the drop » Economic Development & Globalization

The Most Polluted Places on Planet Earth

The international non-profit environmental action group, the Blacksmith Institute, last week released its rankings of the world’s most polluted places. Out of over 300 sites nominated by NGOs and local communities, 35 were identified by an advisory board of international environment and health experts as meriting special emphasis. Of these, ten locations were singled out for tragic infamy, ranked together as the Top 10 worst polluted places on the planet:

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Nobel Peace Prize and Microfinance

2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus © Nobel Foundation

There’s been a lot of talk about the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. Celebrated as a microfinance pioneer, the economist started the bank in Bangladesh to offer loans and financial services to rural poor communities. Responses have ranged from critiquing recent Nobel Peace Prize selections to reviewing how the media characterizes microfinance. I started at Pienso…, a blog on development, economics and international business, and followed a wealth of links to differing opinions on microfinance.
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Global Hunger Index/World Food Day

To coincide with World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute published the 2006 Global Hunger Index. The index combines three measurements on child mortality, child malnutrition, and calorie deficiencies to provide a progress report dating back to 1981. In addition to noting improvements or a decline, the index looks at how well countries are allocating resources to solving hunger issues in comparison with the level of development.
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WORLD WAR NO: Apocalypse Impending?

'The Middle East Theatre of War' (GlobalResearch.ca)

When a former Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times is writing that “War with Iran — a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East — is probable by the end of the Bush administration,” we should awaken to the possibility. When he continues, “It could begin in as little as three weeks,” concerned citizens everywhere should resolve to work together to prevent it.

Writing on Alternet on Tuesday, Chris Hedges warned of an American naval armada barreling towards the Strait of Hormuz: the 50 kilometer-wide, 21 kilometer-narrow waterway adjoining the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea…

“The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.“

Three weeks ago, a Time magazine cover-story broke the news of a “‘Prepare to Deploy’ order sent through [U.S.] naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters” alongside “a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)” asking “for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.” A follow-up post in The Nation reported the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirming that “the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles… is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21“ — next Saturday — just over two weeks before mid-term elections in the US.
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One Laptop per Child: Is Criticism Welcome?

Untouchable? OLPC, the Church, and the Red Cross

News of a tentative agreement between Libya and One Laptop per Child made headlines earlier this week. The 2B1 Children’s Machine is designed to be a low-cost, low-power laptop, targeted at developing nations. While agreements with Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand have also been reached, India rejected participation in July. Economist Atanu Dey writes about his skepticism of OLPC and the Indian government’s reasoning in his blog.
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Third Annual Ethical Fashion Show in Paris

The third edition of The Ethical Fashion Show takes place in Paris this weekend. The fair presents fashion that respects people and the environment. Over 20 nationalities and cultures will be represented. Organizers say that the fair seeks to be a unifying event where the fashion industries’ various players meet.
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EU REACH Legislation on Hazardous Chemicals

NGOs and chemical companies battle over European REACH legislation. (Photo: Photocase)

An article in the International Herald Tribune announced that the European Parliament environmental committee approved proposed REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) legislation. The draft rules, which are being contested by major chemical companies, still need to pass voting by the EU Parliament and member governments.

At the Chemical Policy Institute website, there’s a comprehensive rundown on the stakeholders in the fight to pass REACH. The outline analyzes the key issues of the dispute, the costs and benefits of the legislation, and the major players.
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Upgrading International Development, Part II

A Talk with Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices Online Co-founder, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law

In part two of the interview, Ethan shares his views on conquering digital divides, activism and technology, and how improvements in technology might affect us in the future. You can read the first part of the interview here.
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How can we use technology to turn apathy into action?

I think the only force that combats apathy is empathy. Until you care about a situation in another part of the world, it’s very hard to decide to pay attention to that situation and even harder to decide to act.

To get people to care across cultural, language and geographic barriers requires some sort of exposure. I knew very little about Africa and cared very little until I lived in Ghana as a student in 1993. Coming back to the US, I was suddenly interested in African politics because there were a lot of people in Ghana I cared deeply for. This discovery is what led me to form Geekcorps - I wanted to give other geeks the chance to get exposed to different parts of the world, build interpersonal ties and work on solutions to tough technical problems.

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Power Players in Net Neutrality

Proposed US legislation on Internet neutrality is being hotly debated.

At Salon, there’s an interesting read about the grassroots organizations taking on large telecom companies in the fight for Net neutrality. The Telecom Slayers provides a clear overview of the main concerns with the proposed Internet legislation, as well as a rundown on the organizations and lobbyists working for and against the issue.

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Chinese Car Boom

On a recent ‘Car Free Day’ in Beijing, the capital was clogged with vehicles and the sky a drab shade of grey. The sheer number of cars on the roads had made a mockery of the city initiative to make dwellers ride their bicycles or use the public transport. As the expanding Chinese middle class aspires to car ownership, studies project China will have more cars on the road than the United States within 15 years. For everyone from environmental activists to government officials, China’s growing addiction to the automobile is a worrying trend.
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Upgrading International Development

A Talk with Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices Online Co-founder, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law

I had the opportunity to correspond with Ethan Zuckerman, just back from a trip to Zimbabwe and the Digital Citizen Indaba conference on blogging. In part one of the interview, Ethan talks about his involvement in international development, blogging, the lack of media coverage on foreign investment in Africa, and the prospects of an African blogging conference.

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I came across your blog and Global Voices through being an avid reader of Sokari Ekine’s blog Black Looks. Now it seems that whenever there’s a topic I find interesting either you or Sokari is involved! How did you first get involved in international development and technology issues?

Sokari is one of my favorite reads as well, and one of the bloggers who’s helped convince me of the power of this medium to build friendships across barriers of nationality, race, gender and other obstacles. I’m very grateful to her for the work she did as the founding Africa editor for Global Voices.
I’ve been interested in international development since I lived in Ghana as a student in 1993. But I didn’t think about getting involved in development issues until my work on Tripod.com. Coming out of the experience of helping to run a successful dot.com, I wondered whether any of the lessons I learned could be applicable in building technology businesses in Africa. I was lucky enough to have the mentorship of Professor Dick Sabot, who was a brilliant development economist as well as an entrepreneur, and who helped encourage me to channel my interests into Geekcorps, the NGO I founded in 1999 to work on technology transfer in the developing world.

What has been the response to projects like BlogAfrica and Global Voices Online?

The two projects have had very different responses, probably because they’ve had very different purposes. BlogAfrica was designed to be a tool useful to a small group of people - folks who follow Africa closely and want to keep up with a large number of voices for the continent. For those folks, it’s a little rough around the edges, but functional and basically useful. But it’s not a site I spend a lot of time promoting and celebrating - the folks who would find it useful generally already know about it.

Global Voices, on the other hand, is a site that I’d love everyone to read. It’s designed to pull people into stories they’d otherwise miss, broaden their worldview and introduce them to people they otherwise would never get to know. It’s been amazingly successful - we were just honored with the Knight Batten award for innovation in journalism. Technorati ranks us as the 175th most popular blog in the blogosphere… which is pretty good for a blog that doesn’t focus on technology, popular culture or US politics.
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Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Switzerland received the best ranking on the BPI 2006

Transparency International released the Bribe Payers Index yesterday, an analysis of the custom of bribing by companies from the top exporting countries. The index sheds light on a problem that is often characterized as rooted solely in the developing world. Switzerland ranked the highest on the list. Germany came in at number seven; The United States was ranked number nine.

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Sour Apples

Greenpeace is calling all Apple fans to join the campaign for demanding the company to create greener products. Apple fans love the sleek design and the meticulous attention to detail. But why do the products still contain hazardous substances that other companies have already abandoned? Greenpeace argues that a cutting edge company shouldn’t be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals, but should rather be setting a green standard in the market.
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Susu Collectors: Microfinance in Ghanaian Culture

Connecting informal and formal financial services

While microfinancing is being touted as the new wave of aiding developing countries, informal financial structures on a micro-scale aren’t that new at all. At Timbuktu Chronicles, there’s an example of institutional microfinance combining with traditional Ghanaian financial services, the Susu collectors.

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Regulating What We Eat

NYC Board of Health proposes regulating trans fats in restaurants

As obesity and diabetes statistics are climbing steadily in the U.S., health experts are caught in between public policy makers and the food industry. The numbers have been debated and revised without any viable public health strategies developing. Yesterday, the New York City Board of Health voted to propose regulating the maximum amount of trans fats used in NYC restaurants. Stepping out of the obesity debate, the regulation is focused on reducing heart disease.

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Development and Microfinance: Some Sources

Photo: Adam Rogers/UNCDF

In the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books, Nicholas D. Kristof reviews William Easterly’s latest book about foreign aid in the context of recent literature on this hot topic. It got me thinking about some of the useful Internet sources out there for people that want to learn more about microfinance. Here’s a short list:
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Olympic Development and Social Costs

Is gentrification part and parcel of the Olympics?

Many cities look forward to Olympic bids as a chance to provide a burst of development into ailing downtowns. Local residents are often less enthusiastic, watching neighborhoods turn into Potemkin villages as low-income housing and homeless people are relocated. With the Summer Games in 2008 slowly approaching, Human Rights Watch announced the closing of many Beijing schools for migrant workers’ children in China.
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Foreign Policy Index: Commitment to Development

The Netherlands tops the 2006 FP Index

Foreign Policy and the Center for Global Development released their annual ranking of the 21 richest countries, as posted on Idealist.org. The Commitment to Development Index analyzes at seven government policy categories to determine which countries are living up to promises to end world poverty.
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NGO ACTION: Human Rights Watch calls on Swiss voters to reject asylum restrictions

Swiss referendum today on changes to asylum law (LaSi), Photo:Freefoto.com

In an e-mail bulletin sent yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on voters to reject changes to the Swiss asylum law (LaSi) in today’s referendum. HRW released an analysis of the proposed amendments in an open letter, detailing the failure to comply with international standards.

Elisa Mason provides a quick overview of pro and con links at the Forced Migration Current Awareness blog, including a post at the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR).
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“Business Rebel” Richard Branson pledges $3 billion to combat global warming

Branson at the opening event of one of his many brands: Virgin Bride. Next costume will be green...

Story found at lime: Richard Branson, the British mogul behind the Virgin multi-brand, plans to invest the profits from all transportation sectors — including train companies and five airlines - in research and business efforts to develop and promote renewable, sustainable energy sources. From signing the Sex Pistols in his early Virgin years to offering space flights – Branson is known for audacious projects and thinking BIG. The original AP story reveals that Branson made the decision after talking with former US Vice-President Al Gore - whose movie “An Inconvenient Truth” about Climate Change changed some minds in the States.

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Reach Out and Finance Someone

Courtesy Grameen Foundation

A few weeks ago I interviewed Peter Bladin, vice president of Grameen Foundation, the US-based wing of Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank – the Bangladesh institution often referred to as the first large-scale microfinance project in the world. Although the interview (published today) focuses on the connection between technology and microfinance, we also talked a bit about Village Phone, the program where locals sell mobile phone air time in their communities, and make a profit doing so.
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“Are brands more powerful than governments?”

A post on the ‘Think Progress’ website shows a segment from a recent BBC report that revealed a “direct link between the tobacco companies and the claim that climate change isn’t happening.” In 1993 Philip Morris set up a grass roots coalition to “cast doubt on studies showing that second-hand tobacco smoke is dangerous for health.” In order not to raise suspicion that the company was involved, Philip Morris decided to “‘link the tobacco issue with other more politically correct products’ and campaign on issues like global warming.” The result was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the campaign to halt it than any other body.

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“Is there an ecological limit to economic growth?”

California is the largest car market in the US

An article published in ‘The Independent’ today reports that the State of California, already at the forefront of the fight against global warming, filed an unprecedented lawsuit against six leading car manufacturers yesterday, arguing that exhaust fumes caused untold millions of dollars in damage to the state’s weather, economy and public health. The state attorney is seeking unspecified damages from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and Nissan because they “either knew or should have known the severe impact their vehicles would have on the health of the planet”.
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Beer, Chips and… Internet TV

The end of TV? Crowds create and rate their own media...

Did I mention that I studied TV but never actually watched it? Anyway, last night I tried to promote my transcriptions of Bill Joy´s answers from the Table of Free Voices, so I went to problogger for some tips, and learned that I ought to pitch the story to places like reddit, furl or digg - where real people choose which content matters. I was a good digital citizen and uploaded my photo to digg, but then I found myself overwhelmed by the real-time barrage of story suggestions every second. So then I went to see digg Offbeat News. That´s where I found out about “yruhrn – First Book Created by Global Collaboration of Over 1,000 People”. And that´s where my zig-zag tour through our lovely social web started…
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Migrant Crisis Continues in Spain

Spain signed a repatriation agreement with Senegal, Photo: BBC News
You had promised me that I would never be hungry
You had promised me of true activities and a future
Really up to here I still see nothing
That’s why I decided to flee

The lyrics are from DJ Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and producer, who is promoting awareness of the migrant crisis with his song Sunugaal and an online slideshow.
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features

Upgrading International Development, Part II

Upgrading International Development

Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Recycle Your Cell-Phone, Save a Gorilla

A Look Behind the Prison Walls

The Homeless World Cup 2006

Reach Out and Finance Someone

Arundhati Roy asks herself: What form of resistance is effective and acceptable?

Iranian Bloggers Joined by President Ahmadinejad

Creating A New Universe

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Economic Development & Globalization

The Most Polluted Places on Planet Earth

Nobel Peace Prize and Microfinance

Global Hunger Index/World Food Day

WORLD WAR NO: Apocalypse Impending?

One Laptop per Child: Is Criticism Welcome?

Third Annual Ethical Fashion Show in Paris

EU REACH Legislation on Hazardous Chemicals

Upgrading International Development, Part II

Power Players in Net Neutrality

Chinese Car Boom

Upgrading International Development

Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Sour Apples

Susu Collectors: Microfinance in Ghanaian Culture

Regulating What We Eat

Development and Microfinance: Some Sources

Olympic Development and Social Costs

Foreign Policy Index: Commitment to Development

NGO ACTION: Human Rights Watch calls on Swiss voters to reject asylum restrictions

“Business Rebel” Richard Branson pledges $3 billion to combat global warming

Reach Out and Finance Someone

“Are brands more powerful than governments?”

“Is there an ecological limit to economic growth?”

Beer, Chips and… Internet TV

Migrant Crisis Continues in Spain