It was too perfect. And sad. On my way to see experts at Rio+20 speak about the growing waste problem in the developing world, I watched a man on his cell phone walk up to a recycling bin and dump his trash in the wrong receptacle. He walked off without even realizing what he had done.

It perfectly encapsulated the challenge. If people with access to proper recycling and waste management services aren’t using them properly, what about countries without those services?

According to experts at Rio+20, the problem is far greater than the international community is recognizing. With global municipal solid waste set to double in by 2025 — mostly in developing countries without the capabilities to manage that waste — many say it’s one of the most pressing environmental problems of our time.

“We are creating an environmental disaster that developing countries are ignoring at their own peril,” said David Newman, a board member with the International Solid Waste Association.

Less than half the world’s population has access to proper waste disposal, causing mountains of hazardous trash — including a growing amount of e-waste — to pile up. By 2020, e-waste from consumer electronics will jump 500% in some countries. That’s causing toxic chemicals to leach into groundwater and putting a financial burden on economically-constrained countries.

The United Nations has identified waste reduction strategies as a key part of its sustainable development goals. Chemical and municipal waste is mentioned frequently in the draft text that negotiators are putting together at Rio+20.

We recognize the importance of adopting a life-cycle approach and of further development and implementation of policies for resource efficiency and environmentally sound waste management. We therefore commit to further reduce, reuse ...

In March 2012, the Indian Planning Commission stated that 29 percent of India’s population was poor. These were people who had less than Rs.22.42 (US $0.41) a day if they were living in villages, or Rs. 28.35 (US $0.52) if in a city. The Commission’s happy conclusion was that poverty had fallen from 37 percent since its last measurement in 2004-05.

It is difficult to decide which is the more remarkable figure here. The fact that more than six decades after India gained independence, and after two decades of some of the highest economic growth rates in the world, almost a third of the country was still poor—or the fact that India’s highest planning body actually considers anyone earning more than $0.52 a day as not fitting into their definition of poor. Activists pointedly asked the government economists if any of them could live on that amount in New Delhi; the response, of course, was a resounding silence.

If even slightly more realistic figures are used, the grim reality of poverty in India is revealed. Taking the World Bank criterion of $1.25 (PPP) a day, for instance, there were 456 million “poor” Indians (42 percent of population) in 2005. Estimates that take nutritional and caloric needs into account bump the number in poverty up to 60 – 80 percent.

Development’s failed promise

This is not how it was supposed to be. Post-independence, an industrial model of “development” had promised to eradicate poverty. When this was seen to be clearly failing, partly due to the inefficiencies of a state-led economy, the country was taken into the era of economic globalization with the same promise. It has now been two decades since the introduction of new economic policies in 1991, which included a shift away from an inward-focused model of ...

Recent news headlines are a clear intimation that the gods are not on our side.  “Our” in this case can be read as the U.S., the West, or the Planet we call Earth – all apply.  Here’s a sampling:

“Dismal Job Market Pushes Dow into 275-Point Plunge”
 (DailyFinance)

“Obama Ordered Cyber Attacks on Iran”
 (New York Times)

“American Nuns Fight Back Against Vatican Crackdown”
READ FULL POST 3 COMMENTS

As a general rule, as communities grow, they lose social cohesion. There is a tricky tension between growing a group and a maintaining sense of personal belonging for members.

Like other voluntary associations, social movements struggle with this. But we can learn important lessons from the places that have figured it out—even from unlikely places like Saddleback “megachurch” in Orange County, CA.

Over 20,000 people attend Sunday worship at Saddleback, and yet members experience a strong, deep sense of belonging. That’s because Pastor Rick Warren has created “a church out of a network of lots of little church cells—exclusive, tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another’s homes during the week to worship and pray.”

In other words, the secret is small groups.

Progressive social movements don’t often take inspiration from conservative megachurches. But the lessons about organizational structure may be worth a second look. (Hat tip to Dave Pollard for pointing this out.)

Say a new activist works up the courage to attend a forum or rally. She may find herself part of a large, anonymous crowd. Of course, it is essential to provide such open spaces for people to join the movement, and it’s essential that we make them welcoming and inviting (like a Sunday worship service). But people don’t stay deeply involved with a movement for long if they don’t make connections with others.

So we should ask: within our movements, are there opportunities to join a small, closely knit group? The group that will become your glue to the overall movement? That is ...

It’s happening in Buenos Aires. It’s happening in Paris and in Athens. It’s even happening at the World Bank headquarters.

The global economy is finally shifting away from the model that prevailed for the last three decades. Europeans are rejecting austerity. Latin Americans are nationalizing enterprises. The next head of the World Bank has actually done effective development work.

Maybe that long-heralded “end of the Washington consensus” is finally upon us.

After the near-collapse of the global financial system four years ago, obituary writers rushed to proclaim the death of the prevailing economic philosophy known as neo-liberalism. “Wall Street’s financial meltdown marks the end of an era, “wrote Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers in Counterpunch at the end of 2008. “What has ended is the credibility of the Washington Consensus – open markets to foreign investors and tight money austerity programs (high interest rates and credit cutbacks) to ‘cure’ balance-of-payments deficits, domestic budget deficits and price inflation. 

It was a tempting conclusion. Putting Wall Street and financial speculators at the center of the universe had generated an economic supernova, and everyone seemed to get the message. Everyone except Big Money, which never received the obituary notice. After some minor tweaking of Wall Street practices, some bailouts of enterprises deemed too big to fail, and the injection of some stimulus spending to arrest the free fall, Washington continued with business as usual. The Obama administration, like the Clinton administration before it, discovered the immense power of the bond market. The IMF and the World Bank, meanwhile, didn’t fundamentally change their policies. And the European Union, led by tight-fisted Germany, continued to back austerity. All the major economic actors held to the old orthodoxy even ...

Over the past few years, former president Bharrat Jagdo has led several initiatives resulting in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country gaining much recognition for its ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation and climate change efforts.

But in spite of these efforts, officials here say Guyana, population 750,000, "is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change".

"We continue to be affected by extreme weather patterns and events, in particular, intense rainfall leading to floods, both on the coast and in the hinterland areas," Prime Minister Samuel Hinds told IPS.

Approximately 90 percent of the population and most economic activities are located in a narrow strip along the coast, near or below sea level, Hinds explained. As a result, the majority of the population is vulnerable to coastal inundation caused by sea-level rise, or floods.

In 2005, Guyana suffered a major flood, with three weeks of continual heavy rains wreaking economic havoc, the equivalent of 67 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Jagdeo has been championing the cause of developing countries in the fight against climate change. He has also brought to the forefront the role that the country's forests have been playing, and can continue to play, in addressing climate change.

It was under his leadership that Guyana's low carbon development strategy, which is commonly known as the LCDS and has received widespread national support and international acclaim, was developed in 2009.

Under the programme, the country receives payment for forests' ecosystem services. The funds are used to set economic activities on an environmentally friendly, low-carbon trajectory for growth and development.

In November 2010, Guyana and Norway established a partnership - the second biggest interim REDD+ agreement in the world - through which Norway committed to ...

Nearly four years after the start of the global financial crisis, many are wondering why economic recovery is taking so long. Indeed, its sluggishness has confounded even the experts. According to the International Monetary Fund, the world economy should have grown by 4.4% in 2011, and should grow by 4.5% in 2012. In fact, the latest figures from the World Bank indicate that growth reached just 2.7% in 2011, and will slow this year to 2.5% – a figure that may well need to be revised downwards.

There are two possible reasons for the discrepancy between forecast and outcome. Either the damage caused by the financial crisis was more serious than people realized, or the economic medicine prescribed was less efficacious than policymakers believed.

In fact, the gravity of the banking crisis was quickly grasped. Huge stimulus packages were implemented in 2008-9, led by the United States and China, coordinated by Britain, and with the reluctant support of Germany. Interest rates were slashed, insolvent banks were bailed out, the printing presses were turned on, taxes were cut, and public spending was boosted. Some countries devalued their currencies.

As a result, the slide was halted, and the rebound was faster than forecasters expected. But the stimulus measures transformed a banking crisis into a fiscal and sovereign-debt crisis. From 2010 onwards, governments started to raise taxes and cut spending in response to growing fears of sovereign default. At that point, the recovery went into reverse.

Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook READ FULL POST 1 COMMENTS

Kim, who will take over from the incumbent, Robert Zoellick, Jul. 1, prevailed over two highly regarded candidates, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and former U.N. under-secretary general for economic and social affairs Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian who also served at the head of his country's finance, agriculture and planning ministries.

Ocampo had withdrawn from the race last weekend in favour of Okonjo- Iweala, who served as the Bank's managing director from 2007 to 2011 and enjoyed the support of the African Union (AU) and several emerging countries, notably South Africa and Brazil, as well as more than three dozen former senior Bank officials who signed an open letter on her behalf released here last week.

But that was not enough to overcome the built-in and increasingly criticised voting majority held by the North American, European, and Japanese representatives on the board.

"You know this thing is not really decided on merit," Okonjo-Iweala told reporters in Nigeria just before the executive board was to convene. "It is voting with political weight and shares, and therefore the United States will get it."

Similarly, Ocampo, whose candidacy was supported by scores of development economists around the world who are critical of the neoliberal orthodoxy the Bank has championed for most of the past three decades, denounced the selection process as a "political exercise" when he announced his withdrawal.

For their part, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in developing countries welcomed Kim's selection even as they criticised the process by which he was selected.

"Dr. Kim is an excellent choice for World Bank president and a true development hero," said Oxfam's Elizabeth Stuart. "But we'll never know if he was the best candidate for the job, because ...

People in many developing countries often lack access to clean water, but the approach to remedy this problem has shifted in recent years to rely more on the private sector. Yet, as this new report and several other watchdog groups have shown, the change has been more harmful than helpful.

Corporate Accountability International, the U.S.-based non-governmental organization that published the report, has called on the World Bank to stop funding the private water sector and start redirecting its money to public and democratically accountable institutions.

The release of the report, entitled "Shutting the Spigot on Private Water: Case for the World Bank to Divest", coincides with the start of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's 2012 Spring Meetings.

The World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has spent 1.4 billion dollars on private water corporations since 1993, according to the report.

As of January 2013, that investment will increase to 1 billion dollars per year. The report also says that the IFC is attracting 14 to 18 dollars of follow-up private investment for every 1 dollar it directly invests.

This money helps explain why the World Bank and the IFC continue to fund private water corporations, even though roughly one third of all private water contracts signed between 2000 and 2010 have failed or are in distress – four times the failure rate of comparable infrastructure projects in the electric and transportation sectors, according to CAI.

"A tremendous failure"

"Rather than focusing on guaranteeing access to clean and affordable water, the World Bank has promoted ...

With three nominees now in the running to become the World Bank’s next president – Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Colombian Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo, and the United States’ nominee, Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim – this is the moment to step back and assess the Bank’s trajectory. Unless the Bank’s next president has a clear vision of the way ahead, and the gravitas to withstand the institution’s internal pressures, he or she will be swallowed up by its complex machinery and unwieldy processes.

Global attention has been focused on weighing the three candidates’ strengths and qualifications, particularly their economic and financial credentials. But the real challenge lies in providing direction for the World Bank that reflects the world as it is, and re-calibrating the Bank’s tools accordingly. Inevitably, the new course hinges in part on recognizing that economics and finance, while integral elements of all areas of the Bank’s activities, are no longer the institution’s main drivers.

The World Bank’s traditional instruments have been (and still are) low-interest loans, interest-free credits, and grants. But the Bank’s core philosophy has rested on lending, with interest, to middle-income countries and channeling the ensuing funds to the poorest countries eligible for assistance. Today, owing to the conditionality of its loans, the Bank is losing competitiveness vis-à-vis the plethora of actors, both public and private, that crowd the development scene. Meanwhile, the Bank is emerging as a vital – indeed, indispensable – source of expertise and technical assistance, as well as a provider of global public goods.

Building on these strengths, the Bank must be willing to understand its client countries’ realities, rather than pontificate, and to balance its country-based work with its global roles. While ...

In an open letter sent to the Bank's executive board Wednesday, 39 former senior Bank staff endorsed Okonjo-Iweala's candidacy, citing her "deep experience in international and national issues of economic management", which includes four years as the Bank's managing director. 

"She would hit the ground running and get things done from the start," the former officials, who included senior vice presidents, vice presidents, and directors, wrote. "In a word, she would be the outstanding World Bank President the times call for." 

In another letter released Thursday, more than 100 economists endorsed Ocampo, arguing that his experience leading the ministries of finance, agriculture and planning, as well as stints as the head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and as U.N. under-secretary general for economic and social affairs, made him "the most suitable candidate for World Bank President". 

The signers included internationally recognized figures, primarily from North America, Latin America, Europe, China, and India, including former Bank officials, ministers of finance and development, and central bank governors, as well as academics. 

The endorsements are coming as the Bank's executive board prepares to interview all three candidates early next week and reach a final decision the following week, by the opening of the annual Spring meetings of the Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

The current race is the first since the Bank was created at the Bretton Woods conference in ...

European civil society organizations continue to demand that international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund apply the same standards of transparency and accountability to their internal affairs that they demand for governments across the world.

These demands are being made just ahead of the spring meetings the IFIs will hold later this month in Washington D.C., and refer in particular to the nomination of a new president for the World Bank.

"The election of the new president of the Bank is typical of the lack of transparency and democracy that reigns in the international financial institutions," Peter Chowla, an economist working for the Bretton Woods project (BWP), told IPS.

The BWP, a London-based international coalition of economists and anti-globalization activists, focuses its work on the IFIs, to challenge their power, open policy space, and promote alternative approaches.

Traditionally, the U.S. government and the European Union share the leading positions at the IFIs. While the U.S. government occupies the coveted presidency of the World Bank with a candidate of its own, the EU places one European technocrat at the helm of the IMF - no fair election process precedes either of these appointments.

Last year, the French government obtained the backing of European governments to name former French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, despite vociferous opposition from developing countries.

This year, U.S. president Barack Obama has nominated Korean-born physician Jim Yong Kim to become the Bank’s next president.

Although there are two alternative candidates for the position, the present Nigerian minister of finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and her former Colombian counterpart José Antonio Ocampo, it is taken as given that ...

US President Barack Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has been well received – and rightly so, especially given some of the other names that were bandied about. In Kim, a public-health professor who is now President of Dartmouth University and previously led the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, the United States has put forward a good candidate. But the candidate’s nationality, and the nominating country – whether small and poor or large and rich – should play no role in determining who gets the job.

The World Bank’s 11 executive directors from emerging and developing countries have put forward two excellent candidates, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia. I have worked closely with both of them. Both are first-rate, have served as ministers with multiple portfolios, have performed admirably in top positions in multilateral organizations, and have the diplomatic skills and professional competence to do an outstanding job. They understand finance and economics, the bread and butter of the World Bank, and have a network of connections to leverage the Bank’s effectiveness.

Okonjo-Iweala brings an insider’s knowledge of the institution. Ocampo, like Kim, brings the advantages and disadvantages of being an outsider; but Ocampo, a distinguished professor at Columbia University, is thoroughly acquainted with the World Bank. He previously served not only as minister of economics and finance, but also of agriculture – a critically important qualification, given that the vast majority of the developing countries’ poor depend on farming. He also brings impressive environmental credentials, addressing another of the Bank's central concerns.

"Follow ...

Obama has shown real leadership with this appointment. He has put development at the forefront, saying explicitly, “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency.”

Kim’s appointment is a breakthrough for the World Bank, which I hope will extend to other global institutions as well. Until now, the United States had been given a kind of carte blanche to nominate anyone it wanted to the World Bank presidency. That is how the Bank ended up with several inappropriate leaders, including several bankers and political insiders who lacked the knowledge and interest to lead the fight against poverty.

In order to break this tradition, and to underscore the critical importance of putting a development leader in charge of the Bank, I entered the campaign myself, and I was deeply honored by the public support that I received from a dozen countries, and by the private support of many more. Kim’s nomination was a win for all, and I was delighted to withdraw my candidacy to back him.

READ FULL POST 4 COMMENTS

Obama nominated Dartmouth University president Jim Yong Kim, M.D. to head the United Nations World Bank. Most people think that UN agencies benefit poor people, but this is far from the truth.

The UN World Bank claims to fight poverty in developing nations by financing infrastructure projects. But the UN World Bank is really a tool used to acquire Third World natural resources through conditions on loans that are extremely difficult to repay. The raw resources are then privatized by insider multi-national corporations. The World Bank actually creates more poverty.

The nomination of Jim Yong Kim indicates that the World Bank may shift away from focusing on infrastructure and will instead turn toward providing health care in Third World countries. Jim Yong Kim’s areas of interest include vaccines for tuberculosis as well as drugs for HIV and AIDS.

Kim brokered a deal with Big Pharma and the UN World Health Organization for expanding the pharmaceutical drug market to a larger populace in exchange for lower drug prices for second-line tuberculosis drugs. Second-line drugs are used when basic treatment fails because of drug resistance. Drug resistance similar to the new ‘resistant White Plague‘ brought about by big pharma’s drugs. Many in the medical community believed it would be dangerous to distribute second-line drugs widely. Kim is also responsible for pushing HIV/AIDS retroviral drugs in developing nations.

HIV/AIDS