by Claire Melamed | Jun 10, 2011 | Economics and development
UNICEF have been doing some great work on inequality recently, and have just released a new report with lots of numbers on global and regional inequality trends. The surprise: inequality has a lot to do with age, but not much to do with gender. Here’s the facts:
1. Inequality is an age problem. Children are disproportionately likely to be in the poorest groups. If you divide the population of the world into five equal groups according to income, and if children were as likely as anyone else to be poor, you’d expect that one fifth of children would be in the poorest group and one fifth in the richest. But this isn’t the case. Only 14 per cent of children and young people are in the richest 20 per cent, while one quarter are in the poorest 20 percent. Yet another reason to get serious not just about children, but about the less photogenic and altogether more threatening problem of youth unemployment.
2. Inequality is not a gender problem. Contrary to much received wisdom, this report does not find that women are disproportionately represented among the very poor. Again dividing the world’s population into five equal groups by income, almost exactly one fifth of women are in each group. This does not mean that there are not a lot of extremely poor women, and nor does it imply that women don’t face specific barriers to earning and keeping income. But it is another nail in the coffin of the dubious ’70 per cent of the world’s poor are women’ statistic, which everyone really should have stopped using by now.
UNICEF are among the few big agencies out there making the case that inequality should be a much more mainstream part of development thinking and practice – and they’re backing this up with good solid facts and data. All power to them.
by Andy Sumner | Jun 10, 2011 | Africa, Economics and development, Global system, Middle East and North Africa
Charles Kenny’s Getting Better is one of the books of the moment (here’s a summary and reviews in NYT and the Financial Times and listen to it here).
It’s an upbeat account of progress. Things have got better around the world.
He notes that if one looks at almost any measure of quality of life except income there has been real and rapid progress. For example, infant mortality has halved since 1960 and countries in every region of the world have seen such improvements not only in health but in education, gender equality, civil and political rights too over the same period.
This is good news. I was struck by three things.
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by Alex Evans | Jun 10, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
What have sausages got to do with climate change (and no, this isn’t about methane emissions from livestock)? For the answer, see Sizzle – the new report on communicating climate change from Futerra. Why sizzle?
In the 1940s a supersalesman named Elmer Wheeler made what TIME magazine called ‘a handsome living’ advising U.S. businesses: “Don’t sell the sausage – sell the sizzle!” Elmer knew that the big secret to successful selling is that you don’t advertise the sausage itself – because it’s the desirable sounds and smells which get the juices flowing and the people hungry.
And what’s this got to do with climate change?
Climate change itself isn’t the sizzle, it’s the sausage. That’s where our second metaphor comes in. The most common message on climate change is that we’re all going to hell. That’s what climate change looks like when you get right down to it; rising seas, scorched earth, failing food supplies, billions of starving refugees tormented by wild weather. But contrary to every expectation, hell doesn’t actually sizzle. Hell doesn’t sell. Although these Armageddon climate scenarios might be accurate and eye-catching, they haven’t changed attitudes or behaviours nearly enough. Threats of climate hell haven’t seemed to hold us back from running headlong towards it.
So what is the sizzle on climate change? In a nutshell, it’s about making sure that narratives describe the positive, by painting a really resonant picture of what ‘low carbon heaven’ will look like.
This is a really great report. Although I think narratives that emphasise the opportunity on climate change need to be deployed with care, I think that Futerra are spot on in arguing that narratives about responding to climate change and scarcity have to paint a picture of the “sunny uplands” that lie at the other end of the transition. This is something that’s all too often not reflected in campaigning groups’ messaging – and it’s something that needs to be fixed.
by Alex Evans | Jun 9, 2011 | Climate and resource scarcity
I’ve seen some pretty bizarre ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in my time, but this must set some sort of record:
Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change.
The suggestion is included in Canberra’s “Carbon Farming Initiative”, a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, seen Thursday.
Adelaide-based Northwest Carbon, a commercial company, proposed culling some 1.2 million wild camels that roam the Outback, the legacy of herds introduced to help early settlers in the 19th century.
Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year, making them collectively one of Australia’s major emitters of greenhouse gases.
In its plan, Northwest said it would shoot them from helicopters or muster them and send them to an abattoir for either human or pet consumption.
“We’re a nation of innovators and we find innovative solutions to our challenges — this is just a classic example,” Northwest Carbon managing director Tim Moore told Australian Associated Press.
No kidding.
by Richard Gowan | Jun 8, 2011 | Global system, Influence and networks, Off topic
This week, Ban Ki-moon announced that he wants a second term at the helm of the UN. As I predicted last September, the U.S. is behind his renewal, and the rest of the Security Council seems on board. A few miserable grinches may argue that Ban could have done with some competition. But at Global Dashboard, we can proudly look back over Ban’s first term and say that we brought you uniquely detailed coverage of his journey from man to legend. Click on these links for classic coverage of Ban’s…
- …nuisance phone calls…
- …unfortunate medal collection…
- …reality TV star status…
- …sheer goddamn manliness…
- …ability to charm the ladies…
- …misty-eyed nostalgia…
- …unfortunate flirtations with cliché…
- …Jewish neocon enemies (or lack thereof)…
- …anger…
- …astounding ability to rap!
Thanks for sticking with us, Mr. Ban. We can’t wait for the next five years.
