Jasmine Burnley is Global Economic Crisis Adviser for Oxfam and has taken up the baton for this post in Duncan’s absence… Six short months ago, pundits didn’t hold out significant hope that the G20 would seriously tackle development. But the Korean government – hosts of the G20’s most recent bash in Seoul earlier this month – worked hard to push

A few weeks ago, Dani Rodrik pointed out that while East Asia has topped the charts in recent decades on growth and poverty reduction, many of the best performing countries on human development are majority moslem, scattered across the Middle East and North Africa. I’ve just been reading IFPRI’s Global Hunger Index 2010, and the same pattern emerges. Here’s the

Rob Bailey is a senior Oxfam policy adviser on food issues. Last week on his blog, Dani Rodrik took issue with Oxfam and the World Bank for not being balanced in communications about food prices. When they’re low, we complain. When they’re high (like they were in 2008, and may soon be again we complain. On the face of it,

Max Lawson, Senior Policy Adviser at Oxfam, looks forward to an important year for taxing the financial sector. With the French now in charge of the G20, all eyes are on President Sarkozy to see whether he will press for a Robin Hood Tax on the financial sector to fund development and tackling climate change. Meanwhile a series new of

The idea of stopping blogging fills me with a disturbing mix of reluctance, relief and alarm at the impending withdrawal symptoms, but I have no choice. It’s getting on for two and a half years since I started this blog, and I’m taking a break, probably til the end of the year. The reason, as always, is workload – I’m writing

Alex Evans is on a bit of a roll at the moment, with an excellent new paper on ‘Globalization and Scarcity: Multilateralism for a World with Limits’. It’s a great summary of the problems created by the threat of scarcity of food, land, water, energy, and ‘airspace’ (for greenhouse gas emissions). He confines his solutions to the implications for the

Today in the FT: “Sugar prices suffered their biggest one-day sell-off in 30 years on Thursday, tumbling by as much as 11 per cent after speculators pulled out from the market in the wake of dizzying gains. The sell-off, which came just hours after the sweetener hit a 30-year high, started after the European Commission granted further export licences for

The G20 summit takes place in Seoul today and tomorrow, the first such gathering in a non-G8 country. I’ve been following the G20 process from a distance and it’s fascinating – here’s a few reflections. The moment: the financial crisis of 2008/9 saw the G8 publicly hand over the reins of international coordination to the G20. What happens next? Will it

An intriguing new paper from Paul Segal at the University of Sussex kicks off with a great quote from Mr Getty “The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights”. Segal wonders what might happen if governments defied that prediction, and just handed over the income from oil, mining etc directly to poor people as unconditional cash transfers

“I am one of those who think and say that it is possible to destroy extreme poverty. Mark you, gentlemen, I am not saying ‘reduce’, ‘lessen’, ‘limit’, ‘control’, I said destroy. Poverty is a disease of society such as leprosy was a disease of the human body, and can be eliminated just as leprosy has disappeared. Yes, it is possible.

Every development research paper I ever absent-mindedly skim pore over with fascination seems to end with NMR (needs more research) – a blatant piece of self-justification, but usually justified (anyone got any candidates for areas where we need less research? Anything involving cross country regressions or ‘discourse analysis’ perhaps?) But research on what? Research funders are ever-hungry for the next

Is the IMF going socialist? Hardly, but on Monday Dominique Strauss-Kahn, its Managing Director, gave a pretty extraordinary (and welcome) speech, entitled “Human Development and Wealth Distribution”. Here are a few excerpts: “Adam Smith—one of the founders of modern economics—recognized clearly that a poor distribution of wealth could undermine the free market system, noting that: “The disposition to admire, and