Rising resource risks and the growing recognition of the economic value being lost in waste have raised business interest in the circular economy. These trends are feeding a more interventionist approach to resource policy in countries as diverse as the US, China, ermany, Japan and Korea. This analysis shows how Scotland could help to make its economy more circular, by assessing potential opportunities in three exemplar sectors, and developing these into a wider suite of lessons for government as a whole.
The report can be downloaded using the button on the right.
For decades, Europe has lived in peace and prosperity. But in recent years ‘ghosts of times hoped past’, have once again edged closer towards the continent’s borders. Rather than manifesting in far away places, such as Afghanistan or the South-China Sea, territorial conflict, epidemics and religious war has made steady gains towards Europe’s borders. Russia annexed Crimea. The Ebola virus sowed death and destruction in Western Africa but also found its way to Spain and the United Kingdom. Europe was shocked to see various European citizens join, fight, massacre and die among the ranks of Islamic State (IS). One of the dominant narratives of the news is that some particularly ghoulish ghosts from the past are back on European soil. These ghosts are incontestably real, representing formidable challenges.
This year, the Netherlands faces important choices regarding its defense and security posture. What security risks does it need to prepare for in light of recent developments? What types of capabilities are required to both prevent and defend against these risks? When, where and with whom should these capabilities be brought to bear? And should the security and defense budget – which has seen a downward trend for two decades – be increased in support of all this?
At the basis of the decision-making process for these and similar questions stands a careful examination and analysis of today’s global security environment. For that purpose, the Dutch ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Security and Justice have established the Strategic Monitor, in collaboration with the Clingendael Institute of International Relations and The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS). The Strategic Monitor is, in the words of Defense minister Jeanine Hennis, a crucial anchor in the formulation of Dutch defence policy.
The report, The Return of Ghosts Hoped Past? Global Trends in Conflict and Cooperation, is HCSS’ most recent contribution to the Strategic Monitor and examines the longer-term security impact of these reappearing ghosts. Are the horrific events that dominated news agendas in 2014 - such as the downing of MH-17 and violent acts of IS - isolated incidents or part of a more structural trend? Did the ‘ghosts of the past’ ever really go away? In the report, HCSS addresses recent events and trends in light of overarching patterns of conflict.
As the Dutch government unveils its revised security policy, it has never been more important to stress this point: that a two-pronged approach, placing both emphasis on development and human security as on military efforts, will be crucial to securing the Netherland’s own future, as well as that of Europe more broadly.
The report can be downloaded via the button on the right.
Al vele decennia lang kent Europa vrede en welvaart. Maar in de afgelopen jaren zijn een aantal 'geesten uit het verleden' onverwacht teruggekeerd op ons continent, in plaats van zich te manifesteren in verre oorden als Afghanistan of de Zuid-Chinese Zee. Rusland annexeerde de Krim. Het Ebola-virus zaaide dood en verderf in West-Afrika, maar vond ook zijn weg naar Spanje en het Verenigd Koninkrijk. En heel Europa was geschokt dat Europese burgers gruweldaden verrichtten onder de banier van de Islamitische Staat. Een van de dominante nieuwsverhalen van dit moment is dat diverse afschuwelijke ‘geesten uit het verleden’ terug zijn op Europese bodem. Deze geesten zijn echt en vormen een formidabele uitdaging.
Dit jaar staat Nederland voor belangrijke keuzes in zijn defensie- en veiligheidsbeleid voor de komende jaren. Op welke veiligheidsrisico’s moeten wij ons voorbereiden in het licht van recente ontwikkelingen? Welke soorten capaciteiten zijn nodig om deze risico’s te voorkomen en om ons ertegen te verdedigen? Wanneer, waar en met wie moeten we deze capaciteiten inzetten? En moet het budget voor defensie en internationale veiligheid, na de neerwaartse trend van de afgelopen twee decennia, weer worden verhoogd om dit alles te bekostigen?
Aan de basis van het besluitvormingsproces rond deze en soortgelijke vragen staat een zorgvuldige analyse van de mondiale veiligheidsomgeving. Precies voor dat doel hebben de ministeries van Defensie, Buitenlandse Zaken en Veiligheid en Justitie, in samenwerking met Clingendael en The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS), de Strategische Monitor in het leven geroepen. De Strategische Monitor is, in de woorden van minister Jeanine Hennis, een cruciaal handvat voor de beleidsontwikkeling van Defensie.
Het rapport The Return of Ghosts Hoped Past? Global Trends in Conflict and Cooperation, de meest recente bijdrage van HCSS aan de Strategische Monitor, onderzoekt de langere termijn veiligheidsconsequenties van de teruggekeerde ‘geesten uit het verleden’. Zijn de gruwelijke gebeurtenissen die in 2014 het nieuws domineerden, zoals het neerhalen van MH-17 en de gruweldaden van de Islamitische Staat, geïsoleerde incidenten of onderdeel van langjarige trends? Zijn de 'geesten uit het verleden' eigenlijk ooit echt weggeweest? In het rapport beziet HCSS de recente gebeurtenissen en ontwikkelingen in het licht van de onderliggende patronen in de internationale veiligheidsomgeving.
Binnenkort komt de Nederlandse regering met een nota over het defensiebeleid in deze rumoerige tijden. Juist nu is het belangrijk dit cruciale punt te benadrukken: voor het veiligstellen van de toekomst van Nederland en Europa is een tweeledige aanpak, met nadruk op zowel het bevorderen van ontwikkeling en menselijke veiligheid als op militaire inspanningen, noodzakelijk.
Het rapport (in het Engels) is te downloaden via de knop rechts.
"The United States Army War College just published some take-aways from its strategic wargame on Russia. in which Stephan de Spiegeleire participated."
Download the report using the button on the right.
Apart from the fact that the crisis caused the biggest stand-off in East‐West relations since the end of the Cold War, the anti-Western messages broadcast by the likes of RT and Sputnik risk undermining fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy within nations that lie within the Russian orbit, as alternative sounds are crowded out. These developments are particularly important to the young generations—who are most likely to want to hold their leaders to account, and seek the freedom to shape their lives in their own image. These worrying trends call for a Western response that aims to prevent, or counteract, one-sided coverage of events and developments in the post-Soviet space. However, rather than engaging in a kind of two‐sided information warfare as took place during the heydays of the Cold War, western media should instead focus on shared (societal) values such as enshrined in the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Such an approach would avoid the pitfalls of confrontation and escalation, whilst at the same time allow for the support of fundamental rights and values in those countries where these are under pressure.
This report is commissioned by RNW, an international media organization based in The Netherlands that aims to promote free speech and fundamental freedoms in countries where these are severely restricted. RNW (co)creates content and online platforms where young people can form and express their opinions about sensitive issues. This study zooms in on a select number of countries belonging to the post-Soviet space that lie on the fault lines of overlapping spheres of influence between Europe and Russia. Specifically, the report assesses the risks of the current one-sided media services to Russian speaking minorities in Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. In doing so, the study examines the extent to which RNW could make a meaningful contribution to a more balanced information service, focusing on online and social media. Furthermore, the report analyzes the opportunities for RNW to operate in these countries, and provides an inventory of the kinds of (legal) barriers that exist that could hinder this aim.
Authors: Sijbren de Jong, Willem Th. Oosterveld, Artur Usanov, Katarina Kertysova,
Ihor Ilko and Juncal Fernández-Garayzábal González.
Cyberdreigingen: we schrijven er veel over, maar weten maar weinig. Een vandaag verschenen studie van het Den Haag Centrum voor Strategische Studies (HCSS) laat het beeld zien van zo’n 70 van de meest toonaangevende rapportages over cyberaanvallen uit 15 landen over de laatste paar jaar. Het toont een versnipperd landschap. Het aantal gevallen, de gebruikte methoden en definities, en de dreigingen die onderzocht worden, variëren sterk. Willen we wereldwijd beter kunnen inspelen op cyberaanvallen, dan moeten we duidelijke afspraken maken over methoden, definities en rapportage, en toewerken naar geharmoniseerde collectie en rapportage.
De studie laat verder zien dat, op basis van een vergelijking van vijf indices over digitale veiligheid op nationaal niveau, Nederland samen met de VS en het VK naar voren komen als de best beschermde landen. Tegelijkertijd geven alle rapporten aan dat cyberaanvallen steeds vaker worden gerapporteerd. Het is lastig om de gevolgen van die aanvallen precies vast te stellen, maar steeds meer studies wijzen op significante en stijgende kosten, voor kleine en grote organisaties, zowel in termen van directe (bijvoorbeeld misgelopen omzet) en indirecte kosten (zoals reputatieschade). Op nationaal niveau blijven de kosten significant, en kunnen ze volgens een studie oplopen tot meer dan 1% van het BNP. Dat geldt juist voor de beter beschermde landen, zoals Nederland en de VS. In deze landen bevinden zich veel aantrekkelijke doelwitten, met name binnen de overheid en de financiële sector.
De meeste aanvallen vallen in de categorie ‘cybercrime’ zonder dat we goed weten wie daar achter zitten. Wel weten we dat bij een significant deel ‘insiders’ betrokken zijn, zoals huidige of voormalige werknemers (tussen de 6 en 28%, volgens vier rapporten) en dat vooral computers in de VS en China worden gebruikt. Dat verschilt wel per cyberaanval: volgens een rapport komt meer dan een kwart van alle cybercrime aanvallen vanuit de VS, volgens een ander worden cyberspionage aanvallen vooral vanuit China gelanceerd. Hacktivisme lijkt minder vaak voor te komen, maar inschattingen verschillen sterk. En er zijn slechts een beperkt aantal gevallen bekend waarbij de cyberaanval als deel van oorlogsvoering wordt gebruikt.
Het rapport gaat ook in op een aantal trends die invloed hebben op de daders, targets en de gebruikte tools en technieken. De ondergrondse markt voor cybermisdaad wordt steeds groter. Bovendien gebruiken staten steeds vaker criminele organisaties om hun beleid, vaak onder de radar, uit te voeren. Staten proberen sowieso hun macht steeds meer in het cyberdomein te etaleren en dragen op die manier bij aan de ontwikkeling van defensieve en offensieve cyber capaciteiten.
Wie of wat daarvan het doelwit zijn, is steeds moeilijker te overzien, bijvoorbeeld door de kwetsbaarheid van online aangesloten media recorders, koelkasten of smartmeters, ook wel bekend als het Internet of Things. Daarnaast gebruiken naast legitieme, commerciële bedrijven, waaronder Google, ook criminelen big data om er achter te komen hoe het verkennen van onze ‘identiteit’ kan worden misbruikt voor illegitieme doeleinden.
De toolbox van daders lijkt steeds effectiever te worden. Door een beter en geharmoniseerd overzicht van de verzamelde data kunnen we ons hiertegen beter wapenen.
Dit rapport is mogelijk gemaakt door sponsors Hoffmann Bedrijfsrecherche BV, NLnet foundation, de Gemeente Den Haag, Capgemini Nederland en The Hague Security Delta, en met dank aan inhoudelijke bijdrages van TNO.
Agriculture and food are central to the economic security for the Netherlands specifically, but also for the EU in a broader sense. Overall, both security of demand and supply are of vital importance for the economic security of the Dutch agriculture and food sector. The broader, long-term sustainability of Dutch agriculture is a key concern. And at the European level, the overall competitiveness of agriculture keeps playing an important role. We cannot ignore that the development of large economies – for example, the BRICs will continue to bring up serious challenges for the future of agriculture. For example, with their huge populations, these countries will thus substantially contribute to the increase of the global demand for meat.
Who will produce and eat tomorrow’s food is a complex and uncertain issue. As a result, having a broad sense of thoughts about the future of agriculture is of utmost importance.
We performed a research to find out how different countries, in the Chinese, English, and Portuguese language domains, as well as in Africa, are thinking about the future of agriculture. For this purpose, we used the HCSS MetaFore protocol as a methodology for the systemic coding of relevant government and think tank foresight studies about this topic. This study was performed as part of the project Future Contours of Agriculture and Food. It seeks to better inform decision makers from government and industry in preparing for the challenges of this future environment. It has a modular setup: the results presented here can be built upon in order to gain a better insight in the future nature of agriculture and food. More generally, they could provide supporting material to develop agricultural policies that would help both producers and consumers benefit from the fruits of sustainable food production, now and in the future.
Interested readers can request our Technical Report, which includes a more comprehensive version of the research, from the methodology to the most detailed findings, and the Annex, which provides the list of foresights per language domain and geographical zone.
The report can be downloaded with the button on the right.
Authors: HCSS, Eline Chivot, Willem Auping, Roberta Coelho, Freija van Duijne, Mayuri Mukherjee, João Almeida Silveira, Michelle Yuemin Yang
Commissioned by The Hague Security Delta (HSD), The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies wrote this report. Read more here.
This analysis was requested by the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands for developing policy strategies to further expand the influence of sustainability schemes – and here in particular, for the production of palm oil and soy. Insight into the discourse by the government of these countries and their interest in the Dutch efforts towards sustainable production can be useful to determine which strategies would be effective. As such, this study aims to identify which are the issues and priorities governmental publications focus on in their discourse on the production, trade and consumption of soy and palm oil. We studied all webpages of governmental websites (webpages published from 2007 till 2014) for Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Our study brings some evidence of a gap between ‘the walk and the talk’, and of the possible bias in interpreting a country’s position and priorities. We also provide a number of recommendations to help in addressing this broad range of concerns when communicating and working with these countries. This may complement and improve the way communication is built between the Netherlands and these countries, in order to foster a better understanding, allow for a more efficient collaboration, and lead to fruitful benefits.
This study is also an attempt to explore the usefulness of new data sources and data analysis tools. Using a programming language, HCSS set out to construct a new database consisting of all retrievable text–based webpages from the Ministries of five countries that play a key role in relevance to the research topic. We then applied a number of textmining tools to this new dataset, in order to automatically identify the main topics to have emerged from these websites as well as a number of associations with some topics of interest.
Send us an email if you wish to request access to our Technical Appendix, which includes a more detailed version of our entire research process, methodologies and findings, as well as two Annexes. The first provides data on global trade to inform the introduction of the report on soy and palm oil. The second assesses the extent to which each country includes the Netherlands’ Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) in the official discourse.
Authors and Contributors: HCSS, Eline Chivot, Antoine Carnet, Francesco Corsini, Freija van Duijne, Nicolas Fassetta, Andrea Fassina, Laurin Hainy, Wan–Chun Hsu, Denis Kulicek, Mayuri Mukherjee, Caroline Saweho, João Almeida Silveira, Stephan de Spiegeleire.
In collaboration with the Agricultural Councils at the Dutch embassies of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The modern welfare state is under stress. The Great Recession has had a severe impact on public finances in the Netherlands and in many other EU member states. While the pace of fiscal consolidation remains a very controversial topic, few would dispute the need to move public finances towards a more sustainable trajectory at some point in the future. Given that social spending constitutes the largest share of public expenditure in the Netherlands, it is inevitable that the questions about the affordability of existing welfare programs are being raised.
The modern welfare state is also affected by various long-term structural changes in our society. Population aging is creating additional demands on the pension, health and long-term care systems at the same time when governments are looking for ways to cut public spending. Globalization makes capital and labor more mobile. This makes raising fiscal revenue to pay for the social services and transfers more challenging. Skill-biased technical change destroys many medium- and low-skilled jobs and contributes to raising inequality. Family patterns are changing as well, bringing about new risks.
All these trends and challenges point to a clear bottom line: the welfare state has to change. King Willem-Alexander in his Speech from the Throne in September 2013 essentially announced that the old welfare state is dead and has to be replaced with a ‘participation society’.
The new HCSS report Beyond the Welfare State takes a broad look at the welfare state: its historical evolution, and its different types in various countries. The report provides an in-depth study of several economic and societal trends that create substantial challenges for the welfare state. It also examines the efforts to reform various aspects of the welfare state that have been undertaken so far in a number of European countries. Finally, it outlines general approaches and principles that can serve as a basis for reforming the welfare state.
The report can be downloaded with the button on the right.
Something’s afoot with power. The nation state is being challenged structurally and institutionally. Its model of hierarchical power, monopoly on violence, and binding law, is being squeezed from below and from above - by grassroots organizations on the one end and supranational organizations on the other. Development aid is becoming caught up with strategic interests in the political, military and economic areas. Centralized power with major international oil companies is a thing of the past. The internet has the capacity to bring people together, or to divide them. All of these developments are changing our world drastically, and altering our view on the world.
In ‘The Fission of Power’, we make sense of these different changes, and demonstrate what they have in common. Power is becoming more widely distributed, more accessible, and more evanescent—but without losing amplitude. As a result, actors of all kinds must be more ‘flexible under flux’: they must take on a more agile and networked approach to implementing their decisions, prepare for change, and engage in more iterative and experimentalist forms of decision-making. The first step is to recognize the changing nature of power in a fragmented world.
You can download the report with the button on the right.
Commissioned by The Hague Security Delta (HSD), The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies wrote this report on the emerging market for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
The report was presented at the TUsExpo 2015. Read more here.
Supply and demand of resources are connected in multiple and complex ways. This interconnectivity has been framed as the global resource nexus. This study focuses on the nexus of five essential natural resources: land, food, energy, water, and minerals. In order to meet the demand for resources from present and future generations, strategic thinking about interdependencies between the supply of and demand for resources is paramount.
This report provides insight into the complex interaction between resource supply and demand, global megatrends such as economic growth, climate change, urbanization and demographics, and broader nexus variables such as human resources, technology, governance, social and political factors and instability.
Comprising case studies on soy from Brazil, cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire and palm oil from Malaysia, the report illustrates how the nexus dynamics create various risks to the sustainable security of supply of agricultural commodities that are of high importance to the Dutch agri-food sector.
The results of this research can be used to strengthen existing initiatives for sustainable supply chain management, and to facilitate policy making in this field. To this end, the report contains a chapter with recommendations on how policymakers can use the global resource nexus framework proposed in this report.
China is under extreme pressure to meet the growing demand for high-value and safe food of middle- and high-income households. Food security - crucial for socio-political stability – and upgrading food quality and safety have been prioritized by the Chinese government. This offers business opportunities for the Netherlands.
The supply capacity and knowledge of the Dutch agri-food sector can contribute to a more diversified and sustainable food supply of trustworthy quality in China. At the same time, however, Dutch companies operating in China experience considerable risks, ranging from an unlevel playing field with Chinese state-owned companies, ill secured intellectual property and rights, unfavorable ownership regulations, barriers for market entry, and foreign competitors.
This report aims to provide an impetus for a more strategic Dutch agri-food policy towards China. It discusses the merits of reciprocity as a basis for more intense cooperation between the Netherlands and China based on shared interests in the agri-food domain. It has been commissioned from HCSS and LEI Wageningen UR by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs with the aim of exploring ways in which the Dutch Topsectors Agri & Food and Horticulture & Propagation Materials can strengthen their position in China.
Download the report with the top button on the right. The Annex can be downloaded via the second button.