Digital Archive....

Which countries are preparing for old age? Eldis Poverty The Global Aging Preparedness Index (or GAP Index) aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the progress that countries are making in preparing for ... Sent with Reeder  

Two Problems With CSR The Business Ethics Blog There's plenty of confusion about what CSR is. Indeed most of the definitions you'll find online don't even read like definitions. They'll tell you what CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is "about," or what it "relates to," but they won't tell you what it is . Any definition worth its salt ought to take the words in the term seriously, and note that the term "CSR" refers to some kind of responsibility, and then explain just what kind of responsibility it is. But good luck finding such a definition. And this failure of definition isn't just a matter of semantics. It's critically important, because a sloppy understanding of the term gives the appearance of unifying under a single banner people who actually hold vastly different views of what a corporation's responsibilities are. Various definitions out there seem to coalesce around the idea that busine...

Jan Pronk: Internationale noodhulp is het ondergeschoven kindje van de globalisering Vice Versa - vakblad over ontwikkelingssamenwerking Over de manier waarop noodhulp wordt gegeven valt veel te zeggen. Hoe moet de hulp worden georganiseerd? Hoe professioneel zijn hulpverleners? En welke lessen worden meegenomen voor toekomstige crises? Vice Versa geeft het startschot voor een serie artikelen waarin prominenten uit de ontwikkelingssector hun mening geven over noodhulp. Vertrekpunt voor deze serie is onderstaande column van Jan Pronk, die reeds eind 2010 in Vice Versa werd geplaatst. Overstromingen, aardverschuivingen, aardbevingen, bosbranden, stormen, ontploffingen en milieurampen waren de afgelopen jaren talrijk. Of het er meer waren dan vroeger, weet ik niet. Of er meer slachtoffers zijn gevallen, evenmin. Maar de aantallen zijn groot. De economische groei in de wereld, de technologische vooruitgang en de verbeterde communicatiemogelijkheden hebben niet...

Directeur Artsen zonder Grenzen over noodhulp: 'Het is zaak het kaf van het koren te scheiden' Vice Versa - vakblad over ontwikkelingssamenwerking Foto: Michael Goldfarb / MSF De noodhulpserie van Vice Versa is gisteren van start gegaan met de column van Jan Pronk, waarin hij stelde dat noodhulp het ondergeschoven kindje van de globalisering is. De komende tijd zullen meer prominenten hun gedachtes over dit onderwerp laten gaan. Vandaag is het de beurt aan Arjan Hehenkamp, directeur van Artsen zonder Grenzen. Vice Versa stelde hem vijf vragen over noodhulp. Als u kijkt naar de situatie in de Hoorn van Afrika, en de reactie van hulporganisaties daarop, waar bent u dan het meest kritisch over? Ik ben kritisch over het beeld dat wordt geschetst. Het lijkt alsof er hongersnood is uitgebroken in de Hoorn van Afrika, en dat deze is veroorzaakt door een klimatologisch probleem. Er is echter geen sprake van hongersnood in de hele Hoorn. In Somalië is ...

What Now? Aid Thoughts "What now? Let me tell you what now. I'mma call a couple of hard, pipe-hitting development economists ..." In an e-mail exchange, Matt and I agreed that there haven't been any really interesting and engaging development debates recently: this has been one reason (among many) for our recent relative silence. It's worth looking at this calming of the intellectual waters around development a little further. There are a couple of interesting points about the way in which the debates have died down. The first point to notice is that the debates have not died down because any kind of consensus has been reached. Bill Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs are not running down the beach hand in hand, singing about sunshine and Millennium Villages; nor is Dambisa Moyo finding support from, well, anyone. Debates have died down precisely because the prime movers in them have been so intellectually intransigent. Sachs has refused to addres...

What If Funders Really Acted Like Purchasers? SSIR Opinion & Analysis In my previous article , I argued that funders should think and act like purchasers rather than investors, and that doing so would address one of the key drivers of the nonprofit starvation cycle. Thinking of the work of funders as akin to that of a purchaser or customer initially may not seem as attractive as the funder-as-investor analogy. "Making an investment" in a cause or social good sounds much more meaningful than being a customer of a nonprofit. However, in addition to offering a clear rationale for avoiding the starvation cycle, the funder-as-purchaser model provides a powerful lens for critically re-examining many of the current practices of funders. It also offers new frameworks and nomenclature to spur new thinking and advancements in the nonprofit sector. Re-examining Current Practices If a true purchaser-seller relationship between funders and their grantees we...

So What? Part Two The Baseline Scenario By James Kwak So, Standard and Poor's went ahead and downgraded the United States yesterday, apparently because we have a dysfunctional political system. Who knew? As I said before , I don't think that S&P has added anything new to the world's stock of information. In the short term, the most worrying thing about a downgrade is what I called the "legal-mechanical consequences": the possibility that investors, who value their own opinions more than S&P's anyway, might have to dump Treasuries because they are no longer AAA. Apparently, this is not going be a huge problem. Binyamin Appelbaum of the Times  says that (a) many of the rules place Treasuries in a different category from other AAA securities to begin with and (b) since the downgrade only affects long-term debt, money-market mutual funds are safe. Still, I think the whole thing is preposterous. S&P downgrading the United St...