Global Prosperity Wonkcast
February 2, 2010
Population, Poverty, and Economic Growth
By Lawrence MacDonald
My guest this week is Rachel Nugent, deputy director for global health here at the Center for Global Development. Rachel directs the Center’s work looking at the links between population, poverty, and economic growth and serves as the coordinator of the Population and Poverty Research Network, which held its fourth annual conference recently in Cape Town, South Africa.
Many of us are familiar with how development influences population growth: as incomes rise, fertility rates and average family size tend to fall; populations grow more slowly. Rachel explains that while this relationship is important there are many important unanswered questions about how population policies affect development outcomes. For example: if a poor country slows population growth by actively encouraging family planning, will the families involved and the nation reap economic benefits? Under what circumstances?
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January 26, 2010
Six Lessons for Disaster Relief in Haiti
By Lawrence MacDonald
I’m joined this week by John Simon, a visiting fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Before coming to the Center, John served in a range of influential positions, from U.S. Ambassador to the African Union to Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. During the George W. Bush administration, he was a member of the National Security Council, serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization, and Development.
That last role placed him at the center of the American response to natural disasters including the 2005 South Asia earthquake and Hurricane Stan. On the Wonkcast, he shares some of the lessons he learned through those experiences, expanding on a blog post he wrote last week (a post I highly recommend reading!).
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January 19, 2010
Fragile States: Development in the World’s Basket Cases
By Lawrence MacDonald
My guest this week is Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Vij directs the Center’s research on fragile states—countries where, often due to recent or ongoing conflict, the basic functions of government are weak or nonexistent. These states present special challenges to aid donors and practitioners, both in planning how to give aid effectively and in delivering it. More…
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January 11, 2010
Birdsall on Clinton, Elevating Development, Taking Stock in 2010
By Lawrence MacDonald
I’m joined this week by Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Nancy introduced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Clinton came to speak to CGD last week. On the Wonkcast, she shares her impressions of Clinton’s speech and places it in the broader context of U.S. development policy reform—including two ongoing assessments, the White House Presidential Study Directive or PSD and the State Department’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review or QDDR.
In the second half of the interview, Nancy reviews the past year in development and offers a policy wish for 2010.
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January 5, 2010
Bases, Bullets, and Ballots: U.S. Military Aid and Conflict in Colombia
By Lawrence MacDonald
My guest this week is Oeindrila Dube, a postdoctoral fellow here at the Center for Global Development and an assistant professor of politics and economics at New York University. She is the author, along with Suresh Naidu, of a new paper that examines the relationships between U.S. military aid to Colombia and paramilitary violence and electoral participation in that country. Her paper reaches the unsettling conclusion that U.S. military assistance dollars may in fact be responsible for raising the levels of political violence.
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December 14, 2009
AIDS and Aid: Rethinking PEPFAR
By Lawrence MacDonald
This week on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast, I’m joined by Nandini Oomman, director of the Center’s HIV/AIDS Monitor. Our conversation focuses on the new 5-year strategy laid out earlier this month by Ambassador Eric Goosby, the new U.S. global AIDS coordinator and head of PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).
Nandini praises the evidence-based framework PEPFAR has laid out and its move towards much greater openness and transparency. She stresses that the challenge ahead will be in designing concrete plans that implement the strategy effectively and measure its impacts.
Nandini brings to the table a wealth of experience, dating back to the late 1980s, when she worked on the front lines of the battle against HIV/AIDS in India. On the Wonkcast, she tells me how she moved from educating sex workers in Mumbai about HIV to studying global HIV/AIDS policy. That journey started when her organization hosted a US Congressman, who wanted to see the realities of AIDS & sex work in India up close. More…
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December 8, 2009
It’s One Climate Policy World Out There—Almost
By Lawrence MacDonald
As climate talks get underway in Copenhagen, the specifics of an agreement to slow global warming and adapt to its effects are far from settled. My guest on this week’s Wonkcast, Jan von der Goltz, has spent the last few weeks surveying views in the global development community about what these specifics should be.
Jan is the author, along with CGD president Nancy Birdsall, of a new CGD paper It’s One Climate Policy World Out There–Almost that presents the results of a recently completed CGD survey. The online survey, which Nancy and Jan launched in mid-November, collected the views of nearly 500 respondents, hailing from 88 countries, who mostly work on international development issues.
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November 23, 2009
David Wheeler on Climate, Development, and Forest Monitoring for Action
By Lawrence MacDonald
This week, my guest on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast is senior fellow David Wheeler, the lead researcher for CGD’s work on climate and development. Last week, David and his team released a new tool called Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA). A major advance in the remote monitoring of forests, FORMA makes available rapid, high-resolution monitoring of ongoing deforestation in tropical areas to anybody with an Internet connection. Developed with financial support from the Foreign Ministry of Denmark, host for the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, FORMA debuted with data through the end of October for all of Indonesia (read the press release).
While coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling cars are the poster children for carbon emissions, David says the destruction of forests is just as serious a concern. “There is a lot of carbon locked up in tropical rainforests,” he explains, “and when you burn forests to clear it for other economic activities, you release all of that carbon.” Deforestation contributes about 15-20% of total emissions worldwide, with most of this coming from tropical forests.
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November 13, 2009
Beyond Microfinance: Principles of Access to Finance
By Lawrence MacDonald
On this edition of the Wonkcast, I am joined by senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez, who discusses her work as co-chair of the CGD Task Force on Access to Financial Services. Financial regulation—and access—is a hot topic right now, as countries try to reduce the chance of future financial crises, while also ensuring access to financial services. The US House and Senate are currently wrestling with exactly what a revamped US regulatory system should look like.
Liliana explains that the balance between financial stability and increased access to finance is at the root of these debates, and in fact was central to the financial collapse itself. “Even in the United States,” she explains, “many people did not have sufficient access to finance, and, well, nobody wanted to stop the provision of financial services. And that was creating a bubble that ended up in the largest crisis that we have seen in recent history.”
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November 9, 2009
Ruth Levine on Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health
By Lawrence MacDonald
What are the benefits of focusing specifically on girls when we invest in development? My guest this week is Ruth Levine, an expert on health and education who for the past two years has focused much of her work on adolescent girls. She’s the co-author of a recently released CGD report titled Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health. In our Wonkcast, she outlines the agenda and explains why it’s so critical.
“Women and girls in many senses really hold the key not only for their own health but for the health of their children and their broader communities,” Ruth tells me. Recognizing that fact and directing our investments accordingly, she says, can lead to better solutions for a wide range of problems—everything from economic development to HIV/AIDS.
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November 2, 2009
USAID Missing Person
By Lawrence MacDonald
My guest this week is Sheila Herrling, director of CGD’s Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program. With November upon us and still no USAID administrator, Sheila introduces us to some possible candidates who have already been vetted for other jobs (learn more and pick your favorite here).
In the Wonkcast, Sheila explains the poll and offers a quick run-down on three development-related initiatives underway in Washington: Obama’s Presidential Study Directive, the State Department’s first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, and a new effort to re-write the badly out-dated U.S. Foreign Assistance Act (a short video we produced last year remains relevant!) More…
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October 22, 2009
Benchmarking America: The 2009 Commitment to Development Index
By Lawrence MacDonald
Congratulations to Sweden for ranking first in CGD’s 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI) for the first time since the creation of the Index in 2003. The United States, meanwhile, manages only a meager 17th place among the 22 wealthy countries ranked. In Benchmarking America, our second Global Prosperity Wonkcast, I ask CDI architect David Roodman to tell us why Sweden ranks first, why the United States gets such a mediocre score, and why Japan and Korea once again fall at the bottom of the list. Whether or not you are a podcast listener, I urge you to take a look at the greatly enhanced 2009 CDI Web site (now multilingual!). You can also watch the Webinar and read the brief or press release.
Subscribe to the podcast if you have iTunes.
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October 19, 2009
Ghana’s Oil: Black Gold or Fools Gold?
By Lawrence MacDonald
Oil and Africa. Boon or bust? In CGD’s first Global Prosperity Wonkcast I interview senior fellow Todd Moss on his innovative proposal for managing Ghana’s anticipated $1 billion per year oil windfall: money to the people. Subscribe to the podcast if you have iTunes; read Moss’s executive memo to Ghana’s President John Atta Mills, or get the full story in Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution.
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