Zimbabwe

The Fight to End Wildlife Crime Is a Fight for Humanity

Elephants in Kenya. Curt Carnemark/World Bank

Elephant ivory is on the march. Not elephants, but their ivory. The elephants are left bloodied and dead on the range. So are many rangers who work to protect a country’s natural capital. In the past 10 years, over 1,000 rangers have been murdered in 35 countries alone; the International Ranger Federation tell us that as many as 5,000 may have been murdered worldwide in that time.

At the CITES COP – the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – the halls in Bangkok ring loud with concern for the elephants and other charismatic species, particularly rhinos, that are being exterminated across Africa in pursuit of private profit, at the expense of communities that rely on nature for their food, shelter, start-up capital, and safety net in a warming world.

So why should the World Bank care? Our concern is to build strong economies and healthy communities by revving the engine of inclusive green growth as we prepare countries and communities for the impacts of climate change.

What does this have to do with elephant ivory you ask? Simply put, we cannot achieve our dream of a world without poverty without taking account of the rise in wildlife crime.

Is Concentrated Solar Thermal Making Progress in Developing Countries?

Concentrated Solar Thermal It’s no secret that renewable energy development in developing countries is on the rise. In its most recent report on renewable energy investment, the UN states that investment in renewables in developing countries has grown over ten-fold – from USD 8 billion to USD 89 billion in the past eight years. When taking advantage of solar resources, the clear choice – assisted by large recent reductions in capital cost - has been for solar photovoltaic technologies (Solar PV).

2012, une année charnière pour le sida et les avancées attendues

Lors de la dernière conférence internationale sur le sida organisée à Washington, en 1987, les États-Unis étaient présidés par Ronald Reagan, l’Union soviétique tenait encore debout, un mur coupait Berlin en deux et la taille de l’économie chinoise était comparable à celle de l’Espagne. Personne n’aurait pu prédire les évolutions de notre planète ni celle de l’épidémie de sida.

En cette année 2012 décisive, la conférence est de retour à Washington. Le sida reste le plus grave défi de notre temps sur le front des maladies infectieuses, avec plus de 65 millions de contaminations et 30 millions de décès depuis le début de la pandémie, sans compter les quelque 3 millions de nouveaux cas et les 2 millions de victimes supplémentaires chaque année.

Ces statistiques sinistres ne doivent pas masquer les incroyables progrès accomplis. Lors de la conférence de 1987, le monde était démuni face à cette pandémie mortelle alors qu’il n’existait aucun médicament pour atténuer une lente et douloureuse agonie. Aujourd’hui, la palette des outils de prévention à l’efficacité avérée ne cesse de s’étoffer ; les infections sont en recul dans plus de 33 pays ; et jamais l’humanité n’a disposé d’autant de traitements pour lutter contre un virus. Les coûts de traitement annuels ont été divisés par 100 et ils atteignent désormais 8 millions de personnes à travers le monde, soit 60 fois plus. C'est, à ce jour, l'expansion la plus importante d'un traitement qui permet de sauver des vies.

Avec l’accélération des progrès scientifiques, des percées encore plus spectaculaires sont attendues.

C’est en Afrique surtout que ces progrès incroyables sont le plus visibles. En Afrique de l’Est et en Afrique australe, l’épidémie de sida était responsable à son paroxysme de 50 à 70 % des hospitalisations et des deux tiers des décès dans la population adulte. Imaginez un instant ce que cela signifierait à l’échelle de votre quartier. Dans mon pays, le Zimbabwe, les hôpitaux étaient remplis de mourants décharnés, le personnel soignant transformé en fossoyeurs, les hôpitaux en hospices et toute la vie sociale réduite à deux activités : visites aux malades et funérailles. Les marchands de cercueils, à l’activité florissante, s’installaient le long des routes menant aux cimetières surchargés.

AIDS 2012: In a watershed year, breakthroughs await

When the International AIDS Conference was last held in Washington, D.C. in 1987, Ronald Reagan was U.S. president, the Soviet Union stood, a wall scarred a divided Berlin and China’s economy was roughly the size of Spain’s. The wider world – and the AIDS epidemic – has changed more than anyone foresaw.

The conference returns to Washington in a watershed year. AIDS remains the greatest infectious disease challenge of our age: more than 65 million people infected and 30 million deaths since the epidemic began, and roughly 3 million new infections and 2 million deaths a year.

These are grim statistics, but they belie the incredible progress made. When we met at the 1987 AIDS conference, the world had few tools to prevent deadly infections and no drugs to commute slow, agonizing, wasting death. Today, there is an expanding armory of proven prevention tools; new HIV infections have been reduced in more than 33 countries; and there are more drugs to treat HIV than for every retrovirus in history combined. Annual treatment costs have been reduced 100-fold and AIDS treatment has been expanded 60-fold to reach 8 million people worldwide in the largest-ever expansion of lifesaving treatment.

As the pace of scientific progress accelerates, even greater breakthroughs await us.

Nowhere is this amazing progress more evident than in Africa. At its peak in Eastern and Southern Africa, AIDS was responsible for 50-70% of bed occupancy and two-thirds of all adult deaths. Let each of us simply try to imagine experiencing this in our own neighborhoods. In my country, Zimbabwe, hospitals overflowed with emaciated, dying people, nurses and doctors were undertakers, hospitals were hospices, and an entire society’s social life rotated from hospital beds to funeral gravesides. Coffin-making was the fastest growing business, lining miles of roads to overcrowded cemeteries.

Longreads: Visualizing Migration, a Poor African Woman’s Journey, Domestic Remittances, World at Work

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease, but for how long?

www.worldbank.org/malaria

This year, on World Malaria Day, April 25, the global health community has reason to celebrate. Indeed, thanks to substantial investments from partners and countries over the last decade, the scorecard on malaria reports good news: a reduction of more than 50% in confirmed malaria cases or malaria admissions and deaths in recent years in at least 11 countries south of the Sahara, and in 32 endemic countries outside of Africa. Overall, the number of deaths due to malaria is estimated to have decreased from 985,000 in 2000 to 655,000 in 2010.

The fact that an estimated 1.1 million African children were saved from the deadly grip of malaria over the last decade is an extraordinary achievement. By the end of 2010, a total of 289 million insecticide-treated nets were delivered to sub-Saharan Africa, enough to cover 76% of the 765 million persons at risk.

Over the past 5 years, four countries were certified as having eliminated malaria: Morocco, Turkmenistan, the UAE and Armenia. In southern Africa, health ministers of eight countries -- Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe--have developed a regional strategy to progress towards E8 malaria elimination status.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

The National Press Club
Freedom of the Press panel explores 'Arab Spring' aftermath

"The revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa have brought the promise of more open and accountable governments and societies but that outlook has dimmed, as autocratic regimes in the region have responded to the so-called “Arab Spring” by clamping down hard on reporters and citizens communicating on the web, a panel of experts said a National Press Club Freedom of the Press event Feb. 14.

“Wait a few more years before you call it ‘spring,’” said a skeptical Abderrahim Foukara, Washington bureau chief of Al Jazeera Arabic, one of the panelists.

As regimes have felt threatened by their own people’s demands, their security personnel have beaten, detained, spied on and even killed reporters. They have blocked communications via phone, satellite TV and the Internet. They have conducted surveillance of the computer activities of reporters and citizens alike." READ MORE

Prospects Daily: Moody's downgrades 21 European commercial banks -- heating up the financial crisis

Important developments today:

1. Moody’s downgrades 12 U.K. banks and 9 Portuguese institutions

2. U.S. employment growth in September bests economists’ estimates

3. German output falls less-than-expected after July’s surge; but orders slow

Fascinating FreedomFone

As I explore innovative approaches in civilian-led movements, I become increasingly knowledgeable about the latest technological gadgets and devices that have become powerful tools in demand for good governance and democratic reform processes. Don’t worry, I won’t go on about the Arab Revolution and the role of social media yet again. Instead, I will talk about a latest invention that does not even require the end users to have a web access, something that can be exploited by just anyone, even the illiterates. FreedomFone is an ICT invention that has been specifically designed to cater to those that are in most need of information, bearing in mind the barriers they face in accessing information and the opportunities it provides to improve their conditions.

Mideast Tremors and Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There a Media Divide?

This week, as mass protests continued to sweep across North Africa and the Middle East, observers keep asking, “Where will be next?” Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, currently under siege, has campaigned throughout his long tenure for African unity, arguing that the similarities tying the continent together outweigh the differences. The events of the past few weeks have highlighted differences between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, however, including one which may be critical in determining whether long-serving leaders south of the Sahara face the same challenges Qadhafi is now battling: access to media and communication technology.

This issue was strikingly evident in Zimbabwe on Saturday, when police arrested nearly 50 people who had gathered to watch videos of international media coverage of the events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt. As reported in the New York Times, the gathering “allowed activists who had no Internet access or cable television to see images from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt” and was intended to start a discussion on the implications of these events for Zimbabwe.

Media Events for Development Campaigns

Using large international events to get attention for a development objective is a pretty good idea. Events like the Soccer World Cup are so called media events - events that capture the attention of a large audience, that break our routines, and unify a large scattered audience. Whatever team you were cheering for, you weren't the only one cheering for it, and didn't you feel like your team's friends were also your friends? This kind of mood - attention and a feeling of community - provides a great environment for campaigns that want to raise awareness about certain issues or that want to change norms and behaviors.

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