Paradigm shift, maybe

In spite of what David Rothkopf has to say on the subject, I am really hopeful that the crisis that has been shaking the world economy since last fall will not have been in vain. Given all that has happened, and the intense amount of media scrutiny and public debate on the outcomes of the "Crash of 2008" (however you want to call it - does it even have a proper capitalized name yet?), you would think that this would have created some space for a healthy discussion regarding the future of our civilization... We live in a world of gross overconsumption, excess and waste. While I'll be the first to admit that I'm firmly part of this system, I see the need to adopt a system that doesn't promise to drive us straight into the wall as an urgent one (Lula said it best.)

Yesterday, I came across a TED talk by Ray Anderson, the CEO of a carpet company. Now you might think - as I did - that hearing Mr. Anderson's take on the "business logic of sustainability" would probably not be the most enlightening and thought provoking experience (again: carpet company.) Well, that is a misguided impression, dear reader, and I invite you to check out his 15 min talk in the video below. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the Environmental Impact Equation (min 4:40), and particularly of his re-writing of it (min 11:18). 

Obviously, developing a "new civilization" is no easy feat, and you can't draw a fancy road map for completing this task. Nonetheless, the notion that Anderson introduces in his speech, that we must decrease the importance of "Affluence", and increase the importance of "Happiness" in our calculation of the impact of production really appeals to me (watch the video, really). Sure, it's a pipe dream - and for working with (and not for) the private sector on a daily basis, I know that the notion of the triple bottom line is far from being a central tenet of modern business.

However, stories like these instill a little bit of hope:

The video [The Story of Stuff] is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution. And many children who watch it take it to heart: riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos.

Of course, no one wants their kids (or other people's kids, even worse) becoming staunch and unwavering advocates of the environment at home - I can already picture children across America going through their mothers' cosmetics and hiding/throwing away (I mean, recycle) all of the products that don't meet their high standards. Regardless - and seriously - I do believe that tackling the question of how to adapt our modes of production/consumption to current realities (more people, more pollution, less resources) will require some efforts on the educational front. Leaders of tomorrow (it's apparently too late for today's leaders) will need to view the world through the filter of sustainability - and that can only happen if we educate and shape our young generation to respond appropriately to the challenges of their time. 

The Story of Stuff is an amazing video, which I highly recommend you watch - similarly to the Anderson TED talk, it shows how modern means of production are outdated. I'm not surprised that it's being used in classrooms across the US to teach students about the environment and climate change. Living in Vancouver, I sometimes feel like I live "in the future": few people still use plastic water bottles, taxis are almost all hybrid, buses are electric, electricity comes mostly from hydropower... etc... There are so many signs that we are turning a corner in terms of how we approach consumption/waste - but not nearly enough, in my view. And I suppose it will take time. And that, to a large extent, it's the millions of small, everyday paradigm shifts that really make a difference (recall Rafael de la Torre Batker who was worried about the effect of a new set of Legos on the planet). 

The Economist published a story about money growing on trees. Wait. What? 

When forests vanish, people suffer. That is why many believe that there is an urgent need to bring forests onto the global financial balance sheet. Last year Pavan Sukhdev, an economist at Deutsche Bank, reported that the world was losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year as a result of deforestation alone. If money could be made by selling these ecosystem services, then the financial equation for forests would change.

So a London-based firm, Canopy Capital, is taking up the challenge with Iwokrama International Center (Iwokrama is 370,000 hectare forest in Guyana). They are creating an entirely new class of asset management, by analyzing all of the "services" the forest offers and putting a price tag on it: carbon sequetration, soil regulation, oxygen production... Possibilities are endless, seemingly. I think the conclusion of The Economist piece captures it: "For a few bright sparks out there, financial innovation and engineering combined with science will let them generate wealth in a whole new way."

Brilliant! I'm already imagining the answers we'll hear when we ask a child, ten years from now, what he or she wants to be when they grow up: "I want to be a financial scientist!" 

Dead Aid Bandwagon

If you are a development nerd, you have probably read ad nauseam about Dambisa Moyo's new book, Dead Aid. In the last few months, there has been an interesting debate happening between different schools of thought. Essentially, Moyo argues that foreign aid to African countries is one of the preeminent root causes of Africa's underdevelopment (for lack of a better word), and that instead of throwing billions of (wasted) dollars into the hands of dicators, African governments should instead be given access to more private finance. 

Having worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs, Moyo - who hails from Zambia - offers a refreshing perspective on the aid debate (which is typically dominated by white males... no surprises there, right?)

Her book unleashed an outpouring of commentary - some condemning her views, others wholeheartedly agreeing, and everything in between. I have been tempted to throw in my two cents, but the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that a) everything that could be said, has been said and, b) the debate over whether aid should be stopped or not is such a macro discussion that, ultimately, we're getting stuck at the "50,000 foot" view - and that doesn't really help move the debate forward constructively. Because, as we all know, foreign aid will NOT end - even if you were able to show by a+b=c that aid caused most of Africa's problems, Official Development Aid (ODA) is still a critical foreign policy tool, and to call for its halt is unrealistic.

Anyway.  

Most recently, Francis Fukuyama voiced his opinion on the matter in Slate. He compares Moyo's argument with another prominent African scholar's views, Wangari Maatai. His piece, I thought, actually touches on a couple of really key issues, which most commentary on "Dead Aid" have failed to focus on. Excerpt:

Both women see sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government. Far too many regimes in Africa have become patronage machines in which political power is sought by "big men" for the sole purpose of acquiring resources—resources that are funneled either back to the networks of supporters who helped a particular leader come to power or else into the proverbial Swiss bank account. There is no concept of public good; politics has devolved instead into a zero-sum struggle to appropriate the state and whatever assets it can control.

This view actually echoes what one of the most prominent French African scholars, Jean Francois Bayart, writes in his book "L'Etat en Afrique: La politique du ventre". In this book, he writes that the "politics of the belly" - which is to say the political culture that is prevalent in Africa whereby rulers seek to accumulate power and possessions -  is not only the fundamental issue that has been plaguing the continent, but also a product of its very particular social, political and economic history. In his book (which I unfortunately don't think has been translated into English), he describes how complex social and political networks arose in the context of colonial and post colonial sub-Saharan Africa, and how the polity that emerged is defined by an intricate interplay between foreign dependency, reliance on local (and often socially constructed) tribal or ethnic identities and leaders' destructive desire to selfishly accumulate resources. 

Of course, given that we're talking about a whole continent, generalizations are very hard to make - so while one can certainly find counter points to Bayart and Fukuyama's argument, there is an element of truth to it, which to me captures the most powerful criticism of Moyo's book: it's not aid per se that's the problem - it's what's being done with it, and how it's being managed. And of course, Moyo knows this. But, as Owen Barder notes:

It seems to me that Dambisa Moyo has set up a false dichotomy between aid and entrepreneurship. Many of the things Moyo would like to see - better access to financial services, a better business environment, lower tariffs - can be (and are) supported by aid. 

It's been frustrating to read Bono's response to Moyo, as well as the reactions from a lot of people "shocked" that Moyo would call for an end to foreign aid. But, if (like me...) you subscribe to the Easterly school of thought that holds that most ODA ends up being horribly wasted and that an entirely new ODA regime needs to come about, then her argument, while virulent and, frankly, aggressive, makes sense. 

Just recently, from (of all places) USA Today:

Two United Nations agencies spent millions in U.S. money on substandard Afghanistan construction projects, including a central bank without electricity and a bridge at risk of "life threatening" collapse. 

In the current context, I think it's great to debate the virtues (or lack thereof) of ODA - however, focusing on that macro question shouldn't be a reason to turn our focus away from the real issue: today, there are millions of aid dollars at work - how do we actually make them work, with a view to incrementally decrease countries' dependence on foreign assistance? 

Oh, aid effectiveness... You are hella elusive. 

Meandering again

It's been a while.... Lots of things happening professionally, personally, all across the board, it's been a rather eventful Spring. Except it's not *really* Spring here in Vancouver - the weather gods have been particularly ungenerous, save for the few nice days that they kindly (and I'm pretty sure begrudgingly) bestowed upon us. 

In any case, my Google Reader is finally under control - reading (or skimming through...) the 1000+ articles that have been accumulating in there, in addition to catching up on all the reading and informing myself I have failed to do in recent times was a bit daunting, but here I am again, ready to contribute. 

Before diving back into my favorite topics, I think a Niapele update is in order. 

For the past 9 months or so - basically since the financial crisis and the resulting meltdown occured - we have seen a sharp drop in donations. Truth be told, this also coincided with Celina, my co-director, and myself getting full time jobs (girl's gotta eat!), and we weren't fully prepared to cope with dwindling spontaneous donations. In spite of our success as a small start-up organization (feeding 100s of kids for a school year... providing for 20+ abandoned children for nearly 2 years..... supporting a small organization for handicapped children...), we have been struggling to mobilize the funding that we would need to make all of the aforementioned projects true successes.

For instance, the School Nutrition Initiative which we ran during the 2007-2008 school year - we served daily meals to over 600 kids and 30 staff and teachers at the only tuition free school in the Buduburam refugee camp. [Note: After more than 2 years being involved in this project, I have yet to wrap my mind around the concept of private, costly education in a refugee camp as the "best" alternative for schooling for refugee children.] The program cost about $2,000 per month, including salaries of kitchen staff, and had start up costs of about the same amount (pots, utensils, stoves, renovations to the cafeteria space which we rented....). Over the course of the school year, we worked in close cooperation with the Carolyn A. Miller School, its donors and supporters, as well as with an incredible, dedicated Ghanaian nutritionist, Adam Sandow, to develop, implement and continually refine the School Nutrition Initiative. The program delivered positive results, which you can read about here.

Now, we are trying to recreate this same initiative in Liberia, where our partner, the Carolyn Miller School, is now operating out of. While a refugee camp setting was a challenging environment for us to succeed in, Liberia is a whole different story - essentially demolished by the war, Liberia is still reeling. And despite advances on many fronts, there are still some core challenges that need to be seriously taken on. Our very own - and very brave - Megan Sullivan just arrived in Monrovia to act as our Country Director, and assist our Program Manger, Henry Snyder. We are really hopeful that, with her presence, we'll be making strides towards improving the sustainability of our partner organizations - as well as our own. 

Raising funds for the School Nutrition Initiative in Monrovia is a priority for us at this point. We've carried out a needs assessment exercice at the school, and we drew up a budget with them - for $2500, we can restart the program. That's probably something we can achieve in the next couple of months - however, what's much, much more difficult is to secure the funding to actually run the program every day of every week.... We feel that starting up the program without the guarantee of funding to make it last would be suboptimal - that goes against our principle of sustainability, and would be devastating for the school, and its students. 

So Megan is initiating a series of meetings with donor organizations and agencies at the country level - hopefully, we will be able to secure the support of a reliable funding partner for our activities. The model is simple and replicable, and by cutting costs and having a lean operation, you can feed A LOT of children, all the while stimulating the local economy by purchasing from local food producers, by employing staff for to run the program. That's really the beauty of working at the grassroots level, with community-based organizations - with relatively small amounts of money, you can have a significant impact. 

One of my favorite new blogs, Aid Watch, ran a piece (a post?) about aid effectiveness in Nepal - excerpt:

Doing an inventory of small NGOs working in the various districts, then giving out small amounts of funding ($10,000-$20,000 a year) probably gets the most done. Skip the audits and heavy-duty report writing and verify with a small team equipped with a camera. A picture is worth a thousand words (or reports) it's there or it isn't and the camera tells you. NGOs with barely enough budget to survive have little motivation and opportunity to corrupt the process. They are community members themselves and the community can police its own quite effectively. Nearly anyone living in a small community in Nepal can tell you in short order who is working for the good of the community and who is lining their own pockets. Snap photos, ask the locals and you'll know for sure that your aid dollars did something.

I feel confident about Niapele’s ability to make a difference – with Megan in Liberia, I have a renewed sense of optimism. Celina and I are also going to continue finding new ways to raise funds, and, in an effort to be transparent, I’ll be posting updates about our progress. In fact, this is part of our broader attempt to revive our online presence as an organization – new Facebook public profile, new Twitter account, and a new resolve to make things happen.

 

For those who might have missed it, here is the video that Ayoka Productions made for us last year: