October 2009

I've just returned from country Australia evaluating the impact of one of the World Bank's (WB) recent development programs in the region. A WB initiative on the ground in Australia? What is the relationship between country Australia and the Bank's mandate of a world free of poverty?

Photo © Tomas Ernst/World Bank

Following several year's of research and advocacy, the Australian government opened its borders this year to the short-term supply of labour from the Pacific Islands (PIs). Evidence from New Zealand showed that when temporary labour mobility programs are well managed - with the appropriate level of monitoring to prevent worker exploitation and with the right incentives to minimize overstaying - the scheme is win-win for growers and PI workers. Growers enjoy a steady, reliable source of labour and PI workers receive income at least 4-5 times the GDP/capita of their home country.

My colleague Nathan and I travelled to Griffith, New South Wales where six ni-Vanuatu workers were preparing to head home following a six-month assignment picking, pruning and packing fruit. All workers reported a significantly improved financial position, with the majority sending regular remittances to their family members and local villages. In terms of skills acquisition, the training workers received on farms in Australia will benefit them when they return home to agriculture dependant economies of the South Pacific.

Climate change in the news (Oct 26 - Oct 30, 2009)

“South Asia continues to grow rapidly and its largest economy, India, is close to becoming a Tiger.”

Sadiq Ahmed and I were inspired to author Accelerating Growth and Job Creation in South Asia when we were asked by the South Asia Chamber of Commerce, SAARC Business Conclave, FICCI, and a number of policy makers, local research institutes, and CEOs to come up with a strategy on what can be done by South Asian countries to accelerate growth and job creation. So we invited the world’s leading scholars to apply their talents to understanding the economies of South Asia. This gave birth to the book.

It is organized along three themes—an overview of South Asia’s growth opportunities and challenges; sources of growth and policies for the future; and the significance of regional cooperation in promoting growth. The essays combine quantitative data with analytical rigor to provide innovative suggestions in terms of policies and institutions that can propel South Asia towards higher growth, while promoting inclusiveness.

The banner that's been unfurled across the facade of the World Bank's Main Complex in Washington, D.C., where DM2009 will be held Nov. 10-13, tells the story.  Are you registered?

From Kathy Sierra, Vice President of the World Bank’s Sustainable Development Network, and Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President of the World Bank Institute, comes this welcome to DM2009 finalists:

Development Marketplace 2009 couldn't have a more timely or significant theme: “100 Ideas to Save the Planet and its people from the effects of a changing climate.” 

With apologies in advance to initiatives in a handful of other countries considered world leaders in this area (including Costa Rica, Namibia, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil):

Of all the programs in middle income and developing countries that have sought to introduce ICTs systematically into the education, the Chilean experience is perhaps the most lauded.  Enlaces has been the subject of much scholarly and policy attention since its inception almost two decades ago (including a publication from the World Bank back in 2004 [pdf]).

The fact that Chile and Enlaces is considered by many to be a global model of good practice presents policymakers in Chile with a(n enviable) challenge:

Where should Chile look for inspiration as it continues to evolve its programs exploring the effective use of ICTs in education?

I was recently in an informal discussion with development colleagues regarding the governance of extractive industries in a fragile state, which shall remain unnamed for various reasons.  One of them had been working in development for more than three decades and in country X for five years.  In terms of governance, he didn't think any of the usual solutions to the widespread and deeply embedded culture of rampant corruption and excessive rent-seeking would work in the country.  Things are just that bad.  He intimated that the only thing he could think of was to build the capacity of the country’s fractious civil society so that they could become credible interlocutors to government actors, and demand accountability from their elected and appointed leaders.  It was quite distressing when he said, “I don’t know what else to do.”

In July, biodiversity specialist and blogger Tony Whitten wrote a post about not abandoning old-fashioned conservation techniques as an important method of taking positive action on climate change. One of the important old-school mitigation methods, he wrote, lies in protecting the world’s forests through reforestation and avoiding further deforestation.

Accordingly, a big part of the ongoing climate change discussion includes reducing emissions through deforestation and degradation (known as REDD). And the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization now offers a tool to help monitor forests in developing countries. Using satellite imagery and other data, the Global Forest Resources Assessment Portal displays the information on an interactive map.

Not too long ago, Bill Easterly and Justin Lin squared off at an event at the World Bank over the wisdom of industrial policy in developing countries. While I am sympathetic to Bill's position, judging by the mood of the crowd in the room, I would have to call the debate a tie.

Bill has returned for round two with a new working paper that formalizes some of the arguments he made during that debate. In the Power of Exports, the New York University Professor (and now avid and entertaining Twitterer) points out that tiny Fiji dominates the market for exports to the U.S. in the category of "Women's, girl's suits, of cotton, not knit." More generally, the market for exports tends to be dominated in each country by a few big hits (and what's more, to a particular importing country), whether women's cotton suits or "ceramic bathroom kitchen sanitary items not porcelain." Mathematically, this is described by a power law, where the likelihood of observing a particular value decreases exponentially with the size of that value.

Quite literally…

Imagine walking around the streets of DC with your mobile phone in hand. You "point" to, say, a building or a bridge and an application on the phone allows you to detect whether the project is a beneficiary of some of the $787 billion allocated by the US Government American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The amount of money spent for the building and the name of the beneficiary are also displayed. Public spending could not get more transparent – and tangible – than this. Science fiction? Not anymore, thanks to the augmented reality mash-up just released by the ever inspiring folks at Sunlightlabs (hat tip: David Osimo).

The results of a large survey I conducted with my fellow environmental researcher, Wes Schultz, produced a pair of actionable results. First, people who thought their neighbors were conserving energy were more likely to conserve themselves. Second, at the same time, almost all of the nearly 3,000 survey respondents underestimated the conservation efforts of their neighbors. This suggests a simple way to increase conservation activity—by trumpeting the true levels of conservation that are going unrecognized.

To investigate this idea, we examined resource conservation choices in an entirely different setting—upscale hotel rooms, where guests often encounter a card asking them to reuse their towels. As anyone who travels frequently knows, although the wording of this card may vary somewhat, it always requests compliance for the sake of the environment. What the card never says, however, is that the great majority of guests do, in fact, reuse their towels when given the opportunity. We suspected that this omission was costing the hotels—and the environment—plenty.

Governments and development agencies have devoted many years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing democratic governance in countries around the world. The idea of creating democracies is still the primary driver of many governance improvement agendas. Clearly, democratic systems often bring with them improvements in governance and economic development, but simply putting a democracy into place is not enough.
 

Last week, this blog featured a quote by Elinor Ostrom, which contains an interesting sentence: “Yet I worry that the need for continuous civic engagement, intellectual struggle, and vigilance is not well understood in some of our mature democracies and is not transmitted to citizens and officials in new democracies….We have to avoid slipping into a naïve sense that democracy – once established – will continue on its own momentum."