debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
At its best, the G8 can provide the coordinated action that helps the poorest countries to catch up. Historically, the main focus of such action was on aid, but the fiscal context is now profoundly different. While G8 governments have no spare money, many poor countries have the prospects of serious money from recent natural [...]
Watch political philosopher Thomas Pogge set out his plan to end global poverty at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London. Philosopher Thomas Pogge: A Global Plan to End Poverty from The RSA on FORA.tv
The lives of the world’s poorest people have improved more rapidly in the last 15 years than ever before, yet I am optimistic that we will do even better in the next 15 years. After all, human knowledge is increasing. We can see this concretely in the development and declining costs of new medicines like [...]
In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril. The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a [...]
In March Kenya discovered oil. Even before it has proved to be commercial, and years before the money will flow, oil has already had an impact: by April public servants were demanding a large wage increase. Oil discoveries are psychological earthquakes: people imagine that good times have arrived. Such a narrative is the default option for [...]
During the nineteenth century London grew from a city of one million people to six million, a rate of expansion commensurate with the rapid urbanization currently underway in Africa. Further, per capita income in London in the mid-nineteenth century was roughly comparable with that in Africa today. But unlike modern Africa, nineteenth century London and [...]
The world is at a crossroads. Either the global community will join together to fight poverty, resource depletion, and climate change, or it will face a generation of resource wars, political instability, and environmental ruin. The World Bank, if properly led, can play a key role in averting these threats and the risks that they [...]
Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth’s vital resources. Our current global economy, however, is not sustainable, with more than one billion people left behind by economic progress and the earth’s environment suffering terrible damage from human activity. Sustainable development requires mobilizing new technologies that are guided [...]
This year, the Global Footprint Network has declared September 27th as “World Overshoot Day”. It was only September, yet all of the Earth’s natural resources for the year had already been used up. Our planet’s clock is ticking. Today, we are using 1.5 times the amount the planet has to offer. But, there remain people [...]
Long-term sectoral economic development seems to follow a stable pattern: For most industrialised economies the dominant share of agricultural production begins declining early on until it reaches single-digit percentages. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector builds up at varying velocities, reaches a peak and starts giving way to a growing service sector. A sector that, in many [...]
Poor countries have access to world markets and rich countries’ technologies. In principle, they should catch up. Yet the record belies this expectation. But this column argues labour productivity in manufacturing displays a clear tendency towards convergence, unconditional on the countries’ institutions or policies. The policies that matter for growth are thus those that bear [...]
The countries most affected by Europe’s sovereign debt woes and Europe’s most energy dependent countries are largely the same. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain all import more than two thirds of their energy requirements. The context is one where Europe depends more generally on a wide range of commodities imported from abroad. The last [...]
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