Obama in Africa; Easterly v Collier; Justin Lin on the joy of small banks and a Fox News journo bottles it on Rupert Murdoch: links I liked (and see you in two weeks)

Before I head off for two blog-free weeks in Italy, here is some final reading material.

In Ghana on his first presidential visit to Sub-Saharan Africa, Barrack Obama hands out some tough love – colonial legacies are no longer an excuse for corruption. Chris Blattman analyses the speech para by para (and gives it an overall A-). Plus, will oil destroy Ghana’s record of success?

Is football the future of globalization? Watch a ’soccer economist’ suck the joy out of the beautiful game.

Bill Easterly picks another fight, this time with Paul Collier, first in a feature on ‘democracy in dangerous places’ in the Boston Review (which features a number of other big development beasts) and then ‘taking it outside’ onto Easterly’s Aid Watch blog

Is the potato the real driver of urbanization?

Confessions and self doubts of an Afghan aid worker (and an intriguing factoid in the comments about marmite – if you hit it with a spoon it turns white……).

‘The size and sophistication of financial institutions and markets in the developed world are not appropriate in low-income markets… Japan, South Korea and China managed to avoid financial crises for long stretches of their development. It helped greatly that they adhered to simple banking systems (rather than rushing to develop their stockmarkets and integrate into international financial networks) and did not liberalise their capital accounts until they became more advanced.’ World Bank chief economist Justin Lin is doing his heretical thing again, this time in the pages of The Economist

Finally, want to see a truly servile journalist inaction? Try watching Fox News ‘grill’ Rupert Murdoch.

What does the British Conservative Party think about development?

This week I attended the launch of ‘One World Conservatism’, a ‘Green Paper’ (i.e. discussion document) in which the Conservative Party (who if you believe the opinion polls, are highly likely to take over from Gordon Brown’s Labour at the next election, due before next June) set out its thinking on international development.

The Green Paper is the product of four years of internal thinking within the Party. One of the more interesting earlier (2007) outputs was ‘In It Together‘ the report of the Globalisation and Global Poverty Policy Review Group, chaired by Peter Lilley MP.

The Green Paper’s three sections cover aid, wealth creation and conflict, stabilisation and peacekeeping (this last section essentially channels Paul Collier’s thinking in Bottom Billion and War, Guns and Votes).

Perhaps most striking was the level of consensus on development within British politics. Despite any opposition party’s need to try and distinguish itself from the party in power, David Cameron, the party leader, pledged:
- to keep the Department for International Development (DFID) as a separate ministry with a seat in the cabinet
- to stick to the aid target of 0.7% of national income by 2013 and avoid any attempt to change its definition in order to massage the figures (see G8 post on Silvio Berlusconi’s proposed Whole of Country Approach). We asked David Cameron specifically on this and he answered: ‘this is a commitment of the government budget, defining aid in the same way as the current government’, which seems pretty categorical.
- to stick with DFID’s attempts to increase the stability of aid through three-year commitments and indicative ten-year projections

But the Tories (as the Conservative Party are popularly known – half the readers of this blog are from outside the UK) realize that raising aid when the government has to cut elsewhere is going to be a political hot potato, so a lot of the Green Paper is devoted to how to buttress public support through an independent aid watchdog, increased transparency (DFID publishing far more information online + ‘DFID funding can and should act as a battering ram for transparency across the world’) to counter what they call a ‘chronic lack of feedback and accountability’, and even a ‘MyAid’ competition in which the public vote to boost funds for their favourite aid project (limitless possibilities for gerrymandering there!).

The MyAid idea is part of a flirtation with what the paper calls ‘post-bureaucratic innovation’ – a brand of ‘wiki-aid’ that tries to circumvent bureaucracies through use of internet, mobiles etc. Hence big support for peer-to-peer lending like Kiva – the paper even floats the possibility of ‘providing matching funding for peer-to-peer loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.’

They are also much impressed by the ‘cash on delivery’ proposal being developed by Owen Barder and Nancy Birdsall at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development. (For the latest CGD update on Cash on Delivery, see here and for CGD boss Nancy Birdsall’s comments on this post, see here). They explain it as ‘for example, £100 for every extra child who attends school, or for every extra mother who gives birth in a proper medical facility’. They hope this will help them shift what they see as Labour’s ‘endemic tendency to focus more on inputs than on outputs’. I’m going to have to read up on this, but at first sight it seems easier said than done and likely to be dogged by issues of attribution – if school attendance drops, how do you decide if it is because of government incompetence or because a recession is forcing parents to pull their kids out of school? And it is always politically difficult to cut aid when things are going badly.

One of the most controversial proposals – introducing aid vouchers that poor communities can redeem with a supplier of their choice for water, health clinics, schools etc – was downplayed in the document, as it’s already received a lot of criticism (see press story here). This is likely to be a flashpoint with NGOs and others who will probably fear a move to privatisation by stealth – the Paper argues that ‘we stand ready to work with public, not for profit and private sectors’ in providing health education, purely on the question ‘does it deliver for the poorest?’ But that begs a number of crucial questions, not least, timescale. A short term fix by privatising service provision may only be achieved at the expense of eroding the longer term effort to strengthen state systems that can deliver universal access to schools, hospitals etc.

Oh, and they love NGOs. Get ready for weird lobby meetings in which NGOs are arguing for channelling funding for essential services via the state, rather than via NGOs……

Click here for Oxfam’s official response to the paper.

How has Indonesia coped with the crisis, compared to the crash of 1998?

How has Indonesia, the country worst affected in the late 90s by the last major financial crisis in the developing world, been coping with the current one? Quite well, according to the IMF, which predicts the economy will grow at 2.5% in 2009 and 3.5% in 2010. That’s down from the 6% average in the preceding years, but a far cry from the devastating 13-16% contraction (depending on who you believe) in 1998. How has it managed this? UNDP’s International Policy Centre on Inclusive Growth has a ‘one pager’ that summarizes the response as:

· ‘Cartelist stances in the supply of commodity exports’, agreeing with other regional producers to cut output of  rubber and tin to push up prices.
· Increased use of subsidies as part of wider ‘import-substitution measures’, for example boosting cotton production to reduce dependence on imports to feed Indonesia’s textile factories. The government is also subsidizing the footwear and textiles industry directly, helping it shift production from exports to the domestic market
· ‘a Keynesian fiscal stimulus’ of about 1.4% of GDP, and interest rate cuts.

The one pager concludes ‘until now these heterodox measures have been anathema to the neoliberal consensus. We are witnessing the resurgence of the developmental state, given the crisis of legitimacy faced by that consensus.’

Well maybe. Previous crises have shown that intellectual justification for big policy shifts often lags behind the shifts themselves. After the Great Depression destroyed their export markets, governments were forced to pursue ‘import substitution’, but the intellectual case by Raul Prebisch and others only arrived some years later. Similarly, the Latin American debt crisis of the early 80s may have had Milton Friedman salivating in the wings, but most governments in the region were initially just trying to cut spending to avoid default. The full justification for structural adjustment only followed later in the decade.

According to one Oxfam staffer in Indonesia ‘it is too early to see a comeback of the Development State. The winner of this election (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY) is supported by an awkward combination of political liberals, who have been arguing for a reduced government role in the economy, and free-market reformers, such as Boediono (the Governor of the Central Bank and vice-president elect) and Sri Mulyani, (Minister of Finance and acting coordinator of economic ministers).’ The free-market reformers have been in ministerial power centres ever since the late 90s. They are mostly economists who supported and implemented the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programs in Indonesia as a response to the 1998 crisis. This group is not much concerned with civil rights.

So for the moment, any moves towards a developmental state in Indonesia look reluctant, driven more by necessity than conviction.

And the elections themselves provided a handy, but one-off stimulus. Another Oxfam colleague reports a conversation with an official who pointed out that in the general election in April, 44 political parties all bought t-shirts and flags from small businesses across the country and paid people up to $10 a day to join campaign events. By one estimate, $250bn is spent during an Indonesian election, adding another third to the fiscal stimulus.

The Pope’s New Broadside on Globalization, the Crisis and Everything

One of the more unusual curtain raiser documents for the G8 summit last week was ‘Caritas in Veritate’ (Charity in Truth), the latest encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI. NGOs and development wonks tend to ignore these kinds of documents, but research shows that churches matter far more in the lives of poor people than NGOs do, so it’s worth paying attention to important position statements from the different faiths. For the Roman Catholic Church, they don’t come more important than encyclicals. This one has the usual odd (to the secular eye) blend of economics, workers’ rights, spirituality and reproductive rights (or denial of them) (see the Economist for a good overall analysis). Herehere are some highly selective quotes from the 47 page document (paragraph numbers in square brackets, italics in the original, subheads mine rather than the Pope’s).

Inequality and Injustice
The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. In rich countries, new sectors of society are succumbing to poverty and new forms of poverty are emerging. In poorer areas some groups enjoy a sort of “superdevelopment” of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation. “The scandal of glaring inequalities” continues. Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries, both old and new, as well as in poor ones. Among those who sometimes fail to respect the human rights of workers are large multinational companies as well as local producers. International aid has often been diverted from its proper ends, through irresponsible actions both within the chain of donors and within that of the beneficiaries….On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care. At the same time, in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behaviour persist which hinder the process of development. [22]

Grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution. [36]

Globalization and the Race to the Bottom
The market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State…. cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers’ associations. Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers…. uncertainty over working conditions caused by mobility and deregulation, when it becomes endemic, tends to create new forms of psychological instability, giving rise to difficulty in forging coherent life-plans, including that of marriage.  [25]

The processes of globalization, suitably understood and directed, open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale; if badly directed, however, they can lead to an increase in poverty and inequality, and could even trigger a global crisis. [42]

Food and Agriculture
The problem of food insecurity needs to be addressed within a long-term perspective, eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries. This can be done by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology that can make the best use of the human, natural and socio-economic resources that are more readily available at the local level, while guaranteeing their sustainability over the long term as well. All this needs to be accomplished with the involvement of local communities… It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination. [27]

Labour Rights
The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone….  Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development. [32]

Role of the State
The integrated economy of the present day does not make the role of States redundant, but rather it commits governments to greater collaboration with one another. Both wisdom and prudence suggest not being too precipitous in declaring the demise of the State. In terms of the resolution of the current crisis, the State’s role seems destined to grow, as it regains many of its competences. In some nations, moreover, the construction or reconstruction of the State remains a key factor in their development. The focus of international aid, within a solidarity-based plan to resolve today’s economic problems, should rather be on consolidating constitutional, juridical and administrative systems in countries that do not yet fully enjoy these goods. Alongside economic aid, there needs to be aid directed towards reinforcing the guarantees proper to the State of law: a system of public order and effective imprisonment that respects human rights, truly democratic institutions. [41]

Reforming Aid
It is to be hoped that all international agencies and non-governmental organizations will commit themselves to complete transparency, informing donors and the public of the percentage of their income allocated to programmes of cooperation, the actual content of those programmes and, finally, the detailed expenditure of the institution itself. [47]

In the search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for all. …more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid….One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State. [60]

Climate Change
There is a pressing moral need for renewed solidarity, especially in relationships between developing countries and those that are highly industrialized. The technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption, either through an evolution in manufacturing methods or through greater ecological sensitivity among their citizens. It should be added that at present it is possible to achieve improved energy efficiency while at the same time encouraging research into alternative forms of energy. What is also needed, though, is a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them. [49]

Strengthening the UN
In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect, and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. [67]

Is the organic movement missing a big opportunity on climate change?

Oh dear, not only has climate change turned me into a reluctant green, but now I’m having to rethink my attitudes to organic farming. This is all the fault of a conversation with Peter Melchett and Ken Hayes from the Soil Association, who are both fervent advocates of organic agriculture (which Peter puts into practice on his own farm).

What struck me in our discussions was the presence of two very different ‘narratives’ on organics. The first could be caricatured as a nostalgia/hair shirt world view – harking back to the ‘good old days’ when you bought local, grew local, knew your neighbours, ate only in-season food etc. The second is all about solutions – organics could be part of the response to a range of new and growing problems, above all climate change.

I am instinctively hostile to the nostalgia/hair shirt narrative (which when I was growing up felt more like bad old days of wilting lettuce at the local greengrocers, strawberries for only two weeks a year, not to mention the impact of ‘buy British’ localism on 1.5 million African agricultural labourers producing fruit and veg for export to Europe – see linked discussion on food miles) and think it deters a much wider potential audience.

But now (thanks to Ken) I have been reading up on organics-as-solution, and it looks much more interesting. The key question is how do we feed 9 billion people (the estimated global population in 2050) while cutting greenhouse gases by 80%? So (a) can organics feed the 9 billion and (b) how serious a dent can they make on GHG emissions?

A paper by Catherine Badgeley et al in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems (sorry, looks like you have to pay for this one - anyone know of a free online version?) pulls together the evidence on the first question and concludes: ‘For most food categories, the average yield ratio was slightly <1.0 for studies in the developed world and >1.0 for studies in the developing world’ i.e. going organic does indeed involve a loss in yields in some areas of intensive, rich world agriculture (eg potatoes, fruit and horticulture, especially from greenhouse production), but can actually increase yields in poor countries. Also, there is plenty of scope for increased production on organic farms, since 99% of agricultural research of the past 50 years has focused on conventional methods.

A recent paper by the FAO agrees on the relative neglect of research into organics, but remains concerned on the impact on world food supplies.: ‘a 100 percent conversion to organic agriculture could decrease global yields. According to various studies, this yield reduction could be 30 to 40 percent in intensively farmed regions under the best geo-climate conditions. In less favourable regions, yield losses tend to zero. In the context of subsistence agriculture and in regions with periodic disruptions of water supply brought on by droughts or floods, organic agriculture is competitive to conventional agriculture and often superior with respect to yields.’

What about the link to climate change? The FAO paper points out that each year, agriculture emits 10 to 12 percent of the total estimated GHG emissions and that sustainable agriculture, including organics, includes many techniques that drastically cut emissions, including
° recycling wastes as nutrient source,
° using nitrogen-fixing plants,
° improving cropping systems and landscapes,
° avoiding synthetic pesticides,
° integrating crops and animals into a single farm production sector and including grass clover leys (nitrogen fixing plants that act as alternatives to chemical fertilisers) for fodder production, while avoiding purchase of feed concentrates.

Organics and climate change

The FAO concludes (see graphs for minimum and maximum scenario on how organic farming could reduce global agricultural emissions by between 57-82%):

‘Sustainable and organic agriculture offer multiple opportunities to reduce GHGs and counteract global warming. For example, organic agriculture reduces energy requirements for production systems by 25 to 50 percent compared to conventional chemical-based agriculture. Reducing GHGs through their sequestration in soil has even greater potential to mitigate climate change. Carbon is sequestered through an increase of soil organic matter content.

Improving soil sequestration of carbon is desirable in both low- and high-yield crop and animal systems. However, soil improvement is particularly important for agriculture in developing countries where crop inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not readily available, their costs are prohibitive, they require special equipment, and the knowledge needed for their proper application is not widespread.

In order to reduce trade-offs among food security, climate change and ecosystem degradation, productive and ecologically sustainable agriculture is crucial. In that context, organic agriculture represents a multi-targeted and multifunctional strategy. It offers a proven alternative concept that is being implemented quite successfully by a growing number of farms and food chains. Currently, 1.2 million farmers practise organic agriculture on 32.2 million ha of land.’

One issue this and other studies raise is that sequestration of carbon in soils is currently excluded from funding via the Clean Development Mechanism, thus reducing the potential contribution of sustainable/organic agriculture.

So please put away those hair shirts and let’s concentrate on showing that organics are a promising way to confront climate change.

Bamboo bikes; dodgy banks; social housing; bankslaughter; Brown goes green; France in Africa; why missionaries are better than aid workers and a spectacular marketing disaster from Nigeria: links I liked

Ditch your Prius: the latest must have greener than thou accessory is ….. a bamboo bike from Zambia ‘

‘Already, the panic of the autumn of 2008 is fading. The period within which lessons can be learnt and changes made is closing. Yet without radical changes, another crisis is certain. It may not even be that long delayed.’ Martin Wolf brilliantly dissects the banking crisis and what needs to happen, green shoots or no.

Brazil uses its fiscal stimulus to sort out social housing 

Paul Collier (again!) this time proposing a new crime – bankslaughter

‘We love Gordon’: Alex Evans salutes Gordon Brown’s new found dynamism on climate change

“Africa without France is a car without a driver,” he said. “France without Africa is a car without petrol.” Chris Blatman celebrates the wit and cunning of Omar Bongo, recently deceased president of Gabon

Chris again, this time comparing missionaries (favourably) with aid workers

And finally, Nigeria and Russia combine forces to produce a spectacular Public Relations disaster – give a big welcome to ….. Nigaz

Latest Growth Projections for Developing Countries: Asia doing better, everywhere else worse

The IMF has just revised April’s World Economic Outlook growth projections for 2009 and 2010 (see table). Here’s the summary on developing countries:

IMF projections July 09

‘Emerging and developing economies are projected to regain growth momentum during the second half of 2009, albeit with notable regional differences.

Low-income countries are facing important challenges of their own because official aid has fallen and these economies are particularly vulnerable to swings in commodity prices.

Growth projections in emerging Asia have been revised upward to 5.5 percent in 2009 and 7.0 percent in 2010 [see previous post on China and India here]. The upgrade owes to improved prospects in China and India, in part reflecting substantial macroeconomic stimulus; and a faster-than-expected turnaround in capital flows. However, the recent acceleration in growth is likely to peter out unless there is a recovery in advanced economies.

Growth projections for Latin America have been lowered by 1.1 percentage points in 2009, primarily because production has been hit much harder by the global trade slowdown than initially expected. However, the region is benefiting from rising commodity prices, and growth projections have been revised up by 0.7 percentage points in 2010.

The growth projections for central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have been revised downward by 1.3 and 0.7 percentage points in 2009 and upward by 0.2 and 0.8 percentage points in 2010, respectively. Developments differ appreciably across countries but many have been badly affected by the global financial crisis, with capital flows reversed and commodity exports sharply contracted, although the recent recovery of commodity prices is forecast to raise demand in key CIS economies.

Growth projections for emerging Africa and the Middle East have been revised downward by 0.3 and 0.5 percentage points in 2009, respectively, while those for 2010 are broadly unchanged. Both regions have been more negatively affected by the drop in global trade than previously expected, with Middle Eastern oil exporters using their financial reserves to prop up domestic demand.’

WOCA load of rubbish – fiddling aid numbers at the G8

As expected, some of the more aid sceptic governments will be seeking ways to wriggle out of their commitments at the G8 summit, which opens in Italy today. But rather than just say ‘we’re breaking our promises – tough’, they are floating various kinds of creative accounting to allow them to meet their commitments without actually spending more money.

The approach pushed by Sylvio Berlusconi is the ‘whole of country approach’ (WOCA for short). Italy wants to remove the distinction between public and private aid. It would like all financial transfers to developing countries originating in Italy – including migrants’ remittances and funds provided by NGOs, as well as public aid flows – to contribute to the country’s aid ranking.

Like all the best bits of political spin, this makes superficial sense – as an Oxfam employee, I’m hardly likely to argue that aid has to come from governments to be useful. But clearly some kinds of capital flow are more ‘aid like’ than others, so there will be a lot of room for confusion (and creative accounting) about where the boundaries lie. For example, in its response to the new challenges for development cooperation caused by the global economic crisis, the European Commission put forward a “Whole of the Union” approach arguing that not just official aid but also export credits, investment guarantees and technology transfers should be counted towards the EU’s development contribution. Others are bound to argue that military spending should be included.

Whatever the theoretical merits of the argument, it’s impossible to divorce Italy’s attempt to move the accounting goalposts from its dismal record on aid. According to Iacopo Viciani, the coordinator of an NGO task force on aid effectiveness,  the Italian government has never contributed more than 0.2% of its GDP to development aid. In 2007, Prodi’s government established a timeline for increasing aid in order to meet the 0.51% EU target by 2010. But despite budget increases, aid spending remained at 0.2% in 2008 instead of rising to 0.33% as planned. And it only gets worse: the 2009 budget includes a drastic cut (by 56%) in the aid budget. In January 2009 development allocations reached their lowest level ever, at €321 million – less than the amount collected privately by NGOs.

But even more dangerous than Italy’s attempts to justify its feeble performance is the precedent it sets for other G8 countries to follow suit. They are all in recession (see graph) and there will be ever-louder voices in every Finance Ministry seeking a reverse gear on aid.

So watch out for signs of goalposts being shifted, amid the inevitable spate of lazy headlines about earthquakes, tremors etc (the summit has been moved to l’Aquila, the site of a horrendous earthquake earlier this year).

For G8 watchers, Thursday is climate change day, and Friday covers aid, food and Africa (see optimistic FT curtain raiser on the shift from food aid to investment in agriculture). See here for Oxfam’s coverage of events, and here for my colleague Max Lawson’s curtain-raiser opinion piece. And my favourite G8 moment so far? Bob Geldof getting Sylvio Berlusconi to apologise for breaking his promises on aid. You couldn’t make it up.

What has climate change done to the seasons?

Yesterday, Oxfam published Suffering the Science, a powerful synthesis of the science and the human havoc that climate change is already wreaking. The thing that caught my eye was ‘What Happened to the Seasons?’, an input paper by my colleagues Steve Jennings and John Magrath bringing together evidence from 15 countries on how seasons are changing and the impact on poor people. Sounds techie, I know, but I found it gripping – here’s some excerpts.

Summary of climatic observations: the following observations are reported consistently across all our studies:

1. The seasons appear to have shrunk in number and variety, in that what could be termed relatively temperate “transitional” seasons are truncated or have disappeared altogether. People’s perceptions are that they are progressively being replaced by a more simplified pattern of seasons whose characteristics are predominantly hot (hotter) and dry or hot (hotter) and wet.

2. Increased temperatures overall, particularly in winters.

3. Rain is more erratic, coming at unexpected times in and out of season. In particular there is less predictability as to the start of rainy seasons. Generally rainy seasons are shorter. In mountainous areas there is considerably less snowfall. Dry periods have increased in length and drought is more common.

4. Within recognisable seasons unusual and “unseasonable” events are occurring more frequently, such as heavy rains in dry seasons, dry spells in rainy seasons, storms at unusual times, dense and lingering fogs and temperature fluctuations.

5. When rains do come they are felt to be more violent and intense and punctuated by longer dry spells within the rainy seasons. Dry spells and heavier rain increase the risk of flooding and crop loss.

6. Winds – and storms – have increased in strength. They may come at unusual times. Prevalent wind directions have also shifted.

Summary of human impacts: The precise effects are very geo-specific, but broad patterns seem to hold true generally:

1. Unpredictable weather has always presented serious problems for smallholder farmers and fishing communities in poor countries, but farming is becoming even more difficult and risky because of the greater unpredictability in seasonal rainfall patterns. Heat stress, lack of water at crucial times and pests and diseases are serious problems that climate change appears to be exacerbating. These all interact with ongoing pressures on land, soils and water resources that would exist regardless of climate change. The most common observation is that the changes are “shortening” the growing season.

2. Unpredictability requires greater investment of time, energy and resources in order to seize the right moments and to maintain crops (and animals) through dry spells.

3. Rising temperatures and unpredictability together can be an incentive to diversification – whether desired or as a matter of necessity. But the ability to diversify is highly dependent on many factors and generally requires support to succeed.

4. Seasonality difficulties are strengthening trends within rural societies for people to move out of agriculture to a greater or lesser degree and to move to urban areas. Men and women respond differently, although exactly how depends very much on each society.

5. Seasonality difficulties are likely to increase inequalities between those who are in a position to diversify – including taking advantage of the ability to grow new crops – and those who are not.

6. Women are particularly badly affected by the combination of climatic and environmental stresses, but their particular needs and wishes for adaptation are less likely to be heard or acted upon.

Effects on psychology and culture: Changes in the seasons create existential shocks, to individuals and to societies by threatening belief systems, cultural practices and, as a result, social relationships. Bewilderment, disorientation and a sense of loss are often palpable in interviews, along with sadness and fears for the future.

Carlos Ling, an Oxfam Project Officer in the Atlantic coast area of Nicaragua, says that the elders among the Miskito Indian communities “are baffled by the changes. … The crop season has been moving from the traditional dates and this is very, very important because such climate change affects your understanding of the whole Universe, not just your way of living. For people it’s very important to understand that on a particular date you plant the seeds in the ground and it is magical, it involves a lot of energy and also hope for the future, and also certainty of a new crop. When certainties move you feel a loss of control of your life, which is demoralising. … Even if you had no control of your health or your education because of poverty or racism, you had that certainty inside you. Now there’s nothing to stand upon; climate change has had that kind of impact”. It also means that the elders have lost respect in the eyes of the younger generation.

Do these perceptions fit the meteorological data? There’s a fascinating digression on the differences between how farmers and meteorologists measure the weather (I may come back to that in another blog), but the paper concludes:

‘These perceptions of changing timing and character of seasons seem often to find support in the meteorological record and are also to some degree consistent with climate model simulations.’

What I love about ‘What Happened to the Seasons’ is the way it combines genuine respect for both the science and the perceptions of poor people (with dozens of vivid quotes from communities living the consequences of climate change). Where there are disparities between the two, it makes real and intelligent efforts to understand them. Bravo.

How do you get a job in a development NGO (starting with one in my team)?

I’m prompted to post this partly because there’s a job coming up in my team at Oxfam. We’re looking for a research methods adviser to build the skills of our staff around the world who commission and/or conduct smart research to inform Oxfam’s programmes and advocacy. If you’re interested, read more here, and you need to get a move on – the deadline is this weekend.

Otherwise, promoting From Poverty to Power over the last year has involved a lot of talks to bright young things in universities, and in almost every Q&A, the question comes up ‘how do I get a job at an NGO?’ (or more alarmingly, ‘how do I get your job?’). Firstly it’s not easy right now, as the crisis in the UK has hit NGOs’ funding and jobs are more infrequent. The official answer is that people should have a look at our website, but here are some unofficial (and anglocentric – this is about Oxfam GB) tips.

First, decide what kind of work are you interested in. Programme work on the ground? Emergencies (conflict refugees, disaster reconstruction etc)? Advocacy and lobbying? Campaigning?

Next think what kinds of experience will help – experience often marks you out more than gaining another post graduate qualification, but you have to find some way to get over the inevitable first-rung problem of ‘how can I get experience when I haven’t got enough experience to land a job’ – it’s not easy, but it can be done.

For emergencies and programme work, try and get out there and get some experience in developing countries – it’s very hard to arrange that from this end, unless you have a particular network (eg a Church) that you can call on, so many people just try and sort something out on the spot. For campaigners, a record of activism at university or afterwards is always helpful.

For advocacy work, NGOs are often impressed by people who have worked in other sectors, especially the institutions we are keen to influence – governments north or south, multinational companies. Many of them are much larger than Oxfam, and have good graduate entry schemes – a further advantage if you’re trying to get your foot on the ladder. Many are highly competitive, but check out the schemes for DFID, the World Bank, or the Overseas Development Institute.

And remember that research, advocacy and campaigning jobs are often the most sought after and competitive. It may be advisable to try to get a foothold by applying for more ‘corporate’ areas such as marketing, HR and finance, and then start from there.

Finally, show your face. Putting in a spell as an intern may add to your student debt, but it enables you to make your mark and prove your commitment. It also enables you to apply for jobs that are only advertised internally, including short term jobs that help you get on the paid employment ladder. But be choosy who you intern for, and what jobs you accept – even if there is no pay involved, you are offering skills and time to an organization, and should demand things in return.

By way of illustration, our research team includes one ex ODI fellows, one ex UK government number cruncher, one ex intern and one recruit from an environmental thinktank. Plus one mystery appointment (me).

Good luck! (P.S. there are other ways to get a start, like driving a cab). See some more advice (on the UN) from the indefatigable Chris Blattman who also quizzed some MSF colleagues. And check out the Working World blog. Any other good links and ideas welcome.