Analysis
IMF and World Bank must support a global goal to end extreme inequality
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- Written by Max Lawson
Rapidly rising inequality will be high on the agenda at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington this week. Oxfam has been warning of the scale of the problem, a paper published ahead of Davos this year revealed that 85 people own the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. Thomas Piketty has identified runaway economic inequality as threatening us all. The pope and president Obama agree.
Read more: IMF and World Bank must support a global goal to end extreme inequality
Follow the money
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- Written by Bretton Woods Project
Interesting report on the World Bank and its use of financial intermediaries.
Can development happen when investing in private banks?
Doing Business with the World Bank: when 'development' drives poverty and inequality
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- Written by Martin Kirk/The Rules
The thing about 'international development' is that it’s a bit of a murky, catchall term. It’s got a good feel to it – if you’re involved in international development, you’re more often than not seen as one of the good guys − and it swirls around in a bucket of meaning alongside similarly noble-seeming notions such as 'foreign aid' and 'disaster relief'. 'International development' could be helping people escape from the ruins of an earthquake or the ruins of economic mismanagement, but it is generally understood to be about 'doing good'.
How would you feel, then, if some projects that came under the umbrella of 'international development' were hiding something darker, less altruistic and far more self-interested? What if some groups charged with leading global development were actually doing more for a small group of transnational elites than for the 870 million people in the world suffering from chronic undernourishment or the 1.2 billion living on less than $1.25 a day?
Well, in many ways, the World Bank, with its $30 billion annual budget, is doing just that and contributing to misery and environmental destruction along the way.
Read more: Doing Business with the World Bank: when 'development' drives poverty and inequality
Let them eat cake! IMF the Equality Champion?
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- Written by Bretton Woods Project
IMF staff discussion note finds inequality impedes growth, redistribution does not
Fund refuses to connect findings to its policies or lending programmes
Quasi-official policy paper examines fiscal policy tools to combat inequality, but not approved by board
NGO studies show inequality impacts political, social and democratic dimensions, not just growth
Don't say we weren't warned ...
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- Written by Jonah Busch
Please take a moment to read the newly released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability." It's a frightening look at the future of our planet, based on the collective volunteer work of dozens of top scientists across fields synthesizing the findings of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles.
This report is the second of four that comprise the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The first report released last November (which I wrote about here) establishes that warming of the climate is unequivocal and that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming. This newly released second report describes the impacts that climate change is already having on people, and is projected to have in the future. The third report, to be released in two weeks, will describe the actions people can take to slow climate change. A fourth report in October will provide an overall synthesis.
Peace and Social justice
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Study the past if you want to define the future … (Confucius)
Reflections on the commemorations of the First World War: Peace and Social Justice
‘Whereas universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice …’ (Preamble to the Constitution of the International Labour Organisation, 1919).
The end of the nineteenth century was a period of globalization, just like today. International trade and the financial sector were booming. Leaving apart the link between globalization, nationalism and war, I want to briefly focus on the lessons that were learnt in that period. These lessons remain highly relevant and useful today, but they are too often ignored.
In 2014, in Belgium and in other European countries the First World War is being commemorated, one century after its start. We should use this opportunity to look at all dimensions of its legacy, and up till now, this is not the case. One of the important lessons that were drawn from the murderous conflict 1914-1918 was this: peace is not possible without social justice.
Post-2015 Development Agenda: Moving to Self-Sufficiency
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- Written by Ann Hollingshead/GFI
For fifteen years, eight goals have represented the yardstick by which development is measured. These are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in the United Nations Millennium Declaration at the beginning of the century, and represent a commitment to a noble new partnership to drastically reduce poverty worldwide. It is through this Declaration that all 193 member states of the United Nations and 23 organizations have agreed to achieve a set of eight goals by 2015.[1]
Now that we are rounding into the last year of the Declaration, the UN and other aid organizations are developing the post-2015 Development Agenda and asking the important question: “So now what?”
And the answer is self-sufficiency.
Read more: Post-2015 Development Agenda: Moving to Self-Sufficiency
World-Wise Europe: Case studies on Policy Coherence
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- Written by Eurodad/CNCD
This report by Eurodad member CNCD, in collaboration with several national NGO platforms and Eurodad, is part of the project “World-Wise Europe: A more coherent Europe for a fairer world”, which aims to strengthen public and political support for ensuring Policy Coherence for Development (PCD). The report includes case studies from Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to illustrate the coherence between development cooperation and non-development policy areas. In addition, the report unites several national platforms of development NGOs, as well as Eurodad, who participated by developing general recommendations.
The case studies illustrate how uncoordinated policy formulation in non-development areas can end up contradicting and undermining development cooperation efforts.
IMF: to solve inequality, tax food, books and coffins
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- Written by David Steven/Global Dashboard
The IMF has attracted plenty of favourable attention from unfamiliar places with two ‘staff papers’ (we’re enjoined to consider them as the personal opinions of the authors, not the IMF itself, an injunction that we all merrily ignore). The first argues that inequality reduces growth, while redistribution is an effective tool for reducing it; the second explains how governments should use taxes and public expenditure to achieve this goal.
Inequality campaigners are over-the-moon to have the IMF on their side. Oxfam International hails the IMF for “mashing myths and debunking dogma in economic policy,” while the Oxfam inequality guru, Nick Galasso, is fulsome in his praise of an “ideological sea change” at the Fund (“if If it sounds like I have a crush on the IMF’s Managing Director, Christian Lagarde…”).
But what tools does the IMF think we should use to shrink inequality?
Read more: IMF: to solve inequality, tax food, books and coffins
The radical implications of being an internationalist
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- Written by Jonathan Glenn/ODI
From Sharing the World's Resources:
What does it mean to be an internationalist today? This was the topic of a panel discussion and symposium held in October last year by the New Internationalist (NI) magazine to commemorate their 40th birthday. In a series of 5-minute opening talks, the 7 panellists each gave a perspective on how development and social change has evolved since the 1970s, and pointed the way forward for the global justice and environmental movements in the critical years ahead. All of the views expressed and the ensuing discussion was informative and persuasive, as can now be viewed on NI’s YouTube channel, but one submission had a particular resonance for us at STWR – that of Jonathan Glennie from the Overseas Development Institute who gave a pre-recorded video message from Colombia. - See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/blogs/radical-implications-%E2%80%98internationalising-our-minds%E2%80%99?dm_i=M4P,296FJ,9JNJFJ,8634O,1#sthash.XUXd4ZPB.dpuf
For a transcription of his presentation, see below:
Read more: The radical implications of being an internationalist
