement des biens publics mondiaux (available in French only). Revue d’économie financière edition 151, Q3 2023. ISBN: 978-2-3764-7087-8. 385 pages. €35,00
Le financement de la dépendance
“The population of Europe is ageing. The increased life expectancy, together with falling birth rates, is set to bring about an increase in the numbers of elderly people in the European Union”, economics professor Pierre Pestieau (HEC, Uliège and UCLouvain) observes in the introduction to this edition of the Revue d’économie financière devoted to the issue of dependency (our translation throughout). He clarifies that “the number of people over the age of 65 is expected to increase by 41% over the next 30 years. Additionally, the number of people over the age of 80 is expected to increase even more, by 88%, in 2050. Consequently, the dependency ratio of the elderly is expected to increase significantly, rising from 34% in 2019 to 59.2% in 2070, representing an increase of more than 70% across all EU countries”.
“In a recent study looking at the United States, Gupta et al. (2022) explore the effects of private shareholdings on the well-being of patients in care homes for the elderly. They show that private shareholding increases the short-term mortality of residents by 10%, in other words 20,150 lives lost during the sample period of 12 years. This phenomenon has gone hand-in-hand with a drop in other measures of patient well-being, such as reduced mobility”, the author reports, going on to stress that in the same edition, his Belgian colleague Matthias Dewatripont (ULB) argues in favour of converting listed companies into “businesses with a social mission, legal structures making it possible to pursue the interests of the staff and residents of EHPADs (the acronym used to refer to retirement homes in France: Ed) alongside those of the shareholders, the legal owners of the company”. Despite the many scandals surrounding inhuman and degrading treatment that have in recent years hit France, where the capitalist management of old age as well, incidentally, as the neoliberal management of the hospital system caused serious adverse effects, there has been a very limited counter movement.
The author also refuses to go down this road, flipping the table: “should we prioritise ‘staying at home’ and informal care? Nothing is less certain in cases of severe dependency. First of all, situations of domestic ill-treatment are equally deplorable. Secondly, burnout, which goes some way to explaining the ill-treatment, creates health problems for family carers with attendant individual and social costs that are insufficiently recognised. Numerous studies report a worsened state of physical and mental health among carers and also identify risks of increased mortality among this population”. By way of comment, who could possibly argue that cases of “severe dependency” do not require some form of specific care? But why on earth should this be provided through profit-making businesses? How does domestic ill-treatment – which, moreover, predominantly affects women and children in most situations – explain the ill-treatment meted out in EHPADs? And finally, why could there not be some accompaniment for elderly people living at home and for family carers, as is the practice in many countries of northern Europe?
“According to Santé Publique France, during the first wave, in spring 2020, the number of deaths connected to Covid-19 in care homes for the elderly in France represented around 44% of all deaths related to Covid-19 in France. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), this number of deaths represented around 66% of all deaths in Spain, but just 34% in Germany and as few as 15% in the Netherlands”, observe Mathieu Lefebvre (University of Strasbourg) and Jérôme Schoenmaeckers (ULiège). The two researchers have trawled through the data of the investigation on health, ageing and retirement in Europe (SHARE) to determine whether there is any excess mortality among EHPAD residents compared to individuals living at home. “Our results show that living in an EHPAD increases the risk of death”, they write, specifying that “considering European countries separately, we observed excess mortality in the countries of northern Europe, Central Europe and eastern Europe from our sample. In particular, we observed excess mortality in Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Estonia. Conversely, we did not observe any statistically significant excess mortality in the countries of the South: Italy and Spain. Looking at the mechanisms that could be behind these results, we identified the role of public spending on long-term care and overall resources available for care homes, but also the role of the family as a substitute for these institutions. Furthermore, the proportion of profit-making care homes in a country seems to have an effect on mortality”. (OJ)
Association Europe-Finances-Régulations. Le financement de la dépendance (available in French only). Revue d’économie financière issue 152, Q4 2023. ISBN: 978-2-3764-7090-8. 305 pages. €35,00
Le réchauffement climatique dans les Alpes
In this article published in the review Futuribles, geomorphologist and glaciologist Bernard Francou offers readers a solid and detailed analysis of the decline in glaciers and snowfall as well as the consequences of this for water resources.
“Small glaciers (less than 3 km²), such as the Saint-Sorlin glacier in the Grandes Rousses massif, which is no more than 3400 meters and rises around 500 meters, are likely to disappear around 2050”, the author warns (our translation throughout). These alpine glaciers are, however, the greatest in number and represent around three quarters of all glaciers still in existence. “Large glaciers (more than 5-10 km²), whose basin heads are in excess of 3800-4000 metres and which rise more than 1000 metres, have a life expectancy that could extend to around 2080, or even slightly beyond 2100, but at the cost of a loss of mass in the order of 70 to 90%. France’s two largest glaciers in this category: Argentière (14 km²), which is likely to have completely disappeared shortly before 2100, and the mer de Glace (35 km²). The largest glacier in the Alps, Aletsch (120 km²), which is located in Switzerland, may continue to exist until the end of the century, but at the cost of a loss of mass in the order of 70 to 80% in 2100”, the author goes on to explain, stressing also that even “if we manage to stabilise temperatures at their current levels in the coming decades, large glaciers will lose between 40 and 50% of their mass by 2100”.
This phenomenon, taken together with the decrease in rainfall, is not without its consequences for the functioning of water storage in mountainous areas and is likely to lead to a continuation of the drop in summer water flows in Alpine rivers and the Rhône, while the majority of studies show “a tendency towards water balances that are increasingly in deficit in the summer in the southern part of France, due to a drop in summer rainfall, having already been sensitive for several decades in the Mediterranean region, and an increase in evapotranspiration, which is a direct result of rising temperatures”. By 2070, with temperature increases of 3.5° in winter and 6.5° in summer, “the mountainous regions of the southern half of France are expected to see some water flows reduce in the order of more than 50%”, Francou goes on to observe, before concluding that “without indulging in scaremongering, this ought to lead to a more rational management of water resources, particularly those originating in the mountains, because with the current climate change, this is a resource that can no longer be considered inexhaustible”.
It is worth noting that the same issue of Futuribles also contains an article by former European civil servant Catherine Veilledent, presenting the conditionality regime for European funding, recently set in place to bring pressure to bear on governments calling into question the rule of law and the privacy of European law, as has been the case in Poland and, more particularly, Hungary. (OJ)
Bernard Francou. Le réchauffement climatique dans les Alpes (available in French only). Futuribles issue 459, March-April 2024. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7474-1. 128 pages. €22,00