I’m conscious that this blog has been somewhat heavy going this week, so here’s a reward to anyone who got through to Friday (especially for any saddoes like me who end up watching youtube at the weekend). Hans Rosling is a youtube phenomenon, a Swedish economist whose lectures on data and development have deservedly become legendary. He specializes in showing

Another day, another UN report, this time the Trade and Development Report 2009, from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), released last week. It’s surprisingly forthright. Set up in 1964, in the table-thumping days of the New International Economic Order, in recent years UNCTAD had become markedly more cautious, not least under its current secretary general, the distinctly un-fiery

Cash will be king in the next few months as the crescendo of climate change negotiations builds to the big December summit in Copenhagen. In the words of Alf Wills, a South African negotiator, ‘no money, no deal’ (although European Commission President José Manuel Barroso is also credited with the soundbite). If developing countries are going to get anything like

This year’s World Bank flagship publication, the World Development Report 2010, is on climate change – a significant departure from the tradition of devoting turn of the decade WDRs to an overview of poverty. It’s an unabashed bit of climate change advocacy, remorselessly upbeat and optimistic (even when the story it tells suggests rather more gloom is in order) and

According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometres of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years. This would require only 12 times the land area currently devoted to golf courses. The influence of the Mercator projection runs deep –Africa is much bigger than most people think.

September is the start of report season, an avalanche of global roundups from UN agencies, thinktanks etc that seems to grow in number every year. As it coincides with the party conference season, start of the college year in the Northern hemisphere etc etc, it all makes for a horrific backlog. So to ease the collective bottleneck, here’s some highlights

After months of futile and wearying paralysis, marked by interminable meetings full of little more than posturing and the endless repetition of fixed positions, the climate change talks seem to be entering full negotiating mode, and not before time, with the Copenhagen climate summit only 3 months away. For the ‘glass half full’ optimistic version, check out Leo Horn’s summary

Some aid supporters, fed up with Bill Easterly whinging on about aid on his Aid Watch blog, have started a ‘Bill Easterly Watch’ blog, and announced it on…. Aid Watch of course. The Economist predicts a much-needed ‘demographic dividend’ from Africa’s falling fertility rates The raucous healthcare debate has Paul Krugman missing the rationalism of Richard Nixon, and worrying that

It’s Labor Day in the USA today, and so it seems a good moment to talk about a flourishing US industry that is built on socialist lines. Every year, by general agreement, the most talented new staff are allocated to the weakest firms to ‘keep things fair’. Firms are subject to salary caps and/or taxes on excessive wages (are you

This weekend the finance ministers of the G20 – the world’s most powerful nations -will meet in London.  While the rich world’s green shootists apparently feel that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, the poorest countries are being hammered, with those living on the margins of the global economy paying the highest price for the bankers’ folly.

Jetlag is a wonderful way to catch up on your paper backlog. Just been reading UNCTAD’s 2009 Least Developed Countries report (published in July). Limpid prose it ain’t, but it sets out a coherent case for a post-Washington Consensus push for state-led industrialization in the world’s poorest countries. (I blame the turgid nature of UN-speak for the over-lengthy nature of

The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (a UNDP-funded thinktank, based in Brazil) has published an excellent 35 page ‘Poverty in Focus’ on public v private provision of basic utilities, especially water and sanitation, (but also touching on electricity). Some highlights from the overview, based on a series of country case studies: ‘Rapid urbanisation and informal settlements pose particular problems