July 2009

On the sidelines of the Diaspora conference I asked some colleagues how the crisis was impacting Africa and other regions, and how the diaspora could be of help. Please check out what they said, on video.

The New York Times recently published an article about the experience of Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission, whose existence is being threatened precisely because it is so very good at doing its job of fighting corruption. Sound like a conundrum? Hardly.

It always seems to be the case that by simply writing or saying something, you can hardly get the same point across as by presenting it in a visual way. For example, it’s one thing to say, “three billion people (a little less than half the world’s population) comprise the bottom 5 percent of global GDP contributors.” But as the Strange Maps blog points out, it’s a little more eye-opening to show a map with those countries completely missing.

I’m not sure this map accomplishes much more than to illustrate a single interesting point – unlike the SHOW World animated maps we wrote about earlier this year or the popular WorldMapper Collection, both of which put several data sets in a visual format.

The map does, however, highlight the interesting fact that most of the countries represented are either in Southeast Asia or Africa. Check it out here.

A pesar que fue un poco de trabajo, valió la pena organizar la conferencia. Nuestro objetivo era ir más allá de discutir los temas sobre las remesas. Queríamos discutir iniciativas concretas para aprovechar los recursos de la diaspora sea en la forma de transferir recursos tangibles (contribución monetaria, inversiones, etc.) e intangibles (conocimiento, tecnología, contactos, etc.). Quisiéramos dar las gracias a todos los presentadores y a los participantes por contribuir al éxito de la conferencia. Recibimos cerca de 200 trabajos, de los que al final sólo 35 fueron seleccionados para ser presentados en las sesiones. El debate fue enriquecedor dado el intercambio de ideas. El programa y las presentaciones de la conferencia están están disponibles en inglés aquí.

Permítanme destacar brevemente en el video adjunto algunas de las ideas y los próximos pasos que han surgido como resultado del intercambio de ideas durante esta conferencia.

Sonia Plaza from World Bank on Vimeo.

This is a summary of materials available from ILO and World Bank.

The financial and economic crises of 2008 had gender-specific impacts and placed a disproportionate burden on women, in particular poor, migrant and minority women. Even though both women and men are affected by job losses, women are often laid off first, as men are traditionally considered to be the main “breadwinners”. Some of the implications of the global financial and economic crisis on women are:

"Public opinion represents a consensus, which emerges over time, from all the expressed views that cluster around an issue in debate, and that this consensus exercises power."

-- Cutlip, S M, Center, A H and Broom, G M (1994) Effective Public Relations, Prentice-Hall International Inc, 7th edn.
 

Photo © Rachel Block/World Bank

Reading the newspapers last January when Russia suspended the supply of gas to the rest of Europe—with Eastern European countries hardest hit—I could not help but think that the region might be better off with fewer sub-zero days during winter.

On a trip to the Balkans last year, I partook of the colorful summer bounty of peppers and tomatoes enjoyed throughout southern Russia and Southeastern Europe. 

What a contrast from the pickles and cabbage my great-great-grandparents subsisted on in Poland and Lithuania! Though I was raised “properly”—with a taste for pickled cauliflower and herring—I could see why the northern reaches of the region might appreciate a longer growing season and more sunny, tomato-ripening days.

Studying (and contributing to) projections of global food supply in the changing climate over the next century, I see precipitous drops in yields projected in already-poor swaths of Africa, and in densely populated and cultivated regions in South and East Asia.  But many have concluded that, globally, there will be enough food to go around—thanks to the expanding role of Europe and Central Asia as the breadbasket of the world—and assuming free and fair international trade in food.
 
A recent report by the World Bank, “Adapting to Climate Change in Europe and Central Asia,” argues that these outcomes can by no means be taken for granted.

Another example of China’s respectable growth, despite the global economic crisis, is apparent in this month’s Fortune magazine, with its Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies. The 37 Chinese firms that made the list is all the more impressive when you consider just six companies made the list in 1998, as Worldfocus pointed out on its blog and on its television program.

In the following video clip, Fortune global editor Brian Dumaine says the increasing number of Chinese Fortune 500 companies is all about the country’s economic growth. “It’s a growth story,” he says, “and if you look at where most growth is going on, it’s not in the developed world, it’s in the developing world.”

Despite the successes of a number of Chinese companies, other developing countries in the East Asia and Pacific region are all but completely absent from the Fortune’s list. Of developing countries, only Thailand is listed with its state-owned oil and gas company, PTT Public Company Limited, which has been on the list for at least the past several years.

As interdependence between the developed (North) and developing countries (South) becomes greater, the economic policies of the North will invariably impact on the South. Globalization, defined as the increasingly free flow of ideas, people, goods, services, and capital that leads to the integration of economies and societies, has become a major force for global change, but much remains to be understood about the transmission channels and potential impacts.  The developing countries commonly complain that the global system is a ‘creditor-run financial system’ and as such, maintaining the stability of the financial system is more important for the advanced countries than mitigating financial crisis in any particular country. 

Internet usage in China continues to grow, and the latest figures released by the Chinese government’s Web research organization show that the total number of online users, at 338 million, surpasses the population of the United States. The impressive statistics – which reflect a 13.4 percent jump from 2008 – had a number of blogs and news sites buzzing late last week. The full report is available in Chinese here (pdf), and WSJ’s China Journal blog has a nice roundup of the findings in English here.

The growth in China – and the rest of East Asia and the world for that matter – is nothing new. Last year, we shared 2008 comScore statistics showing Asia’s internet audience growing faster than all other regions worldwide. And according to more recent information from comScore, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest global share of internet users, at 41 percent (although it’s important to note that the penetration rate of the region is only around 17 percent of the population – well below most other regions – according to this web stats site).

We’ve seen that increased connectivity through mobile phones and the internet may lead to improved economic growth, job creation and good governance, as well as other activities like mobile banking. And as more people, particularly in developing countries, get connected, this growth trend clearly seems to be a positive one.

Image credit: TimYang.net at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

The New York Times recently reported on the political crisis in Niger, where the President’s dismissal of the Constitutional Court (which had ruled against his proposal to abolish term limits) is being contested by the main political parties, civil society and lawmakers. The attached note by my colleague Amadou Ibrahim suggests that the situation could be even worse. As the international community (whose aid finances about 45 percent of Niger’s budget) focuses on the political deadlock, early estimates are that this year’s rainfall will be weak. With most Nigeriens making their living from agricultural production and about 25 percent of them already food insecure, a shortfall in food production coupled with the political turmoil could threaten the lives of millions of people.