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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

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Interactive climate change map shows what a warmer world could look like

Submitted by James I Davison on Mon, 2009-11-02 17:21

As next month’s climate change conference in Copenhagen draws closer, we are undoubtedly going to see the amount of online discourse on the topic continue to increase. The latest example comes from the British government, which last week released an interactive map showing the possible impact of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit). An article in the Guardian says the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre produced the map based on a recent study that indicates, "such a 4C rise could come as soon as 2060 without urgent and serious action to reduce emissions." The newspaper also quotes the government’s chief scientist as saying that such a temperature shift would be “disastrous.”

Indeed, after exploring the map for just a few minutes, you see how devastating the consequences of a warmer planet might be. By zooming in and clicking and dragging with your mouse, you can navigate the map to see what could happen to different parts of the globe. Be sure to click on some of the plus signs, which give you a brief overview of an issue and the option to click to learn more and view sources of the research. The map, its creators say, displays the latest in peer-reviewed climate change research.

Looking around East Asia, you’ll see that some of the impacts listed include decrease in rice yield, extreme temperatures in population centers of eastern China, and flooding caused by rising sea levels.
 

Click on the map to interact. View full screen map here.

(Hat tip: From Poverty to Power blog.)

Climate Change won't go away – so get the basics right now

Submitted by Florian Kitt on Thu, 2009-10-15 09:24

Editor's note: This post is part of Blog Action Day on climate change. For more information, visit blogactionday.org.

Apologies for having been out of touch since Carbon Expo. I needed a break, and summer in Croatia proved one can have a life beyond international development and carbon finance. Climate change, however, very much stayed on my mind with reports of wildfires in the United States and Greece. Clearly, one cannot escape all-encompassing global change, in particular when negotiations have now started in earnest on a post-2012 treaty to reduce carbon emissions and provide financing for developing countries.

Some still think that climate change is just a buzz topic and will quietly disappear from global attention. Let me assure you that many people in East Asian and Pacific countries would disagree. They are hit by natural disasters, which in recent years not only steadily increased in frequency, but also in intensity.

China's presence on Fortune's Global 500 list grows, despite economic crisis

Submitted by James I Davison on Thu, 2009-07-23 21:23

Another example of China’s respectable growth, despite the global economic crisis, is apparent in this month’s Fortune magazine, with its Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies. The 37 Chinese firms that made the list is all the more impressive when you consider just six companies made the list in 1998, as Worldfocus pointed out on its blog and on its television program.

In the following video clip, Fortune global editor Brian Dumaine says the increasing number of Chinese Fortune 500 companies is all about the country’s economic growth. “It’s a growth story,” he says, “and if you look at where most growth is going on, it’s not in the developed world, it’s in the developing world.”

Despite the successes of a number of Chinese companies, other developing countries in the East Asia and Pacific region are all but completely absent from the Fortune’s list. Of developing countries, only Thailand is listed with its state-owned oil and gas company, PTT Public Company Limited, which has been on the list for at least the past several years.

An open discussion on improving access to development- and aid-related information: Friday, July 10

Submitted by James I Davison on Thu, 2009-07-09 13:53

A few months ago, the World Bank released a new programming interface (API) that allows for a new level of access to the institution’s data. It is just one example of how the World Bank and other organizations are relying on new technology and the internet to increase transparency and improve access to information and data.

On Friday at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., several organizations are hosting an open discussion on the topic of transparency and open access to information. The event, which is dubbed Open Development Camp, is also sponsored by AidInfo, Development Gateway, Forum One Communications, and USAID's Global Development Commons.

According to the event's webpage, spots are filled to attend the conference in person. But it only seems appropriate that anyone will be able to join the discussion through the this website or follow the conversation via Twitter through the #OpenDevCamp hashtag. Tune in starting around 9 a.m. (Washington, D.C. time).

(via Global Development Commons)

Web videos for a cause: using films to raise awareness, donations

Submitted by James I Davison on Mon, 2009-07-06 16:14

A while back, I saw this blog post, written by a Global Voices blogger Juliana Rincón Parra, highlighting storytellers using online videos to raise awareness about hunger in the Philippines. Among other videos, the blogger pointed out one film in particular, called Chicken a la Carte, a touching video that has been viewed thousands of times after spreading virally on the web through social media sites and email.

This got me thinking, and wondering, about how else online videos are being used to raise awareness of issues and spread word about charities and organizations. It is clear that a short film or video, if done well, can be an incredibly effective at turning an issue we’ve heard of into something much more personal and emotional. And as the Chicken a la Carte film shows, sites like YouTube can facilitate a video’s rapid and widespread broadcasting to mindboggling degrees.

10 (+1) tips for finding a job in development

Submitted by James I Davison on Wed, 2009-04-22 14:40

Jobs aren't easy to come by these days, no matter where you live. The ongoing global downturn is making finding employment even more of a challenge, and in the middle of a job hunt, any advice is usually welcome. Which makes this recent post by political science professor Chris Blattman timely. He highlights development blogger Alanna Shaikh's five tips for finding an international development job – and adds a few of his own (see the tips after the jump).

API allows new ways to access World Bank data

Submitted by James I Davison on Fri, 2009-04-17 13:33

Certain online circles have been buzzing about last week's quiet release of the World Bank's new open API, or application programming interface, which gives open access to vast amounts of the Bank's economic data that date back more than 50 years. The news was first announced by the third-party creator of the API, and has been widely discussed on other blogs and Twitter.

The goal of the API is to make it simpler for third-party programmers to create applications that make the World Bank's economic data globally accessible and easy to understand.

I'll leave the specifics of what an API is and how they work to the others, but a quick example is the thousands of games and other iPhone applications (advertised by Apple as "apps") that have been created from its API. Apple couldn't have developed so many apps on its own and instead made it easier for others to create them.

Other than the fact that the API was re-launched, this news won't mean much to non-computer programmers like me ... at least at first. That is, most of us won't be able to see the direct results of the API until programmers and developers start to create mashups, widgets and other applications that make it easy for the rest of us to access, understand and visualize the data.

New and innovative uses of the World Bank's valuable data will hopefully be an eventual result of the API. Irakli Nadareishvili, who was on the team that created the API for the Bank, writes on Phase2's blog, "What you can do with actual code and integration with other tools is probably only limited by imagination."

Remittances to East Asia & Pacific expected to fall by 4 to 7.4 percent in 2009

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-03-31 14:04

As jobs become fewer and income harder to come by for immigrants in developed countries, the amount of money they send back home, known as remittances, is expected to fall this year more than previously expected. The Bank's Migration and Remittances team announced the latest outlook last week on its People Move blog: "We now expect a sharper decline of 5-8 percent in 2009 ... compared to our earlier projections," wrote economist Dilip Ratha, who leads the team.

While the steepest drops in remittances are expected for Europe and Central Asia – down 10-12 percent – countries in the East Asia and Pacific region are also forecasted to fall by 4-7.5 percent in 2009. Two of the world's biggest recipients of remittances are China, which received $34 billion in 2008, and the Philippines, which saw $18 billion last year. Other big receipients in East Asia include Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, according to the Bank's Migration & Remittances Factbook 2008.

Q&A with World Bank President Robert Zoellick on March 31

Submitted by James I Davison on Fri, 2009-03-27 13:07

Early next week, days before the G-20 summit, head over to the World Bank homepage for the live video stream of a speech by the Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, to be broadcast on Tuesday at 10 a.m. in London (5 a.m. in Washington, D.C.). If you can't make it for the speech, it will be posted to worldbank.org.

During the Reuters-hosted event, Zoellick will answer questions submitted by readers. You can participate by submitting your questions for Zoellick directly through the comments section of Reuters' The Great Debate blog or by using the #askwb tag on Twitter. It looks like there is already plenty of interest – with more than 130 comments posted as I write.

Collaborative climate change website targets both experts, average folks

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-03-10 15:21

Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia website, has interestingly turned the concept of wiki sites into something that seems to be a relatively accepted and trustworthy source of information.

An interesting new wiki tool called Climate Lab takes this concept one step further. The people behind the site, which was beta-launched last week, hope that it will serve as both a clearinghouse source of information for the general public, as well as a collaborative and knowledge-sharing tool for experts of issues related to climate change.