Digital Archive....

William Easterly ( @bill_easterly ) 21-01-11 20:43 Commentators give a lot of useful "feedback" to a certain Prof on Millennium Villages http://bit.ly/gUx2TR  

Ed Carr ( @edwardrcarr ) 21-01-11 21:03 @bill_easterly A lot of this was predicted years ago . . . http://bit.ly/i1JtV5  

William Easterly ( @bill_easterly ) 21-01-11 20:43 Commentators give a lot of useful "feedback" to a certain Prof on Millennium Villages http://bit.ly/gUx2TR  

naming, shaming, & measuring Texas in Africa Just before the holidays, the Enough Project released its first rankings of electronics companies based on their "progress they are making toward conflict-free supply chains and a conflict-free mining sector in Congo." You can look at the quick guide to their rankings here or read the full report here . As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm cynical about the effects that any effort to engage in supply chain monitoring in the DRC will have on the conflict there. This is because the conflicts there are not only about or fueled by the mineral trade and also because local institutions are not strong enough to prevent smuggling, mislabeling, and the many, many, many other ways of getting around a monitoring and tracing regime. I'm of the view that this exercise is mostly a waste of time and effort, but if companies want to do it, then so be it. The "name-and-shame" approach that En...

Sustainability is Unsustainable The Business Ethics Blog I was tempted to call this blog entry "Sustainability is Stupid," but I changed my mind because that's needlessly inflammatory. And really, the problem isn't that the concept itself is stupid, though certainly I've seen some stupid uses of the term. But the real problem is that it's too broad for some purposes, too narrow for others, and just can't bear the weight that many people want to put on it. The current focus on sustainability as summing up everything we want to know about doing the right thing in business is, for lack of a better word, unsustainable. Anyway, I am tired of sustainability. And not just because, as Ad Age recently declared , it's one of the most jargon-y words of the year. Which it is. But the problems go beyond that. Here are just a few of the problems with sustainability: 1) Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, not everything unsus...

How do Southern NGOs Rate Northern NGOs? Development Horizons from Lawrence Haddad How do the Southern partners of Northern NGOs rate them? Keystone Accountability have just released a report which attempts to answer this question. Keystone worked with the following 25 European and US NGOs: CARE UK, CARE USA, Christian Aid, Catholic Relief Services, Concern, Church World Service, Helvetas, International Rescue Committee, International Service, Lutheran World Relief, Minority Rights Group, Mennonite Central Committee, Methodist Relief and Development Fund, Mercy Corps US, Peace Direct, Save the Children US, Practical Action, UMCOR US, Progressio, Save the Children UK, Schorer, Self Help Africa, Skillshare International, Tearfund and Trocaire. 2733 partners were invited to respond and 1067 did, a 39% response rate (an impressive response rate, although I would have liked to have seen more exploration of the impact of this rate, and its distribution, on survey resu...

Is eliminating malaria hopeless? Chris Blattman The real way to get rid of malaria is to reverse the dynamics of rural-to-urban migration and build comfortable, stable rural communities first—something that is probably never going to happen in Africa—and then to attack the disease. The key way the disease is spread is by infecting people without resistance. Rural to urban migration, the kind that dominates in Africa today, promotes the spread of the disease. …In this sense, Jeffrey Sachs and the Gates Foundation are working against themselves, by pushing development and fighting malaria at the same time. That is James Pogue writing in Guernica . The tagline for the piece is "Ending malaria in Africa any time soon is nearly hopeless. And in trying, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Gates may be doing more harm than good." Skeptical though I am of massive, idealistic, cash-driven interventions, I have to hope that policymakers regard Pogue's article skeptically...

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Commotie over Rosenthal Vice Versa - vakblad over ontwikkelingssamenwerking Er is veel commotie in de ontwikkelingssector naar aanleiding van de aanvaring tussen minister Rosenthal van Buitenlandse Zaken en ICCO. Rosenthal stelt dat ontwikkelingsorganisaties die activiteiten uitvoeren die 'strijdig zijn met de regeringsopvattingen', moeten vrezen voor hun subsidie. De minister gaat de vinger aan de pols houden bij alle ontwikkelingsorganisaties. En dat is iets waarover brancheorganisatie Partos zich zorgen maakt. In een verklaring op haar website schrijft Partos dat het vindt dat Nederlandse ontwikkelingsorganisaties en het gehele maatschappelijke middenveld de ruimte moeten behouden om, waar dat past binnen hun doelstellingen, tegen het Nederlandse beleid in te gaan. Met het standpunt van Rosenthal slaat de Nederlandse regering een fundamenteel nieuwe en bijzonder kwalijke weg in, vindt de brancheorganisatie. In de Nederlandse democratie is het de af...