So we went to buy some coffee from La Colombe the other day…
and found out that all profits go to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation…
and that Leonardo helps projects that support help for our planet…
which Leonardo says helps the planet.
We found out even more about how Leonardo helping the planet helps the planet…
… but after all that, we were still not totally clear. Except for the part about tigers.
By William Easterly and Laura Freschi
It is a rare day that we former Aid Watchers congratulate the US Agency for International Development on self-imposed changes that will actually help aid benefit the poor.
Today is not that day.
That day was February 6, when USAID changed its own rules to allow itself flexibility to buy more goods and services locally. Buying and contracting locally, rather than shipping goods from the US and contracting services through American companies, can be a cheaper and more efficient use of US aid dollars. It can also help local economies thrive, and strengthen small businesses, local governments, and NGOs.
USAID plans to increase its funds spent through local actors to 30 percent by 2015, from 11 percent in 2011. Huzzah. This small but promising change means that hundreds of local nonprofits will no longer have to go through contractor middlemen. It means that where public financial management systems are strong and representative enough, more local governments can be helped with direct support rather than through experts employed by American contractors. It also means that the American companies (the so-called “Beltway Bandits”) that earn hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts each year from USAID stand to lose a little.
Naturally, these firms have accepted the prospect of this loss in revenue with equanimity, acknowledging that the reforms will improve outcomes for the proper beneficiaries of aid, and have set about adapting their business model to the new funding environment.
Haha, that was a joke. They’ve actually gone and hired a major Washington lobbying firm to kill the reforms in Congress. Joining forces as the Professional Services Council and the public-facing Coalition of International Development Companies (from the website: “Did You Know…that funding through international development companies offers superior accountability and transparency?”) they have employed the Podesta Group, which, according to lobbying disclosure forms, has been hard at work “promoting the work of international development companies” in Congress at PSC’s behest.
And the Podesta Group has delivered: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) has told USAID he will seek to block these reforms, just in time for the markup of the international affairs budget beginning next week.
“This agency is no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development,” thundered USAID head Raj Shah in a speech in DC last year. The Beltway Bandits and their lobbyists only want him to take out the words “no longer” and then utter the remaining sentence.
Tags: Rajiv Shah, USAID
By William Easterly
The new World Bank blog People, Spaces, Deliberation has already achieved one milestone: it covers exhaustively the field of “governance” with little or no usage of words that have historically been prominent in such discussions (see chart).
How to get these numbers: Click on one of these words in the list of “tags” and count the number of pages with search results. No tags existed on ‘consent’ or ‘liberty.’
We were inspired by the new blog to translate one historical document that is now badly out of date and frame it as a practical roadmap for further engaging civil society:
|
Original |
Translation |
| We hold these truths to be self-evident | The mainstream consensus among experts is |
| that all men are created equal, | All efforts should be inclusive, |
| that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, | Development as a Multi-Stakeholder Initiative must be Broad-based and Community-driven, |
| that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. | Including Social Sector Goals, Participation, and the pursuit of Capacity-Building. |
This community-driven participator is unfortunately not adhering to Governance best practices set out by the authorities.
Tags: Democracy, human rights, World Bank
By Tanja Goodwin
Earlier this week, we pointed out the new wave of emigration from Portugal to its former colonies. As the number of emigrants has increased, so has the emigrants’ skill level. The new generation of migrants is no longer made up of blue-collar workers, but of teachers, advertisers, engineers and architects. “This amounts to a hemorrhaging of highly educated people—the very people [the euro zone’s weakest economies] will need if they are to take off when circumstances get better,” says Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
The specter of “brain drain” has haunted international organizations and think tanks for decades, threatening that emigration of skilled workers would leave poor countries short of the human capital needed to develop. After much research, this simplistic concept has been largely overthrown. Today, almost everyone recognizes the benefits arising from income gains to the emigrants, greater human capital in the source country, knowledge transfer and remittances. Almost everyone.
Academics got it: “The recent empirical literature shows that high-skill emigration need not deplete a country’s human capital stock and can generate positive network externalities.”
The World Bank got it: “Our results show large positive benefits of high-skilled migration for citizens of high emigration countries.” […] “The size of the net gains is so large, that these distributional impacts are likely to be of second-order in any welfare calculations.”
Even the UNDP got it: “In migrants’ countries of origin, the impacts of movement are felt in higher incomes and consumption, better education and improved health, as well as at a broader cultural and social level. Moving generally brings benefits, most directly in the form of remittances sent to immediate family members.”
Headlines capturing the media’s alarmist take on skilled migration.
The media did not: Major outlets were quick to call the recent increase in skilled emigration “Portugal’s ‘brain drain’ dilemma” (BBC podcast). CNBC offered this pessimistic take: “Some worry that with less talent in the country there is less chance that Portugal will be able to innovate its way out of the downturn.” Other articles report that brain drain is causing alarm—though this alarm seems to be mostly in the media. (One recent exception is this piece in The Economist).
“Brain drain” will ultimately not be bad for Portugal just as it has not been bad for Africa. And just as Europe would never suggest barriers to skilled migration, Africa will certainly not consider this either.
Tags: Brain Drain, Migration, Portugal, Skilled migration
By Tanja Goodwin
Expect to see controls on African migration increase dramatically any time soon. Oh, and just to clarify: that’s migration TO Africa, not FROM Africa.
Portuguese, facing high unemployment and their economy plagued by austerity, are flooding the shores of Angola and Mozambique. Angola has again become Portugal’s El Dorado as unprecedented numbers of Portuguese workers have flocked to the former colony: from 2006 to 2009 alone the number of visas issued for Portuguese increased from 156 to 23,000. Some already complain about difficulties in obtaining legal permissions to stay in Angola. The number of Portuguese workers settling in Mozambique has increased by more than 30 percent over the past two years.
It’s likely just a matter of time before some African countries limit their “green cards” to prevent European immigrants from stealing Angolan and Mozambican jobs. Undoubtedly, Africans will try to protect their cultural identities by banning Port Wine from their menus, for example. Immigration officials may soon be allowed to deny pregnant Portuguese women entry into Angola or Mozambique at their discretion to avert the birth of “anchor babies”.
At least African countries don’t have to fear that Portuguese will be living off their welfare programs. Portuguese seem to find well-paying jobs: Remittances sent from Angola to Portugal have increased more than seven-fold. In 2009, they even surpassed remittances sent from the UK.
500 years after Vasco da Gama’s first landing in Mozambique and Diogo Cão’s arrival in Angola, the Portuguese are heading south again. No doubt, their greeting manners have improved. This time they’re coming with resumes, not rifles.
In thousand Euros. Source: Banco de Portugal.
In thousand Euros. Source: Banco de Portugal.
Tags: Migration, Portugal, Remittances
