The United States continues its decline for the third year in a row, falling one more place to fifth position. In addition to the macroeconomic vulnerabilities that continue to build, some aspects of the United States’ institutional environment continue to raise concern among business leaders, particularly related to low public trust in politicians and concerns about government inefficiency. On a more positive note, banks and financial institutions are rebounding for the first time since the financial crisis and are assessed as somewhat sounder and more efficient.

Germany maintains a strong position within the Eurozone, although it goes down one position to sixth place, while the Netherlands (7th) improves by one position in the rankings, France drops three places to 18th, and Greece continues its downward trend to 90th. Competitiveness-enhancing reforms will play a key role in revitalizing growth in the region and tackling its key challenges, fiscal consolidation and persistent unemployment.

The results show that while competitiveness in advanced economies has stagnated over the past seven years, in many emerging markets it has improved, placing their growth on a more stable footing and mirroring the shift in economic activity from advanced to emerging economies. 

The People’s Republic of China (26th) continues to lead the way among large developing economies, improving by one more place and solidifying its position among the top 30. Among the four other BRICS economies, South Africa (50th) and Brazil (53rd) move upwards while India (56th) and Russia (66th) experience small declines. Several Asian economies perform strongly, with Japan (9th) and Hong Kong SAR (11th) also in the top 20.

Read the report here: http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-2011-2012/

Over the last 15 years, the world community has not only learned more about preventing and ending conflicts but the success rate for peacemaking has also gone up.

A number of research groups keep track of conflicts around the globe – their numbers, their origins, and their resolutions. Most find hope for reducing war and violence in some measure because of people who, yes, promote peace.

Compared to the 20th century, many more conflicts these days are being negotiated to a conclusion than are being started. “Wars between states are far less common than they were in the past,” declares a 2011 World Bank report, “and civil wars are declining in number.”

The best explanation, says longtime peace activist Gareth Evans, “is simply the massive increase in international activism – across the whole spectrum of conflict prevention, conflict management, and post-conflict peace building activity.”

Peacemaking operations, for example, have tripled since 1989 to more than 30 places worldwide. And, Mr. Evans notes, there was a tenfold rise in the number of groups that support peacemaking and follow-on initiatives from 1991 to 2007.

Mediators have become better at negotiating peace deals that stick and the United Nations has become better at peacekeeping. In the 1990s some 45 percent of peace settlements broke down within five years. In the first years of the new century the success rate was closer to 85 percent.

Defining peace, let alone measuring it, is almost as challenging as achieving it. Still, many groups try.

The Institute for Economics & Peace, for example, has issued a “Global Peace Index” for each of the last five years, ranking 153 countries on 23 indicators for their level of conflict and violence – or “peacefulness.”

Its latest report reveals that in two indicators – military spending and relations between neighboring states – the world is more at peace over the past year. Still, the level of violence went up, in large part because of the pro-democracy upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East, mainly in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.

Yet that violence in the region may end up ending the inherently unstable dictatorships there and bring about peace-promoting democracies – as could be the case for Egypt and Tunisia.

Another “conflict counter” is the Human Security Report which comes out of Canada’s Simon Fraser University. In a report last December, it found “serious” conflicts (those with 1,000 or more reported battle deaths per year) and mass killings have seen an 80 percent decline since the early 1990s. “Long-term trends are reducing the risks of both international and civil wars,” the report stated.

What are some of those trends – beyond better peace promotion?

1. Greater interdependence between nations, mainly through trade.

2. The growth of better governance, through more democracies and anticorruption campaigns.

3. Less ideology-driven wars – except for radical Islamic groups (which have declining Muslim support).

4. Rising use of visual technology such as cellphone cameras to record violence – and then using it to shame or convict perpetrators.

Such trends help redefine peace as something other than a lack of violence. The world is adapting higher values, such as justice and a reverence for life. Peace is being seen more as the natural state for humanity.

Still, one in four people still live in conflict-affected states or in countries with very high levels of criminal violence. The region with the least peace is Sub-Saharan Africa. And the nature of conflict itself is constantly changing.

“Norms about wars, and especially about the protection of civilians caught up in them, have evolved rapidly, far more so than anyone would have guessed even half a century ago,” writes scholar Joshua S. Goldstein in the latest Foreign Policy magazine.

“Similarly rapid shifts in norms preceded the ends of slavery and colonialism, two other scourges that were once also considered permanent features of civilization. So don’t be surprised if the end of war, too, becomes downright thinkable.”

Plenty of work awaits those who want to promote peace.

Source: the Christian Science Monitor

By: The Monitor’s Editorial Board

Speaking from Seattle, Mr Gates told the Herald Australia had been exemplary in its approach to aid, but ”we’re in a period where a lot of the richest countries are tightening up their budgets”.

”We’re having to remind them that the needs of the poorest are not the way that people should balance their budgets.”

Both the government and opposition are committed to increasing Australia’s foreign aid to half of 1 per cent of gross national income, or more than $8 billion a year, by 2015-16. Tomorrow night’s budget is likely to include Australia’s biggest one-year increase in foreign aid, adding substantially to the $4.3 billion set aside this financial year.

Yet for some it will still be well short of what is needed.

While careful to avoid direct criticism of Australia’s ”point five” aid target, Mr Gates said Australia could spend billions more helping the world’s poor.

”Point seven per cent [of gross national income] is what you should move to.

”The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway – those people have been above point seven per cent for quite some time. The United Kingdom, [which] of course has had a 10 per cent budget deficit, amazingly will get to the point seven per cent by 2013.”
Australia donates at less than half that rate. This year’s aid budget is 0.3 per cent of gross national income.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, is considering the findings of the first big review into aid effectiveness in almost 15 years.

It is expected to be published late next month.

Mr Gates questions the aid budget’s emphasis on better governance in the countries Australia helps, which accounts for more than one-fifth of all the money spent.

“I’m a big believer in health being a high percentage because health is so catalytic … It actually, amazingly as you have more healthy children, it reduces population growth.”

SOURCE: Sydney Morning Herald
AUTHOR: Tim Lester

The winners of the competition have now been announced, and some of the apps are truly outstanding and useful. They range from simple Google Chrome extensions to fully fledged applications such as StatPlanet.

The Apps for Development website and winners can be found here.

Key Facts

Source:World Development Report 2011

Links

• Check out the World Development Report homepage for more information on the report.
• WDR2011 Data Visualizer
• Download the full text of the report
• World Bank’s Conflict and Development blog

Multimedia

Nigel Roberts, WDR2011 Director

_____________________________

Two-thirds of developing countries are on track or close to meeting the millennium development goal (MDG) targets for extreme poverty and hunger, say the World Bank and the IMF.

According to the Global Monitoring Report, released on Friday in Washington during the Bretton Woods spring meetings, the number of people living in extreme poverty – on less than $1.25 per day – will drop to 883 million by 2015, from 1.4 billion in 2005 and 1.8 billion in 1990.

The joint IMF-World Bank report explores current successes and shortfalls on achieving the MDGs, attempting to project future progress while also offering policy prescriptions – with an emphasis on sustained economic growth.

Much of world’s recent progress on the first goal – to halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people in extreme poverty and those suffering from hunger – reflects rapid growth in China and India; the report projects that, by 2015, only 4.8% of China’s population will be in extreme poverty compared with 36% in sub-Saharan Africa. While the world is set to halve extreme poverty by 2015, 17 African countries are still off-track.

Progress on reducing poverty at national levels often obscures deep-rooted disparities, says the analysis, adding that enduring issues of social exclusion could lead to uneven improvements that would put at risk aggregate success.

At a press conference on Thursday, Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, warned that high and volatile food prices could prevent success on poverty and hunger targets. Forty-four million people have “fallen into poverty” since June 2010, said Zoellick.

“If the food price index rises by just another 10% … another 10 million people will fall into extreme poverty where people live on less than $1.25 a day. And a 30% increase would add 34 million more people to the world’s poor.”

Zoellick’s proposed steps to reduce the impact, and likelihood, of future food crises include a new code of conduct on export bans, improved information on the quality and quantity of food stocks, and preparing small stocks of humanitarian food in places like the Horn of Africa.

“The World Bank and the regional development banks can help countries with quick support for the most vulnerable through effective, targeted nutrition and safety-net programmes rather than mistaken price controls or broad-based increases in wages,” he added.

Many developing countries are close to meeting targets on primary education completion and eliminating the gender disparity in education, as well as access to safe drinking water. However, no low-income country has reduced mortality for under-fives sufficiently and they are unlikely to meet that MDG target.

Maternal and child mortality targets remain among the most intractable of the goals: 40% of developing countries are far from meeting health MDGs, despite unprecedented amounts of aid funnelled into the health sector in the past 10 years.

Delfin Go, the World Bank’s lead economist and the report’s lead author, said: “Certain health and education outcomes are disappointing, in part because spending has focused largely on increasing the quantity of services, while not paying enough attention to quality.” Go suggests improving incentives for health workers by, for example, paying on the basis of their performance, as well as “strengthening institutions”.

The report points to Rwanda’s experience, where the government supplemented primary healthcare with a “cash for performance” programme – paying clinics on the basis of, for example, the number of children vaccinated, the number of women who start to use contraceptives, the number of mothers who give birth in the presence of skilled midwives, or the number of malnourished children referred for treatment.

But 45% of developing countries are far from meeting the notoriously neglected international targets on sanitation.

And lagging furthest behind on MDG targets are the so-called “fragile states”. These countries “require additional support, to help in building institutions and moving towards a virtuous circle of development, peace, and security”, says the report.

The World Bank also urges a stronger focus on development in fragile states in its 2011 development report (WDR), released on Monday last week, in advance of the meetings. But, warns the WDR, the greatest blocks to reaching international development goals are the chronic cycles of criminal and political violence.

SOURCE: The Guardian
AUTHOR: Claire Provost

But IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano said he had “no doubt that this crisis will be effectively overcome”.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have been battling to cool reactors and spent fuel ponds to avoid a large-scale release of radiation.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the quake and tsunami has risen to 8,450, with nearly 13,000 people missing.

‘Positive developments’

The Fukushima plant was crippled by fire and explosions after the 11 March quake and tsunami.

Electricity has been restored to three of six reactors and engineers hope to test water pumps soon.

Earlier, some workers were temporarily evacuated from the complex after grey smoke was seen rising from the No 3 reactor.

Reports said the smoke appeared to have come from a pool where the reactor’s spent fuel rods were kept.

Radiation levels did not appear to have risen significantly though after the smoke was spotted, the IAEA and Japan’s nuclear safety agency said.

White smoke was later seen rising from the No 2 reactor.

“The crisis has still not been resolved and the situation at the [plant] remains very serious,” Mr Amano, the head of the IAEA, told an emergency board meeting.

But he said he was starting to see positive developments; the cooling system had been restored to reactors 5 and 6, and they “are no longer an immediate concern”.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission – whose staff are in Tokyo conferring with the Japanese government and industry officials – said the Japanese nuclear crisis appeared to be stabilising.

The NRC said that reactors 1, 2 and 3 had some core damage but their containment was not currently breached.

Meanwhile, the government has ordered a halt to some food shipments from four prefectures around the Fukushima nuclear plant, as concern increases about radioactive traces in vegetables and water supplies.

Villagers living near the plant have been told not to drink tap water because of higher levels of radioactive iodine.

The suspension – which the government said was just a precaution – applies to spinach from the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma, as well as milk from Fukushima.

Over the weekend spinach and milk produced near the nuclear plant was found to contain levels of radioactive iodine far higher than the legal limits.

However, senior government official Yukio Edano told a news conference that eating or drinking the contaminated food would not pose a health hazard. “I would like you to act calmly,” he said.

The World Health Organization said it had no evidence of contaminated food reaching other countries. However, China, Taiwan and South Korea have announced plans to toughen checks of Japanese imports.

Bad weather forced Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to cancel a planned visit to emergency workers near the Fukushima plant.

It is also making the recovery work a much more difficult task.

Search-and-relief efforts in the prefecture of Miyagi, where the police chief believes the final quake-tsunami death toll could reach 15,000, have been delayed by driving rain.

“We basically cannot operate helicopters in the rain,” Miyagi official Kiyohiro Tokairin said.

“We have been using helicopters to deliver relief goods to some places but for today we have to switch the delivery to places that we can reach by road,” he said.

More than 350,000 people are still living in evacuation centres in northern and eastern Japan.

There are shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine in the shelters, officials say.

Some aid from foreign countries has started to arrive, and the government has started the process of finding temporary housing in other parts of the country for those made homeless.

Workers in north-east Japan have begun building temporary homes for the displaced. The prefabricated metal boxes with wooden floors were put up on the hillside near the devastated town of Rikuzentakata.

Nearly 900,000 households are still without water.

In a rare piece of good news, an 80-year-old woman and her grandson were found alive on Sunday in the rubble of their home in Ishinomaki city, where they were trapped for nine days.

SOURCE: BBC

Japan has received offers of assistance from 14 international organizations and 102 countries (including a number of unexpected aid donors such as embattled Afghanistan and poverty-stricken Cambodia), according to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Japan has accepted help, mostly in the form of search and rescue teams, from 15 countries. Here is an overview of some of the help pouring into Japan as it struggles to dig out from Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami.

United States

The US is sending the largest contingency to Japan: 148 personnel and 12 rescue dogs hailing from Los Angeles and Fairfax County, Virginia. They will be mostly operating in Ofunato, about 100 miles northeast of Sendai and northwest of the earthquake’s epicenter.

A US aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, has been diverted from exercises near South Korea to the Japanese coast, where it is serving as a refueling platform for Japanese helicopters conducting search and rescue efforts. The US military has also been assisting with humanitarian aid drops when needed.

But Japan has an effective, well-oiled disaster relief infrastructure, making it more capable of responding to the earthquake and tsunami than any other country that could swoop in. The main thing it needs now is cash, which it can then use as it sees fit, according to USAID, which is tasked with coordinating US government assistance, NPR reported.

As of right now, $100,000 has been offered to Japan via the US embassy in Tokyo, according to an embassy briefing.

China and greater Asia Pacific

Japan has accepted assistance from a number of its neighbors, including those with whom it has rockier relations. China has pledged the most so far. The Chinese government on Monday announced $4.6 million in disaster relief funding, which comes on top of almost $1 million offered by the Red Cross Society of China, Xinhua reports. China has also sent 15 search and rescue workers into the country, who are working in the same area as the US teams, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, South Korea has sent 105 search-and-rescue personnel, Taiwan has sent 30, and Singapore has sent five. South Korea and Taiwan’s workers are in Sendai City, the closest major city to the epicenter, while Singapore’s are operating in Fukushima, southwest of Sendai and the site of one of the nuclear reactors not functioning properly.

Australia and New Zealand

New Zealand, still digging out from its own 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Christchurch in late February, has sent 65 personnel to Japan to work in the Miyagi Prefecture. According to multiple news organizations, Japan’s own earthquake rescue specialists were still on the ground in Christchurch when their own country was struck by earthquakes March 11. At the time, Japan had already pledged $500,000 in funds to aid New Zealand’s rebuilding efforts.

The New Zealand rescue workers will be working alongside 72 Australian personnel and two rescue dogs. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the country is also providing a large military transport plane to help move Japanese troops carrying out rescue work, fresh water, and equipment.

Europe

Five European countries so far have personnel on the ground or on their way to Japan: 134 from France (the second largest search and rescue contingency, after the US), 64 from the United Kingdom, 54 from Russia, plus three vehicles, 41 from Germany, and 27 from Switzerland. The UK personnel will be located in the same area as US and Chinese aid workers, while the rest of the European countries will be in Miyagi Prefecture like almost all of the other countries putting boots on the ground.

The European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT), which included 500 bone marrow transplant centers across Europe, is also on alert to potentially treat Japanese radiation victims, according to the BBC. “We have contacted Japan directly and have also offered our services to them through the World Health Organization,” said Ray Powles, chair of the nuclear accident committee for EBMT.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional economic and geopolitical bloc that excludes China, has also offered whatever assistance Japan needs. Mongolia and Sri Lanka have together offered $1 million in funds.

International organizations

Several UN agencies are working with the Japanese government based on their areas of expertise.

The UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team has dispatched seven people to Japan to assist in an advisory role and to verify and disseminate information – an atypical role for them, but the best one in this situation because Japan’s disaster relief infrastructure is functioning well without them, according to the team’s press release. They will conduct a reconnaissance mission March 16.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization are also in contact with Japanese officials.

The International Federation of the Red Cross is on the ground, prepared to coordinate help from other countries’ Red Cross societies and provide support and assistance to the Japanese Red Cross. The World Food Program is also working alongside the Japanese Red Cross to assist with securing and distributing supplies.

SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor

That may not be far from the truth. An analysis by The Economist shows that regional income disparities have widened in several rich countries during the recession (see article), and are particularly big in Britain and America. The gap between Britain’s poorest regions (mainly in the north and Wales) and its richest (in the south-east) has widened for the past 20 years. It grew worse during the recent recession, and is likely to widen again as government budget cuts fall disproportionately on poorer regions. GDP per head in the poorest quarter of Britain’s regions is now lower than in the richest part of China.

Does this matter and, if so, what should be done about it? To most politicians the answer to the first question is self-evidently yes. “Slipping behind Shanghai” is hardly a vote-winning slogan. And all too often the answer to the second question has involved subsidies. The European Union’s “structural funds”, more than a third of the EU’s budget, are designed to shift cash from richer to poorer parts of the single market. America has pumped federal dollars into deprived regions such as Appalachia. Now Britain’s coalition government is dusting off Thatcherite ideas for boosting left-behind areas with tax breaks: on March 5th George Osborne, the chancellor, announced the creation of ten “enterprise zones” that will get preferential tax treatment and simplified planning rules.

People not places

Unfortunately, the record of such regional-development efforts is poor. Despite massive transfers, the gap in economic vibrancy between Italy’s richer north and its poorer south is still huge: only 40% of people in Calabria have a job, compared with 65-70% in Lombardy and Bolzano. Even policies that, in principle, should be helpful, such as improving infrastructure, are no panacea. West Virginia has masses of roads, but is still poor. And good intentions can backfire: “enterprise zones” and other regional tax incentives often shift jobs away from places that don’t get the subsidy, rather than create new ones.

Instead of obsessing about revitalising lagging regions, politicians would do better to focus on the people within them. A region’s prosperity is determined by its inhabitants’ productivity and thus by people’s skills, the scale of capital investment and the pace of innovation. These are bound to vary across regions. Cities are more productive than rural areas. But not all cities are equal: the characteristics that helped Manchester and Liverpool prosper in the 19th century, such as proximity to cotton mills and the sea, are less useful in the 21st century, when Britain’s strengths—in finance and other skilled services—decisively favour London and the south-east.

This points to a different set of policies. First, make it easier for people to move. Given inherent gaps in regional productivity prospects, there is a case for boosting mobility from declining regions to prospering ones. In Britain the main problem is the fetish for home-ownership and high house prices in the south-east, partly the result of severe shortages of supply. Easing planning restrictions below the Watford Gap would be a better way of helping Britons than propping up the north.

Second, focus on education. In Sunderland only 21% of adults have any form of higher education, compared with 39% of Londoners. Though there are other ways that the British government can help boost productivity—from strengthening infrastructure to cutting red tape—the single biggest reward will come from improving northerners’ educational performance. To be sure, the better-educated might then move. But they, and Britain as a whole, would be much better off.

SOURCE: The Economist