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Blame It on Rio

John Garrison's picture

Unlike the 1984 movie “Blame it on Rio”, which attributed a bawdy affair between a middle-aged man (played by Michael Cain) and a teenager on the tropical vibes of the stunningly beautiful city, the recent hosting of the Rio +20 Conference served to showcase a different face of the Rio ambience -- its global environmental leadership role.  The city not only maintains the world’s two largest urban forests, Pedra Branca and Tijuca (see photo), but has just completed a state of the art waste treatment center which will allow for a 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and are installing 300 kilometers of bicycle lanes.  For the World Bank, the city has been the setting for the improbable significant improvement in relations between the Bank and environmental CSOs over the past 20 years.

When Rio hosted the original UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, the Bank participated with a small staff delegation and its modest publications booth at the parallel NGO “Global Forum” held on Flamengo Beach was set on fire by environmental activists.  They were protesting the Bank’s financing of the Narmada Dam project in India, which threatened to displace hundreds of thousands of small farmers without a fair and sustainable resettlement plan in place.  Some were expressing disapproval of the Polonoroeste project funded by the Bank in Brazil where the paving of a highway linking two Amazonian state capitals led to widespread deforestation in the 1980s.  

AIDS Debate Poses Tough Funding Questions to Top Thinkers

Donna Barne's picture

AIDS Debate

The question was on the pros and cons of HIV/AIDS funding and the tools were sharp insights and passionate views as some of the most influential figures in the fight against AIDS and poverty participated in a lively debate before a packed World Bank auditorium July 23.

The webcast event, co-hosted by the Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development/ U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the medical journal The Lancet, asked a panel of experts to weigh global funding for HIV/AIDS in a fiscally strained, post financial crisis environment. The debate was part of the first International AIDS Conference to be held in Washington in 22 years.

Closing the Gender (Data) Gap: Clinton, Kim Launch New Efforts for Better Gender Data

Donna Barne's picture

The phrase “gender gap” may be well known – but what about the gender gap for data? Today at an event at the Gallup Organization in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called for better data-gathering on girls and women as an essential way to boost women’s empowerment and economic growth.

“Gender equality is vital for growth and competitiveness,” said Dr. Kim at “Evidence and Impact: Closing the Gender Data Gap” in Washington, co-hosted by the State Department and the Gallup Organization.

But the lack of gender-disaggregated data hampers development efforts in many countries, Dr. Kim said.

“We need to find this missing data. We need to make women count.”

Colombia: Getting due credit for disaster prevention

Gloria M. Grandolini's picture

También disponible en español

Natural disasters

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods or droughts are the same worldwide. Whether in Mexico, Colombia, Haiti or Pakistan, these are natural events or "disasters" of varying intensity. 

What changes are the effects and consequences. Water and land become the mortal enemies of populations who pay the highest price with their lives and property.

Too little water, too many droughts

Kristina Nwazota's picture

Understanding Risk Forum 2012, Cape Town, South AfricaIt was gratifying this morning to sit in a room filled with disaster risk reduction and management experts from around the world to open the 2012 Understanding Risk Forum. The Forum focuses on  how countries and their development partners can work together to protect people and communities against the impacts of climate-related natural disasters.

In Sub Saharan Africa, these disasters range from floods caused by cyclones and rising sea levels in coastal countries like Mozambique and Madagascar, to droughts caused by too little rainfall in places like Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger in the Sahel and Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan in the Horn. As the World Bank's Jonathan Kamkwalala said, many disasters are hydro-meteorological in nature, meaning too little water resulting in droughts or too much water resulting in floods. Volcanoes also are a concern in Africa, although many wouldn't know it. The Democratic Republic of Congo's Mount Nyiragongo is an active volcano, one that could erupt in the very near future.

Going to school in Om AlBadry

Kavita Watsa's picture

Mid-morning in the little village of Om Albadry in Sudan’s North Kordofan state, and it is market day. But a curiously dull market, eerily silent but for the occasional sounds of livestock. In a few minutes, I realize why. All the village children are safely in school, and that accounts for the peace. In other Sudanese villages that we typically visited late in the afternoon, the first sounds of greeting were always whoops and cries from a horde of excited little boys, while the girls hung back, shy of strangers.

We carry on for half a mile past the market, passing large camel pens, in search of the school. We find a collection of small shacks that houses the older boys and girls, while preschoolers sit in a dusty group under a shade tree. The preschool teacher is seated on a plastic chair, and the children are repeating their lesson after her. It is a while before I notice the teacher is nursing a baby, even as she recites to her pupils. When the lesson ends, some of the girls begin to skip, using ropes that the teacher fishes out of her bag. The others play listlessly in the soft, warm sand, some lying down in it and falling asleep. None leave the shade of the tree, not even the little skippers.

Colombia: Building a Future without Violence with Juanes and Mi Sangre

Gloria M. Grandolini's picture

También disponible en español

money under the mattress

“A microphone, a guitar and a spray can; these are their weapons.” These could be the lyrics of a song by the wildly popular Juanes, but the singer-songwriter was actually referring to the work of his foundation, Mi Sangre, which campaigns for a Colombia free from violence for young people.

The Foundation’s programs offer Colombian youth, many of whom are victims of violence in the country -- 4,000 minors died in 2003-2006-- the chance to practice the art of singing, painting and composing to exorcize the threat of violence on the streets, in their neighborhoods, homes and schools. 

Women of action in Sudan

Kavita Watsa's picture

 

Working in development, there are some faces you never forget because they come back to you at the end of a long day, time and again. As we recognize International Day of Action for Women, I’ve been thinking about some of these faces from a recent trip to Sudan. Faces of young women who are doing community work that is so important, it is really in a league of its own. I’d like to dedicate this “day” to these women of action, the young graduates of village midwife schools in eastern Sudan.

The doorway to the midwives school in Kassala, a town close to the Red Sea, leads you into a small courtyard crowded with beds, belongings, and cooking utensils gently baking under the desert sun. Passing through this open air dormitory, another door opens into a classroom, in which a group of about twenty young women dressed in soft white are listening to a lecture that involves plenty of gesticulating and a plastic model lying on a bed. These students have already qualified as midwives and are now in town to learn more advanced skills that they can take back to their villages in a few months.


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