1) Scale. How big is the global economy relative to the global ecosystem?
2) Stress development over growth. That is, make the economy better at satisfying human needs, not simply bigger.
3) Make prices tell the ecological truth.
4) Account for nature’s services.
5) The precautionary principle. This is just the age-old wisdom of “first, do no harm” and “look before you leap,” but applied to public policy toward new products (like chemicals) and technologies that could pose serious risk.
6) Commons management.
7) Value women.
Elizabeth Hausler explains to Global X that she was finishing her Ph.D. in engineering at Berkeley when an earthquake hit India and killed 20,000 people. That’s when she realized that “it’s not the earthquake that kills people, it’s the building collapsing.”
She looked for a solution and launched Build Change to build earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries and change construction practices permanently so that homeowners in seismically active developing countries can sleep at night.
The article here and its accompanying video describe this invention as, “…a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines…”
Farmingsolutions.org website has a touching story of the success of farmers’ self-help group in India. How they overcame all odds to work themselves out of poverty with sustainable agriculture at the same time caused a social revolution.
The website AfriGadget documents precisely what its tagline says. This is the website to check out if you are interested in seeing how people solve real life problems with limited resources. An African version of the Indian HoneyBee network may prove helpful.
I am a big fan of TED and it never fails to wow. In this presentation Hans Rosling demonstrates visually a myriad of development indicators and at one point argues that Africa is not a basket case but has made tremendous strides in social development.
“The aid system is broken,” says Ashraf Ghani in this powerful, reform-oriented talk. He discusses how to mobilize capital for state-building; why technical assistance fails; and why classic economic theory proved useless in Afghanistan, which is “dominated by the drug economy and a mafia.” He emphasizes the necessity of investment (”A dollar in private investment is equal to 20 dollars of aid”) and design ingenuity to rebuild broken states. And he offers a blueprint: the 10 key functions that a state should perform, from providing infrastructure to enforcing the rule of law.
The Acumen Fund blog links to an article by James Surowiecki (of ‘The Wisdom of the Crowd‘ fame) in the New Yorker. The article talks about the dichotomy India is facing; a massive skills shortage at the same time it is one of the top producers of skilled workers in the world.
The bigger question people have been trying to answer for decades is
How can developing countries prosper when so many needs are fighting for scarce resources? Where do we start? Widespread unemployment at a time when industries can’t find talent, environmental degradation, public health & sanitation, illiteracy, malnutrition, gender and social discrimination, overburdened public infrastructure, energy scarcity, the list seems endless and problems unsurmountable. But all is not lost… there are some glimmers of hope: vibrant democracy, entrepreneurial acumen, progressive judiciary, developed financial institutions, burgeoning middle class, commendable savings rate
I came across this article on Slate- Dollar a Day: How the world’s poorest really spend their money. The article is actually a take on another article by 2 MIT researchers titled, The Economic Lives of the Poor.
From personal experience, I know that it is possible to live on less than $1 a day a in India. Though, in cities it is probably getting very difficult to survive on $1 or about 40 rupees a day.
Then again, the article is cognizant of the fact that purchasing power varies widely from place to place. Global poverty is on a steady decline but I think if we are not careful with mitigating the environmental and social risks it may stage a revival.
That said, there are some interesting findings from the article are that even those living at the bottom of the pyramid try to keep money for life events, sending kids to school, etc.
The very poor even seem to have some consumer power. For example, in the countries where free public schools are especially bad, some parents scrape together the resources to send the children to private schools. The teachers may be largely unskilled themselves, but at least they show up.
I am a MS (Information Science) graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and work for a management consulting firm. When I am not travelling for work, I live in Pittsburgh. My hometown is Bangalore, India and did my college education from New Delhi, India and Chapel Hill, USA.
