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October 2011

Facts, knowledge and women, trump myth and superstition

Fionna Douglas's picture

When scientists from a broad range of disciplines get together to discuss research to feed the world, while protecting the planet in a changing climate, it’s not surprising that they would call for increased investment. More surprising is that they would agree on setting clear priorities.

The World Bank co-organized the Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture in Wageningen, Netherlands, with Wageningen University and The Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation as part of its efforts to build the store of knowledge that can help small holder farmers around the globe increase productivity – a central theme of the Bank’s Agriculture Action Plan – and build resilience to climate change. The conference will also inform the upcoming global climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

Motivated by the statement of UK Chief Scientific Officer Sir John Beddington that the world is unlikely to make the changes required to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade, and is heading for a “4 degree centigrade world with disastrous implications for African food security”, the scientists heeded policy makers’ pleas and delivered some clear evidence-based advice.

Geeking Out for Development: WaterHackathon Generates Solutions

To find innovative solutions to water and sanitation development challenges, the World Bank and the Water and Sanitation Program are reaching out to new, rather unlikely partners.  Computer programmers, designers and other information technology specialists were invited by the World Bank and various technology partners to compete for 48 hours in 10 cities around the world this month.  Their aim: to create the easily deployable, scalable, and sustainable technological tools that respond to specific water and sanitation challenges in developing countries.

Welcoming the Globe’s 7 Billionth Person

Michal Rutkowski's picture

According to the United Nations, this child will be born in India, and statistically should be a girl. But many of India’s girls are going missing at birth, because of parents’ desire to have boys. In 2008, the number of missing girls in India increased in 2008 to 275,000 as compared to 1,000 for the rest of South Asia.

If a girl child is lucky enough to be born, she faces high female mortality in infancy and early childhood in South Asia. What causes excess mortality among girls during infancy and early childhood? One possible explanation that has received a lot of attention is discrimination by parents against girls. Certainly, in parts of the world like Afghanistan, China, northern India, and Pakistan, such discrimination is a serious problem. Studies have shown delays in seeking medical care and lower expenditures for girls. In India, despite stellar economic growth in recent years, maternal mortality is almost six times what it is in Sri Lanka.

Earth hits 7 billion mark, Brazil’s clinics provide hope to the poor

Carlos Molina's picture

As the world’s population hits today the 7 billion mark, unleashing mixed emotions across the globe, Latin America can consider itself lucky that overcrowding is not that big of a deal in our neck of the woods.

Or is it? Experts point out that while the region’s share of the world’s population is a mere 8% -or 560 million- a great concern is that the vast majority of those people –up to 75%- live in cities, leading to overstressed basic services, such as healthcare. My colleague James Martone of the Broadcast Unit, went to Northern Brazil to film a project about a community that has found innovative ways to provide healthcare for the poor.
 

The Seven Billion Mark

Eduard Bos's picture

Photo: Arne Hoel, The World Bank

The UN Population Division has determined that the 7 billion world population mark will be reached today, October 31, 2011. This week’s Economist, the Guardian online, and the New York Times have written on this already, and other news media are following suit. Having produced the World Bank’s demographic projections for some years, and now working as a demographer in the World Bank’s Africa Region, let me add my perspective to the mix.

The approximate date of the world reaching the 7 billion mark is no surprise. When the Bank issued demographic projections back in 1985 (linked to World Development Report 1984– the only one in the series to have specifically focused on the demographic aspects of development), the 7 billion milestone was forecast for early 2011. This is quite close to the current estimate, especially when you consider the projection span of 26 years. At the global level, demographic projections are fairly reliable (but less so for individual countries or small regions).

Are Women More Susceptible to Corruption than Men?

Sabina Panth's picture

The gender dimensions of corruption have typically been approached from the point of view of whether women are less corrupt than men and whether women are disproportionately affected by corruption. While the concept of women inherently possessing a higher level of integrity has been challenged, studies have confirmed that women do indeed bear significant negative consequences from corruption, at least in fragile states and weak institutional settings.  In an article published on Transparency International's Anti-Corruption Research Network, Farzana Nawaz discusses these issues, the highlights of which I will cover in this blog. 

Kenya rising and Germany falling: A tale of two populations

Wolfgang Fengler's picture

Today, October 31, 2011 our planet reaches a new milestone: we are 7 billion people on earth.

In the past, when the world’s population was a fraction of what it is today, the expansion of humanity was a source of alarm and many apocalyptic tales. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus, one of the leading scholars and economists at that time predicted that the world would simply run out of food. Then, we were less than one billion people.

Now I want to take you on a journey into the future.

Quote of the Week: Martin Luther King Jr.

Anne-Katrin Arnold's picture

"You may well ask: 'Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

 

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

Can you really teach someone to read with a computer alone?

Michael Trucano's picture

one technology to teach reading still works pretty well ...For a few years, the World Bank's infoDev program has sponsored a monthy online 'EduTech Debate' (ETD) which functions as a sort of rough complement to the Bank's own EduTech blog.  The goal of the ETD has been to provide a forum for the sharing of information and perspectives on various emerging topics related "low-cost ICT initiatives for educational systems in developing countries".  From the very start, the World Bank's role -- and certainly our voice (to the extent that we have one on these topics) -- has been in the background, and, by design, one only rarely sees a World Bank staff member post on the site, or contribute a comment to the sometimes lively exchanges of opinions that individual posts ignite.  We do follow the discussions quite closely, however, and sponsoring the debate has been a useful way for infoDev, the World Bank and UNESCO to be tuned in to some conversations we might not otherwise know are occurring, and to connect with interesting organizations and practitioners doing interesting things around in the world.

The most recent debate has looked at the potential role that ICT can play in promoting the acquisition of basic literacy skills.  Especially in places where literacy levels are very low -- where the formal education system has, in many significant ways, failed in one of its fundamental roles -- might ICTs offer some new approaches (and tools) that can help get children reading?  Noting (for example) the large number of very basic iPhone apps targeted at children in OECD countries to teach basic letter recognition, phonics, and vocabulary, an increasing number of groups are exploring doing similar things in less privileged environments.  But is it really that easy?

Development Thinking 3.0: The Road Ahead

Justin Yifu Lin's picture

It's time for a third phase of development thinking focused on structural change, driven by changes in endowment structure and comparative advantages. The market will be the fundamental institution for resource allocation and the state would play a proactive facilitating role in the process. I make this case because, in two earlier waves of development economics had mixed records. The first emerged after World War II with a focus on market failures and an embrace of traditional structuralist, state-led development policies; the second adopted a largely neo-liberal view that targeted government failures and recommended Washington Consensus-types of policies.

I lay out this argument in the most recent issue of the World Bank Research Observer (subscription required), which synthesizes half a century of various approaches proposed by development economics, and suggested a way forward. My WBRO paper, New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development, is critically discussed in the same issue of the journal by Joe Stiglitz, Anne Krueger, and Dani Rodrik

At 7 billion, realizing the economic benefits of family planning

Cristian Baeza's picture

JE-GH060621_32957 World BankSlideshow: At 7 Billion Mark, Reproductive Health Critical

With the 7 billionth baby joining the planet, many of us are rightly concerned about the challenges posed by a growing population and its impact on health care, climate change, food security, jobs, and poverty.

Here at the World Bank, we’ve been talking recently about the critical link between population change and economic growth. In some countries, where falling fertility rates have led to expanding working-adult populations and a smaller proportion of dependent children, the economic and social impact has been transformative.

For example, Thailand’s Minister of Finance said at a Bank panel last month that after his country introduced a national family planning policy in the 1960s, more women had the time and opportunity to access education, and take jobs in manufacturing and services. This shift was matched by greater government investment in health, education, gender equality, and skills training for women and the growing young population, together with reforms improving the country investment climate, all resulting in a generation of healthier, more educated and more productive citizens.

As a result, people’s opportunities and quality of life improved. This way, Thailand put in place long-term policies to ensure economic benefit from its demographic transition—it harnessed the “demographic dividend.”

But Thailand isn’t alone. Other countries, such as Indonesia and South Korea, have followed similar paths.

Conditions work! But are they a good thing? (Part I)

Berk Ozler's picture

One of the questions discussed at the recent World Bank workshop on the "Second Generation of CCT Evaluations" (website, complete with at least some of the presentations, here) was the role of the first C in the performance of the CCT: how important is the condition in accounting for the outcomes of conditional cash transfer programs?


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