Foreign Policy magazine ran some remarkable findings this month. While developed countries are inundated with television to the extent that the kids network Nickelodeon will air a blank screen for three hours tomorrow for "Play Outside Day," it seems that rural communities in developing countries are thriving off of their newfound access to satellite TV.

According to new research, access to satellite TV is of surprising value to the lives of rural Indian women—about six years of education, to be precise.

Researchers analyzed three years’ worth of data collected in 180 rural Indian villages, 21 of which gained access to satellite television. In villages that acquired the new medium, school enrollment among girls increased and women had fewer children. The newly wired women also became less accepting of spousal abuse, a bias in favor of having boys declined, and they were more likely to be able to spend money without a husband’s permission.

Researchers at the University of Chicago, who conducted the study, surmise that when rural women observe the status of women in urban environments (in which the overwhelming majority of women on TV are living), their expectations change -- much as they do with each additional year of education.

Better education opportunities for women and girls have long been a reliable and worthy objective, both for women's advocates and for those concerned with community development more generally. No one expects TV to bridge huge gaps between the opportunities open to men versus women in poor rural villages. But this study makes TV look like an effective wedge where the prospect of girls education is simply too far outside the bounds of social norms to make any headway. Women may not close their education gap by tuning in, but they (and their husbands, fathers and brothers) could learn enough to see that it's a problem.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just when you thought that "The Death of Environmentalism" -- the incendiary tract written by disgruntled green advocates Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in 2004 -- had breathed its last, its authors spring a whole book on us. Next month they will publish "Break Through: From 'The Death of Environmentalism' to the Politics of Possibility." Wired Magazine -- the natural home for Nordhaus and Shellenberger's proactive, tech-centric vision -- is running a long piece on the two of them in advance of the book's launch.

Following is a key excerpt:

By its very nature, the environmental movement has always been antitechnology and antigrowth. Bikes are better than cars; open space is better than development; less is always more. As a result, its leaders have focused most of their antiglobal warming political energies on regulating carbon emissions and limiting domestic energy consumption. Noble aims, to be sure. There's just one problem: In dealing with global warming, these strategies haven't worked in the past and will not work any better in the future.

Consider the evidence: Since the Kyoto agreement, many of the 36 industrialized countries that committed to reducing emissions are not on track to meet even minimal goals — since 2000, their emissions have gone up, not down. And both China and India are building a slew of coal-burning plants as their economies explode. "If China burns all the coal that it is set to burn between now and 2050," Shellenberger says, "we are super-deeply fucked."

Even if every American SUV owner were to buy a hybrid tomorrow, that wouldn't come close to offsetting the environmental damage being perpetrated around the globe. In fact, all the standards, cap-and-trade limits, and emission reductions that environmentalists have been pushing for may slow, but will never reverse, global warming. And that is Nordhaus and Shellenberger's inconvenient truth. "There is simply no way we can achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions," they write in their introduction, "without creating breakthrough technologies that do not pollute."

Environmentalists, therefore, have missed a huge opportunity. Rather than being leaders in solving the global climate crisis, they are content to be doomsayers and scolds. What Nordhaus and Shellenberger advocate is what might be called post-environmentalism, an ambitious new philosophy that isn't afraid to put people ahead of nature and to dream big about creating economic growth — neither of which environmentalists have been very good at. Their vision cuts across traditional political divides: It's pro-growth, pro-technology, and pro-environment. They have specific proposals about Brazilian rain forests, the auto industry, and global warming preparedness.

Coming from two advocates hailed/maligned as visionaries/crazies out to radically overhaul the environmental movement, much of this message sounds totally prosaic in 2007. In 2004, Wall Street investors, Silicon Valley scientists and TV personalities were only starting get excited about "green technology" and a proactive vision to solve environmental problems by appealing to industry -- rather than halting or slowing these problems by shrinking the responsible industries. These days one is hard-pressed to find an environmental group that's not talking to the business sector and pushing for more renewable energy incentives from government.

If a primitive form of guilt-ridden environmentalism was dying when Nordhaus and Shellenberger (N&S) wrote their paper in 2004, it has already passed from the public eye as we look to 2008. Over the past three years, the leadership torch for environmental advocacy passed from sloganeering hippies to to the powerful and the actually hip: Arnold Schwarzenegger is on Greenpeace's side, for goodness sake. What was visionary then is mostly obvious now.

Of course, as Tom Friedman (whose columns sound eerily similar to N&S these days) ably demonstrates, it's often useful -- and certainly profitable -- to sum it all up with a big idea. And N&S have a pretty compelling idea: solving environmental problems is fundamentally about innovation rather than changing minds and behaviors. It's not that the old-guard of environmental advocates were wrong about what needs to change (people do need to use less and reduce our impact on the planet) but rather in how we get there; even in the area of conservation, N&S's model seems to prevail over resounding exhortations to do the responsible thing.

There are still outstanding battles to be fought. I'm curious what sort of treaty or legal instrument (if any) N&S support to deal with climate change since they seem to be unimpressed by current talk of cap-and-trade or carbon tax plans. And even I -- a firm believer in the power that markets have to incentivize otherwise-disinterested parties to solve common problems -- see some merit in the arguments that Robert Reich makes in his new book, "Supercapitalism" (see his summary article). It's hard to shake the feeling that while innovative products and models are the biggest piece of this puzzle, to some degree Reich is correct to warn us that these things have no moral bearings of their own.

What is desperately needed is a clear delineation of the boundary between global capitalism and democracy—between the economic game, on the one hand, and how its rules are set, on the other. If the purpose of capitalism is to allow corporations to play the market as aggressively as possible, the challenge for citizens is to stop these economic entities from being the authors of the rules by which we live.

I wonder what the "bad boys of environmentalism" would say to Robert Reich.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When Transparency International (TI) releases its annual report on corruption, as it did today, we all know more or less what to expect. We may be surprised on the margins (Italy is less corrupt(!); Germany, the UK and the US slightly more so), but in general TI confirms that the international community is right to tsk tsk the sorry state of business and governance in places like Burma and the DRC.

This year TI chose to go at these problem countries a different way; the top finding of this report is about complicit multi-national companies (MNCs): From the Financial Times, quoting the new TI report: "Western multinationals and financial centres are often 'complicit in driving corruption in poor nations.'"

Huguette Labelle, TI chairwoman, criticised multinationals for double-standards, paying bribes in poor countries while behaving better at home, according to an advance copy of her speech at Wednesday’s launch in London.

“The bribe money that buys a champagne lifestyle for corrupt officials in the poorest countries often originates in multinational companies based in the world’s richest countries – the CPI’s top scorers”, she said.

In addition, TI said “wealthy countries must regulate their financial centres more strictly”, as these allow “corrupt officials to move, hide and invest their illicitly gained wealth”.

While one cannot help but approve of TI's finger-wagging (it is well-deserved), I would normally despair of its usefulness. Civil society activists have been shouting accusations at MNCs for a long time, with minimal success.

But after hearing Paul Collier -- author of The Bottom Billion -- speak at Brookings yesterday, I find myself encouraged. One of Collier's best ideas is to institute clearly-defined international codes and standards for the way that contracts are negotiated and handled between developing countries and MNCs. (For instance, all contracts would be awarded by public auction, not private back-room deal. And there would be internationally-agreed terms for spending of such revenue, drawing a line in the sand between honest countries that sign on and dishonest ones that don't.) You can get a glimpse of Collier's framework in this area on The Huffington Post.

Collier is no voice crying in the wilderness on this point. By teaming with TI's work to push for MNCs to adopt the same standards in poor countries as they have in rich ones, Collier's ideas could come to fruition.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've had my differences with Jonathan Chait in the past, but I like the sentiment of his column from this weekend, "No, we can't all just get along.

Chait picks up on a thread lots of bloggers (in particular, Atrios) have picked on: There is almost a mania for the idea of bipartisan love and harmony. Anyone interested in making a point or actually differentiate his or her campaign is seen as divisive or worse yet rude. To me, it smacks of banality masquerading as comity. Our greatest diplomats and statesmen have always been able to make their point -- even do so forcefully -- without inviting howls of contempt from middle-of-the-road fussbudgets in the editorial pages.

Chait argues that the current nostalgia for America's bipartisan past is merely a symptom of withdrawal from an addiction to a relatively short period of time when the actual interests of the two parties in power aligned. It seemed then like a golden age of cross-party love had dawned, and now we are tossing that harmony in the trash bin. But in fact, Chait says, one of the parties decided its interests weren't actually aligned with the other and kicked off the current round of partisanship -- to great electoral success, incidentally.

It is for this reason that there seems to be a distinctly partisan bent to many of those casting aspersions on romantic notions of political accord. The desire for partisan amicability is used as a club to punish the party no longer in agreement. The drive for bipartisanship becomes a wedge issue in itself, to be employed expertly as any other, for political gain.

I recognize this but don't see it as the main reason to oppose blind devotion to political amity. To me, change is born in conflict -- not violence, but defined difference as a starting point for negotiation, or defined difference to clearly outline a brave defense of a deeply-held belief. Some would argue this is a statement in support of "politics as usual." I disagree. But regardless of my party affiliation, I believe we have parties for a reason. I wouldn't wish to be a member of a party that didn't understand that.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps you've managed to avoid the avalanche of stories on climate change this week. No longer. Where to begin? Perhaps with yesterday's UN meeting that brought together more than 80 heads of state (and, of course, Al Gore) to build political momentum for December negotiations in Bali "on a new treaty, which is expected to impose deep cuts on emissions of heat-trapping gases by industrial powers," according to the Washington Post.

Secretary Rice offered the administration's usual vague language about supporting the forum without going so far as to entertain mandatory industrial caps. Who knows where these treaty negotiations will lead, but they seem far from the Kyoto process in many respects. For one, there is an insurrection afoot: California Gov. Arnold "Schwarzenegger said his state is following Europeans' example. 'California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action,' he said. 'It is time we came together in a new international agreement that can be embraced by rich and poor nations alike.'"

The Post closes with a statement from the memorable Phil Clapp:

The appearance of so many world leaders at the event demonstrated that the international community intends to "proceed with the U.N.'s binding treaty negotiations almost regardless of what the administration does," said Philip Clapp, head of the National Environmental Trust. "The president is not only rapidly becoming a lame duck domestically but internationally as well."

The timing of these new treaty negotiations seems strategic indeed: is there a better time to get the ball rolling on a new climate treaty than at the point when the 2008 U.S. presidential election ramps up?

But there's another reason why these negotiations are markedly different than Kyoto: dealing with climate change has since become a democratic movement. Whereas scientists, public intellectuals and activists mostly led the charge for Kyoto, the public -- worldwide -- wants "major steps" taken, and soon. From a BBC World Service poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries:

An average of eight in ten (79%) say that “human activity, including industry and transportation, is a significant cause of climate change.”

Nine out of ten say that action is necessary to address global warming. A substantial majority (65%) choose the strongest position, saying that “it is necessary to take major steps starting very soon.”

I've not seen international polling on climate change from Kyoto's early days, but I'd wager that research like the Center for Global Development's new study, "World Agriculture Faces Serious Decline from Global Warming," has done a lot to bring home the practical effects of climate change, giving it relevancy and immediacy that the issue lacked a decade ago.

Finally, it's heartening to read that business industry leaders and executives are taking a hard look at how to do business differently, as reflected in the new "green MBAs" that focus on making business decisions that balance profit with environmental impact.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came to Jerusalem to train some young NGO leaders here in using the media more effectively to tell their stories and building campaigns to really advance their work. The trainings went well, including a test run of a new tool GII/CPSS has developed that we will be writing more abuot next week. I made some observations while visiting Jerusalem, and while I organize my thoughts about the work part of my trip, I had to clear out all the background noise of ordinary life in this strange city on the edge of two worlds. These were composed as I traveled, so some time references are backdated about two weeks.

On the Nature of Time: The people here obviously live in a parallel universe, where every assumption has a caveat designed to make life more complicated and difficult to manage. I'm here during the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and the Muslim month of Ramadan (starts tonight). These two holidays represent the beginning of new years on each religion's calendar. They also represent the end of daylight savings time, roughly. Except the Arabs I'm meeting with in the West Bank are falling back tomorrow, while Jerusalem and the rest of Israel is falling back three days hence, on Saturday. I can go back in time as long as I can get through the Israeli checkpoints into Ramallah.

On Explosions: The odds were very slim that I would encounter anything like a real explosion of any kind while I was here. Jerusalem probably hasn't had a bombing in a few years. But because I am naturally paranoid, I must remind myself relentlessly of this fact, and walk around the city freely repeating like a prayer under my breath "nothing will explode." Therefore, when diesel truck starts just as I'm walking by, and I jump half out of my shoes, it is from preparation that I am jumping, not fear.

On Explosions II: My second night here, traffic was very bad crossing Jerusalem. The roads, which normally function at capacity, were suddenly buckling under more cars than they could bear.

The reason was that two mysterious packages were found and destroyed in controlled explosions by Israeli police. As I listened to this story at dinner, I remembered sitting in my room after my training -- enjoying the breeze up the hillside with the window opened wide -- and hearing what sounded like an explosion. I dismissed it as more of my paranoia. Who's paranoid now?

On a Backpack: Today I went to explore Jerusalem's Old City. I've been to other open-air markets in the Arab World -- most notably Khan el-Khalili in Cairo -- and the Old City isn't much different from it. It's like Khan el-Khalili with the most important sites of three major religions sprinkled here and there, seemingly at random. There are tons and tons of useless cheap Chinese-manufactured junk and surprising shoe knock-offs (Air Jordans, anyone?), acres of fresh fruits and vegetables, complete with incredibly loud hawkers who wail the price and quantity of their wares at startling volume. My favorite piece of Chinese crap was a backpack with a picture of Snoopy and the word "Spoony," like he was America's favorite beagle, and he loved to cuddle.

On the Old City: The most compelling characteristic of the Old City is its mystery. There is no signage to speak of, no way for ordinary people to maneuver without whipping out a map and inviting aggressive targeting by beggars, shop-keepers and rolling limes from the fruit market. I decided on a system where I would walk aimlessly until I found a store with something cheap enough I wouldn't mind buying it. Better still would be if I wanted said item. Anyhow, I would go in, and buy whatever, and then use this exchange as an excuse to ask directions. This was a good plan except for two problems: 1) I am bad at following directions; 2) these directions work approximately 50% of the time. To find the Holy Sepulcher, an Armenian man told me to take a left and another left, presumably at "streets." I bought a photograph of a ploughman behind a cow from him. The two lefts in fact took me directly to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher. Another time, I bought fabric from a man who told me to make two rights, "go something of five meters" and make a left to find the Dome of the Rock. Hours passed as I strained to recall his instructions and map them over the chaotic landscape of the Old City. By the time I bought a very expensive bottle of water to get fresh directions, I was told the Dome had closed for the night.

On the Streets in the Old City: Like the other ancient city/open air bazaars I have visited, Jerusalem's Old City has an extremely loose definition of the word "streets." Streets are essentially any passageway navigable by something as large as a housecat, or larger. And there are cats here, slinking down impossibly narrow shafts and looking at you as if to say, "too fat for this 'street' idiot?"

On the Very Nature of Oldness: This is one of the world's oldest places. There is so much oldness here, the age of things seems to be taken for granted. Oldness is worn by buildings in America in grand style. The floors creek reverentially and most everything is protected from humans by velvet ropes, plexiglass or signs that explain we're not to use flash photography. Nothing gets to be old in this way in Jerusalem. Probably such restrictions would put half the city off limits. Pilgrims freely kiss, hug and rub things on the cold stone that hosted the body of Jesus Christ in death. I stumbled upon some Coptic church (seemed important), and was directed to go look at the cistern where holy water is drawn. It's a good echo chamber. Trash floats in the water, and what looks like a campfire, or arson, is evident across the open space above the water. Ancient churches across Jerusalem sport television antenna like midwestern homes in the fifties.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You may recall the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, a remarkable effort to design a $100 laptop for the needs of kids in the developing world. The project did a radical re-design for markets where power is scarce (the energy consumption footprint is much smaller than standard and its solar panel makes it operable even when the power stays off); phone and cable service is spotty (wireless is heavily-integrated); tech support is far away (it's built for abuse from kids); and applications are different (it skips Windows entirely).

The only problem is that with so much proprietary engineering, the XO (as the first model has been named) still costs about $188 to produce. So OLPC is trying out a novel way to move more XOs out the door -- thus lowering future production costs: Information Week and other media outlets report that OLPC is launching a "Give 1 Get 1" campaign. Every time a North American buys an XO for $399, OLPC will donate another to a child in a developing country.

This seems fairly clever: parents are generally reluctant to buy full-featured laptops for their kids, who have no interest in running Microsoft Excel, for instance. And it's rare to find a laptop selling for under $400 in the States. But combining design aimed at kids with the chance to double parents' investment in their own child by supplying a laptop for a child in the developing world -- all at a price-point near or under competitors -- might just be the sort of "double bottom line" strategy that could make the XO a success.

One thing's for sure: competitors will have a hard time building a brand for their bargain laptops that even comes close. The trick for OLPC will be breaking into saturated markets (and distribution channels) in rich countries with their novel brand and unusual product.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peter Manzo, a civil rights expert at UCLA and the Advancement Project, ponders on the SSIR blog whether the march -- a bedrock advocacy tool in the 20th century -- still has relevance for advocates. Manzo and others suggest that cell phones may be better suited to the way people live, work and communicate -- particularly in the developing world.

Even web-centered advocacy, Manzo notes, is confined mostly to the well-off and well-educated. Cellphone penetration, however, is a market trend that is seeing its biggest gains among those whose voices are least heard and would find it hardest to find time and money to participate in a march.

You may recall that the ONE Campaign has made forays into cellphone-based advocacy, at least on the citizen engagement end. Bono used to invite concert-goers to hold up cellphones (lighter style) and text him to be added to the ONE Campaign during U2 shows. But for cellphones to replace marches in any meaningful way, they'll have to do more than sign people up to a mailing list. Marches are powerful demonstrations of solidarity (think Solidarity in Poland) and collective resolve to those in power.

The sense of steely resolve that participants in a march find so heartening and opponents find so nettlesome comes in large part from the fact that many people are sacrificing time and money to speak for a cause. Cellphone advocacy -- which has the potential to pull many more people together over a greater distance -- takes some of the luster off of "speaking out" simply because it is easier. You can already observe this if you talk to Congressional staffers: there is a hierarchy of meaningful constituent feedback, and digital methods hold the lowest priority.

But these are hurdles, not necessarily roadblocks. It may be that as cell phone technology gets cheaper and begins to interact with web-based advocacy more easily as technology interfaces improve, cell phones will allow more strategic, "just-in-time" marches or similar face-to-face advocacy not possible with current organizing tools.

The march is certainly on the wane; I'd be surprised if it's not resurrected in one form or another.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marketplace, the money and finance news program from American Public Media has a "game" on their site which asks some simple questions about the way you live your life, and then gives you an assessment of how many earths we would need if everybody lived like you do.

They try to keep it light, and it isn't exactly new information that Americans gobble up a resource chunk ten times bigger than they deserve. Still it's eye-opening to look at state averages for energy costs and realize what my family of four, living in our new suburban dwelling, consumes in a month. Air travel -- even if it's work related -- is another big multiplier, as there may not be a more resource-intensive activity engaged in by ordinary Americans, save the few who still race ocean-liners into the sides of oil tankers for sport.

If you click through the survey and your final results, the game's fun really begins. You can compare results to those of people in different states, income brackets, genders and birth years. You can even stack yourself against some radio hosts.

I ended up needing about 4 earths to sustain my lifestyle, and I ride my bike to work. Visit Consumer Consequences and find out how many earths you'll be needing. (The background information on their Frequently Asked Questions page is quite useful as well.)

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Valentino Achak Deng is the subject of Dave Eggers' newest book, What is the What, which tells Deng's story from his pre-war life in southern Sudan to his resettlement in the United States. I have not yet read the book (my wife tells me it is superb and very moving), but I know it is having a profound effect on college students -- one of Eggers' captive audiences -- both in the United States and abroad and is doubtless helping to keep Sudan top of mind as its crises stretch on and the news media turns elsewhere.

I had heard that proceeds from this very successful book would go to victims of Sudan's civil war, but I was surprised and impressed to see how intentionally the connection between Deng's story and the wider problems (and solutions) is made on the foundation's website. It directs readers to learn about Sudan, plug into relevant organizations, and take action, holding to Deng's story with pictures and stories of his work while broadening the perspective beyond him as well.

Here's to a creative and well-executed advocacy campaign on Sudan. It's not easy to get people to take time to learn the details and nuances of such a complex conflict (a tribute to Eggers' writing) and connect them to tangible action, but Eggers and Deng seem to be doing it.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

InterAction has been around the foreign assistance block before. As an umbrella group that pulls relief and development organizations together around a common agenda, it has seen American foreign assistance agencies go through the reform process time and again. The July issue of Monday Developments (see page 4), a publication of InterAction, compares past reform objectives and outcomes to the current and -- with the departure of Ambassador Tobias -- waning "F" process trying to align U.S. government foreign aid programs with a coherent strategy.

What lies around the bend is the key. The Brookings-Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Task Force on Transforming Foreign Assistance in the 21st Century found that the timing of fundamental reform proposals is decisive. The findings of the task force (issued in Security by Other Means Brookings Press, 2007) show that for fundamental reform to meet with success, among other requirements, it must be rolled out at the beginning of a new administration in tune with executive and legislative schedules. The next president, in collaboration with Congress, may be able to capitalize on the growing consensus that recognizes the need for significantly deeper reforms than those put forward by the current Bush administration. By rattling Congress, the F process may even be priming the pump for reforms that ultimately lead to the realization of an alternate vision for U.S. foreign assistance.

If you or your organization has a strong interest in the direction that official foreign assistance goes, it's worth taking a moment to review the history and see how such efforts have played out in the past. Some of the current issues have been around for a long time, it turns out.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's good information in Karen Hughes Washington Post op-ed about Osama bin Laden's declining popularity in the Middle East. There's also a little unnecessary political sleight of hand.

Hughes points out that OBL and al Qaeda aren't as popular as they once were. She hurls a slew of poll numbers which seem mostly positive. But Hughes has an agenda: she wants to make it seem that America can somehow take credit for these declines in the popularity of terrorism and terrorism tactics. She claims the shift in attitudes toward al Qaeda can be seen in the endlessly promoted collaboration of Sunni sheikhs in Anbar province.

She then goes on to talk about the public diplomacy work of the United States -- admitting that we've still got a lot of work to do. But in the space between her words there's a disturbing hint that Muslims are just coming around, and barely five years ago, they were a bloodthirsty mob of al Qaeda followers that wanted nothing more than to see Americans die by the dozen. She says:

Muslim populations are increasingly rejecting bin Laden's attempts to pervert their faith. WorldPublicOpinion.org found in April that large majorities in Egypt (88 percent), Indonesia (65 percent) and Morocco (66 percent) agree: "Groups that use violence against civilians, such as Al Qaida, are violating the principles of Islam. Islam opposes the use of such violence."

An in-depth poll of four major Muslim countries has found that in all of them large majorities believe that undermining Islam is a key goal of US foreign policy. Most want US military forces out of the Middle East and many approve of attacks on US troops there.

Most respondents have mixed feelings about al Qaeda. Large majorities agree with many of its goals, but believe that terrorist attacks on civilians are contrary to Islam.

There is strong support for enhancing the role of Islam in all of the countries polled, through such measures as the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). This does not mean that they want to isolate their societies from outside influences: Most view globalization positively and favor democracy and freedom of religion.

Hope is a strange thing, though. Where are these programs right now? It has been more than two years since her appointment, and as this attempt to take credit demonstrates, real progress is hard to come by. Why hasn't more happened?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

(Click the map to see a bigger version.)
Surely one of the oddest things about disparities between poor countries (where "they have less") and rich countries (where "we have more") is that -- from fresh produce in India (40% of which rots before it gets to market) to energy in Nigeria (which leads Africa in oil exports but struggles to keep the power on) -- the poorer countries often supply the richer. Such patterns make me dissatisfied with an approach to global development that focuses on disparity of resources; rather, it seems that the biggest need is for institutions (government, business or otherwise) to transform resources into income.

Nowhere does this seem more obvious than in places like Afghanistan, a terribly poor, underserved place where even its basic crop -- opium -- is not a legal option. At the same time, as profiled in the New York Times yesterday and at the Center for Global Development today, the developing world is woefully undersupplied with morphine and other legitimate painkilling opiates to ease suffering for those with chronic health problems. Despite the potential for massive, cheap supply from Afghani farmers, this option is denied (or at least highly discouraged). Rather than building institutions, know-how and supply links between Afghani opium farmers and end-users in poor countries, U.S. agencies like the DEA and USAID have instead concentrated on destroying poppy crops.

To my mind, this is a prime example of misplaced, wasteful aid priorities. Suppressing a local livelihood that could lead to development at home (Afghanistan) while easing suffering abroad, officials in Afghanistan hurt their own efforts while closing off a potential solution for global health needs elsewhere. We can't expect to make much progress while burning the candle on both ends.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Week before last I wrote about a new study in the fall issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review urging more nonprofits to follow the lead of top performers by working to leverage partnerships without rather than building as much capacity as possible within. This is easier said than done, of course. Most of us have had the difficult experience of working within a coalition of like-minded organizations; it turns out that sharp elbows and bruising disagreements are not unusual even among nonprofits with much in common. So how does an organization bring in partners from other sectors with very different goals and mindset?

There's a section in every SSIR issue titled "what works." This fall, SSIR profiles Sustainable Conservation (subscription required), a San Francisco-based nonprofit environmental group that "partners with business, nonprofit, and government leaders to promote environmentally sound, yet cost-effective business practices."

I appreciated this article as an independent case study to examine the idea that nonprofits ought to invest heavily in creative partnerships -- not just as a publicity-grabbing example of "strange bedfellows," but as a core operating principle. The model is doubtless more amenable to certain types of advocacy and certain issues (business/nonprofit cooperation is all the rage these days on environmental initiatives; it may be a hard sell for advocates against nuclear proliferation). But Sustainable Conservation was formed in 1992 with an eye toward rethinking what was then a reactive, insular world of environmental advocacy, and its open approach has met with great success.

Author Catherine Potter breaks SusCon's work into three widely-applicable lessons, starting with "Find Facts First."

Before forming a new coalition, SusCon does a lot of research. At the beginning of the auto recycling project, for example, the organization spent three months visiting automobile dismantlers to learn their business. “The first time I heard of them, I was very cautious,” admits Martha Cowell, executive director of SCADA. “This is an industry that is historically frowned upon by environmental groups. But we spent a lot of time with them. They were very willing to recognize that the industry had information that they didn’t.” SusCon’s attempts to understand the business helped build trust with SCADA and other industry partners.

During its fact finding, SusCon also looks for resources. While considering the dairy project, for instance, SusCon discovered that the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation had funds appropriate for the initiative. “Sustainable Conservation has been instrumental in getting grant money,” says Giacomazzi. The organization’s reputation as a rainmaker makes potential partners more willing to work with it.

Finally, SusCon improves its chances for success by identifying issues and industries that are on the cusp of regulation or litigation. “Collaboration works particularly well when a real threat to industry exists,” explains Boren. Auto dismantlers were starting to face litigation, and SCADA “had already started looking into the problem,” says Sarah Connick, associate director of Sustainable Conservation. But SusCon felt that “together, we could do much more,” says Connick. And so SusCon pursued the partnership.

Other lessons include "Build a Distinctive Brand" and "Adjust to Each Partnership." I suspect every organization will encounter somewhat different obstacles to creating productive partnerships. SusCon, formed with such a model in mind, avoided the transition pains that a more established nonprofit would no doubt experience in adopting an outward-looking approach. But it's done the legwork to make unusual partnerships work over the long term. Others should watch carefully; the learning curve may flatten as more organizations internalize those lessons.

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I figured there was bound to be some massaging of the facts in President Bush's televised address last night. But my word was the Washington Post "fact check" this morning disturbingly long.

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We just discovered allAfrica.com at GII, and we love its variety and depth of coverage. If you're looking for a way to stay informed about more than Africa's crises and conflicts, this seems like an ideal resource, with "over 1000 stories daily in English and French and a diversity of multi-lingual streaming programming as well as over 900,000 articles in their searchable archive." A bit of background:

AllAfrica Global Media is a multi-media content service provider, systems technology developer and the largest electronic distributor of African news and information worldwide. Registered in Mauritius, with offices in Johannesburg, Dakar, Lagos and Washington, D.C., AllAfrica is one of a family of companies that aggregate, produce and distribute news from across Africa to tens of millions of end users.

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Faithful readers of The Exchange may remember a post covering "Americans, Ferrets and Fox News" -- my rundown of interesting commentary from CSIS's last Smart Power speaker series in July. It turns out that such events are only the tip of the iceberg that is CSIS's Smart Power Project. Yesterday the project launched a blog (without much in the way of posts, mysteriously) but with details on the Smart Power Commission, its grandly-named "Dialogue with America," and a contest soliciting animated shorts to encourage our next president to "take a Smart Power approach to world affairs."

At the core of the Project is the CSIS Smart Power Commission... This senior, bipartisan Commission is comprised of 20 national leaders representing a diverse range of constituencies, including business, government, U.S. diplomatic corps, NGOs, the law, the military, and current and former Members of Congress. The Commission will issue a report on November 6, 2007 – exactly one year before the presidential election – which will present a new vision for American leadership and specific recommendations on how to begin to implement a Smart Power approach to foreign policy.

The Project is informed by a parallel effort, the CSIS “Dialogue with America,” which is designed to tap into the perspectives and aspirations of Americans from around the country, from across the political spectrum and from a wide range of constituency groups. Between March 2007 and February 2009, CSIS Smart Power commissioners, scholars and staff will travel around the United States to engage in a national discussion about America’s role in the world, providing an important snapshot of American public opinion that will be fed back into the political process in Washington, DC. In addition, through the Dialogue, CSIS will establish a national network of grassroots organizations and interested citizens, and connect these critical voices with policymakers in Washington, DC.

I may be mistaken, but this effort to connect classic CSIS high-level, wonky discussion to down-home public opinion and grassroots NGOs is unusual for the organization. It does seem that CSIS is committing heavily to its Smart Power Project, hoping to increase impact by adding grassroots credibility and even a web 2.0, user-generated contest. The jury is out on whether the sort of measured approach that CSIS gravitates toward can rouse grassroots interest and participation. Who knows? We moderates may next find ourselves throwing down a beat at the CSIS virtual poetry slam.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At GII and Continuous Progress Strategic Services, we spend much of our time thinking about how to set goals, measure progress and adapt to change. Funnyguy John Hodgman (author of the noted book, "The Areas of My Expertise" and representative of the PC in the Mac v. PC ads) took a crack at this on the Daily Show, using his eight keys for success to examine how we're doing in Iraq. The results are memorable. I particularly took a liking to Hodgman's asymptotic multimedia graph, in which success moves ever closer to failure without ever actually reaching it.

In other news, Russian governor Sergei Morozov needs no help setting firm goals to stop his region's population decline. His careful planning seems to be paying off with a one-of-a-kind contest. Presenting: "Family Contact Day."

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Tarek wrote last week about why it's so difficult to displace fallacies once they've taken hold in the mind; when you keep hearing an idea, whether it's presented as true or false, it's the idea that sticks, not the commentary. It's like George Lakoff is fond of saying: "Don't think of an elephant." Immediately after reading that, you had a hard time preventing a stampede of elephant images in your mind, chances are.

That explains, to some degree, the difficulty Americans have getting past the idea that the war in Iraq is a direct response to 9/11. But here's another reason: as election season nears, this absurd story is still being told all over again, as reported today in The Washington Post.

The television commercial is grim and gripping: A soldier who lost both legs in an explosion near Fallujah explains why he thinks U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq.

"They attacked us," he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "And they will again. They won't stop in Iraq."

Every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. But the ad, part of a new $15 million media blitz launched by an advocacy group allied with the White House, may be the most overt attempt during the current debate in Congress over the war to link the attacks with Iraq.

I don't agree with George Lakoff very often, but I think everyone could use him this time around. Rather than arguing about this elephant, I hope candidates can circumvent another fruitless exercise in re-education and move on to talk about the real issues that confront us in Iraq today.

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John Tierney, today writing as mouthpiece for "the skeptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg in the science section of the New York Times, wants us to switch from "feel good" to "do good" strategies for combating climate change.

Although Dr. Lomborg believes [the dangers of global warming] have been hyped, he agrees that it is real and will do more harm than good. He advocates a carbon tax and a treaty forcing nations to budget hefty increases for research into low-carbon energy technologies.

But the best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York, so that people elsewhere can afford to do things like shore up their coastlines and buy air conditioners. He calls Kyoto-style treaties to cut greenhouse-gas emissions a mistake because they cost too much and do too little too late. Even if the United States were to join in the Kyoto treaty, he notes, the cuts in emissions would merely postpone the projected rise in sea level by four years: from 2100 to 2104.

“We could spend all that money to cut emissions and end up with more land flooded next century because people would be poorer,” Dr. Lomborg said as we surveyed Manhattan’s expanded shoreline. “Wealth is a more important factor than sea-level rise in protecting you from the sea. You can draw maps showing 100 million people flooded out of their homes from global warming, but look at what’s happened here in New York. It’s the same story in Denmark and Holland — we’ve been gaining land as the sea rises.”

It appears that Dr. Lomborg has rejected the hubris of climate advocates and scientists ("who are they to believe they can stop climate change?") in favor of that of his own discipline, political science and economics: "The best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York." Ah, so that is what we need to do. I'm not sure Dr. Lomborg has managed his switch from feeling good to doing good particularly well (as the world's leading thinkers in economic development elucidate in my previous post).

I'm not writing Lomborg's observations off entirely. It's a well-documented principle of development economics that good environmental policy is a luxury by-product that almost never emerges apart from economic development. And I take his point that an efficient use of resources does not dictate planning for a worst-case scenario that may or may not have the effects we predict (Y2K comes to mind).

But it's the overconfident sloganeering than gets to me. Could it be that we should pursue a combination of these scientific and developmental approaches?

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I've been fascinated by Paul Collier's new book, "The Bottom Billion," ever since it hit the shelves. One of these days I'll actually sit down and read it, but for the time being, I was pleased to get a primer on Collier's effort to find a "third way" between the grandiose plans of Jeff Sachs and the hands-off approach of William Easterly from a smart, savvy thinker on development assistance: Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development. Following are excerpts of his review of "The Bottom Billion" in Foreign Affairs.

Sachs stresses the ethical imperative of bold, concerted action and derides "armchair economists" who do not offer constructive alternatives. Easterly criticizes "planners" such as Sachs, seeing more promise in the "searchers" who have historically solved economic problems in a decentralized, piecemeal fashion. Sachs highlights sins of omission, Easterly sins of commission. (Both men are affiliated with my employer, the Center for Global Development, Sachs as a board member and Easterly as a fellow.)

Many of those working day to day on poverty reduction, in both rich and poor countries, express dissatisfaction with both sides in this argument. Sachs' exhortations do not convince many insiders because, according to the refrain, he promises too much and does not see the limits of money and technology. (One memorably described Sachs' book to me as reflecting the thoughts of a "great preacher, mediocre theologian, and lousy minister.") Yet even many of the battle-hardened assert that Easterly's doubts go too far; they see him as a wise but blithe naysayer, comforting cynics who would happily leave poor countries to their fates.

Paul Collier, an economist at Oxford, aims to fill the gap between the two poles. His new book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, is meant to surmount the Sachs-versus-Easterly debate by remedying what Collier sees as the limitations of each view. Collier wants to temper Sachs' grandiose claims by arguing that a worldwide aid plan will be ineffective and that assistance should be more focused in both space and time. And he seeks to temper Easterly's aid skepticism by arguing that less should be expected and that the instruments of assistance should extend far beyond mere aid. As he puts it, rich countries must "narrow the target and broaden the instruments."

Collier's first step is to show that the people most in need of our attention are not all those who are poor but those who are both very poor and caught in countries whose economies are not growing. This includes about a billion people living in the 58 countries that have low per capita incomes and have not grown over the long term. Most of these countries are in Africa, but they also include Bolivia, Cambodia, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Yemen, and several Central Asia countries. There are many very poor people in other places, such as India, but at least that country is starting to generate opportunities for larger numbers of people. The poorest people everywhere might need humanitarian assistance, but development assistance -- something distinct, for Collier -- should go primarily to those countries currently achieving no sustained growth.

For the countries of the bottom billion, the long-term problem is not that they have lacked "sustainable, pro-poor growth ... it is that they have not had any growth."

Clemens, befitting a Foreign Affairs article and his own considerable expertise, goes into depth parsing out where Collier contributes new, useful thinking and where he merely equivocates between Sachs and Easterly. Exact answers are beyond any of these thinkers, including Clemens, as he notes in his conclusion:

Helping the bottom billion will be a very slow job for generations, not the product of media- or summit-friendly plans to end poverty in ten or 20 years. It will require long-term, opportunistic, and humble engagement, much of it through public action -- built on a willingness to let ineffective interventions die and on a sophisticated appreciation of the stupendous complexity of functioning economies. The grievous truth is that although a range of public actions can and should help many people, most of the bottom billion will not -- and cannot -- be freed from poverty in our lifetimes.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 11 was such a pivotal day for Americans; we've heard six years of stories that trace changed lives, attitudes and political priorities (remember President Bush's "humble foreign policy"?).

I think the New York Times does a worthwhile service to the memory of the tragedy -- and to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's leadership following it -- by reporting on his efforts to move the city beyond grief.

On Sept. 11, said Edward Skyler, a deputy mayor who, as campaign press secretary, had been with Mr. Bloomberg that day, the city “had been dealt an enormous emotional blow, but he didn’t want it to be a transformative blow for the worse.”

The attack “had clearly changed the city. but he didn’t want it to change the city’s fundamental can-do attitude,” Mr. Skyler said. “He has tried to find the right balance between remembering and rebuilding.”

That can-do attitude makes me proud of New Yorkers, and of Americans in general. As many have commented before (and Bloomberg notes in the quote above), paralysis because of fear or grief would extend the tragedy still further. I'm glad of Mayor Bloomberg's leadership; good leaders don't just dwell in the present, however difficult -- they think toward the future.

I'm not sure how much is attributable to the fact that New Yorkers are famously good at quickly getting on to the next thing and how much is the result of Bloomberg's leadership, but I sometimes think that Americans who live in places nowhere near the attacks of 9/11 -- friends and family from the Midwest come to mind -- have a more difficult time moving on than my friends and family in New York City. The administration's treatment of 9/11 has certainly been different than Mayor Bloomberg's -- perhaps a clue.

But if the past is any indication, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the country follows where New York leads.

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Speaking of novel fundraising approaches (see previous post), Microsoft is testing out a new charity-partnership marketing model for its instant message service, Windows Live Messenger.

Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes... i’m is about making a difference. Not in a huge expensive way, not in a time-consuming way. But in a simple, effective way.

You won't have to change your conversation to change the conversation. With every instant message you help address the issues you feel most passionate about, including poverty, child protection, disease, environmental degradation and animal protection. It's simple. All you have to do is join and start an instant messaging conversation. We'll handle the donation.

Two thoughts immediately occurred to me when I saw this campaign. First, I was surprised that Microsoft would make a foray into cause-based marketing as a business strategy to grow its IM user-base; the company has been famously (and understandably, considering its antitrust record) leery of connecting its business operations in any way to the Gates Foundation's philanthropic work. And Microsoft is culturally cautious about including anything that can't be measured and quantified in its business plan. So I wasn't surprised to read this statement on the page that lists i'm nonprofit partnerships:

As you can see, these are groups you know and groups you know can get things done. Because this isn't only about good intentions, it's also about great results.

The i'm campaign seems to have side-stepped unseemly connections to the Gates Foundation's work while supporting similar causes (and a few new ones, climate change among them) and addressing potential concerns that the funds i'm generates might be spent frivolously.

Which brings me to my second observation: i'm immediately reminded me of Product (Red). The force that makes both campaigns tick is participating companies' desire to sell more product and generate more users -- not, primarily, the urge from consumers to become active on a social issue. Rather, the social piece is a marginal benefit; as the i'm site says: "You won't have to change your conversation to change the conversation."

The i'm business model is somewhat different than Product Red's (one company will contribute to many nonprofits rather than the other way around), but both campaigns share a similarly low bar to participation -- both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, i'm opens itself to criticisms leveled at Red: commercial cross-promotion trivializes huge problems, entrenches a lazy consumption-driven mindset and sells people short, presuming that the public lacks the commitment to do anything difficult -- or even different than their normal routine. We've written about this discussion in reference to Product Red, and I think many of the same responses apply.

To my mind, it's not really a question of which model is better, but of how campaigns like Red and i'm can play into and support more serious efforts to transform consumers into advocates. In the words of a Rwandan-exile asked about Product Red: "Whatever works."

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