At a recent CGD roundtable, water expert John Briscoe gave a whistle-stop tour of Pakistan’s water economy. In a conversation framed by comments about Pakistan’s history of resilience and ingenuity, he laid out the compelling facts about Pakistan’s dire situation:
This week Senate appropriators failed to include an OK for an International Monetary Fund quota increase in the Senate version of the continuing resolution—the spending bill to keep open the US government for the remaining six months of the fiscal year 2013. The administration had requested Senate appropriators approve a transfer of previous US commitments from one IMF account to another -- a transfer involving virtually no cost for US taxpayers.
Today, the World Bank launched a new report, "Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness." The report argues that agriculture and agribusiness should be at the top of the development and business agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bank is right to emphasize this issue--of the $25 billion of food that African countries import annually, only $1 billion comes from other African countries. The report offers a clear and well-researched exposition of the state and prospects of African agribusiness. It is broad in scope, encompassing agricultural production and upstream input markets as well as supply chains and agro-processing.
Morris, a newly arrived CGD visiting policy fellow, was previously the deputy assistant secretary for development finance and debt at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he led US engagement with the multilateral development banks.
Is the world making progress on climate change? Recently, the OECD struck a hopeful note, reporting that emissions were growing more slowly than GDP in both the high-income and developing countries, including China. This decoupling of emissions and growth, if true, would be good news indeed, since it would suggest that the world can cut emissions without hurting the economic growth needed to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
The latest news from FORMA (Forest Monitoring for Action) is very bad. Figure 1 shows that the FORMA index of global forest clearing rose 60% from January, 2007 to October, 2012. It declined during the economic crisis, from late 2008 to early 2010, but has climbed steadily since then. To make matters worse, this increase has been accompanied by rapid dispersion of clearing. As Table 1 shows, only Brazil has displayed a significant decline during the past five years. The FORMA indicator has increased slightly in Indonesia and sharply in other regions of Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. In January, 2007, Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 77.3% of the global indicator total. By October, 2012, their share had fallen to 39.4%.
There is understandable outrage over the United Nation’s reaction to its role in first creating and then denying responsibility for Haiti’s cholera outbreak in 2010 that killed 8,000 people. But last week another UN cholera denial story garnered less attention, this time in Zimbabwe following a UN tribunal ruling in Nairobi.
Migration from poor countries to rich countries can change people’s lives. A doctor-founded startup is exploring how migration can save people’s lives.
During his first overseas trip as the United States’ top diplomat, and in advance of this week’s Friends of Syria meeting in Rome, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke forcefully in response to concerns from the Syrian Opposition Coalition that the United States is not providing sufficient support to the opposition:
What do Obama and Bono have in common?
Both have proposed that the world should seek to end extreme poverty over the next twenty years or so.
Obama said so in his annual state of the union address (here) and this week Bono said the same (to be posted here by TED soon) in an interesting and nuanced TED talk in Los Angeles.