Links of interest!

I've been busy finding cool things for y'all to read :)

1. "Pope's climate push is 'raving nonsense' without population control"
2. "The Mosul Dam is failing. A breach could kill 1.5 million people"
3. "The Many Faces of Global Migration" from Gallup
4. "Why Is the Rent So Damn High?" (Matt wins)
5. "Inside Amazon's clickworker platform" -- and the AI they are training
6. What do actual aid recipients say? Better things than Jeff Sachs!
7. "Argentina on Two Steaks A Day" (some people can barely get by...)
8. From the end of the Fairness Doctrine to the planned rise of Faux News (and the like)
9. "A reflection on Barack Obama’s presidency"
10. Privacy Badger [from EFF] blocks spying ads and invisible trackers

H/T to MV

Renewable reliable desalination

I asked Sid Vollebregt to write a guest post about his young company's technology, which sounds exciting (they've got projects running!), but I have not checked out the company's financials or technology. Please ask for details if you have a project or partnership in mind. -- David

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In a recent TEDx Talk, we explained how we can produce fresh water sustainably.

Desalinated water production usually requires lots of fossil energy. Desalination already accounts for 1 percent of the global electricity consumption, while it currently only supplies half a percentage of our global water needs. This means that desalination powered by renewable energy is basically the only way forward in order to truly provide a sustainable source of freshwater.

The problem with renewable energy driven desalination is the coupling of fluctuating renewable sources (sun, wind, waves) with the preferred desalination technology, reverse osmosis, which is designed for constant operation. Existing solutions either use batteries or operate discontinuously, resulting in high cost, limited scalability and variable water quality.

Elemental Water Makers delivers affordable, renewable-energy-driven desalination.

Our system uses the renewable energy, for example, solar energy generated by solar panels, which are connected to a seawater pump which displaces the seawater towards an elevated water buffer. This buffer delivers the required pressure for the reverse osmosis process. The elevation difference required is reduced by 80 percent using a mechanical form of energy recovery, re-using the excess pressure still present in the brine flow. For seawater, 90 m is required. Brackish water requires about half the elevation. The elevated water buffer is filled throughout the day and will be able to cover the nights, producing fresh water without any auxiliary power, leading to affordable fresh water.

Here is a summary of our benefits (for details, go here)

• Up to 70 percent savings on electricity usage
• Scalable for community & municipal sized water production
• Reliable and independent water supply
• Green solution without fossil fuels, preventing any greenhouse gas emissions
• Off-grid operation with limited maintenance
• Stress-free operation through remote monitoring
• Silent operation by excluding high pressure pumps & generators

In 2015, Elemental Water Makers delivered their first commercial project in the British Virgin Islands, producing 12.5 m3/day. The end-user saves 63 percent in comparison with his former, conventional fossil electricity driven reverse osmosis unit. Besides cost savings, the project reduces CO2 emissions by 25 tons per year. Here's a video tour of the installation.

Brine can be a big environmental issue, which is mostly caused by the large difference in salt concentration between the brine itself and the environment (often sea) it is disposed in. In order for our system to allow for an 80 percent decrease in required elevation, the system is forced to run at a low recovery ratio, resulting in more energy to be recovered from the brine and thus a lower required elevation. This 80 percent decrease is only possible when using a very efficient (95 percent) energy recovery process. If we add this together, we get a system, which runs at a low recovery ratio, leading to only a slightly more saline (less than 20 percent) brine discharge, while still being able to run a very efficient desalination process.

Elemental Water Makers does not only provide adaptability on a technological aspect, but also in a social and economical way. Renewable energy driven products will always involve higher investment costs than conventional powered systems, due to the fact that energy is "purchased" up-front, instead of spreading it out over the operational years, as is the case with fossil fuel or grid powered products. Governments, municipalities and general end-users in need for a fresh water solution often do not have the means to cope with these high up front costs. Therefore Elemental Water Makers is also working on Water Purchase Agreements (DBOT). By entering into an agreement for the purchase of the produced water for a certain amount of years, financing can be obtained to cope with the investment. Currently an agreement is entered with a municipality in Cape Verde for a village of 1300 people, who will soon enjoy a 50m3/day reliable and affordable potable water supply, without having to invest. The strength of this project is the combination of immediate cost savings while enabling a safe and sustainable water supply. Simultaneously the Cape Verde system will be used for educational purposes about fresh water scarcity, desalination and renewable energy. This should be an example for all 57 Small Island Developing States who can benefit from this solution.

Bottom Line Elemental Water Makers has a solution, but we need help reaching end-users, decision makers, international agencies, developers, architects and NGOs who can benefit from our technology and knowledge. Please contact us if you want to know more or have some people for us to meet.

Links of interest

• How to write about Africa -- scathing (and true)
• Insights from Jack Bogle, 87, who invented index mutual funds and founded Vanguard Investments ($3.5 trillion under management)
• Efficiency is the highest form of beauty -- my path, indeed.
• Is Silicon Valley undermining creatives (innovation hubs) and communities (AirBnB) in the same way as it's undermining romance (Tinder)?
• Magnus Carlsen wins at chess by NOT practicing with computers
• Leaf blowers disrupt the commons of your neighborhood
• The early history of wreck diving, bankruptcy and suicide
• Global water risk 2030 tool (free via registration)

Interesting links

I stopped "speed blogging" about a year ago as I switched to twitter and (for my students) Facebook. Now that I am off both (except for tweeting for Life plus 2 meters -- without much success), I will return to posting interesting links here.

1. The Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (free membership :)
2. I donated $100.22 to the American Civil Liberties Union. Trump tower's ZIP is 10022
3. The "Lex Mercatoria" (private merchant courts dating from the 1450s) never existed
4. The power of peers: self-evolving institutions that aid development
5. Basic income lowers risk and raises productive fulfillment
6. "We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump"
7. Yes, you can be too successful as a startup (eatable cutlery!?!)
8. Michael Lewis on the intellectual foundations of MoneyBall
9. Trump the Troll (analysis by cyber-psychologist) is now paying fraud damages. He's also making business deals with foreign leaders to benefit himself his daughter. People who voted for "the guy who makes deals" may not have realised that he wasn't talk about making deals for them.
10. James C. Scott: "I was trained as a political scientist and the profession bores me, to be frank. I am truly bored by mainstream work in my discipline, which strikes me as a kind of medieval scholasticism of a special kind. People ask me about the intellectual organization of my interdisciplinary work, and I have to say, it’s the consequence of boredom and the knowledge that so many other things had been written about peasants that are more interesting than anything political scientists have written about them, that I should go to those places and learn these things and read things outside of the discipline like Balzac and Zola, novels about the peasantry and memoirs."

H/Ts to MV and CD

SoS: 23-29 May 2015

These posts are still useful. Please comment on the original if you have updates...

• A thought on Bjorn Lomborg -- and why he's right (and wrong) about cliamte change
• The plague of innumeracy leads to bad decisions and populist politics
• What are the root causes of Calfornia's problems? Just three.

Water pollution and illness in the Philippines

Kelly writes:*

Water pollution has become a rising concern for todays world, especially with rapid increases in population, urbanization and industrialization. Thus, methods to control this situation must be set in place, however, this is rather difficult as oceans and large bodies of water are not owned by an individual entity; making it hard to control and manage the amount of pollution released.

Pollution comes in the forms of raw sewage, detergents, fertilizer, heavy metals, chemical products, oils and solid wastes, hereby resulting in 22.2 million metric tons of organic pollution annually, thus the country urgently needs methods to control the pollution. Especially considering the fact that 50 out of the 421 rivers are considered biologically dead, in addition to only 47% of the 127 freshwater rivers contain good water quality.

Due to the lack of freshwater and the majority of bodies of water being infected, causing an outbreak in many disease-causing bacteria and viruses resulting in health outbreaks and increase in death rates, including economic costs of P67 (€1.25) billion for health, fisheries production and tourism. Some of the known diseases caused by poor water include gastro-enteritis, diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis, and severe acute respiratory syndrome. Whereby one of the reasons may be due to the fact that only 6 out of 115 Philippine cities have sewerage systems. However, the awareness of the situation is still low, which is reflected in low willingness-to-pay for connection to a sewerage system.

Thus, although the Philippines has several laws regarding water pollution, including the Clean Water Act implemented in 2004, the lack of enforcement is of great concern, in addition to problems such as inadequate resources, poor database, and weak cooperation among different agencies and Local Government Units.

Bottom Line The Philippines needs to increase the awareness regarding the improvement of sanitation and water pollution to reduce illnesses caused by water-born sources, and act upon implementing these solutions (such as expanding sewerage collection and treatment) since 31% of illnesses are caused by water born diseases.

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* Please comment on these posts from my environmental economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data, etc.

Corporate capture in the palm oil industry

Anne-Maria writes:*

The advancement of corporate agendas by an economic elite to the detriment of the environment and human rights has become a pertinent issue within environmental policy-making. One of the primary missions on the agenda of NGOs like Friends of the Earth International is the elimination of this problem of corporate capture, i.e., environmental regulators serving corporate rather than public interests.

The unsustainable palm oil industry, widely accused of a reckless disregard for human rights and the environment, is one of the most pressing environmental issues today. The WWF states that approximately half of all packaged supermarket foods contain palm oil. While palm oil production is highly efficient, it leads to rampant levels of deforestation, loss of biodiversity, land erosion, illegal land clearing and threatens endangered species crucial to the functioning of tropical ecosystems.

Besides environmental degradation and gross violations of human rights, palm oil extraction has raised political tensions and exascerbated corruption in exporting countries (Indonesia and Malaysia jointly account for nearly 90% of the world’s palm oil supply).

The alarming rate of illegal land clearing plays a decisive role in the tension between the Indonesian government, sub-national governments and indigenous communities. After Suharto’s dictatorship came to an end in 1998, Indonesia decentralized the power over land. The smaller kings ‘bupatis’ have been frequently accused of corrupt allocations of logging concessions. Tomasz Johnson, forest campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) notes that the bupatis “take decisions in best interest of companies (…) rather than communities.”

Although the illegal and corrupt practices of the unsustainable palm oil industry have been publicly denounced on the national political level, instances of sub-national oppression, transgression of environmental regulations and violence against local communities are abound. EIA’s detailed investigation [pdf] sheds light on lax law enforcement and corruption in the palm oil industry in Indonesia. Furthermore, it unveiled practices of regional governments transferring public resources to private firms.

While disproportionately large shares of the benefits from palm oil extraction are captured by corporate palm oil industries, the deleterious consequences are borne by the public. Even though national governments have acknowledged and publicly condemned this corporate grabbing hand, both corporations and smaller firms have found ways to circumvent and transgress regulations and boundaries at a sub-national level. This points towards the necessity of potential reformations like a recentralization of land power, increased transparency measures, more effective monitoring, improvement of corporate governance and raising awareness on the graveness of the current palm oil situation.

Bottom Line Palm oil corporations and smaller firms strategically manipulate governments and public institutions to their advantage at the expense of the public interest. This notion of corporate capture necessitates solutions to protect the environment, (endangered) species and human rights.

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* Please comment on these posts from my environmental economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data, etc.

Poverty Inc -- the review

I saw this documentary last year, at Amsterdam's IDFA documentary film festival. It's a brilliant film on the failure of paternalistic international aid (=most of it).

I began my aquaintance with aid, development and bureaucratic failure over 25 years ago, when I read Lords of Poverty as an undergraduate. The thesis there stil holds, i.e., that "development professionals" are more interested in their programs than in the putative beneficiaries of those programs. Since then, I have traveled to nearly 100 countries, read Confessions of an Economic Hitman (correct in its jist if not its facts), published on problems of aid failure ("Save the poor, shoot some bankers"), suggested that water managers "drink their own product," described how poor governance violates a human right to water, explained why people have more phones than toilets, worked on water projects in places like Ukraine, and so on...

This documentary is accurate in explaining the problems of paternalistic aid and how "empowerment" will allow disadvantaged people in poor countries to succeed -- mostly by getting out of their way, i.e., trade not aid.

Poverty Inc is available at iTunes and other places for viewing. Go watch it.**

Bottom Line: I give this film FIVE STARS, as you are hardly likely to find a better diagnosis and treatment to the problem of "aid" making people more, rather than less, poor.

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* If you'd like to read a nice farce of these guys, then you could do worse than "The Development Set" [pdf]
** I'm not getting any money from these guys. Indeed, I asked our school to buy the $500 educational edition.

SoS: 25 Nov -- 6 Dec 2014

These posts are still useful one year (or more) later. Please comment on the original if you have updates on progress or deterioration...

• Friday party! -- grandmas getting stoned for the first time
• Answers to five big questions on water
• Is the city for people or cars?
• Are we still humans? Some thoughts on "progress" from India. Also read this Indian journalist's perspective on China and the "developed" west

Oh, and if you want to read through some of the excellent student posts, here are handy links:

• Microeconomics posts
• Growth and development economics posts

Nobody cares that you brought cupcakes

Melissa writes*

The pipeline funneling women into the workplace is cranking. Today, women represent 40% of the global labour workforce. Girls now outnumber boys in secondary schools in 45 developing countries, and there are more females than males in universities in 60 others. We have much progress to celebrate but gender disparity still remains in many areas, and strangely even in rich and developed countries.

The United States paved the way to increasing women’s participation in the labour workforce, but this progress seems to have hit a glass ceiling. In the 1960s and 70s, Gloria Steneim’s rose tinted sunglasses lit the fire of feminism, and books like The Feminine Mystique and tunes like “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” told women that they had more potential than homemaking and to swap those aprons for pantsuits.

However, something seems to have changed as floods of college-educated American mothers have vacated the workforce in the past decade. These women, dubbed “Opt-Out Women” have conceded their role in the workplace after years of investment in their education and careers. In 1990, the United States had the highest labour force participation rate amongst women. By 2010, it had fallen to 17th place behind Brazil, Kenya, the Netherlands and Singapore. What’s going on here? It might be an autonomous choice, but there seems to be persistent market and institutional conditions that make it a reasonable one.

This is (clockwise from me on the right) my grandmother, mother and aunt in the hairsalon they run together in Kuala Lumpur. They work full-time both weekdays and weekends. They raised me, my brother and cousins in a little office at the back of the salon, taking turns to look after us in between appointments with clients- merging home and work into one single place, their version of workplace flexibility.

In 2013, the median weekly full-time income for men was $860, and $706 for women. The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee reported that studies have consistently found unexplained pay differences even after controlling for predictable variables like education and work hours. Maybe gender roles have become so deeply-rooted in human history and mentality that paying women less has become the norm?

Forget about wages, even colleagues perpetuate double standards. A NYU study looked at male and female employees who were requested to stay back after work to help a colleague prepare for a presentation. After controlling for quality of help, colleagues had significantly more gratitude for a man who helped out than a woman. A woman had to work overtime just to have the same rating as a man who chose not to help at all.

Studies have shown that women also take on more “office housework”. Tasks like mentoring the interns and organizing office birthday parties fall on professional women even in fields like business, law and STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math).

As a result, women are making choices within their careers consistent with ability for workplace flexibility. A study that followed Harvard students after graduation showed that women PHD and MD graduates were choosing to specialize in pediatrics, dermatology, and colon and rectal surgery (recently popular and quite routine) which have more appointment-based schedules, less “surprise hours”, as well as slower learning curves (technology and new knowledge not updated as often). Men were going for cardiology, radiology and surgical specialities which tend to have more diverse work hours and longer residency requirements. Also conveniently tends to pay more.

Sexism is expensive. A McKinsey study called “The Power of Parity” has evidence that equality for women could generate up to $2 trillion in global growth. Every “stay-at-home” woman makes a country lose billions of GDP dollars. If more women participated in the labour force, India’s GDP could increase by 16% to 60% by 2025.

I don’t want to put any value on “paid work” above home-making. Being “a member of a country’s labour force” doesn’t sound like a very exciting life purpose, and cooking a meal for your family can be considered leisure to some or work to others, depending on who you are. But in a world where everyone wants to work, there seems to be market and institutional setbacks which influence women’s labour choice decisions, and thus potential income.

Bottom line: Getting women to participate in the workforce can generate both growth and development for a country’s economy. Developed countries that have made significant progress in gender equality, but they seem to have hit a glass ceiling. Less wages, lack of workplace flexibility and underappreciation of work performed are (disproportionately) women's opportunity costs of choosing paid work over household production.

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* Please comment on these posts from my growth & development economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, other perspectives, data sources, etc.

References:

• "Gender Equality and Development." World Development Report 2012. 2012. Web.
• "Women in the Labor Force: A Databook." December 2014 Report 1052. 2014. Web
• Bertrand, Marianne, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F Katz. "Dynamics Of The Gender Gap For Young Professionals In The Financial And Corporate Sectors." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (2010): 228-55. Print.
• Goldin, C., and L. F. Katz. "The Cost of Workplace Flexibility for High-Powered Professionals." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2011): 45-67. Print.
• Heilman, Madeline E., and Julie J. Chen. "Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions To Men's And Women's Altruistic Citizenship Behavior." Journal of Applied Psychology 90.3 (2005): 431-41. Print.
• Nandy, Amrita. "The Work Women Do." The Indian Express. 6 Nov. 2015. Web.

Globalization, growth and adverse health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa

Dilara writes*

In the 1980´s economic globalization has been largely taken up by international monetary organizations like the IMF to the newly independent states in the post colonial ear in the form of trade liberalization, growth and poverty reduction programs. These programs were often set out as conditional loans to be given to developing countries with the terms of a restructuring in domestic policies particularly on the grounds of domestic economy. The loan programs also known as structural adjustment (SALs) are applied when cuts in government spending, privatization of government enterprises, and promotion of free trade, foreign investment and ownership were introduced. Since 1985, application of conditional loans has increased and had varied impacts on the economies of some of the states. A very common critique towards the SAL/SAPs has ben its limitations to civil well-being Zimbabwe for example, experienced a radical growth in the mid 1980s and was used an an example of successful implementation of SALs by the IMF.

Despite Zimbabwe’s financial leap, social sectors like health and education deteriorated, mostly due to cuts in government spending between 1991-1996. With the introduction of the cost-sharing system, healthcare expenditure increase and limited proper access for low-income populations. This impact was not only limited to Zimbabwe´s case but also to counties like Tanzania where healthcare turned into a commodity rather than a right [pdf]. The crippling of the healthcare and education systems was problematic especially because caused stagnations in state development. One could argue that implementation of Structural Adjustment Loans/Programs were driven by economic growth but lowered the social well-being which had an adverse outcome on the overall development of the state.

Bottom Line: While SAL/SAPs were aimed to promote economic globalisation in developing countries through liberalised, trade and conditional loans to reduce poverty, it crippled healthcare systems through cuts in government spending. This had an adverse effect on the well-being of the civil society.

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* Please comment on these posts from my microeconomics / growth & development economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, other perspectives, data sources, etc.

India’s Microcredit System: A Failed Experiment?

Robin writes*

Microcredit, or the practice of extending small loans to the worlds poorest, has long been hailed as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty, even earning its founder Mohammed Yunus a Nobel Prize in 2006. Although when done right, this business model can indeed be implemented successfully, microcredit has become the subject of much criticism lately. Some of India’s microcredit providers, for example, have been behaving like loan sharks, providing loans regardless of what people plan to do with them, charging exorbitant interest rates, and using increasingly coercive tactics to collect loan payments. As a result, many of India’s poorest citizens are left with debt they will most likely never be able to pay off. There are even accounts of suicide linked to the vicious cycle of debt that microcredit schemes have incited. The entire system almost collapsed in 2010, when growing dissatisfaction led borrowers to collectively default on their loan payments. Microcredits were meant to eliminate scenarios like this one, leaving us with the question: ‘What went wrong?’

Yunus himself attributes some of the issues to a ‘mission drift’ Microcredit organizations were originally envisioned to be small, non-profit and community based, but are increasingly becoming large, for-profit companies. For-profit microcredit companies are problematic in many ways, not the least of which is that they raise their funds in international markets that are often volatile and then transfer the risks to the poor in the form of high interest rates. With this profit-maximizing strategy comes a lack of interest in the educational aspect of microcredit schemes that has made them so successful in many instances. Entrepreneurial education is a vital part of ensuring that loans generate viable livelihoods for their borrowers. The original group lending method used by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, for example, put lenders into small groups, gave them training and encouraged peer-monitoring to help ensure that the loans were being used responsibly. This created ‘social capital’ (as well as physical capital) that India’s current predatory lenders do not (Halder and Stieglitz [pdf]).

Government regulations may provide a solution. At least one Indian state has implemented legislation that restricts the number of lenders that borrowers can lend from and recommendations have been made to put a cap on interest rates and regulate what kinds of companies can call themselves microfinance organizations. While these measures may be helpful to reduce predatory lending disguised as microfinancing, there is also a risk that restricting the activities of legal companies will drive borrowers into the hands of the very loan sharks that microcredits were supposed to displace. This is, arguably, even more problematic because loan sharks are infinitely harder to control.

Bottom Line: Cleaning up the microfinance industry must, therefore, be accompanied by a strategy to combat harmful unofficial lending practices, or ideally eliminate the need for them. There is a delicate balancing act to be observed.

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* Please comment on these posts from my growth & development economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, other perspectives, data sources, etc.

SoS: 18-24 Nov 2014

These posts are still useful one year (or more) later. Please comment on the original if you have updates on progress or deterioration...

• Some thoughts on my Reddit AMA I may do another in the next few months (waiting for El Niño)
• John Briscoe has died. May his insights endure. He said, for example, that people in rich countries "look down" on the poor when they assume the poor do not want or need the same things. Poverty Inc. attacks that mistake (go see it!)
• Friday party! A rant against bankers breaking countries... a trend that has not relented
• The underlying truth in figures, i.e., we don't really know how much (ground)water we're using

Development Aid: A puppeteering game?

Alicia writes*

For centuries, less-developed countries have bowed at the feet of their more economically developed counterparts and begged for aid, but this often comes with strings attached. When the recipient country solely relies on the donor country for goods and services related to aid-financed projects, and when grants are given only after the recipient country meets the conditions set by the donor, this is referred to as tied aid. The most archaic form of this transaction is known as, performance-based aid. This term is straight forward, whereby the recipient of this aid is based on the extent to which they are capable of meeting the conditions. This type of aid is an incentive for the host country to make political and economic reforms that not only benefit their country but the donor country as well.

The main problem with performance-based aid is that it ignores the sovereignty of the decision making processes within the host countries. By agreeing to this type of aid the recipient country may be ‘selling its soul’ without even knowing it. The conditions set by donor countries have the ability to expand over the hosts’ investment policies, trade regulations and government structure- core elements which define a nation. Additionally, tied aid can sink the recipient country further into debt and/or force them to adapt inappropriate technologies and infrastructure that may not be conducive to their environmental, social or economic needs. Although less economically developed countries may be trying their best to advance by relying on tied aid, it is perhaps impossible to grow and develop sustainably with another country pulling the strings.

Bottom Line: The desperation of blindly accepted aid can undermine the self-determination of developing countries and instead has the potential to turn them into puppets of their donor countries.

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* Please comment on these posts from my growth & development economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, other perspectives, data sources, etc.

Brazil’s Social Policy Trade-off

Monica writes*

Brazil’s latest social policy ‘La Bolsa Família’ aims at combating poverty and inequality in the country. In 2003 the poorest 60% accounted for merely 4% of the wealth (World Bank 2013). Since ten years, the policy has tried to combat this problem by offering conditional cash transfers (CCT). The CCT offer an extra income to families so they, in turn, send their children to school and health care visits. However, since the demand of these social services has increased, the supply side has decreased in quality.

Economic Growth
The CCT promotes economic inclusion. It empowers the poorest section of society. It ensures a steady monthly income, which provides for basic human needs and stimulates the nation’s economic growth. The government has stipulated a return of 1.78 reais to the economy for every 1 reais spent. The Guardian states the program is responsible for 33% in the reduction of extreme poverty from 8.8% to 3.6% between 2002 and 2012.

However, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean argues that the reduction of extreme poverty is only short-term. Despite lifting households out of extreme poverty it does not address economic inequality. The safety net is generating immense inefficiency and dependency for older people to reductions in incentives to improve people’s skills and employability.

Development
The program does have the long-term goal of improving the lives of future generations. The requirements have resulted in a reduction of school dropouts and an increase of school attendance. The Guardian states La Bolsa Família has also reduced malnutrition and infant mortality rates. The poorest region in Brazil has scored higher in the Human Development Index (HDI).

Despite an increase of school attendance and healthcare visits, the program has diverted the focus of development from quality to quantity. The table shows that as the spending in social assistance programs increases, the spending on social services decreases. This means that the quality of the education system and healthcare has decreased respectively. This has been evident in the OECD report (2009) that Brazilian students had one of the lowest performing results in school.

Bottom line: La Bolsa Familía has reduced extreme poverty of many households in Brazil. However, the incentive to increase school attendance and the use of healthcare services has undermined the quality of these services respectively. In reality, this is only undermining the process of sustainable poverty alleviation.

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* Please comment on these posts from my growth & development economics students, to help them with unclear analysis, other perspectives, data sources, etc.

Some SDGs are more equal than others

I got this opinion in a "multilateral" newsletter:

SDG target 15.3 requiring countries to become land degradation neutral (LDN) by 2030 is a pragmatic pathway to slice into the other SDGs. It provides a frame for creating a long-term vision to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals.

[snip]

Land is the wellspring of life. Investing in this most precious and profitable asset will place us on the development path that will lead us towards our shared global vision of prosperity, health and dignity for all the world's citizens. LDN is more than one target among 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It is the engine that will trigger change.

I noticed that you can replace "land" with "water" (or education, gender, etc.) to get statements that are just as true in terms of their magnified impact on other areas. That fact does not mean that you will get agreement on priorities. As many water people in California will tell you, it's hard enough to pursue two co-equal goals, let alone 16 SDGs.

Bottom line. Everyone has their own priority. The SDGs are going to be a mess as bureaucrats, activists and funders argue for theirs.

Monday funnies

These pills may not fix your wifi (or bald spot or bike skills, etc.), but they WILL contribute towards HIV medication for those without the funds to buy their own. They are also minty fresh!

Visit the website to see other funny formulations... and maybe make a contribution?

Monday funnies

It seems that Kafka has moved to Russia, where they are destroying frozen-criminal-Hungarian geese:

Video deleted

Flashback: 22 Jun -- 5 Jul 2014

A year old but still worth reading...

• The "Carbon not Market" in China -- I am glad to say that China's carbon market is maturing. Stay tuned... 
• Death does not follow your schedule -- My friend Connie (who died 3 months ago) talking about "carpe diem" 
• Acknowledge success but work on failure -- MANY water managers are doing a great job 
• Accounting for energy used to move and treat water -- you need to track leaked water too! 
• Stabilizing water utility finances in Germany ... by increasing fixed charges
• There are jobs, and then there are jobs. Does yours help or hinder humanity? Speaking of which, Alberta's emission regulations -- are they joking? 
• Watch this -- twice -- Ernesto Sirolli on REAL development work

Windfall -- the review

I ordered this book (subtitle: "The Booming Business of Global Warming") as soon as I saw the premise: an exploration of the businesses that will profit from climate change and the businesses whose profits are driving climate change.

Restated from a positive perspective, these businesses profit from adaptation or a lack of mitigation, respectively.

Restated from a normative perspective, they are businesses that serve or exploit society, respectively.

So you can see that there's going to be a lot of hope and anguish in this book, except that it's often buried under discussions of revenue, jobs and market share. As an economist, I can appreciate the fact that money incentivizes a lot of behavior. As a human, I am horrified that so many clever people are making money on the corruption, fear and ignorance of politicians. (The book does not discuss a carbon tax or other mitigation policies that would erase the profits under discussion, and that's not the author's job. It's just a context that depresses me whenever I think of the magnificence of our "civilization" that humans seem determined to ruin.)

Right.

So... the book is divided into three sections: Melt, Drought, and Deluge.

In Melt, Funk tells about Canada's rush to defend the Northwest passage that's opening with the shrinking arctic; how Shell oil went from "planning for less oil" to "drilling the arctic" as politicians left the path of Blueprints (limiting carbon emissions) for Scramble (dealing with too much carbon); the development of natural resources (and political shenanigans) as Greenland loses its glaciers; and how the Israelis got into selling (artificial) snow in the Alps. These chapters describe businesses that are making money as ice melts.

In Drought, Funk joins private firefighters that protect insured houses while neighbors burn down; the traders who buy and sell water rights (covered often in this blog); the rush to buy farmland in poor countries to ship food to richer countries (see my article PDF); and the battle to halt desertification in Africa (and the refugees fleeing that desertification for Europe). These chapters are about the rich getting richer as they plan ahead and hedge their lifestyles, while the poor are increasingly marginalized.

In Deluge, Funk explores the tensions along Bangladesh's borders, which are likely to be overrun as some of the 150 million residents flee their sinking, flooding delta; how the Dutch are willing to sell seawalls to anyone with cash (sorry Bangladeshis!); the quest to outwit nature by destroying mosquitoes before they can bring tropical diseases to middle latitudes; and the hopes of geoengineers (a group that deserves to be slandered with rain makers). Yes, there are some "solutions" in these chapters, but their cost (via adaptation) is so extravagant compared to mitigation that I think that we should be handing out penny-wise, pound-foolish awards to our so-called "leaders."

In his final chapter, Funk reflects on his six years of seeing, thinking and talking about climate change. His words say it best:

In psychology, magical thinking is the fallacy that thoughts correspond to actions— that to think is to do, to believe is to act. Perhaps the most magical assumption of the moment is that our growing belief in climate change will lead to a real effort to stop it. But as I discovered in Canada and Greenland and Sudan and Seattle and all over the globe, that is not automatically true. We are noticing that in this new world, there is new oil to find. There is new cropland to farm. There are new machines to be built. From what I have seen in six years of reporting this book, the climate is changing faster than we are.

[snip]

The hardest truth about climate change is that it is not equally bad for everyone. Some people -- the rich, the northern -- will find ways to thrive while others cannot, and many people will wall themselves off from the worst effects of warming while others remain on the wrong side. The problem with our profiting off this disaster is not that it is morally bankrupt to do so but that climate change, unlike some other disasters, is man- made. The people most responsible for historic greenhouse emissions are also the most likely to succeed in this new reality and the least likely to feel a mortal threat from continued warming. The imbalance between rich and north and poor and south -- inherited from history and geography, accelerated by warming -- is becoming even more entrenched

[snip]

Climate change is often framed as a scientific or economic or environmental issue, not often enough as an issue of human justice. This, too, needs to change. From this moment on, many of us could get rich. Many of us could get high. Life will go on. Before it does, we should all make sure we understand the reality of what we’re buying.

The people who should read this book cannot afford it or cannot be distracted from their profits. What should those who read it do? The only action that comes to mind is revolution, but that's unlikely to succeed when citizens are distracted and deluded (e.g., Russia and the US), reactionaries are backed by crony capitalists (e.g., Egypt and Turkey), or people are too worried about big screen TVs to see the bigger picture (e.g., India and Australia). Indeed, it's hard to see how any leaders can win support from voters by promising less now for more later. Does this mean that China's dictators are our last hope?

Bottom Line: I give this book FIVE STARS for exploring the stories of those who are profiting from our demise.