Movies that Matter, Jeff Skoll
Highlight Quote: “One is the gap in opportunity – this gap that President Clinton last night called uneven, unfair and unsustainable – and, out of that, comes poverty and illiteracy and disease and all these evils that we see around us. But perhaps the other, bigger gap is what we call the hope gap. And someone, at some point, came up with this very bad idea that an ordinary individual couldn’t make a difference in the world. And I think that’s just a horrible thing. And so chapter one really begins today, with all of us, because within each of us is the power to equal those opportunity gaps and to close the hope gaps.”
Many TED talks focus on the real, the practical and the pragmatic – on harnessing the abstract powers of good and common sense of humanity in a real life way. Yet many of these talks can leave us, as ordinary citizens feeling somewhat inadequate and unable to make an impact. Jeff Skoll, producer of films including An Inconvenient Truth, Murderball, North Country, Good Night and Good Luck, and Syriana, gives us a talk about how he, as an ordinary citizen, worked his way slowly to Hollywood. Once there, he was able to make a difference by inspiring and spreading awareness through films.
Mosquitos, Malaria and Education, Bill Gates
Highlight Quote: “But I – I’m optimistic. I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can make a difference for millions of lives, if we get it right. I only had time to frame those two problems. There’s a lot more problems like that — AIDS, pneumonia – I can just see you’re getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn’t naturally make it happen. Governments don’t naturally pick these things in the right way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources into these things.”
Perhaps the world’s most recognizable philanthropist, Bill Gates is characteristically shrewd, practical, clear, forward thinking and unexpectedly funny. By asking us to consider how to solve two big problems: malaria and education – Gates shows us how businesslike thinking and determination can solve widespread social problems. In only 18 minutes, Gates gives us a TED talk that is small in stature but big in ideas.
Aid versus Trade, Ngozi Okongo-Iweala
Highlight Quote: “But we are talking about “Africa: the Next Chapter” because we are looking at the old and the present chapter – that we’re looking at, and saying it’s not such a good thing. The picture I showed you before, and this picture, of drought, death and disease is what we usually see. What we want to look at is “Africa: the Next Chapter,” and that’s this: a healthy, smiling, beautiful African. And I think it’s worth remembering what we’ve heard through the conference right from the first day, where I heard that all the important statistics have been given – about where we are now, about how the continent is doing much better. And the importance of that is that we have a platform to build on.”
In 2007, Okongo-Iweala, the former finance minister of Nigeria and director at the World Bank, had the unenviable task of summarizing four days of TED talks. In 22 minutes, she draws from personal experience, global leaders, real-life examples and observations to illustrate the lessons from the conference regarding effective aid, morality, and the pitfalls in the current methods of development assistance.
Cheetahs vs. Hippos, George Ayitteh
Highlight Quote: “Africa is more than a tragedy, in more ways than one. There’s another enduring tragedy, and that tragedy is that there are so many people, so many governments, so many organizations who want to help the people in Africa. They don’t understand. Now, we’re not saying don’t help Africa. Helping Africa is noble. But helping Africa has been turned into a theater of the absurd. It’s like the blind leading the clueless.”
Many ask the question, why is Africa still in the state it is, with so much money being poured into it and so much work being done by so many different organizations? In this talk, Ayitteh addresses some of the problems in development; some coming from Africa itself and others with foreign sources – and more importantly, how to address them. Ayitteh’s talk can be applied to a number of other scenarios and teach us that aid is a practice that needs close monitoring and attention in order to be effective.
– Farahnaz Mohammed
What if the Royal Baby was Born in Afghanistan?
On the afternoon of July 22nd, the British commonwealth grew excited in anticipation for the arrival of the Royal baby, but what if baby George, the Prince of Cambridge, never arrived? What if complications had severed his chances of survival? Despite the joy the Royal baby received on his safe arrival, what would this baby and his mother would have done if they lived in a Third World country?
In the developing world, childbirth complications contribute to high maternal and infant mortality rates. The highest infant mortality rate comes from Afghanistan with more than 1 in every 10 newborns dying during childbirth. Around the world, nearly 3 million newborn infants die, with an additional 2.6 million born stillborn every year.
Yet, we must remember that such high figure does not take into account the mother in these events. An estimated 800 women die each day from pregnancy related causes. As it stands, 99% of these maternal deaths come from developing countries.
The greatest causes of maternal mortality include severe bleeding, infections, contaminated delivery rooms, high blood pressure, high risk abortions, and harmful diseases. Fortunately, these deaths are preventable. Unfortunately, there is much to be done in order to reduce these numbers.
Along with health issues, other challenges include “delays in seeking care, inability to act on medical advice, and failure of the health system to provide adequate or timely care” according to the WHO’s 2005 World Health Report.
However, there is a bright side; maternal deaths have been nearly halved since 1990. This improvement is due, in large part to an increase in social acceptance of midwives, adequate training of attendants, and proper implementation of health expert strategies. With a 2.4% annual rate of decline in maternal mortality, many experts agree that it proves the success of strategies and more resources must be committed.
Health experts point to success stories, such as in Rwanda. Despite genocide and destroyed infrastructure, maternal mortality has been reduced by more than half since 1990. Even more, women in Rwanda have doubled their access to skilled attendants, up to 52%. Many attribute this success to the government’s commitment to women’s health with proper planning.
But Rwanda is not the only country cutting their maternal mortality rate. Progress is being made around the world. However, more must be done in order to continue this progress. Although current strategies are proving successful, the developing and developed countries must continue committing themselves to the development of international health sectors.
– Michael Carney
Sources: AlertNet Climate, CIA World Factbook, UNFPA, WHO
Photo: US Weekly
MDG 4: Reduce Child Mortality
This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs are a series of eight interconnected goals agreed upon by almost every country in the world, based on a shared commitment to improving the social, political, and economic lives of all people. These goals are to met by 2015 and, two years out from this deadline, it is time to recognize both the incredible progress we have made and the work we have left to do.
The fourth MDG is to reduce the mortality rate for children under five by at least two thirds from 1990 to 2015. The world has made amazing progress on this front. Despite population growth, the number of deaths in children under five worldwide has decreased significantly from 12.4 million in 1990 to 6.9 million in 2011. This represents 14,000 fewer child deaths every day.
This improvement has been made possible by a wide variety of programs. Vaccines are an excellent way to avoid easily preventable deaths. According to the World Health Organization, vaccine-preventable diseases accounted for roughly 17% of deaths of children under five in 2008, representing 1.5 million deaths. This figure can be diminished fairly easily by providing vaccines for diseases such meningitis, tuberculosis, and rotavirus. The measles vaccine alone has prevented more than 10 million child deaths since 2000.
Another reliable method for reducing child mortality is the education of women. Even minimal education for a mother can significantly improve her children’s likelihood of survival. A UNDP program in Malaysia is capitalizing on this opportunity by surveying 2500 single mothers. These women are faced with incredible challenges, including poverty, lack of education and job opportunities, and social stigmatization. The results of the survey will be used to better understand how best to work with these women, enabling them to find enjoyable work and care for their children.
Another successful UNDP program is taking place in Canelones, a populous and impoverished area of Uruguay where roughly 35,000 citizens are raising children in extreme poverty. As a result of a UNDP study in the area that revealed severe health risks for children in poorer areas, several organizations teamed up to create “Canelones Grows with You”. This program provides the most vulnerable families in Canelones with comprehensive training on care for young children, including nutritional supplements and information on how to use them, as well as regular pregnancy check-ups. The program also encourages a sense of community that encompasses even the poorest families, who are often unaware of or feel excluded from public health clinics, schools, and eateries. “Canelones Grows with You” was so successful in reducing rates of malnutrition, low height, low birth weight, and prematurity that it has been adopted as official government policy with a program called “Uruguay Grows with You”.
Between 1990 and 2011, child mortality has almost been cut in half, decreasing in every region. This is an incredible achievement. However, with the goal set at a two-thirds reduction of the 1990 figure by 2015, we definitely have our work cut out for us. One of every nine children in sub-Saharan Africa still dies before they reach the age of five. In Southern Asia, this figure is one of every sixteen. Children from poorer families are almost twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday than those from wealthier families. Any preventable child deaths are unacceptable, but these figures are horrifyingly so.
Every child deserves a chance to live, and all parents deserve the opportunity to provide for their child. Significant progress has been made towards this ideal, and we must continue this important work if we hope to achieve the fourth Millennium Development Goal.
– Katie Fullerton
Sources: UN Development Program, United Nations, World Health Organization
What Is International Poverty?
Global poverty, at least on first blush, seems to be a rather self-explanatory concept. To be poor, we understand as Americans, is being unable to afford certain necessities. But what it is to be poor, that is, what it is to be unable to afford certain necessities would surely depend on who you are asking. What you consider necessary, such that it would constitute a necessity, would most certainly change your definition of what it means to be poor. So, is global poverty subjective?
Extreme global poverty, as defined by today’s standards, is living on less than $1.25 USD per day. To be considered extremely poor, therefore, would require living on about $450 USD a year or less. Worldwide, there are 1.2 billion people who would “qualify” as living in extreme poverty. But is living on less than a certain amount of money a day all there is to poverty?
The World Bank suggests that poverty is a pronounced and multi-dimensional deprivation in well-being. Rather than placing a number at which one is considered poor or extremely poor, the World Bank definition operates on a holistic approach that takes multiple factors into consideration. For example, communities with inadequate access to health services or education may be considered to be facing the circumstances of poverty, though they live on an amount in excess of the global standard for poverty. Likewise, living with insufficient physical security or certain basic human rights, say freedom of speech, may constitute poverty.
Clearly, what is poverty is not limited to a financial over/under amount, such that it demands a more inclusive, and perhaps malleable, definition. Because understanding what poverty actually is is so fundamental to addressing poverty as an important global issue, however, the United Nations has dedicated both time and resources to better recognizing and defining the many facets of poverty. As a result, the world’s largest multi-governmental organization has developed several working definitions of poverty, including “absolute poverty” and “overall poverty,” while the official United Nations definition of “poverty” is as follows: “Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.”
– Herman Watson
Sources: United Nations, The Global Poverty Project, One Day’s Wages Brookings Institution
Photo: National Geographic
Rape as a Weapon of War
Dating as far back as the Japanese occupation of Nanking in 1937, rape as a weapon of war has been prevalent in conflicts throughout the 1990s and continues to be used today.
A common misconception is that rape is simply a by-product of war. Sexual violence is certainly occurring in every conflict around the world but its role has evolved from an unfortunate effect of war to a tactic used to humiliate and control entire populations.
The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution (UN Resolution 1820) in 2008 defining the use of sexual violence as a war tactic and calling for an end to impunity for those who perpetrate such acts. This resolution came too late for many, including the over 20,000 Muslim women and girls raped in Bosnia during the Bosnian War as well as the estimated 200,000 women and girls raped during the fight for Bangladeshi independence in 1971.
Sexual violence has become a common element of 21st century war. To be able to combat its prevalence, we must first understand the methods and reasoning behind its use.
Perpetrators utilize sexual violence in conflict situations for many different reasons. Rape can be used as a method of ethnic cleansing, as was seen in the Bosnian War. Serbian fighters raped Muslim women to produce Serbian offspring and thereby “cleanse” the population. During the Sudanese War, however, the Janjaweed militia typically used rape as a scare tactic to humiliate, intimidate, and punish the non-Muslim women and communities. Currently in Colombia rival groups are using rape and murder as part of a punitive code to strengthen control in specific regions.
Not only is rape considered the most invasive of war crimes, it has long-lasting consequences for entire communities and countries. Sexual violence during conflicts has contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in multiple regions. In addition, mass rape has produced a new generation of young adults that are growing up with only one parent or as orphans because their mother was killed during the conflict. This has long-lasting ramifications for countries that will only be seen in the coming decades as this generation reaches working and reproductive age.
It appears that the use of rape as a war strategy will continue to be employed in conflicts across the globe as long as the culture of impunity surrounding this crime persists. Although the United Nations made sexual violence an official war crime in 2008, the International Court of Justice has yet to find efficient means to indict and prosecute the many thousands of people guilty of this heinous crime.
– Sarah C. Morris
Sources: BBC, UNICEF, United Nations
Photo: The Wip
Is Black Tea Causing Child Slavery?
Assam tea is a common variety of black tea often preferred for its malty taste. It is produced in the Assam state of India, which is among the world’s largest tea-growing regions. Tea pickers in Assam are paid 12p an hour. At about a dollar per day, this corresponds to roughly half the legal minimum wage for unskilled workers in Assam. These workers pick tea leaves used by almost every brand, from Lipton to Twinings.
Special labels, like Fair Trade, and certifications, such as those from the Rainforest Alliance or the Ethical Tea Partnership, do not guarantee that workers were paid fairly. Wages are established through collective bargaining by associations of growers, and every tea plantation pays the same wages. According to the Indian Tea Association director General Monojit Desgupta, these pitifully low payments are all the growers can afford. In addition to the basic injustice of underpaying workers, this mistreatment causes another deeply troubling problem: child slavery.
With the promise of work, decent pay, and a glamorous life in the big city, traffickers whisk countless children away from their struggling families. Most victims are girls as young as 12. The traffickers then sell the girls for about $50 to agencies that turn around and sell them to the wealthy as slaves at about twelve times that price. Many of these girls’ families never seen them again, and others escape only after enduring appalling conditions for years. Two girls, Rabina Khatun and Elaina Kujar, have recently agreed to share their stories to draw attention to this issue.
A woman promised Rabina work in Delhi as a maid with a monthly wage of 3,000 rupees, or about $40. She worked for two years before she was allowed to go home. When she complained that she had never been paid, the woman sold her to three men who locked her in a house, raped her, and left her penniless at Old Delhi Station. Rabina, now 18, still harbors intense anger against the people who committed crimes against her.
Elaina’s story is similarly appalling. Her family lives on a tea plantation in Assam, where a trafficker came promising a better life for her. She dreamed of being a nurse and believed Delhi would hold opportunities for her. The next four years of her life would be lost serving as a child slave. She recalls how her owner would rape her after watching porn while she laid on the floor beside him. When she told the man’s wife what was happening, he called her a liar and told her to keep her mouth shut. Elaina’s saving grace came when she was sent to a new owner, who took sympathy on her and allowed her to go home.
Elaina and Rabina are not isolated cases, but rather representative spokeswomen for hundreds of thousands of girls who are trafficked against their will. It has been estimated that 100,000 girls are being held in Delhi alone, with countless others sold to the Middle East. Assam has the highest kidnapping rate for women in India, with 3,360 cases registered with police last year. These girls are trafficked because their families are unable to support them adequately with the pitiful wages they are paid for picking tea leaves.
Pressure is being put on tea brands to demand higher wages and better conditions for tea pickers, and they are just beginning to comply. Unilever, the corporation in charge of Lipton Tea, has recently recognized trafficking is a major problem. The Rainforest Alliance, which has certified Lipton, claims it is working towards an agreement that will require workers to be paid a living wage. Major tea company Typhoo also states that it is working to improve their workers’ conditions. These measures prove that public outcry can create change. Their continued efforts will ensure that workers on tea plantations are paid fairly, and that tea drinkers in the first world are not inadvertently contributing to the child sex trade in India.
– Katie Fullerton
Sources: Adagio Tea, The Guardian, Mirror News
Photo: Revolution
What is a Failed State?
In an ever-globalizing world, state legitimacy is, at its core, the foundational property of a state’s ability to participate in global relations. Without legitimacy, an entity cannot enter into multi-lateral agreements or voice concerns; thus compromising economic and physical prosperity. Once a state possesses this legitimacy, however, it is by no means permanent. With a fluctuating political and economic landscape, exacerbated by global security concerns, states face both internal and external strife postured to compromise their legitimacy. As we have seen with Syria when this legitimacy is lost, the state is considered a failure.
Following World War I, the emergent world powers recognized the need to establish a global convention of nations. In theory, having a place where issues could be attended in a multi-lateral manner would dramatically decrease the likelihood for another world war.
Among political scientists, there is no universally agreed upon definition of a failed state. For most, however, the general understanding hinges upon the lacking of any criterion of which makes a state legitimate in the first place.
In 1933, leaders from across the globe gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, to create a Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. At the Montevideo convention, global leaders convened a set of conditions which any state must meet in order to be admitted to the realm of the nations. Known as the Montevideo Criteria, a state must possess:
Currently, the best example of an entity seeking statehood is Palestine. Despite being granted Observer status in November 2012, Palestine still lacks the legitimacy necessary to vote or propose resolutions in the U.N. With views on border legitimacy, questions on the Palestinian refugees and right of return, and whether or not Hamas is a legitimate government, anything more than Observer status is currently untenable.
For states such as Syria, Bashar al-Assads Ba’ath party has demonstrated a clear inability to provide for the Syrian people. With a fleeing populous, civil war, human rights violations, the global political community views Syria as a failed state.
To address the degree of conflict plaguing much of the world, Foreign Policy Group and the Fund for Peace organization have developed an interactive Failed State Index (FSI). Utilizing analytics on 12 separate primary social, economic, and political indicators the FSI provides a valuable resource in bringing attention towards states in danger of failing.
By bringing attention to states that are in danger of failing, the organizations hope to influence leaders so that resources can be channeled accordingly. To be sure, a failed state does not simply affect the state in question. When there is a humanitarian crisis, refugees flood over the border looking for safety in neighboring countries. If a volatile government takes over, security concerns become a security crisis.
Simply put, putting the label of “failed state” on a state in crisis is an important diagnostic in international relations. However, with no coherent definition of a failed state, the U.N. and other institutions are unable to fully address the issues.
– Thomas van der List
Sources: Foreign Policy, Fund for Peace, Faculty of Law, CNN
Photo: Social Science Research Council
Myanmar to Release Political Prisoners
Myanmar has had a long history of political unrest and has taken thousands of political prisoners over the past few decades. In 2011 there were approximately 2,100 innocent prisoners, most of whom did not support the Burma’s military, or were members of the National League for Democracy (NLD). But now, after decades of imprisonment for some, Myanmar President U Thein Sein has promised to release all of them by the end of the year. In doing so he acknowledged that the prisoners were indeed, still being held.
Most of the prisoners have already been released since 2010 when Thein Sein took power, but as of April 2013, 176 still remain, and Thein Sein has guaranteed that there are soon to be no political prisoners of conscience in Myanmar. He made the announcement during a speech at Chatham House in Britain (Burma’s former colonial power) on July 15, saying that a special committee was being appointed to go over every political inmate’s case. He was in London to discuss trade and military ties in order to boost Burma’s economy. The 2010 election was an important turning point for Burma, having replaced military rule with military backed civilian government.
The most noteable prisoner was Aung San Suu Kyi who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her work as head of the NLD in the 1990 election, when it won 59% of the votes and 81% of parliament seats. But the NLD was never able to take power because Suu Kyi had already been detained under house arrest as a prisoner for speaking out against brutal dictator U Ne Win in July 1989. She spent 15 of the next 21 years as a political prisoner, until her release in November, 2010.
Since he took office, Thein Sein has been working to promote human rights in Burma, which has seen much sectarian violence such as the recent fighting and killing between local Buddhists and the minority of Muslims. Rohingya Muslims in Burma have been said to be the most oppressed religious group in the world today.
At their meeting in London, English Prime Minister David Cameron discussed Burma’s ongoing violence with Thein Sein, asking him to do more to create peace in the region. Thein Sein promised a “zero tolerance” policy against anyone who fuels ethnic hatred.
– Emma McKay
Sources: New York Times, Freedom House, Biography.com, BBC
Photo: The Telegraph
IntraHealth International Improves Aid Efforts
Health workers have strong influences in people’s lives. It is important that they be informed and efficient, which is why IntraHealth International runs three programs designed to improve the work done by health workers around the world. IntraHealth recognizes that supplies and advocacy are great, but trained professionals take it to the next level.
Their three programs are Championing the Health Worker, Health Workforce and Systems Strengthening and Health Worker Training and Performance. While each of these programs does good in itself, they work together to achieve higher standards in health care that a single program could not reach alone.
Fully aware of the shortage of health workers in developing areas, IntraHealth strives to engage more people in global health professions. This benefits future generations, but what about people who need help now? IntraHealth deploys trained health workers in the regions they are needed most first. In instances of child birth, the presence of trained medical workers can mean life or death for the mother and infant.
Although trained medical workers are essential to the success of this operation, effective management systems are also necessary. Human resources and management skills, like medicine, can be taught to large populations and provide them greater opportunity to help their community thrive.
IntraHealth helps existing organizations improve their policies and planning to better serve both patients and health workers, strengthen human resource information systems for better decision-making, promoting practices to increase the longevity of health workers and improving overall productivity. The HRH Global Resource Center also helps spread information on human resources specifically for the health workforce.
A prime example of the three programs working together can be seen in Uganda. The country saw an almost 7,000 person increase in the health workforce between October 2012 and April 2013 thanks to IntraHealth’s combined effort with the Ugandan government. Because of this increase in knowledgeable staff, the government allocated 49.5 billion shillings (around US $20 million) to continue growth of the health workforce. This was only the beginning. After the increase in health workers, it was necessary to decide the most effective placements for each worker. With the Uganda Capacity Program, a system that sorts through applications to find the best fit, efficient placement saved the government millions of shillings and created clinics more able to serve their communities. The health workers trained by IntraHealth in human resources practices were also able to continue improvement of operations. Uganda has a history of insufficient numbers of health workers. Only 58 percent of needed positions were filled in Mbale, but by 2013, the number jumped to 70%. With recent clever advertising, over 35,000 applications were sent in for consideration.
– Jordan Bradley
Sources: intrahealth.org Global Health Knowledge
Photo: Flikr
4 TED Talks on Philanthropy
Movies that Matter, Jeff Skoll
Highlight Quote: “One is the gap in opportunity – this gap that President Clinton last night called uneven, unfair and unsustainable – and, out of that, comes poverty and illiteracy and disease and all these evils that we see around us. But perhaps the other, bigger gap is what we call the hope gap. And someone, at some point, came up with this very bad idea that an ordinary individual couldn’t make a difference in the world. And I think that’s just a horrible thing. And so chapter one really begins today, with all of us, because within each of us is the power to equal those opportunity gaps and to close the hope gaps.”
Many TED talks focus on the real, the practical and the pragmatic – on harnessing the abstract powers of good and common sense of humanity in a real life way. Yet many of these talks can leave us, as ordinary citizens feeling somewhat inadequate and unable to make an impact. Jeff Skoll, producer of films including An Inconvenient Truth, Murderball, North Country, Good Night and Good Luck, and Syriana, gives us a talk about how he, as an ordinary citizen, worked his way slowly to Hollywood. Once there, he was able to make a difference by inspiring and spreading awareness through films.
Mosquitos, Malaria and Education, Bill Gates
Highlight Quote: “But I – I’m optimistic. I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can make a difference for millions of lives, if we get it right. I only had time to frame those two problems. There’s a lot more problems like that — AIDS, pneumonia – I can just see you’re getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn’t naturally make it happen. Governments don’t naturally pick these things in the right way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources into these things.”
Perhaps the world’s most recognizable philanthropist, Bill Gates is characteristically shrewd, practical, clear, forward thinking and unexpectedly funny. By asking us to consider how to solve two big problems: malaria and education – Gates shows us how businesslike thinking and determination can solve widespread social problems. In only 18 minutes, Gates gives us a TED talk that is small in stature but big in ideas.
Aid versus Trade, Ngozi Okongo-Iweala
Highlight Quote: “But we are talking about “Africa: the Next Chapter” because we are looking at the old and the present chapter – that we’re looking at, and saying it’s not such a good thing. The picture I showed you before, and this picture, of drought, death and disease is what we usually see. What we want to look at is “Africa: the Next Chapter,” and that’s this: a healthy, smiling, beautiful African. And I think it’s worth remembering what we’ve heard through the conference right from the first day, where I heard that all the important statistics have been given – about where we are now, about how the continent is doing much better. And the importance of that is that we have a platform to build on.”
In 2007, Okongo-Iweala, the former finance minister of Nigeria and director at the World Bank, had the unenviable task of summarizing four days of TED talks. In 22 minutes, she draws from personal experience, global leaders, real-life examples and observations to illustrate the lessons from the conference regarding effective aid, morality, and the pitfalls in the current methods of development assistance.
Cheetahs vs. Hippos, George Ayitteh
Highlight Quote: “Africa is more than a tragedy, in more ways than one. There’s another enduring tragedy, and that tragedy is that there are so many people, so many governments, so many organizations who want to help the people in Africa. They don’t understand. Now, we’re not saying don’t help Africa. Helping Africa is noble. But helping Africa has been turned into a theater of the absurd. It’s like the blind leading the clueless.”
Many ask the question, why is Africa still in the state it is, with so much money being poured into it and so much work being done by so many different organizations? In this talk, Ayitteh addresses some of the problems in development; some coming from Africa itself and others with foreign sources – and more importantly, how to address them. Ayitteh’s talk can be applied to a number of other scenarios and teach us that aid is a practice that needs close monitoring and attention in order to be effective.
– Farahnaz Mohammed
An Initiative to Reforest Haiti
One of the primary causes of poverty in Haiti is deforestation. Only 2% of the Haitian side of the island is covered by forest, one of the lowest rates in the world and less than a fifth of the global average. Satellite images show a striking contrast between the forested Dominican Republic and the barren Haiti. Severe deforestation leads to poor soil quality and water scarcity, both of which reduce agricultural yields. Additionally, natural disasters are worsened with the instability of bare soil, increasing the threat of mudslides and the damage caused by earthquakes.
This issue is not a new one in Haiti. Deforestation began on a massive scale in colonial times, when land was cleared for sugar plantations. Since then though it has continued, with as many as 40 million trees felled annually for cooking fuel. However, a recent government initiative marks a turning point. The government of President Michel Martelly is beginning a push to reforest Haiti, committing to planting 50 million trees a year. The goal is to double forest cover by 2016, and then to continue to improve on that gain. Until now, reforestation programs have all been carried out by non-government organizations, the majority of which are foreign operated.
To further the actual planting of trees, the campaign will include various methods of educating the populace. The initiative’s success requires readjusting the view all Haitians have towards deforestation. Radio programs will be used as educational tools, as well as pamphlets and the addition of environmental studies to the school curriculum. Gas-powered stoves will be promoted as efficient alternatives to the burning of wood and charcoal for cooking.
In order to be successful, this initiative will require a lot of effort from the government. In addition to education and the actual reforestation process, a concerted effort will need to be made to enforce legislation and prevent illegal logging in protected areas. The project is only just beginning, but if it is successful, we will see significant benefits in just a few years.
– David M. Wilson
Sources: The Guardian, Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Photo: UNDP