The Atlantic Basin Initiative (ABI) is a civil society, transnational movement dedicated to identifying and harnessing the potentials of ‘pan-Atlantic’ cooperation. It aspires to rearticulate and to rejuvenate ‘the West’ by broadening the traditional vision of ‘transatlantic relations’ — still cast through the NATO-TTIP ‘northern Atlantic’ frame — to include ‘the rest of the West’: Africa and Latin America, the ‘southern Atlantic.’
What is the Atlantic Basin Initiative?
The ABI has both an analytical and a political component. The ABI conducts multi-disciplinary research on a number of emerging trends and dynamics in the Atlantic space: energy, climate change and geopolitics, economy and trade, ocean and maritime issues, migration, development and human security, and emerging new forms of regional dynamics (ie, ocean basin regional dynamics), among others.
This research provides the basic inputs to the discussions of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) of the ABI. This ´steering group’ consists of a core of some 50 ex-presidents and ex-ministers from each the four continents of the Atlantic, along with a similar number of individual CEOs and other types of corporate and third-sector presence or participation.
The Atlantic Basin Initiative was born in 2012 when the ‘Eminent Persons Group (EPG) met for the first time in April of 2012 in Sao Paolo at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) of Johns Hopkins University SAIS. The meeting was presided over by President José Maria Aznar of Spain and hosted by the Governor of the State of Sao Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin.
Since then the Atlantic Basin Initiative has produced a large body of research and policy analysis on new ‘pan-Atlantic’ dynamics. Meanwhile, the EPG has met seven times to debate their agenda, stimulated by this ABI research, and has released a series of recommendations calling for deeper ‘pan-Atlantic’ cooperation.
In 2014 and 2015 this ‘new Atlantic’ movement created two new practical mechanisms for ‘pan-Atlantic cooperation’ — the Atlantic Energy Forum (AEF) and the Atlantic Business Forum (ABF). These new civil society groupings are conceived of as the seeds of a new Atlantic movement, or even a new Atlantic Community, constructed along ‘pan-Atlantic’ lines and principles.
The agenda is coordinated by Dan Hamilton, the Director of our Center at SAIS and the Director of the ABI, and by Paul Isbell, the CAF Energy Fellow, but it also receives key input and strategic guidance from the members of the Eminent Persons Group (in particular, CTR Distinguished Fellow, José Maria Aznar, former President of Spain), and from our colleagues in the growing Atlantic Basin specialized networks of the ABI.
The Development of the Atlantic Basin Initiative
ABI I: Sao Paulo
The Eminent Persons were hosted by Geraldo Alckmin, Governor of the state of São Paulo, and at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, particularly CTR Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Government of Spain José Maria Aznar and CTR Executive Director Prof. Daniel Hamilton The Eminent Persons agreed to explore how the pan-Atlantic frame could be used to solve societal problems, and to focus their initial attention on three priority themes: shared values, energy and water.
The Eminent Persons asked for additional problem-oriented research in such areas as trade and investment; human migration and mobility; human security and human development.
CTR was also asked to continue its ongoing efforts to “map” Atlantic connections among the four continents in terms of flows of goods, services, money, energy, people and ideas.
ABI II: Dominican Republic
The Eminent Persons were welcomed by Dominican Republic Vice President Margarita Cedeño de Fernández, and former President Leonel Fernández Reyna, at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, particularly CTR Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Government of Spain José Maria Aznar and CTR Executive Director Prof. Daniel Hamilton. They were joined by the Prime Minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe, who encouraged participants to consider Haiti as an investment opportunity rather than as an aid recipient.
The meeting consisted of a debate among the Eminent Persons on how global issues may be addressed from a pan-Atlantic perspective. The traditional term ”transatlantic,” which has come to be associated with connections across the North Atlantic, was deemed insufficient to understand or tackle a growing array of issues in a world of rising countries and diffuse power. However, the four continents of the Atlantic are connecting in a host of new ways that have largely escaped broader attention yet continue to generate both challenges and opportunities.
The group discussed common issues under the themes of:
• Energy and resources sustainability;
• Governance and human development;
• Challenges to the Atlantic Ocean itself;
• Economic links: trade, investment, capital and innovation;
• Fighting organized crime, drugs and other transnational challenges across the Atlantic space.
Supporting Analysis and Publications: ‘food for thought’ and background papers included:
Pan-Atlantic Development Cooperation for the 21st Century, Eveline Herfkens
Energy and the Atlantic: The Emergence of an Atlantic Basin Energy System, Paul Isbell
An Atlantic Agenda for Biofuels, Paul Isbell
The Atlantic Ocean: The Growing Need for a Pan-Atlantic Agenda, Dan Hamilton and Paul Isbell
Merchandise Trade in the Atlantic Basin, Lorena Ruano, Jean Monnet Chair, CIDE, Mexico City
Commercial Ties in the Atlantic Basin: The Evolving Role of Services and Investment, Joseph P. Quinlan and Daniel S. Hamilton, Center for Transatlantic Relations
Reshaping the South Atlantic: Can the BICs Bring it About? Jorge Heine and Deborah Farias
Issues of Security and Human Resiliency, Nancy E. Brune
ABI III: Luanda
The EPG was welcomed by Manuel Vicente, Vice President of the Government of Angola, and by Maria Luisa Abrantes, President of ANIP, the National Private Investment Agency, and at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, particularly CTR Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Government of Spain José Maria Aznar and CTR Executive Director Prof. Daniel Hamilton. José Eduardo dos Santos, President of Angola, also met with those Eminent Persons who were former heads of government.
The Eminent Persons supported the need to use specific projects to advance action and deepen cooperation. As at earlier meetings, the discussion was driven by three overarching questions:
• How might an Atlantic Basin Initiative cut through and not add to the institutional clutter of often meaningless meetings and vacuous summits?
• On what issues can a pan-Atlantic perspective provide added value?
• Where and how can the Eminent Persons present perspectives and recommendations that can motivate private actors and help existing governments?
The EPG adopted the Luanda Declaration (‘Towards an Atlantic Charter for Sustainable Energy’) which called for the creation of an Atlantic Energy Forum and the drafting and adoption of an Atlantic Charter for Sustainable Energy (based on the broad principles outlined in the declaration).
Next steps were determined to include the creation of an Atlantic Energy Forum to advance pan-Atlantic cooperation, identifying 2-3 concrete projects that deserve funding and can be advanced.
Supporting Analysis and Publications:
An Action Agenda for the Eminent Persons in the Energy Realm
‘The Luanda Declaration’ : Towards an Atlantic Energy Charter EPG
The Proposed Luanda Declaration: Towards an Atlantic Basin Charter for Energy Governance by Paul Isbell and Vicente Lopez-Ibor
Atlantic Action Alliance for Renewables Deployment in the Southern Atlantic and the Reduction of Energy Poverty, Paul Isbell and Steve Thorne
Energy and the Atlantic: The Emergence of an Atlantic Basin Energy System, Paul Isbell
An Atlantic Agenda for Biofuels, Paul Isbell
Issues of Security and Human Resiliency, Nancy E. Brune
ABI IV: Veracruz
In Veracruz the Eminent Persons agreed on a common White Paper, a ”birth certificate” for the Initiative that sets forth why pan-Atlantic cooperation is needed and charts an action-oriented agenda. The group discussed each of the five White Paper chapters on:
• Energy issues
• Economic growth and human development
• Challenges to the Atlantic Ocean itself • Human security challenges
• Democratic governance and cultivating “cultures of lawfulness”
The EPG also agreed on the birth of the Atlantic Energy Forum (AEF) at the Veracruz ABI.
Supporting Analysis and Publications
The ABI EPG White Paper: A New Atlantic Community. Generating Growth, Human Development and Security in the Atlantic Hemisphere. Eminent Persons Group, Atlantic Basin Initiative (Washington, DC. Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations/Brookings Institution Press, 2014)
Atlantic Energy Forum Rollout Proposal
The Luanda Declaration (presentation, Paul Isbell and Vicente Lopez Ibor)
The Atlantic Energy Forum
The technological revolutions in ‘unconventional’ and ‘difficult’ hydrocarbons – in shale, the offshore and in low carbon energy — have recently contributed to a shift in the global center of gravity of energy supply away from the ‘Great Crescent’ and into the ‘Atlantic Basin.’
Combined with the shift in the global center of gravity for demand to emerging Asia-Pacific, these ‘revolutions’ are reversing the traditional ‘westward’ flow of energy from Eurasia to the Atlantic to produce a new pattern of global flows in which the countries of the Atlantic Basin will increasingly become the net suppliers of energy at the margin to Asia-Pacific.
This shifting global energy flow map also reveals new geopolitical and governance potential along the strategic horizon for Atlantic actors. However, such potential will remain unrealized without ‘pan-Atlantic’ energy cooperation that addresses both the emerging issues of the new ‘energy seascape’ and the low carbon ‘imperative.’
Finally, the ‘Atlantic energy renaissance’ and the changing global energy flow map of which it is both cause and effect, also highlights the growing relative strategic significance of the ‘Southern Atlantic.’
What is the Atlantic Energy Forum?
Strategic analysts from varied but relevant fields are also invited to participate as special guests to the AEF. The Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS (the top university think tank in Washington, D.C.) serves as the strategic and logistical secretariat of the Atlantic Energy Forum.
The members of the AEF have complete and open access to all CTR research on the Atlantic Basin and energy, as well as access to personal briefings upon request.
Summary Diagnosis of the Atlantic Basin Energy Context
• The Atlantic Basin is the most highly interconnected regional energy space on the planet. Upwards of two-thirds of the total energy trade of Atlantic countries is ‘intra-Atlantic’ – produced, transported and consumed within the Atlantic Basin.
• The Atlantic Basin is also the world’s most dynamic energy space. Already one-half of world’s broad fossil fuel reserves and production – along with nearly three-quarters of installed capacity and production of renewable energy – is found in the Atlantic Basin.
• Atlantic Basin revolutions in unconventional hydrocarbons (shale), offshore and low carbon energy have dislodged the world’s center of gravity for energy supply out of the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia, pulling it into the Atlantic energy space.
• The Atlantic energy renaissance has been responsible – more than any other factor on the supply side – for the recent decline in global oil prices.
• The Atlantic Basin is set to become the regional energy supplier at the margin to Asia, supplying some one-third of the Asian demand call on global energy by 2035. Over two-thirds of all expected growth of global petroleum production to 2035 is projected to occur in the Atlantic Basin.
• The Atlantic Basin’s comparative advantage in energy innovation is now reflected, palpably, in the current reversal in the net direction of global energy flows: for half a century, energy flowed globally from East to West; now energy is heading, in net terms, from West to East.
• The Atlantic Basin energy space now represents – more than any other regional energy system in the world – a microcosm of the global energy scene. However, the unique Atlantic geometries among the various critical agents along the energy supply chain from source to point of consumption are more balanced and propitious than at the continental or global levels for successful and sustainable transnational energy cooperation.
Objectives of the Atlantic Energy Forum:
• To allow Atlantic actors to transform the Atlantic Energy Forum into an ‘ocean basin-based’ civil-society-sustained collaborative platform for transnational energy cooperation.
• To harness the potentials – and to face the challenges – of the Atlantic energy renaissance now articulating itself in the coalescence of a new ‘pan-Atlantic’ energy system.
• To provide the private energy sectors of the Atlantic Basin, along with other agents from civil society, the regular opportunity to collectively review and analyze recent trends affecting the Atlantic energy space, along with projections for the future.
• To create appropriate regional space for civil-society driven pan-Atlantic transnational cooperation in energy policy and regulation.
• To create appropriate space for corporate-regional (sub-)state collaboration in the anticipation of requirements for new segments of the energy supply chain, particularly in the offshore, and to develop sub-state partnerships to optimize future R&D and its application, particularly in the offshore and in low carbon.
• To generate a platform for cross-sector industry interaction, in a space in which most Atlantic energy companies find most of their global markets, and the most promising alliances for influencing – and inserting into – the newly developing energy supply chains in the Atlantic, particularly those in the offshore (or the Atlantic energy seascape), both fossil and low carbon.
• To provide for a propitious strategic space for large scale discussions between segments of the Atlantic energy system which at the global level are usually considered to be at odds (ie, the fossil and renewable sectors, IOCs and NOCs, net importers and net exporters, etc).
Basic Guiding Principles and Comparative Advantages of the Atlantic Energy Forum
• The AEF is ‘pan-Atlantic.’ The Forum’s mission can only be developed successfully and sustainably if there is active participation and leadership from all parts of the Atlantic Basin (not just from the north, not just from the south, and not just from the ‘Americas’). The new ‘pan-Atlantic’ dynamics of the Atlantic Basin energy system involve, inextricably, a web of agents from both the Southern and the Northern Atlantic.
• The AEF is ‘pan-ideological.’ Participation and membership in the Forum comes from no single part of the political or ideological spectrum. The Forum consciously engages the partnership of former statesmen and women, and of energy industry leaders, from all democratic political backgrounds. ‘Pan-ideological’ engagement is considered crucial for the creative construction of innovative transnational cooperation mechanisms within a new regional space — just as it was for the establishment the United States, on for the building of the European Union).
•The AEF is ‘pan-energy’ in the breadth of its concerns. The AEF’s horizon is open. No particular energy form is considered off-limits, at least not a priori. Furthermore, the AEF considers energy and climate change dynamics to be linked. Therefore, climate change issues are addressed by the Forum, if energy remains the primary focus.
• The AEF is ‘civil-society-driven.’ In contrast to the limited international energy fora that do exist, the Atlantic Energy Forum is not led and driven by nation-states, but rather by civil society and the private sector. The AEF is innovative in that it relies on its own private agents to collectively determine how best to tackle new Atlantic energy risks and how to engage Atlantic Basin energy opportunities.
The Development of the AEF
AEF I: Quintana Roo, Mexico
Eminent Persons from the public and private sectors in Africa, Europe, North and South America met for the first-ever Atlantic Energy Forum in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on November 8-9, 2014, at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, particularly CTR Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Government of Spain José Maria Aznar; CTR Executive Director Prof. Daniel Hamilton; and Atlantic Energy Forum Director Pablo Casado. The Atlantic Energy Forum is part of the larger Atlantic Basin Initiative, facilitated by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Transatlantic Relations.
The Atlantic Energy Forum aims to chart new paths for pan-Atlantic cooperation. The context for the AEF is a dawning realization that the global energy map is being redrawn by a series of energy revolutions – shale, offshore, low carbon — that together are creating an Atlantic Energy Renaissance. These revolutions are transforming global energy flows in significant ways:
• The EPG observes a westward shift in the global center of gravity for energy supply into the Atlantic Basin, driven by recent, significant expansion in Atlantic energy resources.
• The EPG sees an eastward shift in the global center of gravity for energy demand into the Asia-Pacific.
• The traditional pattern of ‘net westward global energy flows’ are drying up and reversing to become ‘net eastward – or ‘Asia-bound’ – global energy flows.
• The Atlantic Energy Renaissance is also setting the global pace for energy innovation and renewables.
• The Atlantic Basin is now a central energy reservoir for the world and will become even more so in coming decades. Atlantic Basin countries are increasingly bound together through the production, trade, transit and consumption of energy.
Supporting Analysis and Publications
An Introduction to the Future of Energy in the Atlantic Basin, Paul Isbell
Brazil and Africa: Integration and Development through Expanding Energy Linkages, Chris Cote and Mark S. Langevin
The African Hydrocarbons Boom: Its Impact on Atlantic Basin Energy and Energy Relations with the Non-Atlantic World, Benjamin Augé
Africa’s Energy Scenario and the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Initiative, Steve Thorne and Jeff Felten
South Africa, Africa’s Energy Future and Regional Economic Integration: Energy as a Way to Power Change, Saliem Fakir, Manisha Gulati, Louise Scholtz and Ellen Davies
AEF II: Mexico City
Eminent Persons from the public and private sectors in Africa, Europe, North and South America met to chart new paths for pan-Atlantic cooperation, at the invitation of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, particularly CTR Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Government of Spain José Maria Aznar and CTR Executive Director Prof. Daniel Hamilton.
Supporting Analysis and Publications
An Introduction to the Future of Energy in the Atlantic Basin, Paul Isbell, 2015
New release: The Future of Energy in the Atlantic Basin, Paul Isbell and Eloy Alvarez Pelegry, eds. 2015
The Mexican Energy Reforms, Mario Gabriel Budebo, ex PEMEX, 2015
Shale in Argentina, Raul Parisi, 2015
Atlantic Basin Energy Security and Sustainability: A Brazilian Perspective, Adilson Oliveira, 2015
The Shifting Flows of Global Energy and Trade: Implications for Latin America, Paul Isbell, October 2015
Africa’s Energy Scenario and the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Initiative, Steve Thorne and Jeff Felten
South Africa, Africa’s Energy Future and Regional Economic Integration: Energy as a Way to Power Change, Saliem Fakir, Manisha Gulati, Louise Scholtz and Ellen Davies
Why Atlantic Energy, Paul Isbell and Eloy Álvarez Pelegry
The Atlantic Energy Seascape, Paul Isbell