Seven Billion – NYTimes.com

What does seven billion people mean for this planet?

Can the earth support seven billion now, and the three billion people who are expected to be added by the end of this century? Are the enormous increases in households, cities, material consumption and waste compatible with dignity, health, environmental quality and freedom from poverty?

via Seven Billion – NYTimes.com.

Applying Management Lesson to Foreign Aid

If you’re tired of debating foreign aid–and you should keep an open mind–what about finding a solution from the private sector?

But it’s in the realm of charity, and especially in international aid, where these methods are really succeeding beyond the confines of the corporation, as Alex Perry, chief African correspondent at Time magazine, demonstrates convincingly in “Lifeblood: How to Change the World One Dead Mosquito at a Time” (PublicAffairs, $25.99).

This little gem of a book heartens the reader by showing how eagerly an array of American billionaires, including Bill Gates and the New Jersey investor Ray Chambers (the book’s protagonist), are using concepts of efficient management to improve the rest of the world. “Lifeblood” nominally chronicles the global effort to eradicate malaria, but it is really about changes that Mr. Chambers, Mr. Gates and others are bringing to the chronically mismanaged system of foreign aid, especially in Africa.

via review of Lifeblood – NYT.com

Whither Foreign Aid?

The old US foreign aid debate–luxury or necessity–is revisited in the context of a world in flux, and from hard-headed economists (mostly) is “does it work?” (George Ayittey has argued on “Dead Aid” that it actually is counterproductive.)

Aid has been debated by the likes of Steven Radelet, State Dept v. William Easterly, NYU, among others.  Nicholas Kristof has a reading list, in case you’re still interested.  Your view?

Given the relatively small foreign aid budget — it accounts for 1 percent of federal spending over all — the effect of the cuts could be disproportional.

The State Department already has scaled back plans to open more consulates in Iraq, for example. The spending trend has also constrained support for Tunisia and Egypt, where autocratic leaders were overthrown in popular uprisings. While many have called for giving aid to these countries on the scale of the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild European democracies after World War II, the administration has been able to propose only relatively modest investments and loans, and even those have stalled in Congress.

“There is a democratic awakening in places that have never dreamed of democracy,” Mrs. Clinton said on Friday. “And it is unfortunate that it’s happening at a historic time when our own government is facing so many serious economic challenges, because there’s no way to have a Marshall Plan for the Middle East and North Africa.”

via Foreign Aid Set to Take Hit in U.S. Budget Crisis – NYTimes.com.

There appears to be a ‘third way’ developing–somewhere between Sachs and Easterly, that Jacqueline Novorgratz and others are exploring.

Compassion Fatigue – NYTimes.com

Do you find that repeat viewing of coverage on the Haiti earthquake, Japanese tsunami, and the upcoming Somali famine decrease your ability to maintain concern (and attention)?  You may not be alone.

Are people today — are societies — really becoming somehow more callous?

The answer is no, of course not — at least not in any fundamental sense. But compassion is a limited resource, a system rooted in cognitive networks that tire and need refueling. And it’s not always rational.

Those in the so-called helping professions know as much about the limits of empathy as they do about its merits. Studies of oncology nurses, trauma workers and even marriage counselors, among others, have documented a common “compassion fatigue” that seems directly related to the amount of emotion shared. “In particular, listening to people who are suffering and not being able to do enough for them puts a tremendous weight” on caregivers, said Dr. Charles Figley, a psychologist at Tulane University.

via Compassion Fatigue – NYTimes.com.

China’s Global Leadership Aspirations?

Video of a great debate from Davos with Richard Haas, Christine Lagarde, Anand Sharma, and Victor Chu:

Nik Gowing hosts the BBC World Debate on global leadership with leading figures from the United States, France, India and China.  He posed the question…”Does China aspire to primacy in global leadership?”

via BBC News – Davos 2011: BBC World Debate on Global Leadership.

UN rethinks how to measure, define “poor” – CSMonitor.com

This year, the HDI does something new for the poor: It multiplies them.The report introduces a new measure for poverty. Called the “multidimensional poverty index” MPI, its a different way of thinking about who is or isnt poor. The old way was comparatively easy: Count the number of people who live on less than $1.25 a day. The report still does that, but it augments that income standard with a, well, multidimensional index.

via UN rethinks how to measure, define “poor” – CSMonitor.com.

MDG Wrap-Up

What are some of the best analyses of the General Assembly and MDGs?  Tip o’ the had to One.org for a few perspectives:

• At-risk states say that development goals aren’t listening to them, via Guardian UK.
• Follow the leader…namely China, via Global Times
• Bono’s criticism of the goals rang hollow as judged by his recent Op-Ed calls for transparency and accountability
• Celebrities distract, culture and issues of measurement are some explanations of MDG failure, and, in the end, they are “fundamentally humanitarian and not instrumental to economic development”, via WSJ
• And don’t miss Christy Turlington’s MDG Diary for some celebrity musing and a sense of what its like to wander around at the actual event:

Today I was finally able to venture over to the Clinton Global Initiative (an idea founded in order to turn ideas into actions to “help our world move beyond the current state of globalization to a more integrated global community of shared benefits, responsibilities, and values”) for the last day of workshops and sessions at the conference.

via Christy Turlington Burns MDG 2010 | ONE.

Op-Ed Columnist – Boast, Build and Sell – NYTimes.com

How to fix the MDGS:

World leaders have flown in first class to the United Nations this week to discuss global poverty over cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria.

The U.N. set eight landmark antipoverty objectives in 2000, so this year’s General Assembly is reviewing how we’re doing after a decade. We’re off-track on most of these Millennium Development Goals, so let me offer three suggestions for how the humanitarian world might do better in framing the fight against poverty:

First, boast more.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Boast, Build and Sell – NYTimes.com.

Other suggestions?

Bottom Line on MDGs?

Its grading time for a major United Nations effort to benchmark key global development indicators.  How are they doing?  First, a little background on two key players:  The Secretary General and the General Assembly.

The renowned development economist, Jeffrey Sachs, claims they are successful, giving what sounds to me like an “A”–in spite of missing stated goals:

As 140 heads of state and government gather Monday at the United Nations for the Millennium Development Goals summit, they and the public will ask what has come out of this decade-long effort.

The answer will surprise them: A great deal has been achieved, with some of the most exciting breakthroughs occurring in Africa.

via I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor – Millennium Goals, Five Years to Go – NYTimes.com.

But few share such optimism.  This creates an interesting challenge–how to energize discussion about goals that haven’t really been met–and as some argue, have not been taken seriously.  (Think classes that you audited v. those taken for credit.  How much homework did you do on the former as compared to the latter?)

Some lament the absence of a real action plan. Others fault the richest governments, and the Obama administration in particular, for what they say is mere lip service to the goals without spending the money needed. But perhaps most salient of all is a simple question, one that boils down to accountability.

“If we miss the goals, who is going to punish us?” asked Esther Duflo, a development expert at M.I.T. “Nobody is going to come from Mars and say, ‘You didn’t reach the goals, so we will invade’ — there is no onus.”

via Questions About U.N.’s Poverty Goals – NYTimes.com.

Bono weighs in, as he clearly must–with suggestions for improving stuff:

Find what works and then expand on it. Will mechanisms like the Global Fund get the resources to do the job?

via Op-Ed Guest Columnist – How the Millennium Development Goals can live up to their promise. – NYTimes.com.

For a different view–here is a multimedia project created by University of Miami students to help give the MDG’s a human face–and to better understand what we’re talking about in this case.

U.N. fight over Israel overshadows poverty negotiations | FP Passport

Hint:  If MDG’s were a course the nations of the world were taking, there might be a lot of D’s and E’s….

A very long decade ago, the world’s leaders got together at the United Nations here in New York to agree on something pretty remarkable: that they were going to do their best to end poverty by 2015. In just over a week, they’ll come back — now with two-thirds of that time gone by — to see how well we’ve done.

Sounds very nice, but the negotiations to settle on an answer to that question have been far less glamorous. A draft of the final outcome document, dated Sept. 8 at 1:00 p.m. EST, gives a hint at where the sticking points were: language about foreign occupation and blame where progress has lagged behind.

via U.N. fight over Israel overshadows poverty negotiations | FP Passport.