October 2008

Whether it is connecting with someone in another continent without leaving home or jetting off in a flying car, someone familiar with Second Life knows that pretty much anything is possible in the online virtual world—from the serious to the ridiculous.

On Thursday, October 30, at 2 p.m. Washington time, Second Life users will be able to learn the results of the Doing Business 2009 report when it is launched on this island. Doing Business, a report published by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, ranks economies around the world based on how easy it is to do business, considering the level of laws and regulations in a region. The report aims to improve business environments, in part through dialogue and reform.

In some villages in Laos, a household of six people live on US$320 a year, living with whatever means their environment offers them.

I find it amazing the number of “world days” there are. Food day, health day, hand washing day, peace day, elderly person day—there is almost an event for every day of the year! And while people who are poor, have no food, or do not live in peace, do not need a reminder, the world as a whole does.

In Laos, I would venture to say most people do not need the reminder of last week’s Blog Action Day or United Nations anti-poverty day. According to Government figures, approximately 35 percent of the country’s population—roughly 2 million people—is poor (living with less than US$1.50 a day). And while the number has improved significantly in the last ten years (down from 45 percent of the population in 1992), it is still a big number.

In some of the villages that I have visited in Laos, a whole household of six people live on US$320 a year. They live with whatever means their environment offers them. This, in turn, makes them ever the more vulnerable to anything that may affect the ecosystem that surrounds them.

During the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, World Bank President Robert Zoellick made a plea to the leaders of the world’s richest countries not to forget developing nations, even as they hammer out ideas to steady their own economies. Watch his speech

I spent the last week in Washington, DC, at the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF. There were several things on my mind as I left Beijing ten days ago. I was looking forward to a seminar of Asian policy makers focusing on the food inflation crisis and its impact on the poor. And I was going to speak on a panel on climate change, how poor countries can adapt and what to do to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

The financial crisis, however, hijacked the meetings. The panel on food prices was canceled at the last minute and it was hard to get anyone to focus on long-term issues such as climate change. And attention was definitely drawn away from poor countries and poor people to focus on the wild ride in the U.S. and other advanced stock markets.

"The glacier at Karo-la pass covered the whole rock face when our Tibetan guide began leading tours in 1996."

I spent the October holiday in China traveling across the Tibetan plateau to Qomolangma (Mount Everest) base camp. One striking impression was how much water there is there. Most of the great rivers of Asia originate on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau: Ganges, Indus, Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Salween, Irrawady, and Yarhung Tsangpo (which becomes the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh). Half the world’s population gets its water from these rivers running off the plateau. The rivers are fed by the gradual melting of the huge glaciers that cover the Himalayan peaks, as well as the melting of the annual snowpack and seasonal rain. (The name of the Himalayan peak, Annapurna, in Nepal means “full of food,” reflecting the fact that the gradual melting of snowpack and glaciers each spring and summer waters the rice crop.)

The melting of the glaciers has accelerated dramatically in recent years. This is one of the most profound effects of global warming. The glaciers have shrunk 20% over the past 50 years, with much of that in the past decade. Our Tibetan guide took us to a number of different glaciers and showed us how they had receded since he starting taking tours around in 1996. At Karo-la pass we stood on hard, dry ground that had been covered by the glacier just 12 years ago. Climate scientists project that the glaciers will be 80% gone by 2035.

Growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, every year in elementary, junior high and high school, we would participate in hurricane drills. An alarm would sound, and all the kids would file into the interior hallways, sit cross-legged on the floor, and cover our heads with our hands. Some of us, if there wasn't a hallway handy, would crawl under our desks until we were told it was safe to resurface. Thinking back on those drills, I knew they were important but never quite made the link as to why we had to do these exercises, since strong hurricanes never seemed to make their way that far inland while I was growing up. Of course then in 2004, Hurricane Ivan blew through my hometown and caused massive damage, and knocked out my parents' power and water supply for more than a week. I'm sure the local schools put their hurricane drills to good use during that storm.

Kiribati is the easternmost country in the world, and was the first country to enter into the year 2000.

I had been warned to bring sunscreen to Kiribati. But I had not been warned that I would be captivated by her beauty. Kiribati (pronounced as kiri-bass) is made up of 33 coral atolls, littered across 3,500,000 sq km of ocean in the Pacific—4,890 times its land area. The atolls straddle the equator with the highest point of around two meters. Reports suggest that this country, just 29 years after independence, may be the first land territory to disappear due to climate change. It is reported that if nothing is done in the next 50 years the country will sink, bringing its population of 97,000 down with it. About 40,000 people live in South Tarawa, the urban area of Kiribati.