The National Association of Korean Americans (NAKA) honored CISAC co-founder John Lewis March 23 for his longterm efforts to support peace and reconciliation in Northeast Asia. NAKA President Kuhn Seo visited CISAC to present a plaque honoring Lewis for his efforts promoting the Six-Party Talks and reducing political tension between North and South Korea. "This is a very, very dangerous area of the world," Seo said. "U.S. has acted as a balancing power in Northeast Asia and Professor Lewis has been a pioneer in this. It's one reason why we haven't seen war there in 60 years." The plaque recognizes Lewis for his "contribution to reconciliation and peaceful settlement on the Korean peninsula." Seo said an op-ed titled, "Activating a North Korea policy," that was published recently in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been widely circulated within the Korean-American community and helped bring Lewis' efforts to wide attention. "He is highly respected in North Korea and South Korea as an educator," Seo said.

The First Quarter 2010 issue of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) Energy Forum has published an article written by PESD research fellow Varun Rai and PESD affiliated faculty David G. Victor. This issue of the forum  looks at the far east, particularly China and India. There are six articles that look at multiple facets of energy economics in that area and the forum will continue with this focus in the second quarter issue.

Rai and Victor's article titled "Identifying Viable Options in Developing Countries for Climate Change Mitigation: The Case of India" offers a framework for identifying viable and credible climate change mitigation actions in developing countries. The framework is applied to the case of India to suggest that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India's own self-interest, and that leverage on emissions from each of these options could amount to several hundred million tons of CO₂ annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030.

Robert Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economics, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs, gave an S.T. Lee seminar at FSI on March 11, addressing "The Rise of the New Economic Powers: How the United States Can Meet the Challenge." He set the stage by discussing the vast new economic geography.

• The global economy is now multi-polar, with a number of players in global trade, finance, and technology development, especially China, India and Brazil.  The rising powers, however, still have large numbers of poor people and see their domestic needs and objectives differently than developed nations.
• Second, the big sovereign risk questions now surround the developed, not the developing economies, and the pressures of the global financial crisis have made them more concerned with domestic recovery, rather than global systemic issues, particularly trade.
• Third, the Internet and rising importance of services has brought gains as well as perils. Global integration of production and supply chains is efficient, but disruptions are readily transmitted across national borders. As increasing portions of investment are devoted to services and intangibles, rapid dissemination puts intellectual property at risk.

Asking how to develop a new international system, Hormats emphasized that the Group of 20 was designed to foster greater inclusion and dialogue, calling cooperation during the recent financial crisis the "largest multilateral collaborative endeavor since World War II." In an effort to move forward with strategic concerns, rather than immediate deliverables, the U.S. government is fostering a number of dialogues with key partners - including Russia, China, and Brazil. Hormats also cited the need to address issues more efficiently. Noting that large scale negotiations like Copenhagen no longer work, he identified a new focus on building coalitions of the willing and able.

Article Highlights

• A lot has changed since the Six-Party Talks with North Korea began almost eight years ago.

• For starters, Pyongyang has now conducted two nuclear tests, making its nuclear status much less ambiguous.

• Consequently, Washington must adjust its goals in any future negotiations with the North--especially its stance that Pyongyang must first denuclearize.

Originally created to deal with an earlier nuclear crisis in 2002, the multi-party negotiations were intended to replace, and improve upon, the 1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework, which froze Pyongyang's fissile production program in an attempt to prevent the North from getting nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, whatever promise these talks first held vanished in October 2006 when North Korea decided to attempt a nuclear test. And any remaining shreds of promise disappeared completely last May with Pyongyang's second nuclear test.

So the North Korea we are dealing with today (i.e., a de facto nuclear weapon state) is much different than the North Korea we were dealing with in 2002 (i.e., a country whose nuclear status was ambiguous). Making matters worse, we have painted ourselves into a corner by vowing that we will never "accept" Pyongyang as a nuclear-armed state.

Escaping from this corner will require a delicate, but not impossible, diplomatic dance. We don't have to give up our ultimate goal of denuclearizing North Korea and bringing it within the confines of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But we do have to free ourselves from out-of-date thinking so we can actually tackle this challenge instead of merely posturing about it.

Without a doubt, in 2010, the diplomatic dance is far more difficult than it was before October 2006. The dilemma is that Pyongyang has likely concluded that Washington can neither wrest away its nuclear weapons status nor build enough international pressure to convince it to do so. Most critically, North Korea's two nuclear tests appear to have transformed the country's self-image and bargaining strategy. Pyongyang sees no reason to heed the call for negotiations explicitly designed to relieve the regime of what it worked so long and hard to achieve.

Put another way, the last eight years of talks may have convinced Pyongyang that Washington will never be able to force the North into giving up its tiny, but politically crucial, nuclear stockpile. This may also signal that the space for negotiations has narrowed, and that there is less room to find the golden midpoint: Giving Pyongyang enough of what it wants (i.e., prestige, security, respect, and/or material rewards) so that it will surrender its nuclear weapons.

Things never should have gotten so bad, but numerous failed policies since 2002 have produced consequences that cannot be erased by U.S. presidential cycles. In other words, simply because a new president is sworn into office doesn't mean the other players will blindly accept an offer to turn back the clock or indulge U.S. attempts to press the "reset" button.

So what do we do now? For starters, Washington needs to accept the reality that North Korea is a country with nuclear weapons; that there is--in the short term at least--little we can do about it; and that continuing to focus on denuclearizing Pyongyang gains us nothing. In fact, the only way to advance U.S. interests on the nuclear issue with North Korea is to admit that the ground has shifted. We don't have to shout it from the rooftops, but getting the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program cannot remain our overriding objective, as crucial as that might seem. Rather, it's time we refocused our work, keeping the nuclear problem on the agenda but not letting it completely dominate our approach.

To move forward constructively, we should first resume efforts by several U.S. administrations--from Reagan to Bush to Clinton--to prod the North into becoming a state more fully integrated into the global community. That will take years of hard work, conducted simultaneously on several fronts, but we had better get on with it. Next, we need to sit down and talk with the North Koreans to better refine our assumptions about what will work and what won't work.

Waiting around for significant political change in Pyongyang to solve our problems is the longest of long shots. North Korea as we know it isn't going to disappear any time soon, and the problems that flow from its anomalous policies won't lessen if Washington keeps banging its collective head against the same old wall.

Global meat production has tripled in the past three decades and could double its present level by 2050, according to a new report on the livestock industry by an international team of scientists and policy experts. The impact of this "livestock revolution" is likely to have significant consequences for human health, the environment and the global economy, the authors conclude.

"The livestock industry is massive and growing," said Harold A. Mooney, co-editor of the two-volume report, Livestock in a Changing Landscape (Island Press). Mooney is a professor of biology, senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and senior fellow at FSI, by courtesy.

"This is the first time that we've looked at the social, economic, health and environmental impacts of livestock in an integrated way and presented solutions for reducing the detrimental effects of the industry and enhancing its positive attributes," he said.

Among the key findings in the report are:

• More than 1.7 billion animals are used in livestock production worldwide and occupy more than one-fourth of the Earth's land.
• Production of animal feed consumes about one-third of total arable land.
• Livestock production accounts for approximately 40 percent of the global agricultural gross domestic product.
• The livestock sector, including feed production and transport, is responsible for about 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. 

Although about 1 billion poor people worldwide derive at least some part of their livelihood from domesticated animals, the rapid growth of commercialized industrial livestock has reduced employment opportunities for many, according to the report. In developing countries, such as India and China, large-scale industrial production has displaced many small, rural producers, who are under additional pressure from health authorities to meet the food safety standards that a globalized marketplace requires.

Beef, poultry, pork and other meat products provide one-third of humanity's protein intake, but the impact on nutrition across the globe is highly variable, according to the report. "Too much animal-based protein is not good for human diets, while too little is a problem for those on a protein-starved diet, as happens in many developing countries," Mooney noted.

While overconsumption of animal-source foods - particularly meat, milk and eggs - has been linked to heart disease and other chronic conditions, these foods remain a vital source of protein and nutrient nutrition throughout the developing world, the report said. The authors cited a recent study of Kenyan children that found a positive association between meat intake and physical growth, cognitive function and school performance.

Human health also is affected by pathogens and harmful substances transmitted by livestock, the authors said. Emerging diseases, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, are closely linked to changes in the livestock production but are more difficult to trace and combat in the newly globalized marketplace, they said.

Environmental impacts

The livestock sector is a major environmental polluter, the authors said, noting that much of the world's pastureland has been degraded by grazing or feed production, and that many forests have been clear-cut to make way for additional farmland. Feed production also requires intensive use of water, fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuels, added co-editor Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Animal waste is another serious concern. "Because only a third of the nutrients fed to animals are absorbed, animal waste is a leading factor in the pollution of land and water resources, as observed in case studies in China, India, the United States and Denmark," the authors wrote. Total phosphorous excretions are estimated to be seven to nine times greater than that of humans, with detrimental effects on the environment.

The beef, pork and poultry industries also emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, Steinfeld said, adding that climate-change issues related to livestock remain largely unaddressed. "Without a change in current practices, the intensive increases in projected livestock production systems will double the current environmental burden and will contribute to large-scale ecosystem degradation unless appropriate measures are taken," he said.

Solutions

The report concludes with a review of various options for introducing more environmentally and socially sustainable practices to animal production systems.

"We want to protect those on the margins who are dependent on a handful of livestock for their livelihood," Mooney said. "On the other side, we want people engaged in the livestock industry to look closely at the report and determine what improvements they can make."

One solution is for countries to adopt policies that provide incentives for better management practices that focus on land conservation and more efficient water and fertilizer use, he said.

But calculating the true cost of meat production is a daunting task, Mooney added. Consider the piece of ham on your breakfast plate, and where it came from before landing on your grocery shelf. First, take into account the amount of land used to rear the pig. Then factor in all the land, water and fertilizer used to grow the grain to feed the pig and the associated pollution that results.

Finally, consider that while the ham may have come from Denmark, where there are twice as many pigs as people, the grain to feed the animal was likely grown in Brazil, where rainforests are constantly being cleared to grow more soybeans, a major source of pig feed.

"So much of the problem comes down to the individual consumer," said co-editor Fritz Schneider of the Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL). "People aren't going to stop eating meat, but I am always hopeful that as people learn more, they do change their behavior. If they are informed that they do have choices to help build a more sustainable and equitable world, they can make better choices."

Livestock in a Changing Landscape is a collaboration of the FAO, SHL, Woods Institute for the Environment, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Scientific Committee for Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD), and Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative (LEAD).

Other editors of the report are Laurie E. Neville (Stanford University), Pierre Gerber (FAO), Jeroen Dijkman (FAO), Shirley Tarawali (ILRI) and Cees de Haan (World Bank). Initial funding for the project was provided by a 2004 Environmental Venture Projects grant from the Woods Institute.

Editor's Note

To obtain a copy of Livestock in a Changing Landscape, contact Angela Osborn at Island Press: (202) 232-7933 (extension 35) or aosborn@islandpress.org.