The OECD and the WTO have accumulated systematic data on the magnitude of support going to farmers as a result of farm policies. The datasets are collected for different purposes, but give a detailed picture of the evolution of these policies. This paper extends recent work on the compatibility of these two classification systems with a focus on Norway, Switzerland, the US and the EU. The results show how the OECD data set, particularly with respect to the link between direct payments and production requirements, complements that of the WTO. Many payments classified as in the WTO Green Box require production, raising the possibility that they may not be trade-neutral. Though the issue of correct notifications to the WTO is the province of lawyers, the implications for modeling and policy analysis is more interesting to economists. And the broader question of improving the consistency of the two datasets is of importance in the quest for transparency.
This work was undertaken while Mittenzwei was a Research Fellow at the Europe Center.
Returning to her office in Pyongyang from a site visit to an agricultural development project one day last year, Katharina Zellweger had a revelation to share with her colleagues:
“I saw trees, bushes, upland rice, maize, berries, and all kinds of other crops planted on the hillsides!” she said.
Life in North Korea today is much more vibrant than the stark slopes and muted grey concrete buildings Zellweger encountered when she began traveling to North Korea in the mid-1990s. Day-to-day existence is still a struggle for many people, especially in the countryside, but Zellweger, who is the 2011–12 Pantech Fellow with Stanford’s Korean Studies Program, has watched positive change slowly ripple throughout the country for 17 years.
“If you have the patience and perseverance, and try to understand the country as well as you can, it is possible to do work there that is meaningful for the survival of the people and for the future of the country,” she said during a recent interview.
Zellweger’s projects in North Korea began in 1995 while she worked for the Hong Kong office of Caritas Internationalis, a Catholic network of humanitarian organizations, and continued when she moved to Pyongyang to lead the efforts of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, a part of Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. She lived in Pyongyang and interacted with North Koreans on a daily basis for five years until coming to Stanford in October 2011.
Since her earliest visits to North Korea, Zellweger has introduced ways to help alleviate the formidable problem of food scarcity and hunger. North Korea has always been a country of urban dwellers, she said, and the 60 percent of North Koreans who live in cities drain the countryside of its crops. In an effort to carve out new places to grow food during the toughest years, farmers have resorted to stripping hillsides of their trees. The solution is short-term and unsustainable, though, as the denuded slopes can only be planted for a few years, and it leads to soil erosion and flooding.
“If you do not have enough to eat and you are hungry, that is what people do,” Zellweger said.
She and her team tackled the problem in one province with a simple solution. They taught rural housewives to plant bands of deep-root vegetation every 10 meters along cleared hillsides. The slopes are a “no man’s land” outside of the commune system, and the women have official permission to either keep what they harvest or sell it in the market for extra income. The environment also reaps big benefits from this sustainable agricultural method, which is catching on in more provinces.
“The last time I visited the project, the women told me that they now grow about 15 species of crops, whereas previously they only had one or two,” Zellweger said. “It has brought biodiversity back to those areas.”
Along with receptiveness to new farming techniques, North Koreans have also embraced certain technological developments. Even though the city and countryside are relatively cut off from one another, for example, cell phone tower transmissions now crisscross most of North Korea. Already one million of North Korea’s 24 million citizens own cell phones, and can find coverage in 75 percent of the country.
“Mobile telephones are not just in the big cities—even farm managers have them,” Zellweger said. “With that, communication has improved a lot among the North Korean people.”
Some ripples of change have also penetrated North Korea’s educational system. English replaced Russian a few years ago as the main foreign language taught in school, Zellweger said, who smiled as she described the warbling greetings of school children who would sometimes approach her to test out their language skills.
“Years ago, I would not even have eye contact with people,” she said. “People would simply look down, and I would feel like thin air, as if I did not exist. That has gone—there is now a certain amount of natural curiosity.”
When she first began visiting North Korea, the Pyongyang Business School, a professional development project close to Zellweger’s heart, did not exist yet. Under her leadership, several groups of 30 to 35 mid-level managers and government officials had the opportunity to participate in a special diploma program. During each 12-month program cycle, lecturers from the Hong Kong Management Association flew monthly to Pyongyang to teach an intensive three-day seminar on subjects ranging from finance to management.
“The Hong Kong lecturers would say, ‘We could not have more diligent students,’” Zellweger said. “The feedback from the students was also very, very positive.”
As Zellweger experienced during her 17 years working in North Korea, change may unfold gradually there but it does come. And for the positive development to grow even more transformative, she said, the basic needs of everyday North Koreans must be met.
“When basic needs like food and medical care are covered, I believe things will start moving forward at a different pace,” Zellweger said. “There are 24 million people in North Korea who just want to lead a decent life, and who have the same dreams and hopes as we all have. That goes beyond any political issue.”
Zellweger will give a talk on May 11 about her work and the change she witnessed in North Korea.
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Katharina Zellweger will share her insights into North Korea based on her experience as a development and humanitarian aid worker and a resident of Pyongyang. Closely interacting with North Koreans daily, Zellweger lived in Pyongyang for five years as the North Korea country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). She is a Swiss national with over 30 years of experience in humanitarian work from an Asian base. Her primary engagement has been with China and North Korea.
While heading the SDC program in Pyongyang, Zellweger focused on sustainable agricultural production to address food security issues, income generation to improve people's livelihoods, and capacity development to contribute to individual and institutional learning.
Before joining SDC, Zellweger worked nearly 30 years at the Caritas Internationalis office in Hong Kong, where she pioneered the organization's involvement in China and North Korea. In recognition of her work in North Korea, the Vatican made Zellweger a Dame of St. Gregory the Great in 2006.
Zellweger holds a master's degree in international administration from the School of International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a Swiss diploma in trade, commerce, and business administration. She also apprenticed with Switzerland’s national agricultural management program.
Zellweger joined the Korean Studies Program as the 2011—12 Pantech Fellow to conduct research on the transformation, especially social and economic change, of North Korea and its society.
Philippines Conference Room
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C245 - Desk 2
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Katharina Zellweger joined CISAC as a Visiting Scholar in September 2013. Previously, she was a 2011–12 Pantech Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. She came to Stanford after five years of living in Pyongyang as the North Korea country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Through her SDC and earlier work, she has witnessed modest economic and social changes not visible to most North Korea observers. Her research at Stanford will draw on over 15 years of humanitarian work in North Korea and explore how aid intervention can stimulate positive sustainable change there.
While heading SDC’s Pyongyang office, Zellweger focused on sustainable agricultural production and income generation projects. She is well versed in observing and reporting on political, social, and economic trends and developments.
Prior to joining the SDC, Zellweger worked for nearly 30 years at the Caritas Internationalis office in Hong Kong, the center of its international activities. She organized and led aid and development projects related to North Korea for 10 years there. Her work included collaborating with the media to generate national and international awareness about North Korean humanitarian issues.
Zellweger holds an MA in international administration from the School of International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a Swiss diploma in trade, commerce, and business administration. She also apprenticed with Switzerland’s national agricultural management program.
In 2006, the Vatican named Zellweger as a Dame of St. Gregory the Great, and in 2005 South Korea’s Tji Hak-soon Justice and Peace Foundation honored her with its annual award. She is an active member of the International Women’s Forum and of the Kadoorie Charitable Trust.
Infectious diseases, especially those transmitted from person to person through the respiratory route, continue to pose a threat to the global community. Public health surveillance systems and the International Health Regulations are intended to facilitate the recognition of and rapid response to infectious diseases that pose the risk of developing into a pandemic, but the response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic illustrates the continuing challenges to implementing appropriate prevention and control measures. The response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic will be discussed and its implications examined.
Speaker biography:
Arthur Reingold, MD is Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Public Health (SPH) at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He holds concurrent appointments in Medicine and in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He completed his BA and MD degrees at the University of Chicago and then completed a residency in internal medicine at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is board certified in internal medicine and holds a current medical license in California, but has devoted the last 25 years to the study and prevention of infectious diseases in the U.S and in developing countries throughout the world.
He began his career as an infectious disease epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), working there for eight years. While at CDC, he worked domestically on Toxic Shock Syndrome, Legionnaires’ disease, bacterial meningitis, fungal infections, and non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections and internationally on epidemic meningitis in West Africa and Nepal.
Since joining the faculty at UCB in 1987, he has worked on a variety of emerging and re-emerging infections in the U.S.; on acute rheumatic fever in New Zealand; and on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and acute respiraatory infections in Brazil, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, India and Indonesia. He has directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program at UCB/UCSF since its inception in 1988; co-directed (with Dr. Duc Vugia of the California Department of Health Services), the CDC-funded California Emerging Infections Program since its inception in 1994; and served as the Principal Investigator of the UCB Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness (CIDP) since its inception in 2002.
He also has ongoing research projects concerning malaria in Uganda; HIV/AIDS and related conditions in Brazil; and tuberculosis in India. He regularly teaches courses on epidemiologic methods, outbreak investigation, and the application of epidemiologic methods in developing countries, among others. He also teaches annual short courses on similar topics in Hong Kong, Brazil, Switzerland, and other countries.
He has been elected to membership in the American Epidemiological Society; fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Infectious Diseases Society of America; and membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In Hong Kong, He has a close working relationship with Chinese University, particularly with its School of Public Health and its Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Dr. Reingold gives short courses at the School of Public Health each year and he serves on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Emerging Infectious diseases.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Katharina Zellweger will share her insights into North Korea based on her experience as a development and humanitarian aid worker and a resident of Pyongyang. Closely interacting with North Koreans daily, Zellweger lived in Pyongyang for five years as the North Korea country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). She is a Swiss national with over 30 years of experience in humanitarian work from an Asian base. Her primary engagement has been with China and North Korea.
While heading the SDC program in Pyongyang, Zellweger focused on sustainable agricultural production to address food security issues, income generation to improve people's livelihoods, and capacity development to contribute to individual and institutional learning.
Before joining SDC, Zellweger worked nearly 30 years at the Caritas Internationalis office in Hong Kong, where she pioneered the organization's involvement in China and North Korea. Her humanitarian aid programs in North Korea were coordinated through Caritas-Hong Kong. In recognition of her work in North Korea, the Vatican made Zellweger a Dame of St. Gregory the Great in 2006.
Zellweger holds a master's degree in international administration from the School of International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a Swiss diploma in trade, commerce, and business administration. She also apprenticed with Switzerland’s national agricultural management program.
Zellweger joined the Korean Studies Program as the 2011-12 Pantech Fellow to conduct research on the transformation, especially social and economic change, of North Korea and its society.
Philippines Conference Room
Phillip Lipscy, an assistant professor of political science and a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, is currently conducting research on energy efficiency and financial crisis response. Here he discusses his recent research within the context of contemporary Japan, and comments on current social and political conditions in Japan after the March 2011 disaster.
What is the primary focus of your research right now?
One focus is on the politics of energy efficiency. I am exploring the question: Why do some countries, like Japan, pursue very aggressive efficiency measures, while others, like the United States, choose not to?
I am also researching the politics of financial crisis response. My key research questions include: What political factors determine the speed and effectiveness of crisis response? When do countries act decisively? What policies are chosen and under what conditions?
In your recent research about energy-efficient policymaking, what are some of the cases and issues in Asia that you have explored?
Japan is a very important case. Its economy is one of the most energy efficient in the world based on measures such as energy intensity. There are a lot of questions, however, about whether any of that is due to policy measures.
I have been examining Japan’s transportation sector with Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, and our findings are counterintuitive. Most of Japan's relative advantage in transportation sector efficiency is not due to automobile fuel economy, which is what the Japanese government tends to play up. Instead, Japan is characterized by an abnormally high rail share and less total distance traveled. [A great loss to the Stanford community, Dr. Schipper recently passed away. More information is available here.]
What I show in my research is that Japan's efficiency achievements are closely tied to traditional pork barrel politics. High costs have been imposed on the general public—for example, through automobile taxes and highway tolls. The revenue from these measures was traditionally redistributed to key constituencies of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), namely rural residents and the construction industry.
This arrangement worked nicely for several decades, reducing energy consumption while also helping to keep the LDP in power. These arrangements, however, have become unsustainable with political changes since the 1990s, particularly the coming to power of the Democratic Party of Japan. These political changes have put Japan's energy efficiency policy in a state of flux. The current electoral system makes it more difficult to impose diffuse costs on the public—such as through gasoline or CO2 taxes—but there is no obvious alternative mechanism.
A young boy helps with clean-up efforts after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (Flickr/DJ Milky)
As far as you can speculate at this point, what impact do you think that the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have on Japan’s future energy policy?
Before the Fukushima disaster, Japan had planned to increase electricity generated by nuclear power to 50 percent by 2030. These plans are almost certainly going to be shelved. Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently announced plans to gradually move away from nuclear power in the coming years.
This discussion is not unique to Japan. Germany, Italy, and Switzerland have all recently announced anti-nuclear policies in response to Fukushima. On a recent trip to Taiwan, I found a similar discussion underway there. Taiwan, however, is very similar to Japan in terms of its high dependence on energy imports. This dependence creates a dilemma.
Japan's economy is already one of the most energy efficient in the world, making it more difficult to realize incremental energy savings through efficiency gains. Oil and natural gas are volatile and subject to geopolitical shocks. Renewables are not yet able to meet the kind of energy demand you have in a large economy like Japan. For the foreseeable future, less nuclear energy means higher costs and greater dependence on fossil fuels. That is going to have negative implications for energy security and climate change.
You recently returned from a trip to Japan. What is your perception of the way that everyday people are dealing with the triple disaster that took place in March? What is your assessment of the political situation?
The most remarkable thing is how quickly the Japanese people came together to support disaster victims and conserve energy. There was an outpouring of help, especially volunteer activities and financial contributions. People are taking energy conservation seriously, keeping air conditioning off even during the unbearably humid summer.
The situation at Fukushima was a big blow to the national psyche though. There have been some media reports overplaying the dangers of radiation, and people are deeply concerned about food safety.
Unfortunately, the political situation has been truly tragic. Even for a political scientist like myself, the inability of Japanese leaders to come together after the disaster is troubling. It took less than a month after the earthquake for bickering and squabbling to return full force. On a more positive note, local government leaders and some private sector actors have filled the void to some degree.
It was striking to find how much the Japanese private sector was stepping in to take over functions that we generally associate with government—things like disaster relief, provision of supplies, and screening food for radiation contamination.
A view of the floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. (Flickr/Stefan)
What publications are you currently working on?
I just finished a manuscript, co-authored with my former student Philippe de Koning, on how Japan's defense establishment has dealt with fiscal austerity over the past decade. Now that the United States and Europe are dealing with similar pressures to cut back defense spending, we wanted to see how Japan had managed. We found that Japan's defense planners have fared relatively well within the domestic budgetary process, but they are in an extremely tough situation. Without a major change in policy, when the short-term coping measures being implemented today run their course over the next decade, Japan will face a sharp reduction in its military capabilities.
In addition, I collaborated during the past academic year with Hirofumi Takinami, a Shorenstein APARC Visiting Fellow from Japan’s Ministry of Finance, to examine lessons from Japan’s financial crisis in the 1990s. We looked at the extent to which the United States took these lessons into account when it encountered its own economic downturn in 2008. We found that Japan's crisis influenced the U.S. response quite a bit, but there was some variation by policy area based on the degree of politicization. For example, in monetary policy, which is technocratic and politically insulated, the lessons from Japan were implemented quickly. It was slower for financial sector bailouts though, and especially so for fiscal policy.
In this coming academic year what are the courses that you will be teaching?
I will be teaching a graduate seminar on political economy, primarily intended for PhD students in political science, as well as an undergraduate course on the politics of financial crisis.
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World survey showcases an alarming decline in freedom, democracy and respect for human rights around the world for a fifth consecutive year. Only 60% of the world’s 194 countries and 14 territories can be defined as democracies with respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms.
While universal human rights are trampled upon in dictatorships as North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and China, the European foreign policy debate is dominated by Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza and the US-led war against international terrorism.
Flotillas to Gaza receive massive publicity in the European press, despite the fact that the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is open and the UN secretary general calling the campaign "an unnecessary provocation."
No flotillas are sailing towards Damascus and Teheran, despite the fact that Amnesty reported some 1,400 deaths in the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime, as well as rape and torture of children. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Iran has executed 175 people this year, including women, children and homosexuals by public hanging and stoning.
Calls for a boycott of China are rarely issued in the European debate, although the communist regime in Beijing occupies Tibet and accounts for two thirds of the world’s executions. No fly-ins head to Atatürk International Airport, despite the fact that Turkey illegally occupies Northern Cyprus and commits systematic human rights violations in the Kurdish territories.
Elsewhere, very few European writers and cultural figures condemn the Castro regime, despite the fact that Cuba has forced 18 dissident journalists into exile this year.
The one-sidedness of the European foreign policy debate is clearly exemplified in the case of North Korea, one of the world’s worst human rights abusers according to Amnesty. A recently publicized UN report charged that some 3.5 million of the country’s 24 million inhabitants suffer from acute food shortages as result of the totalitarian regime’s policies.
Self-styled peace activists
Pyongyang has established a system of prison camps throughout the country where 200,000 dissidents are subjected to systematic torture and starvation. Forced labor guarantees that no detainees are strong enough to rebel; attempts to escape are punished with torture and execution.
Very few European campaigns are initiated in support of the North Korean people. This selective engagement can be explained by the fact that countries like North Korea don’t generate widespread media coverage or political debate. More significantly, the problems don’t fit into the dominant European foreign policy discourse, which discriminates between moral principles in the name of biased political agendas.
If the Gaza flotilla was motivated by altruistic humanism, we would have seen some boats setting sail for Benghazi, loaded with medicine and humanitarian aid. Ships with oppositional literature and laptops would have done wonders for the democratic opposition in Havana and Tehran. A universal commitment to the promotion of human rights would have prompted European public engagement against the mass starvation and torture in North Korea.
Next time self-styled European human rights and peace activists in Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland or Spain issue declarations in the name of humanism while condemning the only democracy in the Middle East, you should think twice; specifically when these statements are motivated by a questionable commitment to the promotion of democracy and human rights in all countries of the world.
