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"This week US Secretary of State Kerry (1) and British Prime Minister Cameron (2) expressed their moral outrage at the use of chemical weapons in Syria. They cited video of the devastating effects of the Sarin-like substance, labelling the recent attack a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, equally disturbing images arrive on my computer weekly from the Sudan, but they do not attract the same media attention or diplomatic condemnation. How is a chemical attack on a Syrian worse than the systematic aerial bombardment of unarmed Sudanese civilians by Sudanese armed forces Antonov planes, circling above villages daily, indiscriminately dropping bombs containing scrap metal? Does the suffering of a little Sudanese girl cut in two by hot metal rate less on the hierarchy of misery than a little girl gassed in Syria? September 1st marks the second anniversary of the start of the Sudan government's ruthless campaign against its black African citizens in the Blue Nile region. For decades the Khartoum-based regime has been ethnically cleansing and killing millions of its own countrymen, intent on creating an ethnically pure country without non-Arabs and non-Muslims. As a result, the UN estimates at least a million Sudanese died in what is now South Sudan, and at least 300,000 have been killed in Darfur (3). While the violence continues in a media vacuum in Darfur, Khartoum has intensified its aerial bombardment of the Blue Nile area and neighboring South Kordofan, home to about two million non-Arab and non-Muslim Sudanese. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes and farms to hide in the mountains, meaning they cannot plant or harvest their crops. Khartoum refuses to allow international humanitarian aid groups access, so the people of Blue Nile and South Kordofan also face ethnic cleansing by starvation, a favorite Khartoum tactic: genocide in a time of austerity. The authoritative Small Arms Survey has just reported Sudan is using cluster bombs and incendiary devices on South Kordofan (4). Where is the outrage from Kerry and Cameron?"

Syria and Sudan: Our Selective Moral Outrage (Rebecca Tinsley, Huffington Post, August 30 2013)

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"In 1990-2010 the driving force behind the reduction of worldwide poverty was growth. Over the past decade, developing countries have boosted their GDP about 6% a year—1.5 points more than in 1960-90. This happened despite the worst worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. The three regions with the largest numbers of poor people all registered strong gains in GDP after the recession: at 8% a year in East Asia; 7% in South Asia; 5% in Africa. As a rough guide, every 1% increase in GDP per head reduces poverty by around 1.7%. GDP, though, is not necessarily the best measure of living standards and poverty reduction. It is usually better to look at household consumption based on surveys. Martin Ravallion, until recently the World Bank’s head of research, took 900 such surveys in 125 developing countries. These show, he calculates, that consumption in developing countries has grown by just under 2% a year since 1980. But there has been a sharp increase since 2000. Before that, annual growth was 0.9%; after it, the rate leapt to 4.3%. Growth alone does not guarantee less poverty. Income distribution matters, too. One estimate found that two thirds of the fall in poverty was the result of growth; one-third came from greater equality. More equal countries cut poverty further and faster than unequal ones. Mr Ravallion reckons that a 1% increase in incomes cut poverty by 0.6% in the most unequal countries but by 4.3% in the most equal ones. The country that cut poverty the most was China, which in 1980 had the largest number of poor people anywhere. China saw a huge increase in income inequality—but even more growth. Between 1981 and 2010 it lifted a stunning 680m people out poverty—more than the entire current population of Latin America. This cut its poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to about 10% now. China alone accounts for around three quarters of the world’s total decline in extreme poverty over the past 30 years. What is less often realised is that the recent story of poverty reduction has not been all about China. Between 1980 and 2000 growth in developing countries outside the Middle Kingdom was 0.6% a year. From 2000 to 2010 the rate rose to 3.8%—similar to the pattern if you include China. Mr Ravallion calculates that the acceleration in growth outside China since 2000 has cut the number of people in extreme poverty by 280m. Can this continue? And if it does, will it eradicate extreme poverty by 2030? To keep poverty reduction going, growth would have to be maintained at something like its current rate. Most forecasters do expect that to happen, though problems in Europe could spill over and damage the global economy. Such long-range forecasts are inevitably unreliable but two broad trends make an optimistic account somewhat plausible. One is that fast-growing developing countries are trading more with each other, making them more resilient than they used to be to shocks from the rich world. The other trend is that the two parts of the world with the largest numbers of poor people, India and Africa, are seeing an expansion of their working-age populations relative to the numbers of dependent children and old people. Even so, countries potentially face a problem of diminishing returns which could make progress at the second stage slower than at the first. There is no sign so far that returns are in fact diminishing. The poverty rate has fallen at a robust one percentage point a year over the past 30 years—and there has been no tailing off since 2005. But diminishing returns could occur for two reasons. When poverty within a country falls to very low levels, the few remaining poor are the hardest to reach. And, globally, as more people in countries such as China become middle class, poverty will become concentrated in fragile or failing states which have seen little poverty reduction to date."

Poverty: Not always with us (The Economist, June 1st 2013)

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Additional reading at the New York Times 

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The “show your working” principle does not in any way undermine Ministers’ right to make final decisions about how their departmental resources are allocated. But as in maths exams, it reduces the risks of making silly mistakes. It will help demonstrate to everyone how difficult these resource decisions really are, and the large number of worthwhile activities which cannot be afforded. It will make some programmes less politically attractive if the evidence of cost effectiveness is less compelling, helping to align political incentives with the evidence base. It will increase the technical quality of results offers, since nothing concentrates the mind like knowing your analysis will be available for immediate public scrutiny. It will strengthen the technical assessment of the offers by broadening the scrutiny from in-house colleagues to a wider range of experts in those specific sectors and countries. It will increase opportunities for people in developing countries to help identify priorities and shape the allocation of resources (something which was almost completely missing from the last BAR). And it will increase the accountability and transparency of DFID resource allocation, so helping to build public engagement and trust.

Owen Barder on the concept behind DFID's Bilateral Aid Review

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"Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock argue that many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. In addition, the flow of development resources and legitimacy without demonstrated improvements in performance undermines the impetus for effective action to build state capability or improve performance. This dynamic facilitates “capability traps” in which state capability stagnates, or even deteriorates, over long periods of time even though governments remain engaged in developmental rhetoric and continue to receive development resources. How can countries escape capability traps? The authors propose an approach, Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), based on four core principles, designed to contrast with standard approaches. PDIA focuses on solving locally nominated and defined problems in performance (as opposed to transplanting preconceived and packaged “best practice” solutions). It seeks to create an authorizing environment for decision-making that encourages positive deviance and experimentation (as opposed to designing projects and programs and then requiring agents to implement them exactly as designed). It embeds this experimentation in tight feedback loops that facilitate rapid experiential learning (as opposed to enduring long lag times in learning from ex post “evaluation”). It actively engages broad sets of agents to ensure that reforms are viable, legitimate, relevant, and supportable (as opposed to a narrow set of external experts promoting the top-down diffusion of innovation)."

Synopsis of Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) - Working Paper 299. Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock (6/22/12)

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"As she approaches the end of the book, Meadows gets increasingly lyrical, and concludes with a set of ‘Dancing Lessons’ for those who seek to dance with systems: Get the Beat of the System: ‘Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened. If possible, find or make a time graph of actual data from the system….. Starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behaviour, but by the lack of our favourite solution.’ Expose your mental models to the light of day: ‘mental flexibility – the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure – is a necessity. Get your model out there where it can be viewed….. Scientific method is done too seldom even in science, and is done hardly at all in social science or management or government or everyday life.’ Honour, Respect and Distribute Information: there should be an 11th commandment ‘Thou shalt not distort, delay or withhold information.’ Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts: words matter. ‘we don’t talk about what we see, we see only what we can talk about…A society that talks incessantly about productivity but that hardly understands, much less uses, the word ‘resilience’ is going to become more productive and less resilient.’ Pay attention to what is Important, not just what is Quantifiable: ‘be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality’ Make Feedback policies for Feedback systems: design policies that change depending on the state of the system Go for the Good of the Whole: Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience and sustainability, whether they are easily measured or not Listen to the Wisdom of the System: ‘Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself. Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there.’ Locate Responsibility in the System: in both analysis (look for the ways the system creates its own behaviour) and design (eg internalize pollution costs) Stay humble, stay a learner: ‘trust my intuition more, and my figuring-out rationality less. The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn.’ Celebrate Complexity: learn to embrace the ‘nonlinear, turbulent and dynamic universe…. [even though] there is something within the human mind that is attracted to straight lines, to uniformity and not diversity, and to certainties and not mystery.’ Expand Time Horizons: ‘many native American cultures actively spoke of and considered in their decisions the effects on the seventh generation to come.’ Defy the Disciplines: ‘interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct.’ Expand the boundary of caring: ‘The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings, or from the global ecosystem.’ Don’t Erode the Goal of Goodness: She ends by quoting literary critic and naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch: ‘Though man has never before been so complacent about what he has, or so confident of his ability to do whatever he sets his mind upon, it is at the same time true that he never before accepted so low an estimate of what he is…. Truly, he is, for all his wealth and power, poor in spirit.’"

Review of Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows), from Duncan Green's blog Poverty to Power

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"Does “access” mean water is piped to someone’s home 24-hours per day or does it mean they have to walk one mile to a single hand-pump that they share with 2,500 neighbors? Right now it can mean both because it is not defined. And if access is not defined, how can we evaluate the success or failure of a project aimed at achieving this?"

Marla Smith-Nilson, Executive of Water 1st International. Guest Op-Ed: Water Projects Everywhere, But Little Accountability

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Chair’s summary: Ministerial meeting on mobilizing climate finance (April 11, 2013)

"Ministers and senior officials from more than a dozen donor countries met in Washington, D.C. on April 10-11 [2013] to discuss ways to meet the challenge of scaling up low-carbon investment in developing countries.

The meeting was convened and chaired by the United States.  Participants included representatives from Australia, Canada, Denmark, the European Union and Presidency, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.   Attendees included ministers and senior officials from a broad range of government entities, including ministries of foreign affairs, environment, finance, and development, as well as representatives from development finance institutions and export credit agencies.

The chair emphasized that mobilizing climate finance is an inherently complex task that will require a range of delivery channels, instruments and tools, and implementation strategies.   With the aim of coordinating efforts among ministries, the meeting sought to build a common understanding of approaches to use public funds to leverage significant private sector investment in low-carbon infrastructure and adaptation in developing countries – including lower income countries, not just emerging economies.  

Participants underscored the importance of mobilizing additional finance, in line with our long-term finance commitment, to enable the rapid transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy that will be necessary to avert dangerous climate change.  They discussed the importance of developing methodologies for tracking mobilized private finance, and noted the newly established research collaborative led by the OECD on this subject.

Participants also agreed on the importance of engaging with developing countries as broader strategies and approaches for mobilizing climate finance are considered.

All agreed on the importance of a sustained commitment to public and private finance as core to a broader climate finance strategy.  At the same time, the emphasis on mobilizing private resources was viewed as desirable and practical for several reasons. Mobilizing private markets to address environmental challenges can greatly improve outcomes and cost effectiveness. The resources of global capital markets – if properly incentivized and engaged in the climate investment challenge – far exceed the public budgetary resources available. Also, more efficient leveraging of private investments enables greater focus of public resources in areas where the private sector is unlikely to invest yet there is a great need. 

Participants discussed the economic drivers of climate investment and surveyed the landscape of current flows to developing countries.  They reviewed the barriers to mobilizing greater investment in low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure in developing countries, including generic investment environment risks, risks specific to low-carbon technologies, and technology cost gaps.  They discussed the range of tools used to address these barriers, including technical assistance, risk mitigation instruments, debt and equity instruments, and incremental cost financing.  They discussed innovative private sector investment structures.  They also surveyed the range of institutions through which donor countries deliver these tools, including the multilateral development banks, multilateral climate funds, bilateral aid agencies, development finance institutions, and export credit agencies.  The importance of developing country action to invest domestically and improve enabling environments was also emphasized.

A series of presentations by donor countries focused on examples of innovative bilateral programs delivered via development assistance agencies, development finance institutions, and export credit agencies.  This was followed by a discussion of recent developments in multilateral development banks and multilateral climate funds.

Participants heard perspectives from private sector project developers and financial institutions on the effectiveness of the public tools and instruments discussed earlier.  They also reviewed a range of new approaches to mobilizing climate finance that have been proposed by private investors and think tanks. 

Having considered the range of current efforts and their effectiveness, participants discussed how they could enhance action through private sector engagement and improved donor coordination in various multilateral and bilateral climate finance channels. Several countries volunteered to convene discussions in these channels to explore strengthening the relevant institutions’ contributions to climate finance while also examining new ideas for leveraging private investment.  Participants agreed to take stock of these and other coordinated efforts and private sector efforts at a ministerial meeting in the fall prior to COP-19."

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UN Global Compact

http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/news_events/9.6/ruggie_berlin.pdf

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Notes on "The Architecture of Global Environmental Governance" by Oran R. Young

In this article, Oran R. Young discusses IEG in light of the results of a long-term research project on the "Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC)." Young counters arguments that organizational reform, such as the creation of an umbrella organization for environmental and development issues in the mold of other large UN-style organizations, is flawed because of the inefficiency of such institutions. Young differentiates organizational reform from more profound institutional change, arguing for the latter.

Responding to arguments that environmental organization should be modeled after organizations such the the WTO, he notes key differences between global environmental regulation and global trade. Elements of the WTO approach, such as most-favored nation status and the goal of reducing technical barriers to trade "apply uniformly to all members and all products," while international environmental issues a) must be managed differently based on geography and according to different national capacities and b) are at once interconnected and distinct – for example, Young asserts, "the evolving regimes for climate change and biological diversity have very little in common" (18).

"There is also something to be said for promoting diversity – and even redundancy – in the realm of global environmental governance" (18)

"It is fair to say that few – if any – cases have arisen so far in which the capacity of an environmental regime to fulfill its mandate has been compromised seriously due to restrictions imposed by the provisions of the WTO" (19)

"Globalization is the product of a combination of forces including population growth, economic development, and the introduction of new technologies. The evolution of the international trade and monetary regimes has played a role in facilitating the expansion of globalization. But they are only proximate forces in this realm. Leveling the playing field between the WTO and a UNEO (or newly-created WEO) might produce positive results at the margin with regard to issues of environmental protection. But it would be illusory to suppose that organizational reform of this sort would halt the deeper and more powerful societal forces giving rise in today's world to pervasive environmental problems like climate change or the loss of biological diversity" (20).

When he mentions cap and trade, it is presented as a viable approach to emissions reduction.

Institutions must be "nimble" - notes that they must adopt and implement the precautionary principle

"The goal of sustainable development, by contrast, is to pursue economic growth, social justice, and environmental protection in tandem and to make choices involving tradeoffs among these goals when it becomes clear that we will not be able to maximize fulfillment of all three goals at the same time" (24)

Notes shift in focus (between 1972 Conference on the Human Environment to the present) from environmental protection to sustainable development (25)

"There is an understandable concern in the South that issues of particular interest to northern countries, such as the loss of biological diversity or the destruction of tropical forests, will receive top billing in a UNEO and, in the process, sideline issues of greater urgency in the South, such as the alleviation of poverty, the provision of safe drinking water, and, more generally, the improvement of public health" (27).

"With all due respect to the importance of international financial institutions, the volume of private investments crossing political boundaries now dwarfs the flow of public investments. Globalization has enhanced the role of multinational corporations and given them a critical role to play in any effort to achieve sustainable development at the international level" (28).

Mentions efforts by the UN system to respond to the potential of private power including the launching of the Global compact and emphasis on "what are known as Type II partnerships." However, results so far have been "meager" (28).

There are initiatives in the private sector, independent of intl. governance institutions, that often go unnoticed in IEG discussions including "development of codes of conduct, the promulgation of ISO standards, the adoption of certification procedures, and the emergence of the overarching idea of corporate social responsibility" (29). Also mentions "nongovernmental initiatives, such as the World Commission on Dams or the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange" (29).

"Take-home message": "Those who want to make real progress regarding the problem of climate change... must find ways to alter the incentives of emitters who are currently allowed to use the atmosphere as a repository for wastes without paying for it" (29).

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Notes on pages 24-39 of the Pocket Guide to Sustainable Development Governance

Pocket Guide to Sustainable Development Governance - 2012. Stakeholder Forum and Commonwealth Secretariat

*many of these notes are directly from the text

Section title: Concepts for Sustainable Development Governance

- many concepts drawn from 1992 Rio Declaration

- build on Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development ('development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs')

– the "precautionary principle"

- states that lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a justification to postpone cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation

- assumption that a threat does exist, versus assumption that it does not

- there are different interpretations of the principle

- difficult to implement the principle because politicians often have to expend significant political capital on introducing new environmental legislation, and therefore may need concrete evidence before doing so

– the "polluter pays" principle"

- polluter should internalize environmental costs, pay for damage 

- invoked in argument for notion of "climate debt"

- provides a rationale for the establishment of regulatory frameworks for tax and other measures which integrate 'environmental externalities' into the costs of products and activities

- incentive to invest in more sustainable means of production

- implementation issues include difficulty of establishing responsibilities of different states or corporations because of complex issues related to attribution of causality

- historical versus present role is also a problematic issue

- issue of ecosystem valuation

– "common but differentiated responsibilities"

- role of each state in international sustainable development is differentiated according to economic and technical capacity, and historic contribution to environmental degradation

- enshrined in the UNFCCC

- increasingly interpreted to apply to the current circumstances of nation states, bestowing responsibility not only on historical polluters but heavily upon economies in transition

– notion of "access to information, participation and justice"

- access to information (including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities)

- opportunity to participate in decision-making processes

- effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, to protect access to information and hold policy-makers accountable for environmental decisions

- unevenly implemented globally

- some laws may exist on paper only

- efforts to enhance participation in decision-making are often top-down affairs that take place towards the end of a decision-making process

- legal issues include access to justice constrained by 'obstacles of cost, lack of clarity about procedures for appeal, and also the lack of standing as a legally recognized party with a legitimate interest in the case'

- one of the most comprehensive efforts to further these principles is the UN Economic Commission for Europe Convention of Access to Information, Decision-making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (also called the Aarhus Convention), adopted in 1998

- concerns that a regional approach is most likely to lead to success, rather than watering down of legislation to the lowest common denominator, a problem for global negotiations

– "global public goods"/the "global commons"

- environmental goods and services such as the oceans and the atmosphere

- non-rival and non-excludable

- resources that are managed multilaterally

- it has been argued that globalization has destroyed the distinction between private and public goods 

- proponents of strengthening the governance of the global commons are keen to protect the kind of public goods most vulnerable to 'destructive cherry-picking on the part of investors'

– "intergenerational equity"

- maintaining development within the earth's carrying capacity

- the next generation can only achieve the same level of material well-being and security with the same amount of capital as is used by current generations

- types of capital divided into natural capital (resources), human capital (skills and knowledge), and human-made capital (goods) 

- if a constant capital stock is to be maintained by a society, there must either be no depletion of natural capital, or a replacement of natural capital my human/human-made capital. these two options are referred to as "strong sustainability" and "weak sustainability," respectively

- to make good decisions about resource use, it is important to have both 1. a "governance capacity" and 2. a "scientific and technological capacity" (to determine carrying capacities and indicators, set baselines and set precautionary limits, deepen understanding of environmental processes, and develop and adapt technologies to ensure that development takes place within environmental limits)

– Marlborough House Statement

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Notes on "Sustainable development in action" Post-Rio+20 Hangout, 12 February 2013

(tuned in at 12:37 PM EST)

- there had been mobilisation around a UN high-level representative for future generations

- Mikael: engagement involvement and inspiration are the key words to see change happen. how can social media help? statistics run into millions of hits as to the social media response to Rio+20, but the fact that you can reach and communicate with millions of people in important. key question - how can you alter a community of concern into a community of action

- moderator: real value that social media adds is empowerment, giving a voice and platform to people with transformative ideas 

- moderator: leading up to the conference, we had civil society share their messages, vision for the future we want. if you (panelists) could briefly describe the future you want

- Mikael: rethinking development with our people and our planet at the center

- Liz Thompson: about citizens companies and countries working together and developing strategies to make sure all of us have a piece of the development pie, now and in the future

- Kimo: this questions inspires, moves people past policy-making and into the future

- Jacob: rapid transformation to a low-carbon, green economy. realize that the time for talking is over, and we have to do everything we can in our own countries, companies, communities to stimulate this transition

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International Monetary Fund (IMF) Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP)

http://www.imf.org/external/np/prsp/prsp.aspx#HeadingL

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"Should the World Bank and IMF be 'Fixed' or 'Nixed'? Reformist Posturing and Popular Resistance" by Patrick Bond

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A privatization and individualization of responsibility for environmental problems shifts blame from State elites and powerful producer groups to more amorphous culprits like “human nature” or “all of us.”

"Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?"

by Michael F. Maniates

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The Nation

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The Phoenix