How is Climate Change affecting South Africa?

Here’s my ’summary of the summary’ of a report published today by Earthlife Africa and Oxfam International.

‘In climate terms, South Africa is already living on the edge. Much of it is arid or semi-arid and the whole country is subject to droughts and floods. Even small variations in rainfall or temperatures would exacerbate this already stressed environment. Most South African crops are grown in areas that are only just climatically suitable and with limited water supplies.

But that climate is set to change for the worse because of rising global emissions of greenhouse gases. Indeed, there are already ominous signs of change – dry seasons are becoming longer and wet seasons starting later. Rainfall is reported to be becoming even more variable, with rain coming in more concentrated, violent bursts. Read More …

Obama’s lemon socialism; a globalization-fest; William Easterly loves aid and youtube factoid overkill: links I liked

Paul Krugman at his caustic best on why Obama should nationalize the banks: ‘what we have now isn’t private enterprise, it’s lemon socialism: banks get the upside but taxpayers bear the risks. And it’s perpetuating zombie banks, blocking economic recovery. What we want is a system in which banks own the downs as well as the ups. And the road to that system runs through nationalization.’

Hardly surprising I liked this one – a kind review of From Poverty to Power and three other books on globalization in the Times Literary Supplement

Man bites dog: Arch aid sceptic William Easterly gets all misty-eyed

A youtube killer fact cornucopia on our ‘exponential times’ which brings to mind the lines from T.S. Eliot’s The Rock ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’. (Thanks to May Miller-Dawkins)

Can NGO advocacy influence states? Social Protection in Georgia

Here’s an example from Georgia of how well designed advocacy gets results: in this case helping 34,000 poor families gain access to state benefits and winning the introduction of an appeals procedure for those who feel unfairly excluded. It’s not glamorous, but it made a real difference, so bear with me.

Like other post-Soviet Eastern European governments, the Georgian government takes decisions unilaterally and without any civic engagement. However it is in some respects an ‘effective state’: it has successfully rooted out administrative or petty corruption, improved revenue collection and embarked on sweeping (albeit controversial) reforms. If development-oriented international and local agencies want to influence the government, they have to talk the language of efficiency and evidence. Read More …

They don’t half butcher your prose at The Economist

In a strictly personal capacity, I recently sent in a whimsical letter to The Economist in response to its piece on the changing names of London coined by journalists – ‘Reykjavik-on-Thames‘.

‘Sir
Given the combination of accelerating disappearance of the polar ice caps, and slow motion (glacial?) climate change negotiations, we could be looking at sea level rises of over a metre by the end of the century. The next name for London, in common with most ports and low lying areas around the world, is most likely to be ‘the sea’.
Duncan Green, London-Under-Thames ’

What they subsequently printed in this week’s edition: Read More …

From Poverty to Power in South Africa

Just spent a week promoting the South African edition of From Poverty to Power, published by Jacana Media with a nice foreword from Francis Wilson, an authority on poverty and labour markets in SA who also chaired the launch event at the Book Lounge in Cape Town. Jacana put on a great programme of public events, university lectures and got some good radio and TV coverage.

The highlight was probably the launch in East London, a recession hit town in the Eastern Cape whose economy depends heavily on the local Mercedez Benz factory (which like auto firms everywhere is seeing its sales slump and is laying off workers). The launch was organized by the Daily Dispatch, the East London newspaper formerly edited by Donald Woods of Cry Freedom fame, and it pulled 250-300 people into the Guild Theatre – everyone from high school classes to grizzled survivors of the armed struggle against apartheid. It felt fitting that East London should overtake the launches in Washington or London as the biggest launch event thus far – here people weren’t talking about ‘development’, but about their own lives and futures. Read More …

The future of capitalism; why a world war might help; pay politicians more; the global crisis outside Oxfam’s window and the People’s Front of Judea: links I liked

Dani Rodrik gets seriously long term on the future of capitalism

Paul Krugman contrasts the Obama rescue plan with ‘the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression’ and says we’re in for a long slow slump.

Please pay politicians more: Chris Blattman reports a paper on Brazil that finds that ‘higher pay attracts more and better-educated politicians, and more businessmen and lawyers over farmers and soldiers. They are more likely to get reelected, and so are more experienced over time. They submit more bills and get more legislation approved.’ Shame the same logic doesn’t apply to bankers…… 

Casualization within sight of Oxfam’s head office

And the last Monty Python contribution to the develoment debate for the moment (promise) – this time a practical exploration of the difficulty of building progressive cross party alliances (aka the People’s Front of Judea)
 

How are effective states going to emerge in Africa?

[Sorry to anyone who got a premature alert yesterday - hit the wrong button!]

There’s nothing like a visit to Africa – in this case ten days of book promo and financial crisis impact interviews in South Africa and Zambia, to get you thinking about the role of the state. In Southern Africa, as on earlier launches in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, discussions invariably turn to leaders – is it inevitable that even good politicians will betray us when they come to power? Where will the next Mandela come from? It brought to mind a quote from American Revolutionary Patrick Henry on the purpose of the US Constitution: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” A good constitution is designed not for good leaders, but for bad ones. State building is about the long dull slog of building institutions – perhaps in some ways Mandiba did Africa a disservice by encouraging its endlessly frustrating search for the providential leader. Read More …

Another 100m in poverty; 700,000 dead children in Africa: the latest World Bank predictions on the crisis

Chilling new numbers from the World Bank on the human impact of the global economic crisis. New estimates for 2009 suggest that lower economic growth rates will trap 46 million more people on less than $1.25 a day than was expected prior to the crisis. An extra 53 million will stay trapped on less than $2 a day. This is on top of the 130-155 million people pushed into poverty in 2008 because of soaring food and fuel prices. Preliminary estimates for 2009 to 2015 forecast that an average 200,000 to 400,000 more children a year, a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million, may die if the crisis persists. However even this awful figure may be too low – Shanta Devarajan, the Bank’s chief economist for Africa uses a different method to predict that due to the crisis in Africa alone an additional 700,000 children a year will die before their first birthday. These are all estimates based on previously observed elasticities etc, rather than actual current data, but until that comes in, they should be grabbing he headlines as we head for the G20’s ‘London Summit’ on 2 April. Read More …

Can 17th Century Britain help us design better social protection?

I recently listened enthralled to Simon Szreter of Cambridge University at an ODI conference on growth and equity (more on that later). Simon set out some of the history of social protection in the UK and its possible implications for today’s developing countries.

For the two centuries before the industrial revolution, the UK had a universal system of decentralized social protection backed by national regulatory institutions, which began with two acts passed by Elizabeth I in 1598 and 1601. This system consisted of: Read More …

Who reads this blog? Analysis of the first hundred posts

Google Analytics is a wonderful thing – it means I can see how many people read this blog, and which country and even city they come from (don’t worry, I can’t get your emails). So what does a trawl of the results for the first hundred posts reveal?

Overall the site received over 25,000 visits from about 16,000 people (i.e. a mix of one off and regular visitors), with the average visitor reading two posts, and spending about two minutes on the site (such frenetic lives we lead). 

Top five countries: US just ahead of UK, followed at some distance by Canada, Australia and India. Visitors came from 163 countries in all (at the last count, the world total was 192, I believe, so that’s pretty good)

Five most popular posts: Read More …