Governing Asymmetric Energy Relations
Last week, the Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS) held its Annual Meeting at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. Under the theme, “Small, Middle and Emerging Powers in the UN System”, I was able to present some of my recent work on global energy governance.
Disruptions in predictable supply and demand of energy resources have far reaching impacts for all countries. At ACUNS, I examined the dual constraints of horizontal and vertical pressures put on the global system through the global energy conundrum. Horizontal in that every state – from small, middle to major – demand adequate and reliable flows of energy resources. And vertical in that energy resource wealth forces a recalculation of power across states of all sizes. Small states like Trinidad to middle powers like Canada bank on their energy wealth for economic influence, Brazil as an emerging power has led on alternatives like ethanol, at the same time when the United States (although still the largest producer in the Hemisphere) is heavily reliant on imports from its smaller neighbours to sustain its energy demands.
Conspicuously absent in the international system are real mechanisms for global energy governance. The two institutions that exist at the inter-governmental level have constrained mandates focused on the interests of their selected member-states. In both organizations, energy security is strongly perceived through a nationalistic lens.
On the one hand there is OPEC, a group of major oil-producing nations that acts as a bloc to maintain pressure on the world price through collective supply quotas. On the other there is the International Energy Agency (IEA), within the OECD, which provides detailed statistics and policy advice to the world’s wealthiest and highest oil consuming nations, most of which depend on substantial imports from OPEC members.
Energy policy, nationally and internationally, is often interrupted by environmental policy, or even seen as a sub-set of climate change issues. Rather, energy should be the issue of policy primacy in all related discussions. Although more prominent in public discussions, environmental issues should be treated as symptoms, with energy policy being used to address the root causes of climate change.
Further analysis is needed to suggest whether market-based or policy-based approaches would be more influential in practical solutions. Under current economic conditions, governments are unlikely to be concerned by industrial emissions or inclined to fund massive infrastructure upgrades without incurring serious repercussions.
The world economy needs global energy governance to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy; mediate resource conflicts; enforce regulatory compliance; encourage clean economic development; secure critical infrastructure; support R&D; stabilize prices; and, advise on the best ways to do all of these things.
The G8 has demonstrated its inability to have vision in this area beyond the interests of its select membership. The NATO Forum on Energy Security focuses heavily on narrow strategic interests. The International Energy Forum remains a talk-shop for business leaders with little policy influence. Sadly, the common thread among each major initiative to address energy security has been protection of Northern lifestyles. Only the UN System has the necessary credibility and global reach to advance this aggressive agenda.
