My guest on the Wonkcast this week is New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof. Nick’s incisive reporting on the lives of poor and vulnerable people—especially girls and women (see, for example, Half the Sky)—has led millions of his readers to empathize with people facing difficulties they could otherwise hardly imagine.
The recent collapse of a factory building in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of people making clothing for export has shined a harsh spotlight on the lack of worker protection in such low-income developing countries. But my guest on this week’s show, CGD senior fellow Kimberly Elliott, says that the disaster is unusual only in its magnitude.
Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a provision for increased temporary, low-skill work visas. CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens, a leading expert in migration, labor mobility, and development, has welcomed the proposal as good for development.
My guests on this week’s Wonkcast are David Wheeler, senior fellow emeritus at CGD, and Nigel Sizer, director of the Global Forest Project at the World Resources Institute (WRI). They joined me after a presentation for CGD staff of Global Forest Watch 2.0, a real-time forest monitoring system that draws from David’s work on the Forest Monitoring for Action initiative (FORMA) here at CGD.
My guest Taeho Bark, the Republic of Korea’s trade minister and candidate to be the next director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), has witnessed the power of trade transform his country into a high-income, dynamic trading entity.
“Korea was one of the greatest beneficiaries of a liberal trading regime,” Minister Bark tells me. “It’s time for Korea to make a contribution to the international organization which is governing international trade.”
My guest on this Wonkcast is Alan Kyerematen, Ghana's former Minister of Trade, Industry and President’s Special Initiatives and one of nine candidates to be the next head of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In our interview, Minister Kyerematen tells me he possesses the skills and vision needed to lead the WTO.
Ten years after the conflict in Darfur began, Sudan and the newly-sovereign South Sudan are still experiencing terrible violence and efforts to ensure lasting peace in the region are falling short. What can the United States do differently to help foster governance that works for both countries?
My guest Anabel Gonzalez, Costa Rica’s minister of trade and a candidate to be the next head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is a staunch believer in two powers: that of trade to uplift nations and that of the WTO to help navigate the process.
The leadership selection process for the next Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is underway. As I explained in a recent Wonkcast, we at CGD are making a modest contribution by inviting each of the nine candidates to be a guest on the show.
Many obstacles to development transcend national borders and therefore cannot be adequately addressed within a single country. These include issues such as drug resistance and other cross-border health risks, financial crises contagion, money laundering, water scarcity, fisheries collapse and, of course, climate change. Economists call efforts to address these problems Global Public Goods (GPGs). Like other public goods, funding for GPGs is chronically in short supply: of $125 billion in annual official development assistance (ODA ) only about $3 billion goes to GPGs.