There is a debate about whether we should buy food from poor countries – which helps farmers, but might damage the environment. Well-meaning people are torn.
Ideally, the price of food in the shops would reflect the full social marginal cost of producing it and transporting it. So beans from Kenya would be more expensive if they use up more of the world's resources – including carbon emmissions from transport - than beans from a Spanish hothouse. If taxes were levied at levels and in ways that reflected externalities such as pollution, then we could let the market decide.
In the meantime, should we be buying food imported from Africa? I think we should, for three reasons.
First, it is not clear that food that has travelled a long way is worse for the environment than food grown locally. For many products, the energy needed to grow food locally – such as tomatoes in a hothouse – is more than the energy needed to grown them where the sun shines, even when you take into account the energy needed to transport them. Flowers grown in European greenhouses result in more CO2 emmissions than flowers grown in Africa and flown in.
Second, the energy needed to transport food is a tiny proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. It is way less important than, for example, putting your appliances into standby mode, or making one fewer business trip a year.
Third, millions of people depend for their livelihoods – and that of their children – on growing and selling food and flowers for the UK market. UK consumers spend a million pounds a day on food and vegetables from African farmers. If we deny Africans the opportunity to trade their way out of poverty by refusing to buy their agricultural products, then we will consign another generation of Africans to poverty and handouts from the rich. In Kenya, where half the population lives on less than 50p a day – Kenyan farmers can earn £1000 a year by growing fine beans. Tanzanian famers earn twice as much selling baby corn to UK supermarkets as they do selling maize locally.
More than two thirds of Africa's poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. In our determination to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions, let us start with sacrifices we can easily make ourselves, before we deny them the chance of a decent life.
Very interesting debate in this month's Prospect between Hilary Benn (Britain's Cabinet Minister with responsibility for International Development) and Bill Easterly, a critic of government aid.
For me, the money quote from Hilary Benn is this:
All functioning governments have essential features in common: a capacity to do things, good financial and information management, clear lines of accountability and freedom from corruption, to name just a few. We owe it to the world’s poor to help their governments to develop these capacities. Strong economic growth and fair trade are simply the fastest and most effective ways to get people out of poverty, and both of these require governments to work properly.
Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank have been awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
This is a powerful statement by the committee (which is appointed by the Norwegian parliament) of the role of poverty reduction in promoting peace.
As the Grameen Bank has shown, access to financial services such as credit can make a huge contribution to improving the lives of the poor.
Microfinance has become a very popular cause in international development, especially among the large private foundations of North America. Supporting microfinance appeals to the notion that we should give the poor a hand up, not a hand out. It appeals to our sense that we should find ways to unleash the entrepreneurial spirits of those who are unfortunate enough to have been born in poor countries.
But there remain important questions about microfinance. There remains very little systematic empirical evidence of the impact of microfinance on the incomes and well-being of the poor. Grameen's main measure of its success – its repayment rate – is impressive but tells us little about what impact microfinance has actually had.
In my view, it is impossible to argue with the view that the poor benefit, probably substantially, from access to affordable financial services, including credit, savings, insurance and remittances. But as I argued here in November last year, it does not follow at all that it is a good idea for donors and foundations to subsidize microfinance. After all, the Grameen Bank was developed without donor assistance.
So many congratulations to Muhammad Yunus for his well deserved award, and to the Nobel Peace Prize committee for recognizing the power of economic growth in poor countries to promote peace. But let's think carefully before we all climb on to the microfinance bandwagon. It is not clear that subsidizing microfinance is a high priority for helping the developing world to grow its way to prosperity.
More at Pienso, Marginal Revolution and NextBillion. Update: Also Mark Thoma, Audemus
A new paper by Jorg Faust at the German Development Institute looks at whether rich countries that have more accountable and democratic institutions have more development-oriented foreign policy:
… the results do support the main hypothesis presented here, namely that the level of democratic voice and accountability in OECD countries is one crucial factor explaining the variance of the overall quality of development promotion in those countries. Beyond, these finding also suggest that a rising level of democratic voice and accountability increases the overall coherency of these countries' foreign policies with regard to development promotion. … Rich countries with stronger democratic institutions produce foreign policies which are at the same time more compatible with the concompassing interests of the rich countries' society while at the same time more adequate to promote development in poorer countires.
This is an important finding. It is consitent with the view that policies pursued by rich countries which damage development – such as restrictions on trade, limits on migration, constraints on technology transfer, corruption or arms sales – reflect the power in those countries of special interest groups to protect and promote their causes at the expense of economic development in poor countries. As the rich countries become more democratic and accountable, so the voice of our collective interests in global peace and security and in global equity are more overcome those interest groups.
I am sure that you are all avid readers of Public Finance magazine.
You’ll be fascinated to hear that this week’s cover feature is my article calling for the establishment of a service-oriented architecture for IT systems across the public sector. Here is an extract to titillate your tastebuds:
The priority for government should be an IT strategy that organises the individual functions in government applications into interoperable, standards-based services that can be shared, combined and reused quickly to meet business needs. For example, once the government has developed a procurement system or a payroll module, these should be used and adapted by other business units.This would catalyse significant changes:
- Public services would organise services to correspond to citizen experiences, such as starting a business or moving house, rather than the functions of government
- The frontline service, not the IT department, would design and create applications directly
- Organisations would not bet their future on a single, long-term IT development – instead they would implement change in smaller steps using small, reusable, interlinked modules
- Systems would be designed to change to meet future needs rather than being tightly coupled to today’s processes, and
- Instead of settling on a single, homogenous technology, the government would adopt a variety of different technologies appropriate to the needs of the services.
A common, government-wide structure, based on components, applications and data that could be reused and shared, would reduce development time, cost and risk. Frontline services would control their own processes, which would allow them to respond flexibly to changing needs and develop increasingly customer-centric services.
The article is a shortened version of my chapter in a new IBM publication, Capability, Capacity and Reform, Insights from government leaders on delivering transformational government.
This post comes from the new Microsoft blog post editor.
My initial impression is that it will make blogging much easier for people used to Microsoft Word. It is astoundingly easy to set up – for this blog, which uses WordPress, all it needed was my username and password.
But speaking personally, I much prefer the Performancing add-on for Mozilla Firefox, which makes it all too easy to knock together a traditional link-quote-comment blog post.
If it turns out that the intelligence services and the police have indeed foiled a plot to commit mass murder on a scale never before seen in the UK – and I have no reason to believe that it won't – then we owe them our thanks and gratitude.
We are quick to criticize when things go wrong, such as the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar in Forest Gate in June. Perhaps I am reading a biased sample blogs, but I have not seen a corresponding flurry of recognition of the success of intelligence gathering, investigation and international cooperation that has prevented the destruction in mid-air of nine passenger aircraft.
Similarly, in today's FT, there is a grudging editorial, complaining about the disruption at the airports and recalling past errors: there is no hint of congratulations for the success that the law enforcement agencies have achieved. Nor does today's Guardian leader offer any thanks.
Well I think that is humbug. Well done, men and women of the law enforcement agencies. We owe you.
According to The World of Shez
Today there is a second wind of change blowing across Africa, a trend towards greater democracy and a growing confidence that goes uncovered by the media. Disasters in Somalia, Darfur and West Africa dominate, while transitions to democracy in Kenya, Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, and elsewhere are ignored. Understanding the day-to-day stories of Africa means abandoning preconceived notions. Reporters should try to portray people in ways that are recognizable to Africans. With better media coverage, the United States and the world would realize that there is more to Africa than death, disease, disaster, and despair.
Hat tip: Trade Diversion
I wrote here in June about the need for the UK government to work towards decentralized government databases using shared data schemas to allow information exchange between them in a secure, auditable system of information exchange. This would allow us to obtain the benefits of joined-up government systems, while protecting us (at least to some extent) from the risks to civil liberties of allowing the government to build a single 'Big Brother' database which stores all your personal information and to which government employees would have access.
I discovered today that the US government is developing a National Information Exchange Model. This is precisely the sort of XML schema for data exchange betwen government systems that I had in mind.
Such an information exchange schema would need to be accompanied by the other components of the system recommended in my earlier post – particularly a secure message layer, auditing of information exchanged across systems, and the right of all citizens to see all information held about them and a log of all accesses to that information by government systems.
The US effort is, rather chillingly, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. But since they are some way down the road (they have recently released a beta of the standard, including no fewer than nine proposed namespaces) it would make sense for this to form the basis of an international effort to develop a shared information scheme. After all, the information needs of governments cannot vary all that much between countries, and such a shared system would facilitate international cooperation (for example, for cooperation in criminal investigations, tax and immigration).
At risk of upsetting the anti-Tranzi brigade, it seems to me that an international system, agreed transparently and using open standards for information schema and messaging, could in principle be more likely to protect civil liberties and be more efficient than a series of unconnected information sharing systems developed by national governments.
You have probably read everything you want to about Warren Buffett's decision to donate about $37 billion (£20 billion) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (If not, go read what my colleague Ruth Levine has written on our global development policy blog, Views from the Center.)
I offer two additional thoughts.
- First, it is very refreshing to see somebody decide to support an existing, effective institution rather than start a new one. The world does not need more development institutions and more donors. Very rich men are often filled with a combination of irrepressible self-belief and large egos, and as a result want to establish their own foundations, in their own name. By backing the Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett has shown rare and commendable humility.
- Second, Greg Mankiw picked up in his blog yesterday that even this massive individual donation is small by comparison with what governments can do to reduce poverty by making changes in the international trading system:
In other words, success in the Doha round of international trade talks would give the world more every year than what Buffett can give once after a lifetime of being the world's most successful investor.
(Full disclosure: my employer, the Center for Global Development, receives grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
Tim being away, this week’s round-up has been ably compiled by the Devil.
There was a fascinating report on today’s BBC World This Weekend (you can hear it here for the rest of the week) about China’s role in Africa. The charge d’affaires at China’s embassy in South Africa, Zhou Yuxiao, gave an interview in said China was just protecting its own interests, and that Beijing does not believe that economic embargoes and disengagement were necessarily the best way to promote good governance.
I have written previously about China’s growing role in Africa here and here.
This is a looming foreign policy issue that needs more attention. We must take steps to ensure that the new scramble for Africa is to the continent’s benefit this time round.
A self-confessed sex-fiend, the Girl with a one-track mind reports her experience of a marathon runner (not safe for work):
… I had a fling with a marathon runner for a while – damn that boy had stamina. Stamina like you wouldn’t believe. …But it just goes to show that there is a correlation between fitness, stamina and endurance in training, and the ability to last all night whilst shagging. I’m not saying that being able to run 26 miles will ensure your cock stays hard when you want it to – but surely it must help.
Well, possibly. The ones who aren’t too knackered from running 80 miles that week, perhaps.
The gang that G and I go biking with has got itself matching jerseys. This was us this morning at Peets Coffee, before 50 miles in the hills round Lake Chabot.
My Vaccines for Development blog, which I have been maintaining for a year, has morphed into a group blog on global health policy. Go take a look.
What is not to like about pancakes?
If you are on one of these crazy, low-carb diets, then I suppose you might give them a wide berth. And if you are, more intelligently, someone who avoids sugar and heavily processed foods, then you may be suspicious of shop-made pancakes. But you can make pancakes at home and serve them with lots of fresh fruit, low-fat yoghurt, and nuts for a very filling, healthy breakfast. Just go easy on the syrup.
Here is a recipe adapted from a recent Runner’s World.
Possibly the second worst four words in the English language.*
I was travelling with G to Boulder, Colorado, where she is attending a Business School event. I came along because I’d always wanted to visit this town in the Rockies known for its running and other outdoor sports.
The pilot had announced that we were free to use "electronic devices". I reached for my laptop – which is my office, calendar, library, address book, photo album, music collection, and main form of communication. And that was when I got a black screen, apart from the chilling words:
Operating system not found
You do not want to see this on your computer. It generally indicates a comprehensive failure of the hard disk.
Friends of mine have lost laptops over the last year and have lost everything – their emails, their documents, their diaries, their photographs. Computer repair shops report heart-wrenching tales of young couples arriving in tears, clutching computers with broken hard disks containing the remnants of their wedding photos, or the only record of the first days of their children, begging for them to be rescued. G was recently telephoned by a successful and wealthy retired businessman, in tears because his laptop hard disk had failed and he had lost everything.
My stomach churned as I wondered what I had irreplaceably lost. I knew it would not be too much, as I have a complete backup of all my data at home on two large external hard disks, and I regularly copy across everything from my laptop. But even if I was not going to lose too much data, how could I work without a computer?
Arriving at the hotel, I used a tiny screwdriver to get inside my laptop, and found that the problem was a faulty connection in the ribbon cable linking the computer motherboard and the hard disk. I was able to fix the connection, and the computer booted find.
So all’s well that ends well. But it was a close shave, and a reminder always to make regular backups, especially of laptops. Mine has taken years of abuse – including being humped around on the back of my bike, being thrown around in airports, and the occasional coffee spill. The hard disk WILL fail one day.
So if you rely on your laptop, please – take a backup. Either image your disk, burn your data onto a CD-ROM or DVD, or copy it across to another computer. Please, do it today.
* The worst four words in the English Language are of course "Welcome to Heathrow Airport"
<geek>
Memo to self – this was how I cleaned up my Lacie 500Gb external backup drive which was giving read/write errors.
umount /dev/sdg1
e2fsck -fyc /dev/sdg1
Then go out for 3 hours …
</geek>
The US Consul in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, speaking on BBC Radio 4 PM today:
…In terms of our own policy and our own law, Hamas is considered to be a terrorist organization and we do not engage with terrorist organisations, we don’t have meetings with them, so as long as that remains the case we are not going to be having contacts with them …
Now that Hamas is the elected Government, how can it be a "terrorist organisation"? How are we now definining "terrorist"?
I thought Charles Kennedy’s statement yesterday was brave and dignified. I am not going to comment on that. Instead I want to reflect on the role of Daisy McAndrew in all this.
Mr Kennedy’s statement was triggered by the intelligence that ITV News chief political reporter, Daisy McAndrew, planned to report the story on the ITV evening news.
So who is Daisy McAndrew? In the 1990s, as Daisy Sampson, she was a freelance journalist, scraping a living by hanging around the House of Commons doing tedious profiles for the (unreadable) House Magazine.
Her big break came in November 1999, when she became Press Secretary to none other than Charles Kennedy. In a gushing piece of self-praise, her (self authored) profile on the BBC website says:
Kennedy was widely credited as having by far the best
campaign of the 2001 General Election – in no small part down to
Daisy’s handling of his press and image.
Since the 2001 Election, Ms McAndrew has risen fairly rapidly, though without distinction, first co-presenting The Daily Politics with Andrew Neil (is it possible that Mr Neil chooses his co-hosts on the basis of something other than the size of their intelligence?) and then presenting the LBC evening radio programme.
At ITN, Ms McAndrew’s reporting has been pedestrian at best, and she has not broken any major stories. Her editors must have been beginning to wonder why they had appointed her. Her ‘scoop’ yesterday, reporting the worst-kept secret in Westminster – may have lifted her reputation in the news industry.
I hope it does not. This is not journalism, it is betrayal of confidence of a former employer. In my view, there is little or no public interest in reporting the details of Mr Kennedy’s private medical condition. But even if there were, it was not the story that Ms McAndrew should have broken. Ms McAndrew owes a duty of confidentiality to Mr Kennedy, with whom she worked closely at a personal level. Her career in journalism was given a significant boost by her two years working as his Press Secretary – indeed, if it were not for him, she would probably still be labouring over profiles in the House Magazine. Now she has decided to give her career a further lift by spilling the beans on the man who gave her her first real break and whose trust she has now betrayed.
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