No development, no peace – Jeffry Sachs

To reduce the risk of war, we must help impoverished people everywhere get onto the ladder of economic development.

Anyone interested in peacemaking, poverty reduction, and Africa’s future should read the new United Nations environment programme (UNEP) report Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment. This may sound like a technical report on Sudan’s environment, but it is also a vivid study of how the natural environment, poverty, and population growth can interact to provoke terrible human-made disasters like the violence in Darfur.

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Rich vs Poor, or Poor vs Poor

Developing countries’ discord emerges as new roadblock to global trade deal

By Steven R. Weisman

Published: July 20, 2007

A global economic realignment that has vaulted China, India and Brazil into the top tier of the world’s emerging markets – much to the concern of other developing countries – has emerged as one of the major reasons for deadlock in the global trade talks.

As a result, the impasse is not just one pitting Europe against the United States, or the rich countries against the poor, but also poor countries that depend on trade against each other. Meanwhile, the poorest of the poor countries in Africa and elsewhere charge that the emerging market economies are ignoring their needs.

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Immigration, Populations, Climate Change, and Perverse Ideologies

All of the deepest social problems of the world would be a lot easier to solve with a declining population. Better to accomplish this through enlightened policy than through plagues and war.

by J. Russell Tyldesley

Read the article in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel

 

UN Millennium Development Goals

 

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

 

source: UN Millennium Development Goals

 

United Nations Millennium Declaration [pdf]

Millennium Goals Development Indicators

Progress Reports [pdf]: 2007

 

 

How does the world fare in the fight against poverty…?

Winning, mostly.

MAKE poverty history is a compelling slogan. Halve it by 2015, in contrast, is a measurable commitment. That is the logic behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a host of targets in the struggle against global deprivation, disease and illiteracy, set by the world’s leaders at a United Nations jamboree in 2000.

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The Double Edge of Globalization, By Nayan Chanda

Intensified international trading affects the environment, but also raises global awareness

by Nayan Chanda
YaleGlobal, 28 June 2007

 

Burning question: Does globalization destroy the rain forest?
Rush to grow more crops for export is certainly behind some deforestation.

Activists have long accused global corporations of being bad environmental citizens. But the problems of climate change and deforestation are part of a larger phenomenon, in which globalization is but one factor among many. As Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal, discusses in his new book “Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization,” international consumer habits drive environmental devastation more so than globalized corporations. As a result, activists’ efforts could be more productively directed at building an international consensus on pollution reduction, environmental regulation and sustainable development. Powerful new advances in communications technology relay the realities of environmental degradation and natural disasters to the world’s public more quickly than ever before. Activists are the new preachers in a modern world – and the immediacy of technology gives them unprecedented opportunities to convey their message of morality to a global audience. Building powerful movements with online blogs and instant-chat programs, environmentalists must admit that globalization might not be so bad.

 

– YaleGlobal

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UN 2007 World Drug Report

A summary from Global Development Briefing:

Efforts to eradicate the world’s drug problem are paying off as cultivation, production and abuses appear to have stabilized worldwide, the UN said in the newly published 2007 World Drug Report. The area used for coca cultivation worldwide dropped by 29 percent between 2000 and 2006… Some 42 percent of all cocaine produced was also seized last year, up from 24 percent seven years ago. Meanwhile, the so-called Golden Triangle, an area comprising parts of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand that was once one of Asia’s largest opium producers, is now “almost opium free,” according to UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa. Despite a fall in poppy cultivation in South East Asia, opium production reached a record 6,610 tons (7,286 short tons) worldwide last year, up 43 percent from 2005. The report, which covers 2005-06, estimates that about 200 million people – nearly 5 percent of the world population aged 15-64 – use illegal drugs. However, it puts the number of ‘problem drug users’, most heroin or cocaine addicts, at just 25 million. Afghanistan, meanwhile, produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by roughly 49 percent from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, the report said.

To read the entire report click here for the PDF.

China overtakes US as world’s biggest CO2 emitter

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China’s growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China’s emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world’s biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

John Vidal and David Adam
Tuesday June 19, 2007

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Agricultural Subsidies: Global Trade Talks Collapse

Another attempt to revive the Doha round of negotiations, the goal of which is a global trade agreement for reducing poverty in small developing nations, collapsed once again. The US and Europe resist slashing their own agricultural subsidies as much as developing nations, including India and Brazil, would prefer. Brazil and India refuse to open their markets to goods from the industrialized world if Europe and the US don’t substantially reduce subsidies for their own agricultural markets. The US trade negotiator calls Brazil and India “inflexible.” The US agreed to reduce proposed subsidies for its farmers from $22 billion to $17 billion – but the number is still higher than the $11 billion now received by US farmers. The US plans to ask other developing nations to pressure Brazil and India to be more flexible about opening their own markets and allowing more subsidies for the wealthy nations. World Trade Organization agreements require consensus from the 150 member nations.

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A Loaf of Bread; A World of Ingredients

Globalization in Every Loaf

-the New York Times

The lowering of trade barriers more than a decade ago has pushed food companies to scour the globe for more exotic — or the cheapest — ingredients to compete in a more global marketplace, not unlike automakers shipping in parts from all over. But with America’s relatively permissible food-import rules and weak inspection regime, is the trend to assemble food from so many far-flung locations heightening the risks of contamination?

Click on the loaves to see a world of ingredients