Aid & development linkage

by Danielle Cave - 20 December 2010 8:53AM

A great blog post linking together corruption, cooperation and size of governments in developing countries. (via @chrisberg, Institute of Public Affairs.)
Is vertical farming going to transform the way cities feed themselves? While it sounds like a sustainable path to food security in large crowded cities, the comments below this Economist article are hugely sceptical. One mathematical guru points out that, in order to feed New York City, 70,000 'Empire State building sized' vertical farms would have to be constructed at a cost of approximately $4.3 billion.
Every time I look at the Gapminder 2010 map, which logs life expectancy at birth vs. GDP per person, I learn something new. I was struck by the divergence of results from countries of the Asia Pacific. Having recently spent some time in Bolivia I was shocked to see the poorest country in Latin America performing better than many of our nearest neighbours.
Sam recently featured a presentation by Gapminder founder Hans Rosling about global income inequality. One blogger says the video is seriously misleading.
New Zealand's Parliament has published a report on Pacific Island relations that admits Wellington's aid efforts have yielded 'disappointing results'. Some of the main recommendations of the report, which doesn't seem to be online, are listed here.
The US State Department, in conjunction with USAID, has finally released 'The First Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review: Leading through Civilian Power'. The executive summary starts with, 'somewhere in the world today, a jeep winds its way through a remote region of a developing country', and proceeds to tell a story that seeks to explain how development fits into US foreign policy. Hillary Clinton says in her introduction that the US is 're-establishing USAID as the world's premier agency'.