Lessons on Climate Change from the Pakistan Floods

Martin Khor

There are many lessons from the recent floods in Pakistan.  Here are just a few.

First, when natural calamity strikes, it can be– and nowadays more often than not it is– devastating.  The tsunami that hit Indonesia and many other countries, the Haiti earthquake, and now the Pakistan floods illustrate that. In Pakistan, up to 20 million people have been affected, almost a million homes destroyed or damaged, 10 million were made homeless, and there is widespread damage to agriculture and related livelihoods.

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Markets and Governments: Finding the Balance in Developing Countries

Mehdi Shafaeddin

The recent global economic crisis has renewed interest in the debate over the role of the government in economic activities, in developed countries as well as developing countries. Rich countries had to stimulate their economies by injecting enormous amount of cash to deal with the financial crisis caused by the unregulated market and the activities of financial institutions. In the case of the United States, such injections amounted to over one trillion dollars. Yet, the International Financial Institutions continue to advocate a different policy for poor countries. The recommendation of the IMF to the Government of Malawi to impose pro-cyclical monetary and fiscal policies on the economy is only one example.

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Small-Scale Farmers and Development: Assume a different economic model

Timothy A. Wise

One version of an old joke features a shipwrecked economist on a deserted island who, when asked by his fellow survivors what expertise he can offer on how they can be rescued, replies, “Assume we have a boat.”

In Mexico earlier this month, I was thinking that the real-life version of the economist’s solution is: “Assume we have employment.” But it’s no joke. A World Bank economist had just spoken during a seminar at Mexico’s National Autonomous University on Mexican farm policies in the wake of NAFTA. Earlier, I had presented my recent paper, “Agricultural Dumping Under NAFTA,” which came out in the new report “Subsidizing Inequality,” released in Spanish by the Woodrow Wilson Center and its Mexican partners.

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Aileen Kwa on Europe's EPAs

In its Economic Partnership Agreements with ACP countries, the EU has pushed for African countries to significantly reduce tariffs in return for having access to the EU market. In an interview with Triple Crisis blogger Timothy A. Wise, Aileen Kwa of the South Centre discusses the dangers of the EPAs for African economies and offers possible solutions.

For background and more on the issue, see:

EPAs: The Wrong Development Model for Africa And Options for the Future
Need for Africa to Re-think the EPAs in Light of the Economic Crisis
Legal Analysis of Services and Investment in the Cariforum-EC EPA: Lessons for other Developing Countries

Aileen Kwa on Europe’s EPAs

In its Economic Partnership Agreements with ACP countries, the EU has pushed for African countries to significantly reduce tariffs in return for having access to the EU market. In an interview with Triple Crisis blogger Timothy A. Wise, Aileen Kwa of the South Centre discusses the dangers of the EPAs for African economies and offers possible solutions.

For background and more on the issue, see:

EPAs: The Wrong Development Model for Africa And Options for the Future
Need for Africa to Re-think the EPAs in Light of the Economic Crisis
Legal Analysis of Services and Investment in the Cariforum-EC EPA: Lessons for other Developing Countries

New Estimates of China’s Foreign Investment in Latin America

Kevin P. Gallagher

China’s foreign investment into Africa has been generating a great deal of controversy.  Some argue that China is becoming the new colonial power over Africa, others see China as a key source of foreign exchange that may finally help spur long-run economic growth in Africa.

There has been relatively less discussion about China’s investment in Latin America, because it was thought that there was so little of it.  A closer look reveals that Chinese FDI is larger than previously thought, and growing fast.

According to official Chinese statistics, foreign direct investment (FDI) to Latin America has been relatively limited—averaging just over $4 billion per year between 2003 and 2009.  That is 3-4 percent of total FDI into the region over the same period.  What is more, according to China, 96.7 percent of all Chinese FDI into Latin America during that period went to the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands—two countries that would sink into the ocean if they had $3 billion per year in such investment.  Peal away these two financial havens and the Latin American region only received about $126 million in Chinese FDI, or less than 1 percent of the annual total.

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Going Green Gets Dirty

Jayati Ghosh

Periods of economic recession are known to foster protectionist tendencies. This has been especially marked after the global crisis, when trade openness has become a useful battering ram in the developed world, skillfully used by policy makers and employers to pass the buck on to the threat posed by foreign producers. The significantly increased threat of unemployment is then seen – even by Northern workers – not as the result of domestic macroeconomic policies that prevent employment from rising as it feasibly could, but as something determined by trade patterns, especially exports from the developing world.

Even so, the recent trade wars over the use of “green” technologies are surprising in how extreme and openly self-contradictory the positions have been. And what is most surprising – and even alarming and distressing – is how such thinking has permeated to the working classes in the North, who now openly identify their own interests with those of their employers rather than with workers in developing countries.

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Food Security and India: The unwelcome surprise

The National Advisory Council of India recently proposed a Food Security Bill.  In an article published by Frontline, Triple Crisis blogger Jayati Ghosh examines the proposed Bill and argues that in pushing for a greatly truncated public distribution system (PDS), the Bill undermines the PDS itself.

“It seems that the obsessive desire to keep the price of subsidised foodgrain at the level that was promised – even if only for some chosen sections and at the cost of large-scale exclusion and possible diversion – has dominated over the goal of ensuring a viable and vibrant system of public procurement and distribution.”

“If any system of food procurement and distribution has to cope with varying situations, it has to allow for the possibility of some people moving in and out of the system, choosing to use the ration shops when market prices are high and opting out when market prices are low. Only when the food security of the entire population is secured in a coherent manner can we be sure that we are securing the food security of its most deprived sections.”

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September 16, 2010 | Posted in: Uncategorized | Comments Closed