Good Ideas For Bad Times

A look at the innovative thinkers and bold ideas that kept 2010 from being a total wash.

BY CHARLES KENNY | DECEMBER 2010

Was there any news this year that wasn't bad for poor people? Natural catastrophes seemed to be almost deliberately targeting the world's worst off, from the earthquake in Haiti to floods in Pakistan. A number of the countries that can least afford to fail have pinned their hopes on mineral wealth, which, at least according to conventional wisdom, harms more than it helps. Others look to foreign aid or paychecks sent home from overseas, but those are in tight demand as we face yet another year of grim numbers for global finance, budget cuts in rich countries, and toughening immigration rules. The poor need more from the world's governments and its big givers just as austerity is coming back into fashion.

And yet, all the bad news came with a surprising upside. Driven by the need to do more with less, the year's boldest innovators turned up better, simpler ways to use our shrinking resources to improve global quality of life: ideas like creating demand for development so that poor people can better help themselves and handing money directly to those who need it, as well as new approaches to measuring and mapping that offer better, faster information about what aid needs to go where. This moment of global insecurity has also called into doubt some old shibboleths -- not least that national borders as we know them are good and that resource wealth is bad.

In what sometimes looked like the worst of times, it was actually the best of times for ideas -- and these ideas will shape how the world recovers in the years to come.

Illustration by Guy Billout for FP

 

Charles Kenny is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation.

FLOATINGPOINT

9:10 PM ET

November 28, 2010

why not encourage remittances by giving more visas to migrants f

Well, now rich countries are structuring their immigration policy to reap off the brightest minds and new-found wealth in developing countries. Keep dreaming on!

 

GRANT

3:40 AM ET

November 29, 2010

I can't comment on most of

I can't comment on most of these but I have to point out serious flaws in two of these ideas.
The first is the emphasis on remittances for Haiti. While this would send money back to Haiti it would also guarantee a brain drain that would destroy Haiti's already-fragile hopes of rebuilding.
On Africa I actually have to put the flaws into a list because they're too extensive for a few sentences.
1. To start the only entities that would have the legal power to do that would be the current governments (and not a one of them would). Any other state doing so would be nothing more than colonialism.
2. After that is the fact that it's blatantly obvious that all this would accomplish would be to add fifty more wars to Africa and in the process send famine, disease, plague, genocide, corruption and arms sales rocketing upwards while also decreasing development, international cooperation and peace.
3. Then there's the fact that it's impossible to redraw the maps along nice lines giving each group what they want. There are too many border towns with mixed populations, too many areas where a group would be seriously impoverished because their new state had no resources while another group had them all and too many areas where we have no idea which group speaks for the locals (or perhaps we should just take the word of whoever has the most guns about what should happen).
4. Why would nations that would suddenly be strategically and economically disadvantaged by the changes accept these changes at all? What's to stop them from declaring the decision to be biased and made by people who had no understanding of the situation?
5. Lastly, why are we allowing breakaway parts of Somalia, Sudan and DR Congo set any policy for an entire continent?

 

IAN

4:35 PM ET

November 29, 2010

On the Africa thing

I agree with every point that Grant makes about that whole "colonial lines need to be redrawn" refrain. Saying something like that is easy, actually getting the countries to go along with it is something else entirely.

Its one of those say it and sound smart sayings, but when someone wants to talk about the particulars of actually going ahead with it, no one has any idea.

Maybe what we need to do is get past the "no straight lines" philosophy. Instead of providing constant tension by deliberately saying various peoples should split apart, thus making them instictively act with suspicion towards people of other tribes in their nation, why don't we work towards fostering a national unity of the various peoples and tribes in their respective countries, thereby stabilizing the cycles of suspicion and hatred and working towards a truly peaceful multicultural state, regardless of whether they have straight lines borders?

As an example: What about Ghana? It is generally brought up as a model for Africa to follow, yet it most definitely has straight-lined borders that most definitely cross tribal territories. Just because some fail doesn't mean they can't succeed. I would suggest that the inability of the governments to provide true representation of all its peoples is as much to blame as the colonial treaty lines. While many are failing, the fact that there's even one that's working under the exact same conditions proves that we are looking at this the wrong way.

Instead of the pessimistic "split everyone apart and hope that works" philosophy, we should go with the "work towards a true national identity with full multiculturalism as its base" idea. In the long run, I believe that would be far more helpful for Africa than having a hundred small, stagnant countries that can barely provide their population's life necessities.

See what I did there? Another smart line that sounds good, but I wouldn't have the first clue of actually getting that to work. I should be an "expert" with my ability to throw out great ideas like that...

 

PHILIP HENIKA

12:39 PM ET

December 3, 2010

2048: Humanity's Agreement to Live Together

The goal of the "2048: Humanity's Agreement to Live Together" project facilitated by Dr. Kirk Boyd (UC Berkeley) is the draft of an International Bill of Rights which will be enforced via an International Court - a Court in place in all 192 countries by 2048. The five freedoms enforced by the International Court will be freedom from want, from fear, of speech, of religion which were freedoms set forth for "everyone" by Roosevelt and which became the basis for the 1948 UN Charter. A fifth freedom - freedom for the environment assures clean water and air as a human right. A hypothetical example might include the cholera epidemic in Haiti. If clean water was considered a human right precedent and enforceable by law then perhaps the response to the cholera epidemic would extend beyond just emergency treatment. Nations such the US are more than prepared for war - the US with its 5,000 nukes could destroy the planet several times over. Yet, we always shortchange responses to such disasters as Katrina, or HIN1 etc. Enforcable human rights would end war and redirect our attention to problems that the world shares i.e. pandemics, climate change, and energy and money waste.