For Educators

Food security has been a frequent topic at G-8 and G-20 meetings ever since the food price crisis that preceded the 2008 financial markets crash. It is likely to be discussed again this month when world leaders meet in Los Cabos, Mexico for the 2012 G-20 Summit.

Among the proposals likely to be considered is one with roots in CGD research by senior fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott, my guest on this week’s Wonkcast. Kim is a leading expert on agriculture and poverty, and especially on agriculture pull funding—finance that creates incentives for research, development and delivery of agricultural technology breakthroughs.

In this week’s interview we discuss why food security has featured so prominently on the agenda of global summits; how pull funding differs from traditional approaches; how it could work for specific crops, like vitamin-A enriched sweet potatoes; and the modest scale of the pilots that may be announced at the Los Cabos Summit.

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Nigel Purvis, CEO of Climate Advisors, a visiting senior associate at CGD, and the co-author of a new CGD report “Energizing Rio+20: How the United States Can Promote Sustainable Energy for All at the 2012 Earth Summit.” We spoke last Friday following the launch of the report at a CGD event that concluded with a keynote address by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

In recent years the idea of strong health systems as a component of population health has been noted by both global health donors and national governments alike. Consequently, the question of how to measure the effectiveness of health systems interventions has become ever more pressing. But it remains unclear if efforts to assess health systems are providing enough information to establish a link between investments and improved health outcomes. How do we know if increased investments in the sector are creating the desired impact? This panel discussion will explore the linkage between health system strengthening activities and improving health outcomes and provide a platform for determining the efficacy of health systems investments. Panelists will address methodologies for analyzing health systems, beyond a mere compilation of indicators, and will explore innovative methods to measure health system performance.

Johnny West is a man of many talents. An expert on oil, civil society, and governance in the Middle East who works as an advisor to the UNDP, he is fluent in Arabic, spent more than two decades in the Middle East as a journalist for Reuters, and has just published a highly readable book recounting his journey through the Arab Spring. On this week’s Wonkcast, we catch him between his travels to discuss a new working paper he’s written for CGD: Iraq’s Last Window: Diffusing the Risks of a Petro State. Johnny’s experience in the Middle East makes him think that the region just might be ripe for an Oil 2 Cash revolution that could help foster improvements in governance and reduce poverty.