world food prize winner visits the capital

the IDRC has been hosting a number of big name speakers as part of their 40th anniversary celebrations. they call it their speakers of reknown series and it includes a bunch of big names that happen to be gracing the capital region. i'm particularly interested in checking out trevor manuel when he drops by in may... should be interesting anyway... perhaps he'll be able to share some fun stories about zuma... i bet there are a lot to go around.

so, anyway, i checked out one of these talks the other night - ok... a month ago now. Gebisa Ejeta was the guest of honour, the 2009 recipient of the world food prize. here's the blurb from the idrc site...

In a public lecture at IDRC on February 3, 2010, Ethiopian-American agronomist Gebisa Ejeta made an impassioned case for revitalizing agricultural research to improve the lives of the one billion people who still suffer chronic hunger. He argued for a renewed commitment to development assistance centred on supporting local researchers working on the ground to solve local problems. Farmers in the developing world need new knowledge and methods, so that agriculture can become part of the solution to an increasingly complex set of global challenges, including climate change and water scarcity.

mr. Ejeta is definitely an interesting individual that has done a lot in the field of agricultural science that pertains to the developing world - especially the horn of africa. however, i was utterly disappointed by the talk (that you can listen to on the idrc site...).

it was a tad disappointing to listen to the tired old technological arguments for tackling famine. even when some spoke up during question period to mention their own negative experiences of the green revolution and the overall limiting aspects of an emphasis on technology, there was a token nod to being careful but little recognition of anything more. no one raised the issues of access, of the need to foster diversity (often hampered by technology - especially through the patenting of seeds), or of the troubling aspects of current agricultural practices. one issue i found convenient was the fact that he mentioned the need to increase food production to meet future needs, but did not suggest that an examination of current diets or agricultural practices needs to be undertaken. population growth was not tackled, but neither was the increasing reality of the intensification of resource dependent agriculture.

my memory is a little vague on certain other aspects of the talk but i remember being disappointed by his dismissal of concerns over genetically modified organisms. he argued that the argument was misplaced and that as research into this field increased, concerns would diminish. i really sensed a disconnect on this issue, that he could not understand the moral questions associated with gmos and therefore talked around the issue.

that's about it... hopefully the talks will get better - feel free to check out the links to add your two cents.

The Exponential Function

Youtube was made for this kind of stuff. Dr. By Dr. Albert A. Bartlett,
Professor Emeritus in the Department Of Physics at the University of Colorado At Boulder, speaking on the exponential function which basically stipulates that at 7% growth a number will double within 10 years. This applies to population growth, economic growth, energy use, etc.

The talk, entitled Arithmetic Population & Energy, is riveting for what it is - a classroom lecture with little in the way of pyrotechnics or dancing hamsters... although the tie is pretty awesome.

the Economist on drugs

boing boing recently blogged of a post from the economist magazine on how the legalization of drugs is the "least bad solution" to ending the drug wars.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

the articles touches on a few moral and health issues but its main punch lies in its economics, although it fails to fully develop these issues within its compacted argument. for instance, mark frauenfelder raises the issue of the expansion of the prison industry in the united states as a reason why legalization efforts will not gain traction. the economist does not attempt to contextualize the argument to today's recession. indeed, while the argument is listed as being posted on march 5th, the economist author makes a passing comment on how "the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”"

What Would the Poor Say?

Recently NYU held a conference entitled "What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation". You can find many of the ppts of the talks here at William Easterly's new blog "Aid Watch".

I've only looked at a few of them, but I thought I'd highlight two of them who take fairly (although not entirely) contrasting positions. First is Esther Duflo's talk that focuses on the benefits of experimental design for improving aid interventions. The other is William Duggan's short piece arguing against just using statistical evaluation. He suggest two other methodological techniques: historical political economy and qualitative investigation. What I find interesting about both of these is that ultimately they are both asking the same question: what works? but with a very important difference in terms of what the explanation looks like. In other words, they are both looking to test and generate theory, but theory of very different types.

I think Chris Blattman's notion of Evaluation 2.0* nicely captures the means that these two seemingly contrasting approaches can be combined, namely by defining explanation as the identification of the working causal mechanisms. The answer to what works? is the itetification of the active causal mechanism (ideally the intervention), its structure, what its causal tendency is, and how it interacts with particular aspects of the context. In other words, relevant research question is: what works (or not), how, for whom, and in what contexts? From that we can move to the methodological design that provides the best possible answer given the research opportunities the intervention affords. 

* This notion of a causal mechanism has been around a while in the phil. of social science, but Blattman's example is nice and clear.  This type of theory is applicable at both the macro and micro level.

Mariana van Zeller

I must admit that I have a bit of a crush on Mariana van Zeller. She is a guerrilla video journalist, traveling to various corners of the globe to cover the grimy and striking images of development and its challenges. One of her recent reports is on the Chinese influence in Angola (in particular) and Africa (in general). Each story is compacted into about half an hour or less and while there is a political point to be made in each story van Zeller employs what I consider to be an evenhanded approach to often difficult (and dangerous) topics.



Many of van Zweller's stories are produced by Current TV as part of their Vanguard programme. Current TV is the ballyhooed venture of Al Gore that focuses on short podcasts instead of regular programming.

The above report on China's influence in Angola reminded me of my travels in southern Africa and seeing the influence of Chinese workers (in the construction of buildings, including the library at the University of Namibia) and hearing how the local populace feels about China's interests in Africa.

Barack Obama, Brazilian Style

PBS Frontline has done a story on Claudio Henrique, a black candidate for mayor in recent municipal elections who campaigned under his own name and that of Barack Obama.

The Places We Live

In 2008 the percentage of people living in cities surpassed that living in rural areas. A growing proportion of city dwellers is comprised of those who call 'slums' home.

A project of the Nobel Peace Center documents the experiences of living in four slums from different parts of the world. Jakarta, Caracas, Nairobi and Mumbai are showcased through a series of photos and stories on "the Places We Live".

It's an interesting exhibition and look into a side of development often sadly overlooked (although in the news of late with Slumdog's success...).