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| There is a great deal of passion surrounding the subject of tiger conservation, and there was a great deal of energy at the recent Global Tiger Workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal. (Photo courtesy of catlovers under a Creative Commons license.) |
I’m writing this in Kathmandu, Nepal, at the end of the Global Tiger Workshop, the latest event leading up to the Tiger Summit expected to be held late next year in Vladivostok. This process all began with the major launch of the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) in Washington, DC, in June 2008, and direct engagement with the tiger range countries on the issue of illegal wildlife trade really took off in Pattaya, Thailand, in April this year with ASEAN-WEN and other partners.
This was no ordinary World Bank-facilitated meeting inasmuch as National Geographic filmed the event, and it included a kilometer-long, elephant-led parade of children calling for the conservation of tigers. The GTI team keyed into the Asian and global media through op-eds, press releases, and YouTube. It also had significant support from the highest levels of the Nepali government which excelled itself not just in organizational support and hospitality, but also in commitments for tiger conservation – i.e. plans to double the size of one of its top tiger habitats, Bardia National Park. As remarked byEric Dinerstein, World Wildlife Fund-US Chief Scientist, there has not been such a positive period for the future of Nepal’s tigers in all the 35 years he has been living in and visiting Nepal.
Development Marketplace 2009 goes into business on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, with an intense four-day global competition among "100 ideas to save the planet," including some helping the world's most vulnerable people adapt to threatening climate change.
The public is invited, but visitors must register by Tuesday, Nov. 3. Here's the four-day agenda for the event, which will be held in the Main Complex of the World Bank Group in Washington, DC. (Visitors should enter the Bank at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.)
Coming on the heels of the publication of the Bank's World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change, DM2009: Climate Adaptation has sub-themes aimed at producing streamlined, easy-to-scale innovations that will help protect people in developing countries, especially the poorest, who live in the most climate-vulnerable places and situations.
The three sub-themes:
1. resilience of Indigenous Peoples (at left, photo of Andes family),
2. climate risk management with multiple benefits and
3. climate adaptation and disaster risk management.
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Click to view large. |
A colleague over at the PSD blog first pointed out yesterday a brand new data visualization tool recently rolled out by the World Bank. The Data Visualizer displays the 2009 World Development Indicators – including 49 indicators for 209 countries from 1960-2007 – in an attractive, easy-to-understand and highly customizable way. The data contains social, economic, financial and environmental indicators and can be filtered in a number of different ways, including by region and country.
Someone familiar withGapminder.org, which I wrote aboutlast spring, will quickly notice that this new tool from the World Bank is quite similar to the Gapminder World animated graphing tool. As I mentioned in that post, I think one of the most interesting aspects of this type of data visualization is being able to literally hit Play and witness how the data indicators have changed over time right in front of your eyes.
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." -Thomas Jefferson
Thoughtful comments to my recent post on approaches to fighting petty corruption sparked for me an interesting discussion with Sina Odugbemi about norms, public opinion and law. Mainly, our talk centered on the following “chicken or the egg” issue: Do you adopt laws first and ask citizens to obey them? Or, do you gauge public opinion around an issue first, then adopt a law that reflects that society’s prevailing view on that issue? No matter how you dice it, the enforcement of that law would be easier when it conforms to majority opinion as opposed to when it does not.
- Mood:
cheerful
Editors note: This post is part of Blog Action Day on climate change. For more information, visit blogactionday.org.
Apologies for having been out of touch since Carbon Expo. I needed a break, and summer in Croatia proved one can have a life beyond international development and carbon finance. Climate change, however, very much stayed on my mind with reports of wildfires in the United States and Greece. Clearly, one cannot escape all-encompassing global change, in particular when negotiations have now started in earnest on a post-2012 treaty to reduce carbon emissions and provide financing for developing countries.
Some still think that climate change is just a buzz topic and will quietly disappear from global attention. Let me assure you that many people in East Asian and Pacific countries would disagree. They are hit by natural disasters, which in recent years not only steadily increased in frequency, but also in intensity.
Earlier this summer, Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka to win the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup. Like any triumph in an international competition, there was a great sense of national pride, this time coming in a country with great need for such a unifying force. But, as Tunku Varadarajan wrote, the victory was much more than just a boost to national morale:
“As Pakistan fights for its survival against the barbarian Taliban…its people find themselves possessed of a weapon with which to vanquish the forces of darkness. I speak here not of drones or tanks or helicopter gunships, but of the glorious game of cricket.”
This is a powerful concept: that cricket is a key weapon needed to defeat the “darkness” imposed by extremism in Pakistan. But why limit ourselves to discussing the power cricket possess to fight the Taliban? What about the effects all sports have to instill happiness, empowerment, and hope in people? Could using sports for development be an unconventional tactic for the fight against poverty?
Dubai is a must for any one working on migration and remittances. One of the seven Emirates, but one that depends more on trade, finance and real estate than oil and gas, Dubai is a wonder in the desert. It has a large – perhaps the largest – migrant population relative to natives (no pun intended) in the world. If you ask me which is the most developed Indian city, I would say Dubai!
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Photo © Curt Carnemark / World Bank
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For sure, Dubai has some of the best Indian food. (As an aside, London used to be the city with the best Indian food. I was there a couple of weeks ago, and was a bit disappointed with the Indian (actually Bangladeshi) restaurants. Perhaps the recent visa restriction on hiring cooks from other countries is beginning to have an impact!)
With all the photos in the media of migrants leaving Dubai (abandoning cars on the airport parking lot), I was forced to visit Dubai in April, and once more after that. The level of activity seemed to me as high as the skyscrapers, although the locals reported a slowing down in the pace of construction. I visited a few embassies and remittance service providers. Dubai is slowing, but only for a while, and not all sectors are affected the same way by the crisis. For example construction workers are more affected than hotel workers. Migrants from Kerala (India) and Bangladesh are more affected than those from Nepal and the Philippines. Pakistani drivers are also affected, not the least because rising house prices in Dubai has forced many of them to send their wives and children home. It occurred to me that this could be a reason for the surge in remittance flows to such separated families in South Asia.
Money transfer companies - many of which are also exchange houses and employers of registered hawaladars - were doing brisk business. Remittances to South Asia seemed to be booming.
A highlight of the Dubai trip was a ride to the desert. Sanket and I went dune bashing with a hawaladar/money transmitter friend!
Source: http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/
- Mood: accomplished
We had suggested earlier the bottoming out of remittances to Latin America in response to stabilizing construction activity in the US. The latest employment numbers for June 2009 from the Current Population Survey (CPS) hint at a turnaround in employment levels in the US, particularly for migrants.
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| *3 month moving averages Source: Current Population Survey |
The sectoral breakdown of employment data show that employment in the construction sector is picking up faster than other major occupations. Employment in other major occupations also seems to be stabilizing.
Source: http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/
My Research Paper “Impact of FCI on Economic Growth in Pakistan” is Published in the Journal of Independent Studies and Research, Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2007.ABSTRACT:
The Two-Gap Model suggests that the Poor countries have to rely on the foreign capital inflows (FCI) to fill the two Gaps: Import-Export Gap and the Savings-Investment Gap. There are many forms of the foreign capital inflows like FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), External loans & Credit, technical assistance, Project & non-project aid etc. So, UDC (including Pakistan) have to rely on the Foreign aid, foreign Debt FDI and portfolio investments. The role of these external resources (FCI) always remains questionable. This paper analyzes the impact of the foreign capital inflow on GDP Growth in Pakistan during 1975-2004.
- Location:Pakistan
- Mood:
creative
Anew Economics website is launched. Visit FREE ECONOMICS.COM . This is a FREE economics Web portal for all the students and teachers of the economics. The Main purpose and objective of building this site is to provide the a platform of links to other economics resources. This website contains the information and educational and research material on different branches / topics of economics form the online dictionaries and encyclopedias. FREE ECONOMICS.COM | FREE ECONOMICS WEB PORTAL | WEBPORTAL | FREE ECONOMICS RESOURCES | ECONOMICS MATERAIAL | ONLINE ECONOMICS | LEARN ECONOMICS | ECONOMICS LEARNING | RESOURCE CENTER
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relaxed
Visit my Personal Website updated 23/01/2007. Visit moheyuddin.com . This is A personal website of G. Moheyuddin, MA Economics Gold Medalist. Now doing PhD Economics ...Welcome to My Website Hi! Friends , I am Ghulam Mohey-ud-Din. MA Economics Gold Medalist and now doing M. Phil leading PhD in Economics from GC University Lahore. Along with this I have been doing the IBP Superior Qualification / JAIBP (Junior Associate Institute of Bankers Pakistan) and other professional courses. I am thankful to you for visiting my website. The purpose of making this site is to share information about myself to my E-friends, making new E-friend and making contact with others specially students of Economics. From this web-site you can know about me, my interests, my favorites and many more.
Thank you once again.
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- Mood: creative
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