Imagine you are an ER doctor trying to treat a very ill patient who has no medical history and only a vague recollection of symptoms. What would you do if you were the doctor? Trust your gut? Trust that the patient has chronicled his symptoms accurately enough to warrant an accurate diagnosis? This is perhaps how policymakers and aid workers felt back in 2001 when they were deciding where to begin the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Cities are already a major source of raw materials, recycling more than 400 million tonnes a year of paper and metal from their urban ore. In some particularly good countries more than 90 percent of their discarded aluminum cans are ‘mined’ and recycled into new aluminum. In a few cities, old landfills have even been mined to recover past discarded metals. Another link between cities and the mining industry might be replicating contests held by two important mining companies.
In March 2000 Goldcorp announced a very unusual challenge. The company offered $575,000 in prize money, plus put all of its usually highly proprietary geologic data for its Red Lake, Canada property on line. The company needed help on where best to next look for gold. More than one thousand virtual prospectors from more than 50 countries responded. Their suggestions were prescient and highly profitable. The contest took a small niche gold mining company and made it a global player: share prices increased more than 50-fold since 1993.
Containers spend, on average, several weeks in ports in Africa. In fact, over 50% of total land transport time from port to hinterland cities in landlocked countries is spent in ports.
Our recent study demonstrates that, excluding Durban and Mombasa, average cargo dwell time in most ports in SSA is close to 20 days whereas it is close to 4 days in most large ports in East Asia or in Europe. In this setting, the main response has been to push for: (a) concession of terminal operators to the private sector, (b) investments in infrastructure (such as quays and container yards) and (c) investments in super-structures such as cranes and handling equipment.
What has been the result on cargo dwell time? Not much. On average, it is extremely difficult to reduce cargo dwell time. In Douala (Cameroon), for example, planners set an objective of 7 days at the end of the 1990s, but the dwell time remains over 18 days (despite real improvements for some shippers).
The climate conference in Durban in December 2011 agreed to start a process for a post-Kyoto agreement on emissions reductions. The negotiations in Bonn in the last two weeks did make some progress on the issue, at a snail’s pace, but strong signals for a solid, future carbon market are not in the air.
Carbon prices are at an all-time low and do not currently stimulate trade that would make a difference. Hundreds of carbon traders are flocking to look for new employment opportunities, hopefully not for good if the business picks up again in the coming years.
In spite all of this uncertainty, almost 2,000 people from over 100 countries, have gathered in Cologne this year for the 9th Carbon Expo. This is my second visit to this event and I was surprised to find the booths busy and plenaries full. Admittedly there are clear messages of supply surpassing the demand and the long awaited price signal still missing, but there were also some signs of relative optimism.
The annual World Bank report on the State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2012 was launched with a message that the volume of US$ 176 billion in 2011 was the highest ever (an 11% increase over 2010), but that this market is increasingly dominated by Europe. Pre-2013 credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), known as ‘Certified Emissions Reductions’ (CERs) went down by 32%, Joint Implementation activity was down by 36%. Post-2012 CERs grew by 63% resulting in a total volume of US$2 billion. Africa is emerging as a seller of post-2012 CERs, which is a welcome diversification from the earlier trade dominated by a few emerging economies.
Development Impact is having a week off due to Memorial Day and dodgy internet connections in remote locations. In the meantime, Markus is looking for someone to work on a number of private sector impact evaluations at the World Bank.
Here is the blurb:
Position Announcement Economist, Africa Region Gender Practice, The World Bank
When launching ‘Let’s Talk Development,’ we thought we would create a platform for encouraging open debate and exchanging serious ideas about economic development and poverty reduction. Looking back at almost two years of open exchanges and vigorous discussion on all sorts of issues, I think we have far surpassed our initial expectations. ‘Let’s Talk Development’ now has a wide and loyal readership and is among the most popular of the World Bank’s blogs.
Recently, a friend from Indonesia visited me in Nairobi. He is one of the world’s leading experts on social development and a long-term Jakarta resident. One of his observations stuck in my mind: “Kenya is just like Indonesia ten years ago”, he said.
Comparing Kenya with Indonesia is counterintuitive—except perhaps when it comes to traffic jams—because of the many differences between the two countries. Indonesia is the world largest island state with more than 17.000 islands and a demographic heavyweight with 240 million people (six times more than Kenya). It is also 85 percent Muslim, while Kenya is about 85 percent Christian. Indonesia has massive natural resources – coal and gas (and some oil) – that it exports to other Asian countries, especially China, while Kenya’s economy is fuelled by a strong service sector.
There are many more reasons to challenge a comparison between these two countries but when one digs below the surface, there are also some similarities. Economically my friend was spot on: in GDP per capita terms, Kenya is roughly at the level of Indonesia a decade ago (about US$800 per capita). Today Indonesia is far ahead, but I don’t see any reason why Kenya couldn’t follow suit. Indeed, Indonesia is a good benchmark case for Kenya because it was never a “star reformer”, but instead a consistently strong performer.
Oxfam is publishing a fascinating new series of case studies today, describing its programme work on local governance and community action. There are case studies from Nepal (women's rights, see photo), Malawi (access to medicines), Kenya (tracking public spending), Viet Nam (community participation) and Tanzania (the ubiquitous Chukua Hatua project), and a very wise (and mercifully brief) overview paper from power and governance guru Jo Rowlands. Here are some highlights:
“Governance is about the formal or informal rules, systems and structures under which human societies are organised, and how they are (or are not) implemented. It affects all aspects of human society – politics, economics and business, culture, social interaction, religion, and security - at all levels, from the most global to the very local."
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
AudienceScapes
New Platforms, New Public Opinion?
"With the continued growth of new communication media and technologies, the public opinion and research sector is abuzz with equal doses of optimism and skepticism for its future. In a world of falling response rates and increasing costs for phone and face-to-face surveys, does this new frontier ask us to merely measure the chatter on Twitter and Facebook or does it reframe the definition of public opinion itself? This is among the many questions challenging the Digital Team here at InterMedia." READ MORE
DFID Research for Development
The engagement of women's movements with religion: legal reform in Anambra state, Nigeria
"Campaigning by the women's movement in Anambra State was instrumental to the introduction of a new law in 2005 designed to prevent the maltreatment of widows. Religion is often implicated in gender inequality and discrimination against women, but religious leaders and organizations played key roles in this campaign. The case study enabled the researchers to address the questions of when, why and how religious actors facilitate rather than obstruct legal reform intended to realize women's rights." READ MORE
Back in the mid-1980s, India's then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi lamented that out of every rupee spent on welfare schemes, only 15 paise reached the poor. More than a quarter of a century later, the scale and ambition of India’s social sector programs have become far bigger than what even Rajiv’s 21st-century vision could have comprehended. But one thing has remained constant – the system still leaks.
That’s not to say the problem hasn’t received attention. There is increased awareness about pilferage and diversion of assets meant for a target population. Programs now are better designed to detect leakages, estimate what’s being delivered and allow monitoring at various stages.
But these measures have met with varying degrees of success. Clearly some states – and indeed some projects – have been better at drawing benefits and utilizing funds than others.
So how do you get more bang for your buck when it comes to development projects? When the World Bank invited me to visit some of its assisted projects in Tamil Nadu in early May this year, I got a firsthand opportunity to mull this issue.
It takes an entrepreneur 28 days to start a business in Spain but only 1 day to do so in New Zealand. The total business tax rate (including profit tax and labor tax) is 28.1% in Bulgaria but 68.5% in Italy. And, fixed-term labor contracts are prohibited for permanent tasks in France and Portugal but not in Germany and Sweden.
The World Bank has been publishing the annual Doing Business reports since 2004 to investigate the scope and manner of regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. In a new research paper (Haidar 2012), we investigate the link between business regulatory reforms and economic growth in 172 countries.
In the course of our research, we created a five year dataset on business regulatory reforms from the World Bank’s Doing Business project. Then, we tested the hypothesis that business regulatory reforms increase economic growth, using data on micro-economic reforms. The results provide robust support for the claim that business regulatory reforms are good for economic growth. We establish that, on average, each business regulatory reform is associated with a 0.15 percent increase in growth rate of GDP. The below figure provides a visual illustration of the main empirical finding.
Source: Haidar (2012)
High food prices, especially when they have increased suddenly and unexpectedly, have been found to hurt many poor people around the world. The Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals (GMR) finds that the food price shock that peaked in early 2011 pushed nearly 50 million people into poverty. On one level, this is not surprising—the poorest people, after all, spend nearly all of their income on food. But on further reflection, this result is not so obvious— three quarters of the world’s poor are rural and the majority of them depend on farming for their livelihoods. The problem is that—unlike farmers in rich countries—many poor farmers in developing countries don’t produce enough food to meet their families’ needs. These net buyers of food are hurt by higher food prices even though they are farmers.
Imagine a low-income country in the developing world suddenly discovering a large endowment of natural resources within its borders. Perhaps a large oil reserve is found just offshore, or a deposit of valuable natural minerals is uncovered just below the earth’s surface. Surely, such a discovery would be a blessing, as it would expand the country’s total stock of capital.
Deliberations around public budgets can sometimes bring out the worst in parliamentarians but impassioned responses rarely come from citizens themselves. Perhaps it is because budgets come in the form of tomes, with tables upon tables of data and very little context. Even though those tables reflect social services and entitlements that impact us all, simply disclosing this information does not necessarily mean that these documents will be understood or the resources well spent.
The Budget Transparency Initiative (BTI), led by the World Bank’s Social Development Department and funded by the Governance Partnership Facility, has introduced a methodology to disclose, simplify, and analyze budgets at various levels to not only bring this information closer to citizens but also create enabling spaces for them to provide feedback.
There is growing optimism in the development community that the dawn of the “African Century” may be upon us. The reasons for this optimism are real. Over the last decade, six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies were in Africa, and substantial political and social progress has been achieved.
But I would say that the potential for this development may be undermined if the everyday tragedy of preventable maternal deaths continues unabated across the continent.
The recently-released report “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010. WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank estimates” paints a dramatic picture. Overall, close to 60% of global maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and at 500 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, the region has the highest maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in the world, well above Southern Asia (220), Oceania (200), South-eastern Asia (150), and Latin America and the Caribbean (80).
