Dogbert knows a lot about oil, and perhaps more about resource economics than the average puppy.

See Grist’s take on the cartoon here.

Amartya Sen has also chimed in or Easterly’s recent critiques of the development world. His recent review of Easterly’s new book, The White Man’s Burden, says that while the critiques are valid, Easterly offers little in the way of solutions:

–SNIP–

In The White Man’s Burden, William Easterly offers important insights about the pitfalls of foreign aid. Unfortunately, his overblown attack on global “do-gooders” obscures the real point: that aid can work, but only if done right.

William Easterly, writing recently in the Washington Post, rightly calls Jeffrey Sachs to task for sensationalizing the problems of Africa and paying little attention to the role of African entrepreneurs in stimulating growth and change on the continent.

Easterly is correct, of course. Bono and Angelina’s trips to Africa and Washington say little of successful Africans, who are little more than victims of an abusive West. That said, in his attempt to be snide, Easterly downplays the very real necessity for aid to build the social and economic infrastructure onwhich his people depend. His example of an acquaintance who founded a successful private university in Ghana is case in point. No, he likely could not receive money from Aid agencies, who channel devote their funds elsewhere. That said, universities are seldom successful in countries with crumbling primary education and health services, all of which unfortunately depend on foriegn dollars.

The return of this simplistic dualistic thinking is not good for Africa. Sachs and his friends are equally guilty on the other side – which I will write about in another post.

Many of my colleagues are divided on the issue of celebrities such as Bono pontificating on the issues of poverty and world affairs. Activism on a private jet, they argue, may be sincere in its own way, but cannot truly promote change. And how does being able to carry a tune qualify you to advise on issues of social policy?

I’m a little less cynical. Last week’s American National Prayer Breakfast speech by Bono was, in my mind, a moving address that could only but do good. Bono stood up in front of George Bush and much of the Administration’s elite and spoke of justice, and the need for change.  He did not talk of charity – and indeed said that charity was not enough.  He couched the speech in his own faith, and did so with grace and elegance.

Those who have developed a political currency, through talent or other means, have the ability to use it to promote good, or to simply purchase more and more expensive watches and host parties in LA.  Bono has committed more time than I (a supposed development professional) to moving the world to deal with poverty in Africa, and he seems to have a grasp of the complexities involved.  Perhaps we need more Bonos.

LINK to mp3 of speech.

LINK to video (via CSPAN)

LINK to text

See the text here

I spent some time this morning at a student symposium sponsored by WUSC on campus here at St. Francis Xavier University. The goal of my little talk and workshop was to see what the various students at the conference knew about the Millennium Development Goals, and how they saw them relating to their own lives. I was pleasantly surprised.

While few of the students could recite the Goals (who could???) they were very reflective and curious about what role they could play. There was a healthy mix of criticism and optimism as they broke into different groups to discuss whether the Goals matter, and if they do, what they can do about it them.

Accepting that these students don’t necessarily represent the norm in most universities, I was still left with the impression that apathy does not, in fact, the rule on Canadian campuses.

This month’s New Yorker contains and article by Malcolm Gladwell on a power law approach to social and environmental policy. Power Law holds that in many cases, social problems are primarily caused by a small minority of cases that are statistical outliers.  For example, he argues that up to half of automobile pollution in Denver is caused by a small percentage of the most inefficient and ill-kept automobiles.
Gladwell thinks that too much inefficiency takes place in current social policy – such inefficiency comes from an assumption that people comply with laws, and that current approaches have a possibility of alleviating social policies.

He uses the example of homelessness:

The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment in Denver averages $376 a month, or just over forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she would cost on the street.

Efficiency tells us that it is more effective to simply pay for apartments and services for the homeless. This is a small fraction of the hospital and policing costs of the most hard to do cases. And while this may not provide the transition to wellness and respectability that is expected by most social programs, it is far more reasonable to accept that some of the most difficult cases may never be able to live a life without this support.
The problem, he says, is that while efficiency tells us to simply deal with the problem by providing apartments and direct care for the hardest cases, our sense of justice and equality tells us otherwise – that we should offer similar services to all people; why should the working poor not get a free apartment? The solutions offered by power-law are palatable neither by the left of the right.

However, Gladwell runs into a problem that he seems ill-prepared to solve. If it is more efficient to simply treat the worst cases, then why is it not more efficient to treat the problem as a whole? And what is the line that divides the problem cases from those that are solvable? The problem is the dividing line between the hard and the very hard problems, and deciding at what point power law should rule.

LINK

Can MBA programs be a tool for good? There is certainly a good case to be made that the best and brightest – if those are who indeed are drawn to business degrees – are not working on solving the most pressing problems of the world. NextBillion.net is reporting on the second annual Global Citizenship contest, which provides a platform for MBA students to partner with industry to devise socially responsible business practices. This is all well and good, but I would also hope to see spaces open for those studying management to begin with problems rather than with the solution (our business practices). It seems to me a rather backward way to approach social issues, but one that much of the progressive world is now enamored with.

This Blog is for me. But read it if you want. In the coming weeks, I will begin to post here about my ongoing reading and thoughts about sustainable development, poverty and conservation. This is primarily an effort to keep a regular journal – but the decision to keep it on the web means that I have at least a pretence of someday sharing it with others. Please feel free to leave comments or send me a message if you see something that interests you, frustrates you or otherwise moves you to want to say something.