Brookings: Topics - Global Development

Russia's Development of Siberia: What is to be Done?

Clifford G. Gaddy — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:30:00 -0400

Russians are famous for their “eternal questions.” “Who is to blame?” and “What is to be done?” are the best-known. Another of the timeless quandaries seems to be, “What is the future of Siberia?” In 2003 Fiona Hill and I wrote a book about the legacy of Soviet-era development of Siberia for today’s Russia, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold. Ten years later, people still ask us the Siberian question. Last week I received an inquiry from a journalist who had been tasked to write about Russia’s new plans for Siberian development. My replies to a couple of her questions might be of interest.

Could Siberia be Russia's secret economic weapon?

It is interesting that you entertain the thesis that Siberia could be "Russia's secret economic weapon." My view is pretty different. It’s the same that Fiona Hill and I expressed in our book. I recently had a chance to restate it directly to a Russian audience.

This past February I was invited to Krasnoyarsk for the annual Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum. At a breakout session moderated by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, economist Vladislav Inozemtsev and I debated the governor of Krasnoyarsk Kray, Lev Kuznetsov, and the aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska, about policies for Siberian development. My basic points were as follows:

First, Siberia is part of Russia. That means Siberian development has to be viewed as a national problem, not a local one. Second, even though there are important noneconomic reasons - national security, culture, history - why one might prefer one or another path for Siberian development, one needs to know the economic costs and benefits. Taken together, these two points mean that the question has to be: Does this or that plan for Siberia reflect the best use of Russia’s resources for the nation’s well-being? Specifically, as far as regional policy is concerned, the general rule should be: "Locate economic activity in Siberia only if it cannot be done more efficiently (at lower cost) elsewhere."
The Siberian dilemma is that, while Siberia has more natural wealth than any other place in the world, it also has unequaled disadvantages of cold and remoteness. Siberia's main activity will continue to be resource extraction. (This is not the same as low-tech. Resource industries do not have to be low-tech.) Siberia does not have a comparative advantage in manufacturing. The share of manufacturing and other industry in Siberia should be relatively small. It should be businesses that primarily serve the local region. In the future, large-scale manufacturing plants should not be located to Siberia.
In the past, (largely in the Soviet period, although to some extent even before that) this rule of efficient economic location was violated. It may or may not have been justified for non-economic reasons. That does not matter today. Russia today is burdened with massive amounts of physical and human capital that is handicapped by location. Today, the point is to remove the handicaps if possible, and most important, avoid unnecessary ones in the future. Merely compensating for the disadvantages through subsidies, artificially low rail and electricity tariffs, and the like, is not enough. That is still costly. (Russia’s handicapped capital is the theme of my new book with Barry Ickes, Bear Traps on Russia’s Road to Modernization.)
The issue of Siberian development must also consider the particular problem Russia now faces with its population. Russia's most critical bottleneck in the next 20-30 years is its shrinking labor force. Under those circumstances it makes no sense to have policies intended to attract more people to Siberia. They would be less productive there than elsewhere, and that would weaken the national economy. In the future, Siberia must be developed by a different approach than in the past. Massive concentrated investments to build and support large cities was the past approach. Now, Russia needs to find ways to develop its resources with the fewest number of people possible. So-called Canadian methods — temporary stationing of work teams for resource development at the point of extraction, and so on — would be more important for Russia than Canada.

Why Russia has been late to develop its eastern territory further?

You ask why Russia has been late in developing its eastern regions. I'd say it's just the opposite: its East is far over-developed. Consider the contrast between Russia, on the one hand, and the US and Canada, on the other. In terms of relative shares of total national population and territory, Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East are roughly 15 times more densely populated than Alaska and Canada's northern territories. Alaska has only 710,000 residents; Canada's Northwest Territory and Yukon Territory together have 79,000. Russians complain about the "depopulation" of the East. But if Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East had followed the American and Canadian patterns, they would in total have barely 1 million residents instead of their current 15 million.

But if your focus is on Siberia as a target for international investment, then all that matters is whether these investments can be profitable for the investor. If Mr. Putin wants to defy sound economics and damage Russia’s national economic health by spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize manufacturing, high-tech, or build infrastructure in Siberia, it may still represent an opportunity for a business that jumps on that bandwagon. But then the profitability of the venture will depend on the continued commitment (and resources) from the government to subsidize the East. The Russian state will have to continue to be strong enough to channel resources to that end. This gets to the question of the durability of the Putin regime and/or the likelihood that any successor government will share his same commitment and ability to distribute oil and gas rents to subsidize Siberia.

Authors

Clifford G. Gaddy

Image Source: © RIA Novosti / Reuters

Inclusive Education: A Rising Tide Floats all Boats

Allison Anderson and Carol Grigsby — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:24:00 -0400

Among the five transformative shifts considered essential within the U.N. High-Level Panel’s (HLP) report to the secretary general for the post-2015 development agenda is one which addresses the Bali communique’s emphasis on social inclusion: “Leave no one behind.” The HLP report, launched at the end of May, points to the challenges of ensuring inclusion for marginalized groups in the post-2015 agenda. Few are more marginalized than those with disabilities, however there are compelling reasons to ensure that learning goals are formulated with this significant segment of the population in mind.

By one widely used, albeit speculative estimate, some 93 million children– or 1 in twenty of those aged 14 or younger – live with a moderate or severe disability of some kind. In cases where conflict and the prevalence of landmines overlaps with poverty, disability can be even higher. For instance in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, Brookings’ Echidna Global Scholars Program alum Khadim Hussain found that disability rates are between 15 and 20 percent. Studies across countries show a strong link between poverty and disability, which is in turn linked to gender discrimination, negative health outcomes and employment challenges. While children with disabilities are often caught in a cycle of poverty and exclusion and are less likely to receive an education, a quality education can contribute to poverty reduction in their lives.

The HLP report’s illustrative goal for education, “Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning,” focuses not only on access, but also on learning standards for reading and writing, work-related skills and other measurable learning outcomes. As the education debate shifts from access to access plus learning it is important to turn attention to what learning means for this segment of the population.

The goal of education in the 21st century is not simply the mastery of content knowledge, but the mastery of the learning process: education should prepare all people for a lifetime of learning. All children have the potential to learn, but some learning indicators will need to be different for those with disabilities, both cognitive and physical. However, the individuality of disabilities and their associated learning challenges can seem to the challenge of equitable learning so daunting that it may seem too complex to take on. Yet now is an opportune moment to do so, when the Learning Metrics Task Force is grappling with the very nature of what constitutes learning across a broad range of domains and how to measure it. Moreover, addressing issues associated with learning for persons with disabilities can illuminate some of the more challenging aspects of the wider learning agenda in ways that may benefit others as well, including in these following three ways:

1. Teaching and learning techniques associated with inclusive education for children with disabilities can benefit a broader range of students. An inclusive education entails providing meaningful learning opportunities to all students, allowing children with and without disabilities to attend the same age-appropriate classes at the local school with additional, individually tailored support as needed. It requires a child-centered curriculum that includes representations of the full spectrum of people found in society (not just persons with disabilities) as well as physical accommodation, such as ramps instead of stairs and doorways wide enough for wheelchair users.

Mobile technologies and universal design for learning, a set of principles for curriculum development that gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn through the creation of instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs, are likely to become a mainstream aspect of teaching methodology over time. Ultimately, these materials can help to reduce access and learning barriers of all kinds and optimize levels of support to allow all learners to learn in ways most appropriate to their needs.

2. The right to education for disabled children, as for any marginalized group, carries with it a transformational impact on the larger learning community, particularly in the lessons on human rights and civic values that teachers and learners without disabilities receive through an inclusive education.

3. Attention to varying patterns of ability and disability tends to highlight that learning is not exclusively a classroom experience. While this should not be a reason to keep children with disabilities out of classrooms nor to direct them automatically toward vocational alternatives, differentiated learning styles can and do demonstrate that non-traditional settings can at times better serve the learning needs of individuals. At its best, learning occurs throughout the day and in various environments, and this challenges the global education community to place even greater emphasis on the factors contribute to educational quality and learning.

With the issuance of the HLP panel’s report and as groups mobilize for the next phase of discussions and action toward defining the post-2015 development agenda, the education community may find that aiming high to ensure no one is left behind will yield unexpected and positive benefits in learning for all. Hopefully the challenge and benefits of integrating learners with disabilities into the global development agenda will be more fully explored during the U.N. General Assembly High-Level Event on Disabilities on September 23, 2013.

Authors

Allison Anderson
Carol Grigsby

Image Source: © Muzaffar Salman / Reuters

Arts Education in the Arab World Deserves More Respect — And Resources

Maysa Jalbout — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:48:00 -0400

New evidence suggests that arts education helps students develop 21st century skills such as creativity, imagination, communication and teamwork.

If the Arab world continues to under-value arts education, it risks falling even further behind developed countries in preparing students for the knowledge economy.

Art for Art's Sake - a report released by the OECD today - should change the perspective of any country in the region that is truly aspiring to become an innovation hub in the 21st century. The UAE is well placed to advance arts education as it has made both education reform and access to the arts priorities of its national development strategy.

Innovative societies value artists as much as scientists and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship, in particular, is rightfully gaining recognition in the region as a wellspring of innovation. Arts education should have the same level of support.

Researchers have found that artists possess the type of habits of mind sought after in the job market, such as observing, persisting and stretching oneself. Arts graduates are among the most likely to hold highly innovative jobs - at par with graduates in engineering and computing. They are also needed as part of a growing trend of collaborative teams in companies that are competing in product development and marketing based on design. After all, it was smart design, not new technology, that gave Apple such success with the Ipod and Ipad.

Yet Arab governments, educators and parents continue to push students into traditional jobs.

Rabea Ataya, the CEO of Bayt.com, the Middle East's most established job site, says employers are searching for young people with good arts education, and pay them well. This information should debunk the myth an arts education does not lead to a good job.

The OECD study says music education strengthens IQ and academic performance, and may facilitate foreign-language training. Theatre education strengthens verbal skills. Visual arts strengthen geometrical reasoning. Drama enhances empathy and emotion regulation. Infusing the arts into schools makes their culture more inquiry based.

Governments, academics, the private sector and philanthropists all have roles to play in increasing awareness of the benefits of arts education.

But in the Arab world few schools integrate arts education.

Three new initiatives could provide inspiration.

Finland created Aalto University, merging three schools to bring together art, engineering and business and nurture innovation and entrepreneurship. Aalto is attracting top academics and students, in Finland and internationally.

South Korea has added arts into its already successful STEM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education. The idea is to increase graduates' self-confidence, creativity and teamwork.

Singapore established the School of the Arts, where students learn about physics through sculpture and math through music, for example. Practising artists work with students, emphasising experimentation, expression and discovery. The results are outstanding. The first cohort of students all passed the International Baccalaureate diploma examination; 44 per cent of them were in the top 5 per cent of students who took this exam worldwide.

The Arab world needs bold initiatives of its own, and the UAE has the necessary resources.

Governments, academics, the private sector and philanthropists all have roles to play in increasing awareness of the benefits of arts education. Training must be focused on using the arts to give students new ways to understand their subjects. Employers need to explain the need for arts graduates and the jobs available to them. The arts have always been a rich part of the Arab world's history and culture. Islamic art dating back to the seventh century is still celebrated today for its immense impact on architecture, painting, crafts and literature.

Amid concerns that globalisation is eroding Arab culture, investing in arts education would be sensible. Artists record experiences in ways history books cannot capture, they preserve culture by exploring its depths and unraveling its myths, and they give a voice to people's greatest hopes and dreams.

Every student in the Arab world should have the opportunity to develop artists' habits of mind and to reap the benefits, personally and professionally.

Authors

Maysa Jalbout

Publication: The National

International Actions to Support Green Growth Innovation Goals

Nathan Hultman, Jason Eis and Katherine Sierra — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:11:00 -0400

Achieving global goals for poverty reduction, economic growth and environmental health will require widespread innovation and implementation of new and appropriate “green growth” technologies. Establishing a sufficiently large suite of innovative technology options, suitable to diverse economies, and at the urgent pace required will involve unprecedented innovation activity not only from developed regions, but also from new clusters and enterprises in emerging economies and least developed countries. By linking national governments, the private sector and the international community, international cooperation can contribute substantively in five green innovation priority areas:

Cultivating innovation capacity and ecosystems in least developed countries (LDCs);
Facilitating and strengthening existing entrepreneurial cultures;
Significantly scaling up research and development (R&D) activities through competitive grants;
Encouraging financing for large-scale demonstration and deployment of complex but transformative new technologies; and
De-risking entrepreneurial investments and stimulating intellectual property (IP) sharing.

In this brief we describe several ways that international cooperation can play a critical role in facilitating this transformative process and outline six existing institutional structures that have been invoked as possible examples for scaling up to foster green innovation more broadly. Finally, we suggest several policy recommendations that are feasible in the near term.

Read the full paper »

Downloads

Download the full paper

Authors

Image Source: © Bogdan Cristel / Reuters

A Study on the External Environment of Chinese Investments in the United States

Qiao Yu and Shuqing Zhang — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:47:00 -0400

China’s outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) is entering a stage of rapid development. Outbound investment in 2010 was $68 billion, first among developing countries and fifth in the world. However investment has been concentrated in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The share of investment in developed countries in Europe and North America has been relatively low. Up to the end of 2009, China’s accumulated FDI to developed countries totaled $18.17 billion, 7.4% of its total stock of outbound FDI. Of this, FDI stock in the United States was $3.34 billion, just 1.4% of China’s total outbound FDI stock. And, in great contrast to China and the United States’ status as one another’s second largest trading partners, China’s stock of FDI in the United States only represents 0.1% of the total stock of FDI to the United States. This is far below the share of FDI stock in the United States by Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Brazil and India, and is merely equal to the levels of New Zealand and Austria. According to calculations by the Asia Society, by 2020 China’s outbound FDI will surpass $1 trillion USD, of which a good share will flow to developed countries like the United States.

Many in America view Chinese foreign investments with both hope and concern. On the one hand, Chinese investment plays a positive role in driving local economic growth and in creating job opportunities; many American state governments have established dedicated organizations in China responsible for attracting investment and business from China. According to materials from the Council of American States in China, by now more than half of all U.S. states have established representative offices in China to promote bilateral trade and Chinese investment in the states. On the other hand, differences in the political and cultural traditions of the United States, America remains anxious, worried about the threat to national security that would be posed by Chinese investments controlling some areas of the United States economy. The fact that in recent years Chinese investments in the United States have been repeatedly frustrated by political forces is closely related to this mindset among certain groups in the United States. For example, the attempt by China National Offshore Oil Company to acquire Unocal in 2005, the joint bid by Bain Capital and Huawei Technologies to acquire 3COM in 2007, China Northwest Nonferrous International Investment Company’s bid to acquire Firstgold in 2009, and the 2011 bid by Huawei to acquire the U.S. server technology company 3Leaf all ultimately fall apart on the grounds of national security concerns following interference from various circles in the United States.

Against this backdrop, research on the external environment facing Chinese companies investing in the United States is of critical importance. As we look into the environment for Chinese investment in the United States, we cannot only focus on the commercial risks of natural disasters, unexpected accidents, market changes, mismanagement and currency fluctuations. We must also look more deeply at the external environment facing Chinese investment and the related non-business risks such as political and operational risks. ‘Political risk’ refers to the passive risk posed by a lack of familiarity with laws governing investments by foreigners as well as the active risks posed by the influence of political forces in the review and supervision process. ‘Operational environment’ refers to risks of financial losses or litigation that may be posed after market entry by the substantial difference between the United States and China’s legal systems governing environmental protection, product responsibility, intellectual property, labor and employment and taxation.

Downloads

A study on the external environment of Chinese investments in the United States

Authors

Qiao Yu
Shuqing Zhang

Image Source: © China Stringer Network / Reuters

Strengthening U.S. Civilian Actions for International Development

George Ingram — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:35:00 -0400

Today the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition issued its second Report on Reports, Smart Power Agenda for Advancing America’s Global Interests. This new report updates a previous paper from 2009, Putting ‘Smart Power’ to Work, which synthesized areas of agreement in the recommendations from 20 different reports. It aimed to provide the incoming Obama administration with a guide to the best thinking on how the U.S. government could improve its international operations. In the last several years, however, there has been a further flood of such studies, and this new synthesis, in addition to summarizing areas of agreement looking forward, also provides references and updates to some of the key administration and congressional initiatives of the last four years.

The new report identifies six areas in which there is consensus among many of the reviewed documents. There is no need to repeat what the report presents, but I will add a few specific suggestions on four areas of agreement.

In the category of strengthening civilian power, it is encouraging to see the broad agreement on the critical need to maintain and expand the progress that has been made in restaffing USAID and the Department of State. But to go further, little progress has been made by either agency in replicating their defense colleagues’ model of an adequately planned and resourced career-long professional development program for all Foreign Service officers. The Foreign Service seeks to attract the best and the brightest and then does little to maintain and advance the skills and knowledge they bring to the job. Even broader, USAID’s personnel system is an antiquated hodge-podge of workarounds. The system needs an overhaul, commencing with cooperation with Congress to write a new human resource statutory mandate that encompasses the requirements of a 21^st century international affairs agenda and modern family life. One aspect can be adapted from USAID’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau which, from its founding, has had the authority to partner its career staff – which has broad knowledge of development and how to work in difficult environments – with short/medium term outside hires with the skills and experience to address highly technical issues.

In the area of results-driven development, the White House took a noteworthy step in the May 9 executive order to all executive departments that raises open and transparent data to a mandated government wide policy. The directive calls for all government agencies to make their data publicly available in accessible, machine readable form. This memo serves as a significant impetus to the U.S. fulfilling its commitment to the International Assistance Transparency Initiative (IATI) and to having all agencies posting their data to the Foreign Assistance Dashboard. Another point is that the community needs to acknowledge, commend and protect the Millennium Challenge Corporation for staying true to one of its founding principles – to undertake independent, rigorous evaluation of its projects – as the first evaluations (five agricultural projects) were made public, with both the good and not so good results included, that reveal useful lessons of what does and does not work. Similarly, USAID is to be commended and encouraged to continue the practice established by the posting of 187 high quality evaluations since 2011.

The rising acknowledgement of the key role the private sector plays in development should be expanded beyond the narrow opportunities for leveraging assistance funds to also looking at the broader impact on development, both positive and negative, of corporate business practices, as modeled in the Oxfam initiative “Behind the Brand”.

On the matter of foreign assistance resources, Congress needs to heed the broad array of voices arguing that reducing funds for the international affairs budget, which has been cut 20 percent since 2010, is short-changing our national security and economic prosperity as well as the important national value of helping those suffering from natural and manmade crises. It further runs the risk of the significantly higher costs associated with country and regional instability and economic and human crises.

The synthesis in the second Report on Reports is intended as a service to busy policymakers to help them identify areas of policy action that garners broad support and thereby help them sort through the many competing priorities. The 20 minute read is well worth the time.

Authors

George Ingram

Image Source: © Brendan McDermid / Reuters

Great Expectations for Post-2015: An Analysis of the High-Level Panel Report

Allison Anderson and Lauren Greubel — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:58:00 -0400

We recently outlined the post-2015 priorities voiced by many civil society and nongovernmental actors within the international education community:

Equitable access to education for all children (especially the poorest and most marginalized).
An emphasis on learning outcomes and quality of education in addition to access.
Learning across a continuum – from early childhood through to adolescents and the transition to work.

The U.N. High-Level Panel’s (HLP) newly released report proposing an ambitious new international development agenda for the next two decades echoes these priorities and highlights education as key to eradicating extreme poverty and achieving sustainable development. In fact the framing of education priorities, which are focused on access to equitable, quality education and learning across the life-cycle, has been repeated in three major reports on the post-2015 process released this month: the HLP’s report: New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development; the executive summary from the World We Want education consultation: Envisioning Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda; and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s report: An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development (See Table).

Proposed Post-2015 Goals for the Education Sector
High-Level Panel report	Quality education and lifelong learning.
Executive summary for the World We Want education consultation	Equitable, quality, lifelong education and learning for all.
Sustainable Development Solutions Network report	Effective learning for all children and youth for life and livelihood.

This is a welcome focus on access plus learning. Moreover, the HLP’s report specifically lists corresponding national targets for education:

increasing the proportion of children able to access and complete preprimary education;
ensuring that children can read, write and count well enough to meet minimum learning standards upon completion of primary education;
having access to lower secondary education and increasing the proportion of adolescents who achieve recognized and measurable learning outcomes; and
increasing the number of young and adult women and men with the skills, including technical and vocational, needed for work.

Taken as a whole, the HLP report builds upon the lessons learned from the current Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) efforts to get all girls and boys into school, but also lays the groundwork to ensure that children stay in school and learn.

Moving Forward

The HLP report identifies crosscutting development challenges including gender discrimination, conflict and crisis-affected environments, broader social inequality and an overall lack of – and urgent need for – data and better measurement. The High-Level Panel’s illustrative universal goals and national targets are not a prescriptive blueprint, but examples to frame continued debate. In order to achieve equitable learning for all, the education community cannot operate in a vacuum and will need to address gender, equity, conflict and other issues such as disability in the coming year as it seeks to refine its post-2015 agenda.

While the HLP report does not recommend a stand-alone goal for addressing inequality, it asserts at the outset that the transformative shift of leaving no person behind, regardless of ethnicity, gender, geography, disability, race or other status, is central to its vision. The report consistently reiterates the need to tackle inequality head-on in and across each of the universal goals they propose. In designing these illustrative universal goals “it would be a mistake to simply tear up the MDGs and start from scratch…new goals and targets need to be grounded in respect for universal human rights, and finish the job that the MDGs started.” For education this would include reaching the yet-to-be achieved MDG of universal access to primary education. The majority of the world’s 61 million out-of-school children are living in poverty, conflict settings or are consistently discriminated against populations such as girls, children with disability and ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.

It was also encouraging to see the HLP report underscore the importance of both data and measurement. Reflecting on the success and weaknesses of the MDGs, the HLP report argues that goals without quantitative targets and deadlines will fail to provide the motivation and accountability necessary for progress. The education community, through the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF), has spent the last year tackling these same challenges in order to determine how best to measure learning outcomes. The recommendations of the LMTF on how to measure learning span across seven domains, ranging from literacy and numeracy to social-emotional learning and the arts. Subsequent LMTF reports will provide concrete recommendations for countries at various levels of capacity so that governments and organizations can not only track how they are doing, but also target policy to address areas of need. The HLP report calls for exactly this type of data across all sectors by recommending that new goals be accompanied by an independent and rigorous monitoring system, with regular opportunities to report on progress and shortcomings at a high political level.

The High-Level Panel’s optimism that the international community will succeed in eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 through a new global partnership that breaks with the outdated “high-income/low-income government-to government concept of the MDGs” is encouraging. While the panel’s recommendations are only the first stepping-stone in the longer-term process of developing the post-2015 agenda, we are encouraged by the holistic focus of the report as well as the specific education goal and associated national targets. As the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals ramps up its discussions, including a focus on education in June, we hope that the recommendations of the High-Level Panel, and the broader consultation forums represented by the World We Want Education Consultation and Sustainable Development Solutions Network reports, are consulted and integrated into their deliberations.

Authors

Allison Anderson
Lauren Greubel

Image Source: © David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters

The Coming Wave

G. Andrew Karolyi, David Ng and Eswar Prasad — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:13:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This piece is part of the June issue of Finance & Development.

As emerging market economies become increasingly important players in the global economy, their share of the global cross-border flows of financial assets is also rising. Because of their strong growth prospects, emerging market economies have attracted foreign investors in search of higher returns, especially at a time of very low interest rates in advanced economies. And flows have also gone in the other direction, as the governments of emerging market economies have built up their foreign exchange reserves by investing heavily in advanced economies.

Recently, another phenomenon has gradually gained momentum: the outflow of private capital from emerging market economies as their investors seek overseas opportunities.

Understanding the volumes and patterns of the various outflows—sovereign and private—and analyzing what influences them will shed light on how the landscape of international capital flows is likely to change as emerging market economies become more integrated into global financial markets. We look at the types of capital outflows from emerging markets and describe some preliminary results from our ongoing research, which shows that the direction of portfolio outflows—relatively small now, but with a large potential to expand—is heavily influenced by proximity and familiarity.

Exporting capital

Led by China, emerging markets added about $6 trillion to their foreign exchange reserves between 2000 and 2012—with nearly all of it invested in securities issued by the major reserve currency economies, mainly the United States. It is likely that these emerging market economies will accumulate foreign exchange reserves at a much slower pace in coming years because most have put away sufficient stocks of foreign reserves to help buffer any future capital flow volatility.

Read the full piece on Finance & Development »

Authors

G. Andrew Karolyi
David Ng
Eswar Prasad

Publication: Finance and Development

Eliminate Poverty - Sustainable Development

George Ingram — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:18:00 -0400

The High-Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda and its secretariat are to be commended and thanked for its report, A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development. The paper is both visionary and realistic, places roles and responsibilities on government, civil society and the private sector, and should appeal to the responsible business person and the practical civic activist – a balance created by the thoughtfulness and comprehensiveness of the framework set forth in the report.

In picking up this report, don’t expect to comprehend it through reading only the executive summary or just focusing on the 12 suggested goals. The report sets out a single, comprehensive framework that needs to be read in its entirety.

From an American perspective, the overall frame reflects our approach to development. For several decades we argued whether development is best promoted through economic growth or human development. This nonsensical debate was finally put to rest with the 2004 legislation creating the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), whose statutory mandate is to pursue poverty alleviation and broad based economic growth – the same as the overarching approach recommended by the High Level Panel.

The report clearly articulates why a single, integrated sustainable development agenda is appropriate:

Without ending poverty, we cannot build prosperity.
Without building prosperity, we cannot tackle environmental challenges.
Without environmental sustainability, we cannot end poverty.

The report makes a careful transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to a new set of global goals. It gives full credit to the power and success of the MDGs and recognizes that 2015 does not close the chapter on them. It further recognizes that the world has dramatically changed since the MDGs were adopted and that they did not at the time nor today represent the full scope of development. So, the new framework continues the important goals of the MDGs and suggests additional ones that more fully incorporate the complexity of development by integrating the range of economic, social, environmental and governance aspects of development.

A close read of the report is required not just because it is the entire framework that must be understood, but also because it is the details that bring it to life and reveal the deep integration of the goals. Further, a quick skim leaves the impression that key ideas are missing – equity, democracy and free enterprise. But a full read reveals that these concepts are incorporated into the framework without using words that are apple pie to Americans, but loaded code words in certain societies.

Equity is not in the suggested goals or indicators, but throughout the framework is the notion of leave no one behind and that every relevant income and social group is to be reached before a goal is considered achieved. More explicitly and importantly, there is appropriate attention to the role of women and girls and the need to end discrimination and violence against them.

The word democracy does not appear, but the elements of democracy do – active civic participation, accountable government, transparency, independent media, freedom of speech and open political choice. These concepts should make democratic governments and organizations applaud the framework and autocratic governments question their own conduct.

The word free enterprise does not appear, but responsibility is put on governments to respect the rule of law and property rights, and to create the economic and regulatory environment in which enterprise can prosper.

The agenda presented in the report goes beyond assistance to other government policies and responsibilities, in both developed and developing countries, in areas such as trade, taxation, job creation, resolution of conflicts, management of natural resources and illicit capital flows. It is universal in that it applies to all countries and to all elements of society.

The report states that all parties are responsible for monitoring progress in these areas and are accountable for achieving the goals and indicators. In that regard, it appropriately recognizes the critical role of good data and calls for a data revolution to improve the quality of statistics and information, which should be available to all citizens.

It also goes further than prior reports and recommendations, which in recent years have recognized the role of government, civil society and the private sector, to also recognize the critical role of subnational government. It is the lower-level government institutions that often are responsible for the action that counts, such as administering rules and regulations, protecting the environment, creating jobs, educating children, etc.

While the report does set forth 12 illustrative goals, more importantly it identifies the criteria for selecting goals. The criteria for appropriate goals are: strong impact; compelling message; easy to understand; measureable; widely applicable; grounded in the voice of the people; and consensus-based. There will be considerable debate over the next two years as to the right goals and benchmarks, but these criteria seem to be a good place to start in assessing them.

Finally, a central theme of the report is the role of a new global partnership to bring together all elements of society to work together in pursuit of the new set of global goals and targets.

While the vision of eliminating poverty by 2030 will sound unrealistic to many, when you look at the financial resources available – the potential for developing countries to broaden the tax base, the opportunity of all countries to collaborate to reduce tax evasion, the untold rents in the resource extracting industries that are lost to constructive use, successful social support programs and the good jobs created by corporations that have integrated shared value into their business practices – it becomes clear that what is missing is the political will and the right policies and programs.

Hopefully the framework presented by the High Level Panel will create a frame for discussion and collaboration on a new set of global goals and targets that will help create the political will to end poverty in our time. But don’t take it from me, read the report in its entirety to see its great value.

Authors

George Ingram

Image Source: © Mohammed Salem / Reuters

China’s Foreign Reserves and Overseas Investment

Thu, 30 May 2013 03:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 30, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM CST

School of Public Policy and Management Auditorium
Brookings-Tsinghua Center

Beijing, China

An outstanding feature of the current world economy is the internal imbalance of the economic structure in the developed entities, which is persisted and expanded due to the global trade imbalance. After the global financial crisis, China’s foreign exchange reserves accounted for 1/3 of world’s total, and 1/2 of China’s GDP. Huge risk exists, when such amount of foreign reserves is exposed to turbulent international financial market.

On May 30th, 2013, the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public policy hosted a public event, featuring Dr. Yu Qiao, nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center, to address the aforementioned issues of China’s foreign currency reserves and its overseas investment. To mitigate the huge risk, as Yu Qiao suggested, a diversified investment portfolio is needed, and the investment demand of China’s aging population should be taken into serious consideration. Dr. Yu’s monograph A Study on the External Environment of Chinese Investments in the United States and his newly-released book China’s Foreign Reserves and Overseas Investment were also presented at the event.

After the talk, Jing Xuecheng, director of China International Economic Relations Association, and Chen Xiaowen, deputy editor-in-chief of the Commercial Press made comments to Yu Qiao’s presentation and book.

Transcript

Chinese Event Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

China overseas investment Yu Qiao Chinese transcript edited

Participants

Panelists

Feng Wang

Director, Brookings-Tsinghua Center
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Global Economy and Development, John L. Thornton China Center

Qiao Yu

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings-Tsinghua Center

JING Xuecheng

Director

CHEN Xiaowen

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Internally Displaced Women: Record Number, Unresolved Challenges

Megan Bradley — Wed, 29 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

With crises unfolding in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and ongoing violence in Somalia, Sudan and Colombia, 2012 saw record-high numbers of people displaced within the borders of their own countries. Half of those displaced are women.

Today in Geneva, Chaloka Beyani, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and our Project co-director, presented a new report to the Human Rights Council on the rights and wellbeing of women uprooted within their own states. The first of its kind, the report examines progress made to date at the local, national and international levels in responding to the rights and needs of internally displaced women, from the development of important standards and protection frameworks to the creation by internally displaced women themselves of organizations dedicated to advancing their rights and carving out solutions to their predicament. The report also analyzes the many challenges that persist despite these accomplishments – from sexual and gender-based violence and inadequate reproductive health care to economic marginalization and exclusion from peace talks and decision-making processes. Perhaps most importantly, the report points to ways in which governments, UN agencies and other actors can help ensure that internally displaced women can enjoy the full range of rights to which they are entitled. These include the development of comprehensive, gender-sensitive strategies to support durable solutions to displacement, and ensuring that displaced women have access to justice mechanisms to redress any violations of their rights.

At the consultations in Geneva that informed the development of this new report, I was moved by the story shared by Colombian human rights advocates of a colleague who had been attacked and sexually abused as a “warning” against speaking up for the rights of internally displaced women. Undeterred, these women continue their work – a testament to the tenacity of survivors determined to see the day when reports like the one the Special Rapporteur presented in Geneva today are no longer needed.

Authors

Megan Bradley

Image Source: © Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters

Africa’s Challenge to End Extreme Poverty by 2030: Too Slow or Too Far Behind?

Laurence Chandy, Natasha Ledlie and Veronika Penciakova — Wed, 29 May 2013 12:56:00 -0400

In a recent paper, we explored the feasibility of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Our analysis showed that meeting this goal in sub-Saharan Africa poses a particular challenge.

In 1990, 56 percent of Africans lived on under $1.25 a day accounting for 15 percent of those in poverty worldwide. Over the subsequent 20 years, the region’s poverty rate dropped to 48 percent. However, given the superior pace of poverty reduction elsewhere and Africa’s faster population growth, Africa’s share of global poverty doubled. Our baseline scenario anticipates a continuation of these trends: sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty rate is expected to fall further to 24 percent by 2030, representing 300 million people, but its share of global poverty balloons to 82 percent.

The constraint facing these remaining poor can be characterized in two ways.

First, the poor may not be moving fast enough to reach the $1.25 threshold. This is a function of the rate of economic growth in the countries in which they live, and the degree to which this growth is equitable. Historically, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced long stretches of anemic growth. During the lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the region grew at just 2 percent a year, which meant that GDP per capita fell given the rate of population growth. Though growth in the region as a whole has improved in recent years, some countries continue to underperform and there are concerns that the benefits of Africa’s growth are not being shared by those near the bottom of the income distribution.

Second, the poor in Africa may start too far behind the poverty line to stand a chance of reaching the $1.25 mark any time soon. Even under an assumption of strong and equitable growth, 20 years may be insufficient to lift these people out of poverty given the distance they have to travel. As critics of the Millennium Development Goals have shown, setting targets in absolute terms risks putting goals out of reach for those starting furthest behind.

Which of these impediments best captures sub-Saharan Africa’s challenge: are the region’s poor moving too slowly or starting too far behind?

To help answer this question, it is useful to first establish some parameters linking past regional trends, today’s circumstances and future prospects.

Over the last decade, sub-Saharan Africa’s economies have together mustered an impressive 5 percent growth a year, or around 3 percent in per capita terms (see Table below). Evidence from household surveys suggests that this has, on average, translated into gains for the poor: of the countries in the region with available data, half saw per capita consumption of the poorest 10 percent of their populations rise by 3 percent or more a year during the period. Forecasts indicate that growth rates should remain high in the foreseeable future, so it is not unreasonable to expect that a 3 percent annual increase in income is sustainable for many of those living in poverty.

This rate would be sufficient to lift those currently living on 70 cents or more above the $1.25 a day poverty line by 2030. This level happens to be around the average daily income of the poor in sub-Saharan Africa today. Twenty-two percent of Africans live between the 70 cent and $1.25 mark, while 25 percent live further back on under 70 cents.

Of course, Africa’s aggregate economic performance masks considerable differences between countries, and the location of the region’s growth engines doesn’t align exactly with the location of its poor. Over the past decade, 11 economies in the region experienced virtually no growth (Benin, Central African Republic, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar and Swaziland), while four economies are expected to stagnate over the coming years based on present forecasts (Comoros, Madagascar, Malawi and Swaziland). For these sluggish performers, the pace of progress is such that living within reach of the poverty line today offers little assurance of escaping poverty in the foreseeable future. Three percent of Africans in 2030 are expected to be poor simply because their country growth rates lag behind regional performance. These individuals start between 70 cents and $1.25 and remain there two decades later. We classify these poor people as moving too slowly.

On the flipside, not all those living below 70 cents today are destined to remain in poverty. For those living in countries whose growth is forecast to exceed the regional rate (including Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana) a fast-track route of poverty may be possible. By 2030, 5 percent of Africa’s population could be out of poverty despite standing below 70 cents today, by virtue of super-charged growth rates.

For the majority of those starting below 70 cents however, the $1.25 mark stands too far in the distance. Many of these are accounted for by countries where the average daily consumption of the poor currently stands at under half the global poverty line: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Zambia. By 2030, 21 percent of Africa’s population will be poor having stood behind the 70 cent mark today.

Of these individuals, three in five would have a chance of escaping poverty if they had started at the 70 cent mark, based on the speed at which their economies are growing. Their paltry initial income is their binding constraint. We classify these individuals as starting too far behind. For the remainder, starting at 70 cents wouldn’t be enough to bring them out of poverty as they also live in slow-growing countries. We classify these individuals as being both too slow and too far behind.

The pie chart below illustrates how the 300 million Africans that are expected to remain in poverty in 2030 are classified across the three categories.

What conclusions can be drawn from this exercise?

First, there is a danger in getting carried away by sub-Saharan Africa’s aggregate performance. The region’s renaissance over the past decade masks development failure in several African economies. The same holds for its distribution trends: while, on average, the benefits of growth are being shared by those at the bottom of the income distribution, this is clearly not the case everywhere. Moreover, a focus on aggregate trends misses one of the biggest historical challenges to Africa’s economies: their volatility. This is especially a challenge in Africa’s fragile states, where the benefits from growth episodes are quickly undone during periodic reversals.

Second, if the global community wishes to focus on the world’s gravest needs, then a greater focus on Africa is surely justified. The rise in Africa’s share of global poverty expected over the next two decades is startling, as is the distance from the international poverty line that most of the region’s extreme poor currently stand. The term “extreme poor” doesn’t seem to do these people justice. Furthermore, the large number of individuals whose escape from extreme poverty is constrained by both being both too slow and too far behind gives some indication as to the complexity of solving Africa’s poverty challenge. Without a concerted effort, the goal of eliminating poverty in a generation will remain just a vision.

Authors

Laurence Chandy
Natasha Ledlie
Veronika Penciakova

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

Counting the Poor

Laurence Chandy — Wed, 29 May 2013 12:31:00 -0400

Introduction

Data play an important role in global efforts to end poverty. Data are relied on to determine the prevalence of poverty and its characteristics, to quantify and allocate global resources devoted to reducing poverty, and to assess whether investments to help the poor ultimately work. Good data can inspire confidence in poverty reduction plans and enable results to be rigorously pursued; weak or absent data reduce the goal of poverty reduction to a matter of faith.

This paper is concerned with the central data issue in poverty analysis: counting the number of people who live in poverty around the world. It describes various problems encountered in calculating global poverty estimates and their implications for the accuracy and application of poverty data.

Understanding and awareness of how poverty is measured is generally very low in the development community. This is surprising given the focus on reducing poverty and the frequency with which poverty numbers are cited. Part of the reason for this is that poverty measurement is a deceptively complex field. This paper is intended to expand understanding and awareness by singling out the most important issues and explaining them in layman terms.

Poverty is defined here by the narrowly construed, but widely used, income-based poverty line of US$1.25 a day. This poverty measure is employed in the first and foremost Millennium Development Goal (MDG1a) – to halve the rate of global poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level. It will almost certainly be used again in any successor target as part of a new set of global goals. The reliability of poverty estimates based on this poverty measure is therefore pivotal to the credibility of the MDG and “post-2015” agenda.

The overarching message of the paper is threefold. First, counting the number of people living in poverty worldwide is difficult. It incurs technical, resource, coordination and institutional challenges. Second, the availability and quality of poverty data has improved dramatically over the past two decades. At the same time, however, certain weaknesses within the data have crystallised. Third, there is scope to significantly improve the quality and usefulness of poverty data through a combination of immediate reforms and longer term investments.

The paper is structured as follows. It begins by briefly explaining how global poverty numbers are obtained. It then explores weaknesses in the data organised around three core problems: the reliability of household surveys; adjustments for prices; and timeliness and frequency issues. Next, it describes the underlying constraints to improving poverty data. A concluding section looks at data solutions and the ways in which the scope of, and demand for, poverty data are changing.

Read the full paper on the Development Initiatives website »

Authors

Laurence Chandy

Publication: Development Initiatives

Focusing on Quality Education in sub-Saharan Africa

Germano Mwabu and Xanthe Ackerman — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:32:00 -0400

Primary school enrollment has increased from 59 percent to 77 percent in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade. This increase is due in part to the drive and commitment by governments in the region to achieve universal primary education set by the Education For All declaration established in Jomtien in 1990 and the Millennium Development Goals set in Dakar in 2000. However, much remains to be done. With a regional fertility rate of 5.1, compared to a global average of 2.4, and a 2030 projected population size of 1.5 billion people, there needs to be an increase in the supply of educational opportunities for all children in order to meet the growing demand in sub-Saharan Africa.

Even as access to education has improved in sub-Saharan Africa, learning achievement remains alarmingly low. Regional assessments show that 28 percent of Tanzanian sixth grade pupils are reading at grade level, only 19 percent in Kenya and less than 10 percent in Uganda. This low and uneven level of knowledge acquisition during the foundational years of primary school has adverse implications for knowledge and skills acquisition in later grades and for the long-term development and economic growth of the region.

The Africa Learning Barometer illustrates the urgent need to accelerate education progress and improve equity in learning outcomes. Disparities in achievement exist: between boys and girls – in Malawi, 52 percent of girls are not learning basic competencies at the end of primary school compared to 44 percent of boys; between urban and rural communities—in Tanzania, 10 percent of rural children are not learning compared to only 4 percent of urban children; and between the wealthy and the poor, which is the most divisive of disparities – in Botswana, 7 percent of the wealthy are not learning compared to 30 percent of the poor.

The challenge facing the region now is to continue to expand access, particularly for the most marginalized, while also implementing policy and programs to address the achievement gap. Evidence shows that policies to drive access, especially if poorly implemented, can inadvertently hurt school quality. In Kenya, after the implementation of free primary education in 2003, schools stopped receiving tuition for enrollment, yet government disbursements stalled. Schools had fewer resources for education at a time when enrollment was increasing dramatically. During this time, many parents moved their children from public to private schools despite an increase in costs.

Challenges in Measuring Learning

Although there are assessments at regional and national level in sub-Saharan Africa, there is no comparable measure of learning across countries (World Bank, 2009) to show learning challenges in context and to benchmark countries’ progress. The Africa Learning Barometer used assessment data on literacy and numeracy at primary for 28 countries. Although data was not comparable, it sheds light on the depth and nature of the problem. More needs to be done to understand the nature of the learning challenge affecting children’s development at pre-school, primary school and post-primary school and across a range of learning domains.

The multidimensional nature of quality, quantity and relevance makes measurement complex. Education quantity can be measured using enrollment rates, school attendance rates, school drop-out rates or completed years of schooling, each of which conveys different information. Learning outcomes can be measured in a variety of ways, including mastery of cognitive abilities, knowledge acquisition or acquisition of practical skills. In the economics of education literature, measurement of education quality has typically focused on education inputs, although there is an increasing awareness of the need to focus on learning outcomes and the learning processes. Measurement of education relevance in relation to the labor market has been more limited, although there is a groundswell of private sector interest in the topic, leading to recent research by McKinsey & Company and others.

Current measures of education quality in sub-Saharan Africa often fail to capture important aspects of learning that cannot easily be demonstrated by cognitive tasks. For example, children from pastoral communities may not be able to perform simple addition but may benefit from a teacher’s guidance to become more responsible or to use logical reasoning to care for a large herd and identify when livestock are missing. Children learn productivity-enhancing behavioral attributes that are acquired through schooling, such as punctuality, teamwork, honesty, interpersonal skills and loyalty even if they are not building academic skills. These attributes are rarely accounted for in current forms of assessment though they are linked with a range of life outcomes.

Authors

Germano Mwabu
Xanthe Ackerman

To End Poverty Worldwide, Fix African Agriculture First

John McArthur — Tue, 28 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

The public chorus to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030 now includes U.S. President Barack Obama, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and Bono. The backdrop is extremely promising since the developing world has already cut the share of people living in absolute poverty – that is, on less than the equivalent of $1.25 a day – by half since 1990. At a consistent rate of progress, the other half could well cross the line in another 20 years too.

But, as my colleague Laurence Chandy and his co-authors recently pointed out, the distance to crossing the absolute-poverty line varies tremendously by region. Most of China has already crossed the $1.25 threshold, and India has a huge share of its population poised to make the leap next. Sub-Saharan Africa has the farthest to go, despite recent progress, since a large proportion of its population still lives so far below $1.25 per day, often at half that level of income.

Most of Africa’s poorest people live on small farms in rural areas, so those places will likely form the final frontier of the global quest to end extreme poverty. Although fast-growing cities have gained attention for their role in fighting poverty, including in the World Bank’s latest Global Monitoring Report, it is increases in rural productivity, especially agriculture, that are typically a fundamental driver of the urbanization process.

There are grounds for optimism. Growing academic evidence highlights agriculture’s unique role in helping to reduce extreme poverty. For example, an important 2011 paper by economists Luc Christiaensen, Lionel Demery and Jesper Kuhl shows that agriculture is roughly three times more effective at reducing extreme poverty than non-agricultural sectors.

There has also been a global renaissance of attention on the need for an African Green Revolution, driven by both public and private investments in a manner that respects local community structures. The World Economic Forum’s Grow Africa initiative, which convened last week in Cape Town, offers a potential high-impact platform, bringing together investors and governments to launch practical joint strategies at scale.

Complementary investments in transport infrastructure, irrigation, farmer credit and input support systems (e.g. for fertilizer and seeds) were essential to Asia’s 20th century green revolutions, which laid the foundation for that region’s subsequent economic breakthroughs. The same basic approach, updated for today’s social and environmental realities, can help to ensure that Africa’s long-term economic success is equally, if not more, robust.

The sooner the process starts, the faster the world gets to the finish line on extreme poverty.

Authors

John McArthur

Publication: The Globe and Mail

Generation MDGs: How Youth are Pushing to Reach the MDGs and Shaping the Post-2015 Framework

Lauren Greubel and Jenny Perlman Robinson — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:49:00 -0400

While the next set of global development goals are being debated around the world, those who actually will be responsible for achieving them are also voicing their concerns. As reports are being drafted, working groups assembled and high-level panels convened, we shouldn’t forget that it is today’s young people who will be tasked with carrying out the next development agenda.

Time and again young people identify education as a primary concern and as a response to the myriad of development challenges we face. And more and more we are hearing that it isn’t just any education that is important, but one that imparts the necessary skills, values and competencies to develop productive, healthy and engaged global citizens. Through a series of youth consultations led in part by Restless Development, a global youth-led development agency, youth have outlined their priorities for the next development framework. In a summary report following online and in-person consultations with over 700 youth, there was resounding agreement that learning outcomes must be included in the post-2015 agenda and all young people “should have the right to be educated and literate, and have access to quality services that support that right. Access to nonformal education (such as youth clubs and youth groups) is also particularly important for young people’s growth and development.” Restless Development is also empowering young people with tools to conduct their own post-2015 consultations with other youth and providing a platform for young people to voice their priorities at each of the U.N. secretary general's High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Agenda's meetings.

As part of the official U.N. process to feed into the next set of goals, Genwa Samhat and Chernor Bah, two members of the U.N. secretary-general’s Global Education First Initiative’s Youth Advocacy Group, were invited to the U.N. Post-2015 Thematic Consultation on Education held in Dakar, Senegal. At the meeting, stakeholders from across the education sector came together to articulate priorities for education in the next development framework.

Genwa and Chernor brought a valuable youth perspective to the meeting by outlining the world they want to emerge as a result of the post-2015 framework. They also reminded participants of the world that children and youth live in now. Genwa, who grew up in Lebanon, spoke candidly to the discrimination millions of girls face, saying “I live in a world where I am defined not by who I am, but by my association with men: as a sister, a daughter, and ultimately the expectation that I will become someone’s wife.” She has borne personal witness to the many barriers to girls' education – one of her friends was forced to drop out of school and marry at the young age of 15 and now has three children to care for. Similarly, discrimination due to disability, race, class and sexual orientation deny many in her country the opportunities to study, work and fulfill their potential.

Chernor grew up in war torn Sierra Leone, where he stated that “simply being born in a poor country…could be an intrinsic disadvantage with limited opportunities to access education and hence limited opportunities in life. It’s a world where the advent of conflict…often means that schools are burned, teachers run away and hope of a better life through education is dashed.”

Speaking on behalf of the thousands of young people who have contributed to the post-2015 discussions they declared, “Young people want a world where location of birth is not a permanent life sentence, where everyone – irrespective of their circumstances – has access to that fundamental human right of good quality education. Young people also want a world where girls have the same opportunities as boys, where they are not forced into marriage but given the chance to have an identity and fulfill their dreams. It has to be a world where no form of discrimination is allowed to stand.”

In addition to participating in the global education meeting, youth have been engaged throughout the post-2015 process. On the United Nation’s World We Want platform, which housed 11 thematic e-discussions, young people contributed to, and even moderated, many of the conversations. In particular, they emphasized the need to improve education governance, address corruption and recognize the role a quality education can play in fostering global citizenship. Nina Tchangoue, a member of the Youth Advocacy Group, wrote: “learning should be linked to global issues that will develop the interest of youth to become engaged global citizens.” Similarly, according to the recent results of the My World survey, a global survey of more than 560,000 people from 194 countries, respondents under the age of 25 voiced “a good education” as their number one priority.

Youth representatives around the world are urging the United Nations, governments and education policymakers to move beyond a focus on access to schooling to include a commitment to children’s learning outcomes as well. They are encouraging policymakers to strive for a world where schooling and the lessons learned outside the classroom equip young people with the skills needed to be active global citizens, skills that go beyond reading and writing, such as critical thinking, technological literacy and comprehensive sexual education.

Upholding the Promises Made to all Children at the Millennium

While young people around the world have been participating in the post-2015 discussions, they have also made it clear that the next set of goals will hold little legitimacy if the global community does not honor its original commitments made in 2000.

One effort to ensure we don’t forsake the initial set of promises was a series of Learning for All Ministerial meetings held in Washington, DC in April. National leaders from seven countries – which are home collectively to half of the world’s out-of-school population – and development partners identified concrete steps to urgently deliver real results for the millions of out-of-school primary-aged children. Thanks to a commitment to meaningful youth participation by the meetings co-hosts, U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, World Bank President Jim Kim and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, young people were included in many of the high level discussions and chosen to speak as experts on numerous panels. David Crone, a youth representative from Plan UK, spoke alongside World Bank and civil society experts about the marginalization and lack of opportunities young women in particular face in staying in school and learning. Similarly, Sumaya Saluja, another member of the Youth Advocacy Group, spoke on a Brookings panel about the critical role that youth can play in tackling challenges in the education system in India. Brookings also spoke with two of the members, Joseph Munyambanza from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Anna Susarenco from Moldova, about their personal stories and commitments to education for all.

One of the most valuable parts of having youth leaders at the Learning for All Ministerial meetings was that, alongside their expertise, they brought an untarnished belief that real progress is possible. The Youth Advocacy Group was given the last word in a morning of events convened by the U.N. special envoy for Global Education and they reminded the policymakers in attendance that they will be held accountable for the commitments made that week: “We can only hope that these past three days have been as empowering and inspiring for you as they have been for us. And do not think for even a moment that we have not been monitoring the outcomes and what has been said, because we have, and not to scare you, but you will be held accountable, because our progress depends solely on everyone's willingness and ability to commit to what they said they would do. Nothing is more depressing than progress hindered because of inaction.” The Youth Advocacy Group and young people worldwide are committed to doing their part to achieve the current Millennium Development Goals and design a next set of development goals that reflect the rights, needs and desires of the generation that will be at the helm of implementing them.

Authors

Lauren Greubel
Jenny Perlman Robinson

The Future of Transatlantic Trade and Investment: Opportunities and Challenges

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:30:00 -0400

Event Information

May 23, 2013
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

On May 23, the Center on the U.S. and Europe (CUSE) and Global Economy and Development at Brookings, with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, hosted German Vice-Chancellor Philipp Rösler for an address on the prospects for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In his remarks, Dr. Rösler explored the direction of EU-U.S. negotiations on TTIP and the current state of transatlantic economic relations in an increasingly globalized world.

From 2001 until 2003, Dr. Philipp Rösler worked as a doctor and medical officer of the Federal Armed Forces. In 2003, Dr. Rösler was elected to the state parliament of Lower Saxony and remained a member of this parliament and chairman of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) state parliamentary group until 2009. At the beginning of 2009, he was appointed minister of Economics, Labor and Transport and deputy minister-president of the State of Lower Saxony. In October 2009 he joined the federal government as federal minister of Health. He has been federal minister of Economics and Technology, federal chairman of the FDP and vice-chancellor since May 2011.

Senior Fellow and CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

Good Data: The Foundation of Open Government

Sally P. Paxton and George Ingram — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:36:00 -0400

It is not often one gets excited over a dry, hard-to-understand government memorandum, but the newly released executive order, Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information, and its accompanying memorandum are grounds for applause. The open data and transparency community, both in Washington and internationally, have been quick to give much deserved praise for this effort to make U.S. government data truly open and accessible.

Led by U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel, this policy makes open government and transparency core aspirations of the administration. It contains specific steps for agencies, including 1) making data readily accessible and useable, 2) using common, open standards; 3) modernizing information systems; 4) sharing best practices; and 5) reporting progress. As characterized by the Sunlight Foundation, the policy "signals a new era for open data in our government”.

This new policy applies to all executive agencies, with some exceptions for national security systems. For those of us focused on foreign assistance, however, the question is what it will mean for aid information – and more importantly – for improving our aid effectiveness?

The quick answer is quite a bit. If these approaches are adopted and implemented rigorously by U.S. agencies administering foreign assistance, it could pave the way for a revolution in the way aid information is shared and used throughout the delivery chain. Overall, this new policy strengthens the chances of the U.S. government delivering on its commitment to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which U.S. agencies are beginning to implement, but whose progress has been very slow. The Office of Management and Budget Bulletin, published in October 2012, made some important steps forward for U.S. reporting on foreign assistance. By comparison, the executive order is a leap forward. Why? Here are some highlights:

For the first time, data will have to be in “open and machine-readable formats”, such as XML, the format that IATI uses. This is hugely important for ensuring that the data is as accessible as possible for all potential users. To date, the U.S. has only published partial foreign assistance data from two U.S. agencies – the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation – in the machine-readable IATI XML format, so the new executive order should provide a strong impetus to kick-start progress in other agencies. The importance of machine-readable formats will also be reflected in how donor agencies perform in this year’s 2013 Aid Transparency Index. Data that complies with the IATI standard – in machine-readable, XML format – will be deemed most transparent, as recognized by the U.S. commitment to this internationally comparable data standard.

Agencies now have to support “downstream” users and systems, paying attention to how our own systems maximize information interoperability and accessibility. This means that U.S. systems need to take into account other complementary initiatives, such as IATI. It is therefore a prime opportunity to build IATI compliance into our systems. This supports IATI’s aim of “publish once and use often” for different purposes and different users. So, when doing system upgrades – as recommended in a number of reports, including by the General Accountability Office – we need to be smart about maximizing our IT investments.

Deadlines matter and the executive order sets them. Transparency commitments, such as the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, are great concepts but their implementation has been problematic. Almost two and a half years have passed since the Dashboard’s creation and it is still largely incomplete. It is encouraging, therefore, to see the executive order include the development of a “Cross-Agency Priority” (CAP) goal to track implementation progress with metrics and milestones. This should build on the goals set by the U.S. implementation schedule for IATI by urging agencies to produce good quality, IATI-compliant data.

Best practices will be shared online. Such a repository of agencies’ tools and methods helps us all solve problems and be more effective and efficient. To date, 37 official international donor agencies have signed IATI and 22 have begun publishing to the IATI standard. The sharing of concerns, system limitations and data issues have already proven to be useful in easing and speeding the process of adaptation to open data for all participants. The same holds on the U.S. domestic front. With over 25 U.S. agencies involved in some aspect of administering foreign assistance, it makes sense to bring all agencies into a common learning space to foster “government-wide communities of practice”.

This new approach to open data is both visionary and detailed, and we hope the data starts flowing soon. In the spirit of this new policy, we should embrace IATI as best practice in open aid information and learn lessons from others who have piloted this initiative before us. The president has set the goal of U.S. leadership in open data. It is now the task of the aid transparency champions within the administration to see this through to fruition.

Authors

Sally P. Paxton
George Ingram

Brookings: Topics - Global Development

Russia's Development of Siberia: What is to be Done?

Authors

Inclusive Education: A Rising Tide Floats all Boats

Authors

Arts Education in the Arab World Deserves More Respect — And Resources

Authors

International Actions to Support Green Growth Innovation Goals

Downloads

Authors

A Study on the External Environment of Chinese Investments in the United States

Downloads

Authors

Strengthening U.S. Civilian Actions for International Development

Authors

Great Expectations for Post-2015: An Analysis of the High-Level Panel Report

Authors

The Coming Wave

Exporting capital

Authors

Eliminate Poverty - Sustainable Development

Authors

China’s Foreign Reserves and Overseas Investment

Event Information

Transcript

Event Materials

Participants

Internally Displaced Women: Record Number, Unresolved Challenges

Authors

Africa’s Challenge to End Extreme Poverty by 2030: Too Slow or Too Far Behind?

Authors

Counting the Poor

Authors

Focusing on Quality Education in sub-Saharan Africa

Challenges in Measuring Learning

Authors

To End Poverty Worldwide, Fix African Agriculture First

Authors

Generation MDGs: How Youth are Pushing to Reach the MDGs and Shaping the Post-2015 Framework

Upholding the Promises Made to all Children at the Millennium

Authors

The Future of Transatlantic Trade and Investment: Opportunities and Challenges

Event Information

Audio

Transcript

Event Materials

Good Data: The Foundation of Open Government

Authors