If you live in an urban environment, you probably have a house, legal or illegal, on a street with neighbours in a certain part of town. You know where you’re allowed to go and where you’re not within the highly structured urban geography – pavements for people, roads for cars. Particular buildings and places are [...]
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Redefine wealth for global prosperity
“We can’t begin to tackle poverty without growth.” The words of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, speaking in the US last year. Since the fragile peace negotiated in 2003, Liberia has had steady economic growth at an average of 7% a year. If the country can continue to build, tackle corruption, increase access to education and [...]
I paid a bribe in Kenya
Growing up in Madagascar and Kenya, I became rather familiar with corruption. Demands for bribes crept into the most everyday of activities, from picking up parcels at the post office, to getting a prescription, or connecting a phone line to the house. Policemen would stop cars at random and tell the drivers their papers were [...]
Offsetting gone wrong
A couple of months ago I expressed my interest in offsetting the carbon emissions I can’t cut, clearing the decks as best I can at the end of the year. I still intend to do so, and am looking into how best to do it. Not all offsetting schemes are created equal, as The Ecologist [...]
The 200 year wait for water and sanitation
The summer of 1858 as gone down in British history as the year of ‘the great stink’, when the Thames became so clogged with effluent that Parliament refused to sit because of the smell. It was the turning point for water and sanitation in London, and once the MPs had calmed down and straightened their [...]
Land grabs: the unintended consequences of biofuels
Access to land is one of the oldest sources of conflict. It’s written deep into Britain’s history through the enclosure acts and the seizing of the commons – a process that shaped the landscape, drove people into the cities, and through the industrial revolution, changed the world forever. It’s an injustice that’s never been corrected, [...]
Back the Robin Hood Tax at the G20
When I first read about the financial transaction tax, it was a campaign adrift. A proposal had lost in the European parliament by just six votes – the UK being the leading voice against it. That was 2005, and the decade long campaign for the tax appeared to fizzle out. A few years and a [...]
Twin your toilet
Two toilet related links today, neither of them particularly serious, but it’s friday after all. First up is Toilet Twinning, an innovative way of raising funds for improving sanitation in poor countries. Around the UK, you often enter a town and find a sign declaring it to be a twin of some roughly equivalent place [...]
How much aid is good aid?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the distinction between useful aid and bad aid, prompted by Dambisa Moyo‘s critique of aid. But how much aid is good, and how much is detrimental? That’s a question answered by a new report from ActionAid (pdf). They reckon that out of $120 billion given in 2009, [...]
The Institute of Brilliant Failures
Here’s a website with an interesting counter-cultural perspective. The Institute of Brilliant Failures believes that our best learning experiences come from our failures, and that we should not fear them. We should celebrate those who have the courage to try something, even if it doesn’t work. I agree. I’m an ideas man, and I’ve always [...]
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