IFTF's Future Now

New study on Chinese-EU energy cooperation

SciDevNet reports on a new study proposing cooperation between the EU and China on alternative energy research and development:

China and the European Union (EU) can significantly advance low-carbon technologies if they cooperate closely on technological development and market access, according to a new report.

'Interdependencies on Energy and Climate Security for China and Europe', outlines common challenges faced by the China and the EU in dealing with the impact of climate change on energy security — despite differences in their economic development.

The report was presented in Beijing last month (28 February). Contributors include UK think tank Chatham House and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

In order to meet its fast-growing energy demands, China will need to add power generation capacity of 1260 gigawatts by 2030. And despite stable economic development, the countries of the EU will need to generate 862 gigawatts of additional energy by 2030 to replace outdated generation facilities.

If conventional technologies are used, both China and the EU will be locked in a high-carbon development model, the report warns.

But if they work together, the EU and China — which together account for 30 per cent of the world's energy consumption — could create unprecedented opportunities for global transition to low-carbon energy generation, says the report.

China's huge energy demands, low-cost manufacturing, and cheap local technological talent offer a shortcut for the production of clean energy technologies such as wind, solar and clean coal.

China has already produced 80 per cent of the world's energy-saving lamps — many of which are based on technology created in the EU.

The report recommends that EU research bodies establish research and development centres in China and increase the involvement of Chinese expertise in the development of clean energy technology.

It also suggests that the EU builds 'low-carbon economic zones' in China and establishes a joint technology platform to improve energy efficiency in the building sector.

Technorati Tags: China, cooperation, energy, Europe

The Big Mac, symbol of globalization

A Canadian and South African research team has studied the "phylogenetic distribution" of the human diet, using a Big Mac meal as a case study:

University of Calgary plant evolutionary ecologist Jana Vamosi, working with a team led by Serban Proches from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, found that humans likely stand alone when it comes to the spectrum of species we consume. Our ability to process food combined with an insatiable hunger for new tastes and international trade systems has also led to food becoming the ultimate product of a globalized society.

“Generally speaking, we eat very broadly from the tree of life,” Vamosi said. “Others have looked at the sheer number of plant species we consume but nobody has ever examined whether the plants we eat are clustered in certain branches. It turns out that they are not.”

In a paper published in the current issue of the scientific journal BioScience, the researchers examined more than 7,000 plant species commonly eaten by people to determine the origins and evolutionary relationships of the various plants that comprise humankind’s menu. In addition to confirming the incredible number of species that are regularly eaten, they found that we chow down on members of a remarkably high number of plant families known to biology.

As a case study, the scientists analyzed the ingredients of a simple fast food meal – a McDonald’s Big Mac, French fries and a cup of coffee – to illustrate how the average human diet in developed nations is more diverse than ever before. From potatoes that were first domesticated in South America to mustard that was developed in India, onions and wheat that originated in the Middle East and coffee from Ethiopia, they found the meal contained approximately 20 different species and ingredients that originated around the world.... This leads to the conclusion that “a Big Mac is an apt symbol of globalization.”

Technorati Tags: food, globalization

Miguel Nicolelis and the future of Brazilian science

Despite the fact that I'm quoted in it, Scientific American's recent story on Miguel Nicolelis' plans to build a network of institutions to improve Brazilian science is worth reading.

Convinced that science is a key capable of unlocking human potential well beyond the rigid hierarchies of academia—and outside the traditional scientific bastions of North America and Europe—his other big project has been nothing less than a quest to transform the way research is carried out in his native Brazil. In the process, he believes, science can also leverage economic and social transformation throughout the country. The heart of Nicolelis’s vision is a string of “science cities” built across Brazil’s poorest regions, each centered on a world-class research institute specializing in a different area of science or technology. A web of education and social programs would intimately involve surrounding communities with each institution while improving local infrastructure and quality of life. And the presence of these knowledge-based oases would spark a Silicon Valley–style clustering of commercial scientific enterprise around them, jump-starting regional development.

One of the most notable aspects of his vision is that it reaches down into primary education-- something that's very unusual for science city projects that tend to focus on attracting major multinationals or luring in world-class researchers.

In Nicolelis’s view, reaching children well before college age is crucial. He believes that science education strengthens critical thinking skills in general, and he plans to use improvements in the children’s regular school performance as a benchmark for the effectiveness of the supplementary classes at institute science schools. If some of the kids become interested in pursuing science and technology careers, they will find plenty of opportunities in the knowledge economy. “Ninety-nine percent of scientific work doesn’t require a Ph.D.,” he insists.

Technorati Tags: brain, brain circulation, brazil, pro-am

The new Indian Ocean technology trade

My friend Gregg Zachary, whose career is an illustration of Thomas Friedman's thesis-- first he covered technology in Silicon Valley, then he covered the culture of Silicon Valley, and now he writes about innovation worldwide-- has a piece (I saw it first in the Pakistan Daily Times; it's also on Project Syndicate) on the "browning" of African technology that, appropriately, has been republished in a large number of papers in Asia, but has hardly been seen in the U.S.

Africa boasts the world’s fastest-growing market for wireless telephony, and Huawei — with offices in 14 African countries — is running away with the business, sending scores of engineers into the bush to bring a new generation of low-cost technology to some of the planet’s poorest people.... According to Chris Lundh, the American chief of Rwandatel, “That’s the way things work in Africa now. The Chinese do it all.”

Well, not quite. Across sub-Saharan Africa, engineers from India — armed with appropriate technologies honed in their home market — are also making their mark. India supplies Africa with computer-education courses, the most reliable water pumps, low-cost rice-milling equipment, and dozens of other technologies.

The sudden influx of Chinese and Indian technologies represents the “browning” of African technology, which has long been the domain of “white” Americans and Europeans who want to apply their saving hand to African problems.

“It is a tectonic shift to the East with shattering implications,” says Calestous Juma, a Kenyan professor at Harvard University who advises the African Union on technology policy.

One big change is in education. There are roughly 2,000 African students in China, most of whom are pursuing engineering and science courses. According to Juma, that number is expected to double over the next two years, making China “Africa’s leading destination for science and engineering education”.

The “browning” of technology in Africa is only in its infancy, but the shift is likely to accelerate. Chinese and Indian engineers hail from places that have much more in common with nitty-gritty Africa than comfortable Silicon Valley or Cambridge. Africa also offers a testing ground for Asian-designed technologies that are not yet ready for US or European markets.

In a way, you can see this as the reconstruction of a set of trade networks-- trade in resources, ideas, and people-- that connected east Africa, the Middle East, and south Asia for centuries. These networks were disrupted by Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and eventually British merchants starting in the 1500s (all those East India Companies weren't breaking new commercial ground, but were muscling in on some of the richest markets in the world). Now, with the end of colonialism and the rise of India and China as countries seen as offering technical expertise equivalent to the West, those networks are reasserting themselves.

Heading east, and following another ancient trade network, the Silk Road, one sees a new interest in Indian education in Japan:

Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.... [M]any people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

As the Japan Times reported earlier this year,

the arrival of Indian international schools here follows on the heels of the rapid growth in the number of Indian residents -- in turn largely driven by the IT sector's demand for highly skilled engineers, with whom India is famously well-blessed....

But it's not just Indian people who are welcoming Indian-style education here, with many Japanese becoming aware of the high academic standards it offers -- especially in mathematics. Rumors among people that Indian children "memorize the multiplication tables from 1×1 to 99×99 in India" have done a lot to fuel this interest, which has been reflected in press headlines such as "Indian schools boast astonishing math skills."

The schools also benefitted from a labor anomaly: "many Indian wives who come here with their husbands have a teaching license."

If reports in the Japanese press reflect the interest of parents, there are two things at work here. The first is a sense that because the Indian economy is growing so quickly, the educational system must be doing something right. Second, and more interesting, is a belief that what students are getting is an exotic combination of English-style rigor and something like ancient memory arts-- most notably, mnemonics and techniques to do rapid calculation.

It's another example of the remarkable globalization of learning that's led to lots of European universities opening campuses in China, Indian tutors working remotely with Silicon Valley students, but also a Malaysian private university opening a campus in Botswana-- not that far from Great Zimbabwe, where South Asian merchants traded for African goods a thousand years ago.

Technorati Tags: China, education, globalization, India, university, X2

The world's biggest company is Chinese

For now, anyway:

PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, became the world's first trillion dollar company today after floating on the Shanghai stock market.

In scenes reminiscent of the dotcom boom, investors rushed to buy shares in the company. They floated at 16.7 yuan (107p), and almost tripled to close at 43.96 yuan, giving the group a market capitalisation of around $1 trillion (£480bn).

As well as leapfrogging ExxonMobil – whose $480bn market capitalisation had previously made it the world's biggest company – PetroChina is worth nearly twice as much as the combined value of Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

Technorati Tags: business, China

Going to a place called Lim Kok Wing / Gonna get a big bowl of beef chow mein

The Guardian covered the opening of London's newest university-- a branch of Limkokwing University, which is based in Kuala Lumpur and has campuses in Beijing, Jakarta, and Gabarone (the capital of Botswana).

It's the moment when the empire strikes back - in a good way. For generations, Malaysians have been educated by the old colonial power - either coming to UK universities and colleges or following British-style degree courses at home.

This month, the first Malaysian university to return the favour opened its doors in London's Piccadilly. The grand Victorian edifice on one of the capital's most expensive streets shows that Limkokwing University is determined to make a splash.

There are lots of European and American universities, educational corporations, consultants, etc. involved in joint ventures with Asian universities, or setting up foreign branch campuses. But this is no longer entirely a one-way process.

It may have been inevitable that Limkokwing would move into the European market, given the already-global character of its main campus:

The 6,000 students at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Kuala Lumpur come from 150 countries, mostly from the developing world, but increasingly from Europe, where governments like those of Denmark and Germany are keen to expose young people to the culture and business of Asia.

So the strategy of creating branch campuses is part brand extension, part growth opportunity, and part attempt to expand opportunities for global study-- something that schools like this see as particularly important.

All this is neat, in the way that counterintuitive trends can be. But what really sticks with me is something Lim says near the end of the article:

British higher education goes back hundreds of years and Malaysian universities can never match the strong traditions in academic scholarship built up by the British.

However, as a developing country, Malaysia is better able to understand the needs of other developing nations. It is therefore in a better position to deliver British education to the developing world.

In future, British education will be delivered in China and Malaysia and wherever. I don't think that can be stopped and I think it is a good thing for the UK.

"British education" as a model of education, not as something that happens in (or emanates from) a specific geographical location, and can thus be treated as a monopoly. This is disruptive thinking. Or as Kris Olds and Susan Robertson comment,

So a Malaysian university, providing a Malaysian education in London, and a British education in Botswana (to students from over 100 countries)…the global higher ed landscape is indeed changing…

Technorati Tags: business, education, higher education, Malaysia, UK, university

More on global trends in universities

A promising-looking source on globalization and higher education: GlobalHigherEd, a blog started by University of Wisconsin geographer Kris Olds, and Bristol professor Susan Robertson. They explain:

We are interested in how and why new knowledge and new spaces (including socio-technical networks) are being developed in association with the emergence of the ‘knowledge economy’, and what the implications of this complex development process are. Three examples of relatively territorialized knowledge spaces are Qatar Education City, Singapore’s ‘Global Schoolhouse’, and the European Higher Education Area, though even in these cases they are fundamentally dependent upon extra-territorial relations and linkages (e.g., see the Singapore-MIT Alliance). Examples of relatively more networked spaces of knowledge production include the Erasmus Mundus programme, and university consortia like the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) or the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). There are also a myriad of fascinating and rarely examined spaces of knowledge production (e.g., non-profit think tanks, private research centres and universities).

A bit on the academic side, but that's perfectly appropriate for a blog about... academia.

Technorati Tags: blogging, business, education, university

Building universities in Saudi Arabia

There's a university-building boom in Saudi Arabia. Given that the kingdom has a growing population and even faster-growing demand for higher education, is raking in vast amounts of money thanks to high oil prices, and is starting to think about its place in a post-oil world (or at least a world in which its reserves are no longer vast enough to give it a dominant position in world the oil market), this development isn't entirely surprising. Last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that

The higher-education ministry's budget has nearly tripled since 2004, to $15-billion, much of which has been spent on opening more than 100 new colleges and universities.... And the government has lifted a decades-old ban on private institutions, offering free land and more than $10-million toward scholarships and building costs.

Earlier this year, the kingdom announced a "government plan to open 11 new universities in the next three years... located throughout the kingdom, [which] will focus on applied sciences."

Today, the New York Times had an article on the ground-breaking of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate university on the Red Sea. There are several interesting things about the way the university is developing, and how it'll be organized.

Technorati Tags: education, R&D, research, Saudi Arabia, science, university

But the good news is we'll save fuel sailing from Asia to Europe

The Northwest Passage will soon be open, and doubtless more intrepid captains sailing between Asia and Europe will be using it. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that

Of particular note is imminent opening of the fabled Northwest Passage through the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. This shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in the early 1900s. It took his group over two years of arduous and dangerous navigation through narrow lanes of open water amongst thick, compact ice. Analysts at the Canadian Ice Service and the U.S. National Ice Center confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972. The Northwest Passage traces from Baffin Bay in the South toward M'Clure Strait.

[from NSIDC; large version here]

I haven't seen an estimate yet of how long it'll be before it's possible to sail along the northern coast of Russia.

[via The Guardian]

Technorati Tags: Arctic, climate, North Pole, Northwest Passage

Beware the authoritarian Great Powers

In the latest Foreign Affairs, Azar Gat makes the case that "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers" [sub req] is the big threat to Western democracy.

Today's global liberal democratic order faces two challenges. The first is radical Islam -- and it is the lesser of the two challenges. Although the proponents of radical Islam find liberal democracy repugnant, and the movement is often described as the new fascist threat, the societies from which it arises are generally poor and stagnant. They represent no viable alternative to modernity and pose no significant military threat to the developed world. It is mainly the potential use of weapons of mass destruction -- particularly by nonstate actors -- that makes militant Islam a menace.

The second, and more significant, challenge emanates from the rise of nondemocratic great powers: the West's old Cold War rivals China and Russia, now operating under authoritarian capitalist, rather than communist, regimes. Authoritarian capitalist great powers played a leading role in the international system up until 1945. They have been absent since then. But today, they seem poised for a comeback.

Authoritarian capitalist states, today exemplified by China and Russia, may represent a viable alternative path to modernity, which in turn suggests that there is nothing inevitable about liberal democracy's ultimate victory -- or future dominance.

Technorati Tags: economics, politics, security