Tue, 2 February 2010 My guest this week is <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/content/expert/detail/13109/" target="_blank">Rachel Nugent</a>, deputy director for global health here at the Center for Global Development. Rachel directs the Center's work looking at the links between population, poverty, and economic growth and serves as the coordinator of the <a href="http://www.poppovresearchnetwork.org/" target="_blank">Population and Poverty Research Network</a>, which <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/content/general/detail/1423761" target="_blank">held its fourth annual conference</a> recently in Cape Town, South Africa. Comments[0] |
Tue, 26 January 2010 I'm joined this week by John Simon, a visiting fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Before coming to the Center, John served in a range of influential positions, from U.S. Ambassador to the African Union to Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. During the George W. Bush administration, he was a member of the National Security Council, serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization, and Development.
That last role placed him at the center of the American response to natural disasters including the 2005 South Asia earthquake and Hurricane Stan. On the Wonkcast, he shares some of the lessons he learned through those experiences, expanding on a blog post he wrote last week (a post I highly recommend reading!).
John's six lessons cover the full range from the need for good logistical management of relief efforts to the need to start thinking about long-term reconstruction and private investment potential. I ask him to judge the relief efforts so far on each of the six criteria he laid out in his post. Some of the Haiti coverage takes on a new light when seen through the lens of John's experience. He gives a quick history of how the relationship between civilian aid agencies and the military evolved through the course of the Asian tsunami and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and explores how the current response handles that relationship.
On the need to prioritize critical supplies, John notes media reports of some relief shipments being turned away from the airport in Port-au-Prince. He tells me, "When I hear those things I'm thinking, 'Someone's doing their job. Someone's making sure that it's not first come first served."
Listen to the Wonkcast to hear the interview. Have something to add to the discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Comments[0] |
Tue, 19 January 2010 My guest this week is Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Vij directs the Center’s research on fragile states—countries where, often due to recent or ongoing conflict, the basic functions of government are weak or nonexistent. These states present special challenges to aid donors and practitioners, both in planning how to give aid effectively and in delivering it. Vij explains that learning how to respond to state fragility will hold benefits for development even in more functional states. “"We certainly have a set of countries that are a complete puzzle to policymakers, to development practitioners, to the foreign assistance community,” she explains. “But there are other countries that have weaknesses within them, elements of fragility. They might not be fragile overall, but they may have certain areas that are in need of assistance, or they may at different points in time present as cases that are representative of very weak states.” Together with visiting fellow Satish Chand, Vij is writing a book that will tackle these difficult issues. The book will include a set of papers that outline lessons learned by development practitioners in fragile states, and the first of those papers was just published this week. Written by Nicholas Eubank, the paper examines the fascinating case of Somaliland, a universally unrecognized breakaway republic that is home to about a third of Somalia’s population. Vij explains that, since it’s unrecognized by any other state, Somaliland has been completely ineligible for development assistance. Thus, she says, "It lends itself as a natural experiment on what happens when a government has no aid and no prospect of aid." As it turns out, despite (or because of) a total lack of foreign aid, Somaliland has developed strong, accountable institutions of government and has outstripped the rest of Somalia on key indicators of development. In the podcast, we delve into why this might be the case and think about the implications for other fragile states. Vij also previews some of the other papers that will be part of the fragile states series, covering topics that range from the interaction between military and development personnel in Iraq and Bosnia to the provision of basic services in Zimbabwe. You’ll find a complete listing of the forthcoming papers on our Fragile States page. Listen to the Wonkcast to hear our conversation. Have something to add to the discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Comments[0] |
Mon, 11 January 2010 I'm joined this week by Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Nancy introduced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Clinton came to speak to CGD last week. On the Wonkcast, she shares her impressions of Clinton's speech and places it in the broader context of U.S. development policy reform—including two ongoing assessments, the White House Presidential Study Directive or PSD and the State Department’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review or QDDR.
In the second half of the interview, Nancy reviews the past year in development and offers a policy wish for 2010.
On Clinton’s speech, Nancy is enthusiastic about both the content and the significance of the messenger. "It was the first time that I can remember such a broad-ranging set-up of what development is, why it's important for Americans, from a Secretary of State," she tells me.
Clinton’s passion for the subject—combined with her unequivocal language calling development an “indispensible” strategic, economic, and moral imperative—lends hope that the secretary will champion efforts to eventually elevate development so that it is represented at an equivalent level to defense and diplomacy within American foreign policy.
As to the logistics of what that might look like, Nancy suggests a two-step approach. In the remainder of President Obama’s first term in office, she suggests that Clinton and new USAID administrator Rajiv Shah, guided by the findings of the PSD, ought to take a lead in untangling the difficult coordination problems within the government. As part of this, Shah should be empowered to deal with the larger strategic and policy issues that fall beyond merely implementing programs.
“Then perhaps… if there is a second term, the question with Congress could be addressed of whether there should be a more independent agency on development that includes foreign assistance but also includes this strategic and policy work.”
Nancy suggests that leaving a strong, institutional voice for long-term U.S. development policy would be a fitting legacy both for Secretary of State Clinton and for President Obama. (For more on the rationale for an independent development agency with cabinet-level status, see Birdsall’s introductory essay in The White House and the World
A year ago, Nancy shared her policy wishlist for 2009 on our Views from the Center blog. Her original six wishes ranged from trade policy to climate legislation to the governance of the big international financial institutions. In the second half of this Wonkcast, we go through the list together and see how much was accomplished— and what remains undone.
At the very end of our conversation, Nancy adds one policy wish for the new year. She hopes to get more people talking about the vulnerability of the world's poor to shocks of all kinds, whether from changes in commodity prices or from severe weather events.
No more “just lending countries money when their house burns down, having them build up more debt, and then having another shock and another round of vulnerability... That loop has to be escaped," she says. One example of an alternative approach: insurance that pays out in the event of a major shock, such as a commodity price bust or hurricane. (For more on this idea, see Birdsall Urges Pittsburgh G-20 Summit to Prepare for Next Global Crisis.)
Listen to the Wonkcast to hear our conversation. Have something to add to the discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week.
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Tue, 5 January 2010 My guest this week is Oeindrila Dube, a postdoctoral fellow here at the Center for Global Development and an assistant professor of politics and economics at New York University. She is the author, along with Suresh Naidu, of a new paper that examines the relationships between U.S. military aid to Colombia and paramilitary violence and electoral participation in that country. Her paper reaches the unsettling conclusion that U.S. military assistance dollars may in fact be responsible for raising the levels of political violence.
At the heart of Oeindrila's paper is an innovative approach that uses detailed data on paramilitary attacks and assassinations (available from 1988 to 2005) to establish quantitative evidence for a phenomenon that has long been suspected. "For decades,” says Oeindrila, “many NGOs have anecdotally been describing links between paramilitary groups and the government military that has this implication that … resources going into the country ... might be diverted to these groups. The nice thing is we are able to show that quantitatively." Oeindrila’s data show that municipalities in Colombia that house military bases show statistically significant increases in paramilitary violence following stepped-up U.S. military assistance. She explains that the extremely localized effects provide strong evidence that government forces are not only providing arms and ammunition to paramilitaries but have also conducted joint operations with them. Her quantitative approach also allowed her to answer a range of other important questions. She finds that while an increase in aid correlates with increased paramilitary activity, it has no impact on guerrilla attacks or on counternarcotics operations, calling into question whether military aid to Colombia is an effective means to either securing the country or decreasing narcotics trafficking. Oeindrila's findings carry important lessons for policymakers studying any country where relationships between the government and paramilitary groups factor into the equation. In the last several minutes of the podcast, we examine several of these cases, including Mexico, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “We have to consider the links between armed non-state actors and the state anytime we start disbursing money,” Oeindrila tells me. “Otherwise, our military aid is going to end up financing groups that we are ... trying to counter. Please do listen to the interview and read Oeindrila’s paper here. Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Comments[0] |
Mon, 14 December 2009
Nandini praises the evidence-based framework PEPFAR has laid out and its move towards much greater openness and transparency. She stresses that the challenge ahead will be in designing concrete plans that implement the strategy effectively and measure its impacts. Nandini brings to the table a wealth of experience, dating back to the late 1980s, when she worked on the front lines of the battle against HIV/AIDS in India. On the Wonkcast, she tells me how she moved from educating sex workers in Mumbai about HIV to studying global HIV/AIDS policy. That journey started when her organization hosted a US Congressman, who wanted to see the realities of AIDS & sex work in India up close. "I felt there was such a distance between the woman we were addressing and this wonderful Congressman, and I wanted to travel that distance to find out what decisions were made at the top that allowed money to flow down and prevention programs for health to work." Money earmarked specifically for HIV/AIDS represents a significant chunk of total foreign assistance (roughly 5-10% of the $125 billion official development assistance in recent years), and the United States provides around two-thirds of the AIDS money, around $5 billion in 2007 alone. Nandini explains that four out of every five dollars the United States spends internationally on AIDS is channeled through U.S. bilateral agreements, while the remainder goes through multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. PEPFAR is the main channel for U.S. bilateral spending on the disease, and Nandini gives listeners a brief history of PEPFAR and its approach. She says the program has always strived for clear results. "When PEPFAR was established, the administration thought very strategically about how they could demonstrate success... and I think they realized that to make this a success, they had to have very strong metrics." In the first five years of its existence, PEPFAR exceeded its target of getting 2 million people with HIV on treatment. The challenge now, Nandini explains, is making PEPFAR's work sustainable, in particular by stepping up prevention efforts, since for every two people who are placed on treatment, five people become newly infected. "The difficulty in defining success in prevention is great, because how do you count something that didn't happen?" she tells me. For those who are interested, this is an area where CGD has been doing some pioneering work: senior fellow Mead Over is investigating the possibility of designing a Cash on Delivery program that would offer clear incentives for governments to prevent new HIV infections. I'll be interviewing Mead in an upcoming Wonkcast. Listen to the Wonkcast to hear the interview. Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Comments[0] |
Tue, 8 December 2009 As climate talks get underway in Copenhagen, the specifics of an agreement to slow global warming and adapt to its effects are far from settled. My guest on this week's Wonkcast, Jan von der Goltz, has spent the last few weeks surveying views in the global development community about what these specifics should be.
Jan is the author, along with CGD president Nancy Birdsall, of a new CGD paper It’s One Climate Policy World Out There--Almost" that presents the results of a recently completed CGD survey. The online survey, which Nancy and Jan launched in mid-November, collected the views of nearly 500 respondents, hailing from 88 countries, who mostly work on international development issues. Unlike most surveys on climate, which generally test the knowledge of respondents about climate science, CGD's survey asked respondents for their views on specific prescribe issues that are being discussed in Copenhagen. It sought to find which specific policy options are widely favored among development experts, and whether opinions diverge along developed vs. developing country lines. Jan tells me that, by and large, there is an encouraging degree of consensus on most key items. A large majority of respondents from both developing and developed countries held very similar views on the responsibilities of the two different country groups, including on issues that have been very controversial in the negotiations. Most favored binding commitments now by developed countries, and commitments by 2020 by ‘advanced developing countries’ (Brazil, China, India, South Africa and others), limited use of offsets by developed countries, strict monitoring of compliance with commitments, and the use of trade measures (e.g. carbon-related tariffs) only in very narrow circumstances. Among approaches to governance, the most support went to the Climate Investment Fund model—of equal representation of developing and developed countries on the board. I learned a lot from taking the survey (it’s still online as an educational tool, you can take it here) and from talking with Jan. Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Comments[0] |
Mon, 23 November 2009 This week, my guest on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast is senior fellow David Wheeler, the lead researcher for CGD’s work on climate and development. Last week, David and his team released a new tool called Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA). A major advance in the remote monitoring of forests, FORMA makes available rapid, high-resolution monitoring of ongoing deforestation in tropical areas to anybody with an Internet connection. Developed with financial support from the Foreign Ministry of Denmark, host for the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, FORMA debuted with data through the end of October for all of Indonesia (read the press release).
While coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling cars are the poster children for carbon emissions, David says the destruction of forests is just as serious a concern. “There is a lot of carbon locked up in tropical rainforests,” he explains, “and when you burn forests to clear it for other economic activities, you release all of that carbon.” Deforestation contributes about 15-20% of total emissions worldwide, with most of this coming from tropical forests.
Paying developing countries to preserve tropical forests is potentially one of the cheapest ways to reduce emissions (see the Guardian for one such plan involving Prince Charles), and could bring major economic benefits to poor people who live in and near the forests. But donors will only follow through on these plans if they know that the forests are actually preserved.
David says that this is where FORMA can help. Using NASA and other satellite data, the system tracks deforestation with great accuracy, down to areas about the size of a football stadium. Eventually, FORMA could not only monitor compliance with large-scale climate agreements, but even enable direct payments from individuals or private organizations to protect small tracts of forested land.
While there are some bright spots, including increased efforts in developing countries to slow their emissions growth, the overall climate picture is grim, with global talks gridlocked even as the most recent climate science showing us much closer to tipping points than previously estimated. In the second half of the podcast, I ask David about his views on this dilemma.
“If we had the luxury of time,” says David, “this might be enough. The problem is we do not have that luxury.” He says much more serious commitments are needed from the United States, and suggests that we should not shy away from researching contentious ideas, including nuclear power and geo-engineering—such as potentially risky efforts to shroud the earth in extra water vapor.
“For our grandchildren’s sake, and possibly for our children’s sake,” David argues, “we had better be honest about considering all the alternatives, in case we are truly out of time, as many scientists think.”
Listen to the podcast to hear our full discussion, and visit FORMA’s website here. Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week.
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Fri, 13 November 2009 On this edition of the Wonkcast, I am joined by senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez, who discusses her work as co-chair of the CGD Task Force on Access to Financial Services. Financial regulation—and access—is a hot topic right now, as countries try to reduce the chance of future financial crises, while also ensuring access to financial services. The US House and Senate are currently wrestling with exactly what a revamped US regulatory system should look like.
Liliana explains that the balance between financial stability and increased access to finance is at the root of these debates, and in fact was central to the financial collapse itself. "Even in the United States," she explains, "many people did not have sufficient access to finance, and, well, nobody wanted to stop the provision of financial services. And that was creating a bubble that ended up in the largest crisis that we have seen in recent history."
However, shifting too far the other way-- trying to ensure stability through strict banking regulation-- could deny billions of people around the world access to basic financial services (see David Roodman’s recent blog post examining recent estimates of the number of people who are financially un-served).
Liliana and her task force came up with a set of ten principles that can help policymakers address that dilemma. "The unique thing about the principles is that it takes the forest, not just the trees," Liliana tells me. "It doesn't focus on one part of regulation, it basically looks at the entire forest of financial regulation and says, 'OK we want the system to be stable, but we also want the system to provide financial access.'"
The principles fall into three general categories-- financial infrastructure, financial regulation, and other government policies. Listen to the podcast to hear Liliana explain them, and go read the Task Force's full report introducing the principles here. Have something to add to our discussion? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week.
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Mon, 9 November 2009 What are the benefits of focusing specifically on girls when we invest in development? My guest this week is Ruth Levine, an expert on health and education who for the past two years has focused much of her work on adolescent girls. She's the co-author of a recently released CGD report titled, "Start With A Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health." In our Wonkcast, she outlines the agenda and explains why it's so critical. "Women and girls in many senses really hold the key not only for their own health but for the health of their children and their broader communities," Ruth tells me. Recognizing that fact and directing our investments accordingly, she says, can lead to better solutions for a wide range of problems-- everything from economic development to HIV/AIDS. "In high [AIDS] burden countries, if you look at who is getting infected, three quarters of HIV infected young people are girls." Bringing those numbers and overall AIDS infection rates down, Ruth explains, will require identifying and addressing the social dynamics that make girls more vulnerable in the first place. The 'Start With a Girl' agenda explains what a comprehensive girl-focused public health policy might look like. Among its eight agenda items, it recommends working to eliminate child marriage, focusing HIV prevention efforts on adolescent girls, and fostering national commitments in selected developing countries to providing healthcare to girls. The full agenda as well as a video of the report's well-attended launch are available here. Start with a Girl is the second report in the ongoing Girls Count series, following on Girls Count: A Global Investment and Action Agenda, which Ruth co-authored with experts from three other organizations. Listen to the Wonkcast to hear our full conversation. Have something to add? Ideas for future interviews? Post a comment below. If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to get new episodes delivered straight to your computer every week. Ruth is beginning to Tweet -- sign on to follow her on Twitter! Comments[0] |
Global Prosperity Wonkcast
Global development experts share their views about ways wealthy countries can promote prosperity in developing countries.
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This week on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast, I'm joined by 