humanitarian

30 June 2017

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Nelson and Detrixhe’s “The World Bank’s “pandemic bonds” are designed so investors pay in the event of an outbreak” explains how the just-launched pandemic bonds work. Investors who buy bonds basically act as pandemic insurers. This allows the Bank to release money to poor countries as soon as an outbreak occurs. Take Ebola, $100 million could have been made available as early as July 2014 with such instruments but “money did not begin to flow on this scale until three months later, by which time the number of deaths had increased tenfold”. So that’s a useful tool. And investors are ready to take the risk: the pandemic bond sale was 200% oversubscribed. These instruments have been used for years by insurance companies to transfer risks of natural disasters to financial markets. And they could be applied to other emergencies beyond health and natural catastrophes.

Ziad Haider’s “The case for a Global Council for Refugees” calls for the creation of a new structure that would bring together private efforts supporting refugees. It illustrates how the private sector already helps refugees, mostly around getting jobs. It points to similar business alliances in other areas, e.g. the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS. It lays out the main functions a Global Council for Refugees would play: repository of existing initiatives to avoid duplication; one stop-shop for partners; peer-to-peer catalyst, and advocacy amplifier.

My map this week is from IFAD’s “Sending money home: contributing to the SDGs, one family at a time” which presents the flows and trends in remittances during 2007-2016. The report is full of great facts. 1 billion people are involved with remittances: either sending or receiving. Half of remittance senders are women. Remittances flows to developing countries grew by 51% over the past decade while migration from these countries only grew by 28%. And look at Asia-Pacific: remittances increased by 87%!

My quote this week is from Iraqi Nori Sharif, the videographer of the brutally disturbing “Nowhere to hide”: “It is difficult to diagnose this war. It is an undiagnosed war. You can see all the symptoms: death, pain, sorrow. But you don’t understand the disease.”

31 March 2017

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I have not yet written about fiction books here. But here is an interesting trend: sales of dystopian novels are exploding. Orwell’s “1984” reached a 9,500 percent increase in sales in one week end of January. Rather than re-reading the classics, I started exploring those written for young people and finished M.T. Anderson’s “Feed”. It tells the story of two teenagers in a futuristic world ravaged by environmental degradation and driven by consumerism where news, games, advertisement, and chats feed people’s brains non-stop through electronic implants. As her parents decided to fight the feed, one of the main characters did not get her implant in the early days of her brain development and we observe the increasingly damaging consequences of this choice. The book, written 15 years ago before the smartphones and algorithm mania, feels surprisingly close to our “now” with its self-driving cars, occasional trips to the moon, hacking threats and over polluted air and water. It is a thought provoking read.

The Harvard Business Review ran a series on businesses and inequality this week. Interesting articles and powerful graphs, with two highlights for me. One, Nicholas Bloom’s “Corporations in the age of inequalities” calls for a shift of policymakers’ attention from gaps between rich and poor people, to gaps between high-paying and low-paying firms. He uses a growing body of evidence to show that wages gaps between companies is a huge driver of income inequality. And he argues that three trends widen this gap: “the rise of outsourcing, the adoption of IT, and the cumulative effects of winner-take-most competition”. Two, Melissa Kearney’s “Income inequality may harm upward mobility” illustrates how boys who grow up in poor homes are more likely to drop out of school if they live in places with high income inequalities than poor boys living in more equal ones. Her work shows that highly unequal environments lock young people, and especially boys, into “economic despair”.

My illustration this week is from Simon Maxwell’s “A new case should be made for aid. It rests on three legs“: 1. understand the problem; 2. match instruments to need; and 3. tell a story that convinces the public. Agreed. He then sorts out aid instruments according to public support and demonstrated effectiveness.

My quote this week is from Otherlab’s Mikell Taylor in “Cardboard gliders could revolutionize aid delivery in disaster zones“: “It’s a cross between a paper airplane and a pizza box. The plane lands right where it needs to be. You don’t want to have to account for a bunch of assumed [cargo drops] loss because the wind blew your parachutes into a lake.”

3 March 2017

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I am not sure I can speak rationally about Melissa Fleming’s “A hope more powerful than the sea: The journey of Doaa Al Zamel” given how much I cried reading it. Fleming walks us through Doaa’s life from the teenager in Daraa, Syria witnessing the Arab Spring and its violent repression; to the young woman who flees with her family to Egypt where they are first greeted with compassion but soon threatened daily; to the determined woman who tells her fiancé that “it is better to have a quick death in the sea than a slow death in Egypt”; to the amazingly strong and selfless human being who survives 4 days in the sea holding on to a plastic ring and two babies while 500 people drown around her. In a strange way, I was less shaken by Doaa’s own story than by the atrocities she witnesses. Maybe because I knew from the outset that she would survive or because it was not her own voice sharing the story? The worst parts of that story involve children. Their fate throughout the book is simply unbearable: from the small group of boys, as young as 12, who defy authorities and get arrested and tortured, igniting the revolution; to the unborn child whose pregnant mother wearing a fake life vest boards an unsafe dinghy desperate for a better future; to hundreds of horrified children being moved by smugglers from one boat to the next before all drowning. Fleming, UNHCR chief spokesperson, wanted to raise awareness about the global refugee crisis. She was searching for human stories that would “build bridges of empathy to the public” and give readers real insights into the Syrian war and the lives of refugees. She succeeded. It worked on me, but I was already on the right side of the crowd. Could this book change the perspective of someone who in principle opposes granting asylum, resettlement or work visa to refugees? How does individual storytelling lead to action beyond the life of the protagonist?

Will 2017 be the year of universal basic income (UBI)? As flagged over a year ago, a growing tech crowd argues that UBI is an effective response to the rise of robots, and could capture support from liberals and conservatives alike. In 2017, a good number of countries, from Finland to India, are piloting UBI schemes or considering replacing welfare programs with UBI. Last week end, Annie Lowrey’s “The future of not working” got the development crowd going on the web about the pros and cons for developing countries. World Bank quants said interesting-but-get-your-methodology-in-order, cash-transfer gurus said no-way, and development philanthropists said not-quite-yet. A fun debate to watch.

My graph this week is from the Varkey Foundation’s “What the world’s young people think and feel” and shows that on average young people are pessimistic about the future. Labelled “the most comprehensive and up-to-date attempt to understand the lives of Generation Z”, the paper presents results from a representative survey conducted with 20,000 15-21 year-olds in 20 countries in late 2016. It tells us that Indonesia’s youth is super happy while Japan’s is very unhappy; that young people do not think their leaders are doing enough to help refugees; or that young people are very supportive of the rights agenda in general but maybe not free speech (!).

My quote this week is from David Cameron’s “Even in an age of austerity, aid works. We have to keep giving”: “There are huge gaps in our understanding of what makes states fragile. That is why I am chairing the new Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development. My co-chairs will be Donald Kaberuka, the special envoy of the African Union Peace Fund and the former president of the African Development Bank, and Adnan Khan, research and policy director of the International Growth Centre.”

12 February 2016

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Gabriel Zucman’s “The hidden wealth of nations”, said to be the most comprehensive study on tax evasion, estimates that 8% of global financial wealth is held in tax havens. Poorer countries suffer the biggest loss with 20-30% of wealth held offshore for many African and Latin American countries compared to 10% for Europe and 4% for the US. Zucman is very critical of attempts made so far to counter tax dodging and proposes a new approach based on (i) financial/commercial sanctions against key uncooperative players (e.g., Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Virgin Islands) and (ii) the creation of an automatic global wealth registry accessible to national tax authorities for verification purposes. Being Piketty’s protégé, Zucman also suggests that such global financial registry could be used in combination with real estate registries to impose a global tax on wealth stocks. The final chapter of the book on corporate tax avoidance points the finger at US firms accounting for more than half of the global problem ($130 vs $240 billion per year). Very critical, again, of existing countering initiatives (e.g., by OECD & G20), Zucman calls for focusing corporate taxation on the consolidated profits of firms at the global level. Many have called Zucman “utopian” but what I found most interesting is that his book contributes to bringing tax avoidance – once an expert- or activist-type issue only – into the mainstream. Podcast suggestion here (1h18’).

Ban Ki Moon’s “One humanity: Shared responsibility”, setting the stage for the World Humanitarian Summit, came out this week. Pundits are offering summaries and analyses. And here are the take-aways of our colleague Emily Garin who read it for us: The report does a great job of laying out the myriad challenges that need to be tackled, though it (perhaps understandably?) doesn’t break much new ground in terms of grand solutions. The hundred-odd recommendations contained throughout are helpfully summarized here. The big missing piece, however, is a compelling vision for the added value of the UN in the midst of these problems and solutions. The report rightly accepts the oft-repeated call for more investment in national systems and local actors, but simultaneously fails to make the case for the distinct role that only UN agencies are or should be playing. As our donors and partners look more closely at bottom lines and value-for-money, what is our answer to this increasingly common question?

My graph of the week is from Chris Hoy’s “Can developing countries afford the SDGs?” which compares the price tags of 3 SDG targets (poverty, health, and education) with the public finance capacity (government revenue + ODA) of low income (LICs) and lower middle income countries (LMICs). It shows that most LICs cannot afford the SDGs. For the Democratic Republic of Congo, the cost of reaching these targets equals the national GDP. But Hoy also shows that most LMICs could cover SDG costs with government revenue only. So his recommendation is for donors to redirect ODA from LMICs to LICs. This is going against the latest ODA trends.

Two quotes this week as I could not make up my mind. One from Kimberly Bryant and Kim-Mai Cutler at the 9th Annual Crunchies: “… and the Crunchie [for biggest social impact] goes to … Code.Org !”.
And one from Prof. David Reitze: “We have detected gravitational waves. It’s the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we’ve been deaf.”

22 January 2016

Posted on January 22, 2016 Leave a Comment

The report of the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing “Too important to fail – addressing the humanitarian financial gap” is out. It will feed into the SG’s report on the future humanitarian agenda that will feed into the World Humanitarian Summit. The Panel offers recommendations to decrease humanitarian needs, broaden the resource base, and increase delivery efficiency. My main reaction: a well written round-up but not many new ideas. We did a stock-taking paper on a similar topic a year ago and most proposals where already out there. It will be interesting to see who implements what in the coming weeks/months (and on this front, good to see ICRC launching a humanitarian impact bond to finance disability centers in fragile contexts today in Davos). A few things jumped at me in the report. Here are two. One, the case is made to “follow the people in need, not the countries”, a good principle valid beyond humanitarian contexts. To do this, the Panel proposes to tweak IDA (the World Bank’s arm providing grants to poorest countries) eligibility criteria so that refugee-hosting MICs can also access these funds. Should tapping into pots of money reserved for the poorest countries be a solution? What about starting instead from MICs-specific funding streams and creating a concessional window there for those hosting refugees? Two, the Panel recommends to “harness the power of business” and lists of number of ways companies can support what humanitarian organizations do. But what about getting the private sector to do what it does best: create jobs? The report is silent on this. Yet, we know that this is a priority for displaced people, that the local labor market impacts of giving jobs to refugees are limited and temporary (see here for latest IMF doc), and that some governments and entrepreneurs are ready to scale up (see this Davos Panel where Queen Rania makes the case and Ulukaya shows how his company’s workforce is already 1/3 refugees).

Former DFID Chief Scientific Advisor Christopher Whitty’s “What makes an academic paper useful for health policy” is worth reading. Policy decisions are not evidence-based enough because: (i) the evidence is not available, (ii) the issue at stake is a demand-side problem, or (iii) academics do not write what policymakers need. Whitty unpacks the latter problem. Policymakers are often (advised by) economists: they want to see the opportunity cost of new ideas which scientific publications often omit. Policy processes move fast while research takes months. Decision-making is a multidisciplinary business while scientific studies are mostly not. For Whitty, the most useful type of policy paper is a “rigorous and unbiased synthesis of current knowledge”. Agreed.

My graph of the week is from the Oxfam pre-Davos inequality report, “An economy for the 1%”, because of the methodology controversy it triggered, just like last year’s version did, just like the previous year’s version did. The 2016 headline: the 62 richest billionaires own as much wealth as half of the world population. Like last year, and like the previous year, it was picked up by all major papers, created a big social media buzz, and was discussed by several top economists. A three-year-in-a-row genius PR move turned Oxfam inequality report into the unofficial Davos curtain raiser. Impressive.

My quote this week is from Tim Harford’s “Why predictions are a lot like Pringles”: “A forecast about what will happen in Syria, China or Japan is a simple way to convey a fleeting sense of understanding. The forecast will probably be wrong. But at the instant it is consumed, it gratifies. As I say, a lot like Pringles.”

18 December 2015

Posted on December 18, 2015 Leave a Comment

Tis’ the season of “best-ofs”. Falalalala, lala, lala.

Analysts are selecting their books of the year (See here for lists from finance and economics gurus). I am finishing Tetlock and Gardner’s Superforecasting: The art and science of prediction which is on top of several lists and look forward to telling you what I think. Editorialists are picking out their favorite long essays (see here for David Brooks’) of which I recommend the WeChat piece showing how it is shaping the future of mobile payments. Journalists are electing their women of the year (see here); and their person of the year (see here for the FT and here for Time) and end up choosing the same woman: Angela Merkel. Linguists are picking out their word of the year (see here for Oxford and here for Merriam-Webster) which are not even words. Bloggers are counting their clicks and ranking their posts.

In the spirit of the season, here is What I read’s 2015 best-of. Based on the number of clicks, here are your top fives:

Bevington and al’s “A multitemporal, multivariate index to dynamically characterize vulnerability of children and adolescents in Nepal: Using science in humanitarian response”. While the title is a mouthful, the map distills all this complexity to show children vulnerabilities at the village level, in real time. You can zoom in and out, you can map specific vulnerabilities (displaced children, available schools, functional healthcare facilities) or specific hazards (landslide from rainfalls, landslide from earthquakes, landslide post-quakes), or you can combine all this together in one map. The architecture behind the interactive map triangulates data of different nature and frequency from the Nepal National Census to NASA’s high-resolution satellite imagery.
Gonzales and al’s “Catalyst for change: Women and tackling income inequality” is the latest Staff Paper in the IMF series on inequality and growth. It looks at the links between gender inequality and income inequality in 140 countries over two decades. It shows that an increase in the UN multi-dimensional gender inequality index “from zero (perfect gender equality) to one (perfect gender inequality) is associated with an increase in net income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) of almost 10 points”. This is true for all countries, rich or poor. The paper also proposes policy recommendations from tax reform to improved family benefits such as parental leave and affordable childcare.
A quote from Nesta CEO Mulgan in “Meaningful meetings: How can meetings can be made better?”: “Some of the best meetings don’t happen.” (291 clicks). And let me expand a little: “Often people feel uncomfortable cancelling meetings, for fear that it implies that no work is being done. Similarly people feel uncomfortable in big bureaucracies not attending meetings – for fear that they may miss out on vital decisions, or be seen not to be a team player. The opposite would be a better approach – with cancelling or shortening meetings being taken as a sign of effective day to day communication and coordination that renders the meeting unnecessary.”
Ausubel’s “Nature Rebounds” presents positive trends with the combined effect of restoring nature. Farmland and forest use are reaching peaks; water, petroleum, and transportation uses are plateauing; and green vegetal cover expands. All this alongside a population growth slowdown. The paper concentrates on the US but Ausubel argues that “within a few decades, the same patterns, already evident in Europe and Japan, will be evident in many more places”. The only dark spot in this bright picture is oceans and fisheries damage.
Peleah’s “SDGs as a network of targets” captures the intrinsic connections among SDGs and their targets. Click and play with it: grab one target, say gender disparities in education, and drag it around to see how it pulls a huge part of the network with it. It shows how progress in some key targets will generate progress across the whole set. It illustrates the sectoral integration and complexity inherent to the SDG agenda.