CGD Policy Blogs

The latest Global Corruption Report from Transparency International (TI), launched May 5 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, tackles corruption and climate change. The message is stark: without better governance, transferring funds to developing countries to combat climate change could go awry. This would mean even less progress cutting the emissions of planet-heating gases, a squandering of scarce climate funds, and an intensified risk of dangerous, runaway climate change.

This week, 10,000 representatives from around the world will head to Istanbul for the fourth decadal meeting of the UN conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV).

This recent Columbia Journalism Review article on Hiding the Real Africa reports:

And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought... The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping… Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly… Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors…

This is a joint post with Vijaya Ramachandran.

The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recently reported that the December 2010 Food Price Index surpassed the peak reached in June 2008. A closer examination of the data, however, provides some modest hope that the worst effects of the 2007-08 price spikes can be avoided, with luck and better policies.

First, it is important to note that only two of the five components of the Food Price Index were above 2008 levels—meat (slightly above) and sugar (more than twice as high). Second, as shown in the chart below, staple grain prices, which are key to preventing hunger among the poor, are increasing sharply, while rice and, to a lesser degree, wheat remain well below their 2008 peaks. Maize is the exception, thanks in part to U.S. policies supporting corn-based ethanol that bring to mind the zombies populating popular culture—they just won’t die!