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"Howson, Peter"
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Let them eat crypto : the blockchain scam that's ruining the world
The subject of immense hope, hype, and confusion, crypto has amassed countless headlines in recent years. With cryptocurrencies, NFTs and metaverse markets crashing, the underlying blockchain technology is still promised to solve global development challenges, whilst revolutionising every industry. But is the technology really a silver bullet? Peter Howson puts blockchain, cryptocurrency and 'Web3' under the microscope like never before. He cuts through the jargon and bluster to tell an alarming story of how right-wing libertarian crypto entrepreneurs - often aided by charities, politicians, and philanthropists - seek out and exploit conditions of poverty, oppression, corruption, and conflict.
BOOK
Let Them Eat Crypto
'An essential resource. Howson strikes not just at cryptocurrency, but the frauds who promote blockchain technology as a solution to any social problem' David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain 'A merciless takedown of attempts to apply blockchain to the world's biggest problems... If you are thinking of using blockchain for good, read this first' Professor Villi Lehdonvirta, University of Oxford The subject of immense hope, hype and confusion, crypto has amassed countless headlines in recent years. With cryptocurrencies, NFTs and metaverse markets crashing, the underlying blockchain technology is still promised to solve global development challenges, and revolutionise every industry. But is the technology really a silver bullet? Peter Howson cuts through the jargon and bluster to tell an alarming story of how right-wing libertarian crypto entrepreneurs – often aided by charities, politicians and philanthropists – seek out and exploit conditions of poverty, oppression, corruption and conflict. Their goal? A new front of 'crypto-colonial' extractivism. Let Them Eat Crypto reveals the alarming truth: far from 'banking the unbanked', saving the gorillas, or freeing people from oppressive governments, blockchain offers only false solutions, surveillance and hi-tech snake oil. Peter Howson is a technology writer, researcher and Assistant Professor in International Development at Northumbria University. His work has appeared in Reuters, The Independent, The Conversation, Novara, Jacobin and Coindesk. He investigates the green-washing, aid-washing and crypto-shenanigans that go on in Silicon Valley, as well as the lesser-known tech-hubs of the Global South.
eBook
Slippery Violence in the REDD+ Forests of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia
Due to increasing global demand for palm oil, coal, and timber, Indonesia has become the largest contributor of greenhouse gases from primary forest loss in the world. Carbon market mechanisms, like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), are being promoted by many elements of Indonesia’s government as an effective policy response. The REDD+ programme is designed to enable the provision of financial compensations to protect and restore standing forests by making them more valuable than the timber they contain. However, the logic of REDD+ constructs people living in and around project sites as environmentally destructive and therefore in need of incentivisation to do otherwise. Local people are compensated for the ‘opportunity costs’ of not degrading forests. Within this frame ‘locals’—suffering from the malaise of dispossession—are Othered as illegal loggers, poachers, greedy miners or arsonists. In reality, REDD+ often facilitates the continuation of violence, legitimising an image of small-holders, rather than large international corporations, as the cause of forest degradation in Indonesia. Focusing on the Sungai Lamandau REDD+ project of Central Kalimantan, I discuss how, for some of Sungai Lamandau’s landless farmers, REDD+ is accelerating the very violence and environmentally destructive behaviours it claims to discourage. Farmers are becoming embroiled in other ongoing processes, pushing them towards illicit livelihood strategies, sometimes with devastating outcomes.
Journal Article
Tackling climate change with blockchain
Concern about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is not holding back blockchain developers from leveraging the technology for action on climate change. Although blockchain technology is enabling individuals and businesses to manage their carbon emissions, the social and environmental costs and benefits of doing so remain unclear.
Journal Article
Commercial Due Diligence
Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) is about telling the difference between superior businesses and poor businesses, which is why this book is a mixture of business strategy, marketing analysis and market research. However CDD is not about the bland application of analytical techniques, it's about understanding how businesses and markets work and what is really important for profits and growth. Commercial Due Diligence is written by someone with over 25 years' experience of practical strategic analysis who nonetheless has a strong academic grounding. For the first time here is a book that deals with the essentials of strategic analysis with the practitioner's eye. If you are in the business of formulating company strategy, and you want to see how to apply the theories and understand in practical terms what works, when, and what can go wrong, this is the book for you.
eBook
Let Them Eat Crypto
A shocking exposé of the huge social, political and environmental costs of cryptocurrencies.
Book
ROYAL ARMY CHAPLAINS’ MUSEUM – A REVIEW
Howson reviews the Royal Army Chaplains' Museum located at Beckett Drive, Faringdon Road, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire England.
Journal Article
Due Diligence
How can you be sure you are buying the company you think you are? Are you sure it is as good as the seller says? How can you be certain unexpected costs and obligations will not suddenly appear once you are the owner and responsible for them? How best can you arm yourself for the negotiations? Have you worked out precisely what you are going to do with it once it is yours? How do you set the priorities for change to recoup the premium you have paid for it?
The answer to all these questions, and many more, lies with effective due diligence.
Due diligence is one of the most important but least well understood aspects of the acquisition process. It is not, as many believe, a chore to be left to the accountants and lawyers. To get the best from it. due diligence has to be properly planned and professionally managed.
This book is a comprehensive manual on getting due diligence right. It is a uniquely comprehensive guide, covering all aspects of the process from financial, legal and commercial due diligence right through to environmental and intellectual property due diligence. There are also useful chapters on working with advisers and managing due diligence projects. It also includes a number of checklists to help ensure that the right questions are asked.
eBook
Intimate Exclusions from the REDD+ forests of Sungai Lamandau, Indonesia
Due to land-use conversions for palm oil, mining and other extractive industries, Indonesia remains the largest contributor of greenhouse gases from primary forest loss in the world. Nowhere are solutions to large-scale forest loss more urgently required. To reverse the trend, the Government of Indonesia is banking on carbon market mechanisms like the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) programme. REDD+ is designed to enable the provision of economic compensations to protect forests by making them more valuable standing than cut down. The Sungai Lamandau REDD+ demonstration activity is unique in Indonesia as the first REDD+ project officially proposed by a community group upon land they hope to manage autonomously. Despite the project’s ‘bottom-up’ architecture, for some, access to Sungai Lamandau’s REDD+ benefits remain exclusive. These exclusions are not only something imposed by powerful external actors, but has emerged endogenously, through the everyday functioning of gendered market relations, and community-based socio-environmental and ethno-territorial movements. This paper adopts a feminist-inspired intimacy-geopolitics to explore the nuanced powers of exclusion used by Sungai Lamandau’s farmers to access the project’s non-monetary REDD+ benefits. The paper focuses on ‘intimate exclusions’ – everyday processes of accumulation and dispossession among villagers and small-holders. In doing so, it highlights the hazards of developing REDD+ projects structured with limited sympathy for marginalised actors. Although the seemingly ‘inclusive’ benefits sharing structure attracted excellent ethical carbon credit ratings, the project still failed to address (and even exacerbated) existing inequalities – a root cause of Sungai Lamandau’s forest degradation.
Journal Article