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Joe Zammit-Lucia
Joe Zammit-Lucia is a RADIX Co-Founder and board member. He is an entrepreneur and commentator on business and political issues writing in outlets in the UK, US, Germany and the Netherlands. His particular interest is the relationship between business and politics.
The world is drowning in clever reports.
Think tanks, NGOs, foundations, academics, government inquiries, mega reports commissioned by various international institutions, they all generate well researched and well thought out reports that invariably end with a set of ‘recommendations.’
While, inevitably, many quarrel with this or that recommendation, they often present positive aspirations and are useful as such. But the reality is that most often, in the wake of such reports, nothing, or very little, actually ends up happening on the ground.
One can track the same recommendations re-appearing across multiple reports years or even decades apart. We recycle the same ideas over and over and yet seem to see little movement.
Why?
Many suggestions put forward represent an idealised end state that we might want to get to. Yet too few actually address, openly and honestly, the practical pathways to getting there.
For one thing, I see very few such reports where the recommendations are fully (and credibly) costed and where it is made clear where the funds for the suggested changes will come from.
Then there is the question of the administrative complexity and administrative costs involved. It’s easy to suggest, for instance, reform of welfare systems. But the administrative complexity of doing so is all too often skated over.
Next is the question of whether there are viable political pathways to change. Every change has to be done in steps, and each step will meet resistance, sometimes fierce and effective resistance, from those who have something to lose.
All these issues came to the fore when we were asked to examine how to move forward in getting rid of what some call fossil fuel subsidies. We compared the issues in the UK and in Germany. In getting to our final report, (yes, yet another report!) we found several interesting things.
In the UK, the term ‘fossil fuel subsidies’ was never used in policy circles. Policy makers saw these subsidies as support for selected industries or groups (farmers, fishermen, high energy use companies, etc) not as fossil fuel subsidies. So those arguing for an end to ‘fossil fuel subsidies’ were not even speaking the same language as the policy makers.
[Side note: when I tried to make these points over dinner to an environmental activist, he wouldn't have any of it. "Of course they're fossil fuel subsidies" was the only position he would contemplate. Every other perspective was simply evil incarnate.]
Economists argued that, if you want to support such people, it’s economically more efficient just to give them money than to subsidise their diesel. Yes. In theory.
But in practice, subsidising their diesel was practically, politically and administratively much more achievable and much less contentious than the alternatives. Something that those focused on climate issues and fossil fuels never considered.
In Germany, on the other hand, endless reports have been written by all and sundry focused on fossil fuel subsides and calling for their scaling back. Yet it has been found politically and practically impossible to do so. In some cases, the block lies as deep as the interpretation of the German constitution.
The reality: for practical and political reasons, there is no way of getting rid of what some choose to call ‘fossil fuel subsidies.’ And more reports urging governments to do so are a waste of time and effort.
Needless to say, our funder was not enamoured with such findings (they have not funded us since). Which is yet another problem. The inevitable tendency to issue reports that generate a warm and fuzzy feeling for the funders and their world view even if it bears no semblance to reality or to what is actually achievable. That way the funding can keep flowing.
We can all aspire to reach a destination full of milk and honey. We, maybe, can even describe what that destination could look like. But the reality is that getting to such a destination always involves traveling on a treacherous path where every step forward risks one falling over the edge into the precipice and to one’s death.
Do not take seriously any report or set of recommendations that beguile you with visions of sunlit uplands but fail to lay out clearly, step by step, pathways for getting there that are financially, practically, administratively and politically viable.
This blog was originally posted on Joe's Random Thoughts newsletter on LinkedIn.