The World Bank at a time when according to the IMF, the MENA region is on track for a recovery, despite some rising social unrest threatening the ‘fragile’ progress of low-income economies, produced the following enthusiastic remarks by World Bank Group President David Malpass address to the Arab Governors of the World Bank Group.
Remarks by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the Arab Governors of the World Bank Group
Let me begin by congratulating Minister Khalil. Your appointment as Minister of Finance comes at a crucial moment in Lebanon’s history. The World Bank Group will work with you to support the critical reforms needed to address Lebanon’s challenges. Thank you for mentioning Hela in your opening. She’s the new IFC Vice President for the region, and I want you all to know the high priority we place on private sector advancement in the region. All parts of the World Bank Group are making that a high priority.
Dear Governors and distinguished guests, it is a pleasure to be with you again to discuss the challenges and opportunities in your region. Thank you for your recent annual letter outlining the key and urgent development challenges of the region. Let me also thank our Dean Dr Merza Hassan for helping to convene this meeting and for his unwavering support to the MENA region.
We meet today against a backdrop of uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to reversals in development gains in many regions, threatening jobs, social stability – and lives.
MENA was hit particularly hard by Covid 19. Even before the pandemic, growth had stalled, poverty was on the rise, and the social contract between citizens and the state was strained. Climate change adds a further burden to the development challenge.
During my recent visits to the region, to Sudan, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, I saw firsthand the impact of this multi-pronged crisis. I was concerned by low investment levels, high unemployment rates, and low female labor participation rates.
I also saw potential via regional integration, pro-growth investment, and improvements in the enabling environment for business. The recovery in global growth provides opportunities to make positive changes, and I was encouraged by my discussions with officials and businesses.
As you know, MENA is the least economically integrated region in the world. We have expressed our support for any initiative aimed at developing economic ties between countries in the region, and we are thus looking at ways to support the gas and electricity potential connection between Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
While we are not in a position to engage in Syria, we nevertheless are concerned about the Syrian people’s economic woes due to the degradation of the situation in the country. Our position has always been to look after the people, and we are doing so for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.
In the year leading up to the next annual meetings in Marrakesh, my message will remain focused on the importance of improving access to vaccines; recovering from Covid; overcoming conflict; mitigating and adapting to climate change; containing debt; and creating strong sustainable jobs for the youth of this region.
Morocco has made progress on all of these, and I want to thank you for graciously hosting us in 2022.
As a region, MENA will need to generate 300 million new jobs by 2050. These will be created largely by the private – not public – sector. Reaching this critical goal of sustainable job creation needs governance and transparency, rule of law, and an attractive business environment.
IBRD, IFC and MIGA are fully engaged. I’m interested in hearing from you where the World Bank Group can position itself better.
As we move toward Marrakesh in 2022 and Cop27 in Egypt, how can the Bank Group assist in making these events a launching pad for more sustained and comprehensive development in MENA?
Thank you again for inviting me and let’s now open our discussion.
How Stuff work produced this illuminating article on how Space Architects Will Help Us Live and Work Among the Stars cannot go noticed. Hence it is republishing here.
Above is this rendering showing another view of Team SEArch+/Apis Cor’s Mars habitat. The unique shape allows for continuous reinforcement of the structure and allows light to enter through trough-shaped ports on the sides and top. TEAM SEARCH+/APIS COR/NASA
Space Architects Will Help Us Live and Work Among the Stars
This 2020 concept of a moon village created by XTENDdesign is located on the rim of Shackleton crater on the lunar south pole. The Moon Village Association (MVA) is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) whose goal is to create a permanent global forum for stakeholders interested in the development of the Moon Village. NASA
If you’re of the Elon Musk mindset and think that humans, to survive, will have to become a multiplanetary species, we’re going to need a place to live and work. Out there. In space. On other planets.
We’re going to need somebody — a lot of somebodies, really — to build us houses and apartment buildings and offices and space Walmarts and modes of transportation to haul us between all those places. Heck, we’re going to have to build a lot of places to do everything we do here on our rapidly decaying home planet.00:17/01:43
We’ll need architects. A lot of them. We’ll need a different type of architect, to be sure, for our ventures into space. We’ll need … space architects.
Luckily, that’s already a thing.
The Idea Behind Space Architecture
Olga Bannova doesn’t carry a business card that reads “Space Architect,” though she admits that would be pretty awesome. Instead, Bannova’s title (or one of them) is director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) — it’s been a thing since the late 1980s — in the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering. SICSA is home to the world’s only space architecture graduate program. A diploma nets you a Master of Science in Space Architecture.
It’s not a huge program yet, churning out only a few graduates every year. It is, like much of the whole idea of multiplanetary expansion, an emerging field.
But for those who believe that our very existence relies on someday moving to a different galactic neighborhood, space architecture has us covered. It is, in a very real way, simply the latest exploratory mission away from Mother Earth.
“You can’t stay in your house forever and think that somehow everything else will be the same … everything is changing, including our Earth, including us, including the solar system, including the galaxy. It’s all changing and moving,” Bannova says. “That’s why it’s important. It’s mostly about understanding more about ourselves.”
Team SEArch+/Apis Cor won first place in the Phase 3: Level 4 software modeling stage of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for deep space exploration.TEAM SEARCH+/APIS COR/NASA
What Is Space Architecture, Really?
Space architecture, really, is just what it sounds like. Bannova heads an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) committee, the Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) that concentrates specifically on the field. The SATC, on the site spacearchitect.org — if it has an internet site, you know it’s a thing — describes it like this:Space Architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space (it encompasses architectural design of living and working environments in space related facilities, habitats, and vehicles). These environments include, but are not limited to: space vehicles, stations, habitats and lunar, planetary bases and infrastructures; and earth based control, experiment, launch, logistics, payload, simulation and test facilities.
Space architects, then, are charged with designing buildings and houses and offices and a whole bunch of other stuff that humans need to survive — those interstellar Walmarts, perhaps — both here and in space plus devising ways to get between them. All this, not for nothing, while dealing with problems that Earthbound architects don’t even dream about. Don’t need to dream about. Maybe can’t dream about.
Say, for example, a lack of oxygen or atmosphere. Weather patterns that make our current climate-change problems look like a calm day at a sunny beach. A lack of sunlight. Too much sunlight. Microgravity.
A lack of material to build what you need. Or no way to ship material that you need to where you need it. Or no way to get it there in a timely way, considering the vast distances between points in space.
It’s not hard to imagine the problems that space architects will face, now and in the future. It’s not hard to imagine, either that we can’t even begin to imagine some of the challenges they’ll be up against.
Carving out a space in space for our species to continue is a huge undertaking, perhaps the most audacious ever for mankind. It must be what the possibility of flying to the moon — of human flight at all — must have felt like to Galileo.
But, yeah, we knocked those out, didn’t we?
Team AI. SpaceFactory of New York also participated in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, and won second place for its space factory habitat on Mars.AI SPACEFACTORY/NASA
The Challenges Ahead
Identifying the multitude of challenges in our move into space, thinking them through, and realizing that so many have yet to be recognized is a sizable part of what space architects now, and space architects in the future, must do. The field cries out for critical thinkers who have an understanding (if not necessarily a doctorate-level degree) in a multitude of specialties; not only architecture and its different branches, but the different areas in engineering (industrial, aerospace, systems and aeronautical, to name a few), physics, geometry, mathematics, logistics, computer science, human biology and many more.
In meta terms, architecture embraces both art and science. It addresses how we build, how we live, in the space we inhabit. You don’t build a library without figuring out how we move about it, where the books go, where the light comes in.
If our living space is to become outer space — a habitable space that humans have been learning about, up close, for at least 20 years — well, we better start cracking the books.
What’s a habitat on Mars to look like? How do winds there affect what you build? What about gravity? How do you construct a farm, if one can be built, with the radiation of another planetary body beaming down? How do we build living quarters on a ship that may take decades to get where it’s going? How can we make sure that a flying habitat flies?
What can we learn by building these habitats on some of the less-hospitable areas of Earth? How can what we learn help us while we’re still here?
You want to be a space architect? Get yourself a planet-sized toolbox.
“Space architecture is not for the technically timid. To play this game, one needs to educate oneself about the harsh realities of life beyond Earth, and the science and technology for fashioning habitable bubbles in deadly environments,” Theodore Hall, a former chairperson of the SATC and an extended reality software developer at the University of Michigan, said back in 2014. “Only then is one prepared to stand toe-to-toe with the engineers and strive for architectural aesthetics that treat the human as more than a deterministic biochemical subsystem of a soulless machine.”
Those still interested in space architecture — and, again, we’re going to need a lot of forward-thinkers to sign up — shouldn’t be intimidated, though. Plenty of problems are there to be faced, certainly, and it will take all kinds to determine how our species can best live away from home.
Problems in finding a new home among the stars? Space architects are on the job.
“It’s impossible to predict everything, in space especially. It’s hard to design some close-to-perfect habitat even on Earth,” says Bannova, who carries an undergraduate degree from the Moscow Architectural Institute, dual masters degrees (in architecture and space architecture, both from UH) and a doctorate from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. “We have more questions than answers. It’s the nature of the profession. But it gives you an opportunity to see and decide for yourself where your passion is.”
The following story is about how one country responded to disappointing Doing Business scores to reform its rules and regulations for its own benefit. Would discontinuation of this instrument mean its non-availability to others?
The above image is for illustration and is of iStock.
How one country responded to disappointing Doing Business scores
On September 16, 2021, the World Bank discontinued the Doing Business (DB) report, one of its flagship diagnostic products. This action follows what the World Bank called “a series of reviews and audits of the report and its methodology.”
The DB report, published each year since 2004, was one of the World Bank’s most influential reports in recent years. Every autumn, people around the world would wait eagerly and, in some cases, with some trepidation, for its release. Over time, the reports increasingly attracted the attention of heads of governments who wanted to see their countries do well in the rankings.
When the DB report came out in 2015, the Indian government was disappointed. Soon after taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Modi announced his government’s intention to bring India’s ranking into the top 50 within a few years. Several reforms were carried out in the following months, which the Indian government hoped would put India on a trajectory of rapid annual improvements in the ranking. The 2015 report (officially called “Doing Business in 2016”, since the World Bank always gave the report a forward-looking title) indicated only a modest improvement in India’s rank, from 142 to 130.
The World Bank explained to the Indian government that while several reforms may have been enacted on paper, Indian businesses did not report feeling an impact on the ground. Some responded, “What reforms?”, while others heard about the reforms but had not seen improvement on the ground. The reforms could not be officially recognized until the private sector reported real improvements. The World Bank suggested that the government put in place feedback loops to provide real-time information from businesses on whether the reforms were being well implemented. The government, instead of whining further about the scores, started working on such feedback loops. For several regulatory reforms covered by the DB indicators, it started surveying businesses on whether they felt any reform impact on the ground.
From February 2016 to May 2017, the government carried out a series of business-to-government (B2G) feedback exercises and focus group discussions (FGDs) on how much the businesses were aware of the enacted reforms and their views on the quality of reform implementation. Nine B2G feedback exercises were carried out. Topics covered construction permits (three surveys each in Delhi and Mumbai), starting a business (two surveys), and trading across borders.
The exercises revealed several implementation gaps, some major and some minor. An example is construction permitting. A business survey carried out in Delhi in March 2016 revealed the following implementation issues: a) significant lack of agency coordination—architects still need to obtain approvals from up to 10 different agencies; b) some facilities for online payment were not properly implemented and certain fees were still paid manually; c) very low awareness of the online system among users; d) no way to track the status of an application; e) information lacking on documentary and other requirements. In other words, the reforms had not gone far enough to have impact on the ground.
This feedback exercise helped generate several recommendations to address the deficiencies. These were provided to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and most were acted upon. Follow-up feedback exercises in October 2016 and February 2017 validated these actions while generating additional recommendations for further improvement. A similar effort was made in Mumbai.
The impact of these efforts can be seen in the trends in India’s performance on the “Dealing with Construction Permits” indicator. In the Doing Business in 2016 report, India’s ranked 183 on this indicator. Thirty-three procedures were involved taking 191 days according to the indicators. Two years later, the number of days had come down to 144 with a modest improvement in the rank to 180. The more substantial improvements came the following year when the DB report published in October 2018 indicated a reduction in the number of procedures and days required to 18 and 95 respectively. Still a long way to go but enough to propel India’s ranking on this indicator to 52. While all this improvement cannot be attributed to the feedback exercises alone, it is possible to trace a substantial part of this improvement to actions taken as a result of these exercises.
The Indian government also recognized that the DB indicators did not cover many regulatory interfaces that created problems for businesses and that the indicator measures were based on conditions in just two cities, i.e., New Delhi and Mumbai. Thus, in parallel to its efforts on the DB front, the Indian government embarked on an ambitious regulatory reform program at the state-level covering all states and union territories in the country. A long list of regulatory reforms was identified covering several regulatory areas, and state governments were instructed to carry out the reforms. Called the Business Reforms Action Plan, the program started in 2015.
Progress was monitored through annual indicators that ranked states according to their performance on implementing the reforms. The first such indicators, published in 2015, did not take into account business feedback. However, seeing the usefulness of the feedback exercises carried out as part of the DB program, the government changed the state-level reform indicators in 2018 by making a substantial part of the indicator scores dependent on business feedback.
The powerful demonstration effect of such feedback exercises had touched individual state governments too. In 2018, four state governments, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Rajasthan, expressed an interest in knowing why there was poor uptake of self-certification and third-party certification options provided in business inspection reforms carried out by these states. At their request, the World Bank carried out an independent feedback exercise that could help design corrective actions to improve uptake.
The Indian experience from 2016 onward is a good example of what the DB indicators can lead to if governments use them well. First, the government refocused its attention from reforms on paper to reforms on the ground. Second, it recognized the importance of consulting with the private sector, which knows best where the shoe pinched, and designed corrective actions based on the feedback. This iterative process helped improve reform implementation quality. Third, the government recognized that while the DB indicators were useful, they were not adequate to diagnose the myriad of regulatory issues that businesses all over India faced. Thus, the government embarked on a more comprehensive, state-level, reform program, and, inspired by the power of indicators, underpinned this program by a set of performance indicators. Finally, once the pioneering DB-related feedback exercises proved useful, they created a demonstration effect, first within the central government, which replicated such exercises for the state-level reform program, and then on individual state governments.
At a time where political momentum is growing everywhere in the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, how to avert a global climate catastrophe by Omar Razzaz from Amman tells us the following.
How to avert a global climate catastrophe
• Current global efforts to raise awareness and nudge and shame policymakers are necessary but not sufficient to prevent an existential climate crisis. Addressing the problem more effectively requires international governance arrangements that amount to a new social contract on global public goods
Dead Sea shore, Jordan. (Pixabay)
The hottest day on record in Jordan since 1960 was a staggering 49.3C, (120.7F) in July 2018, one month after I became prime minister. Jordan is not unique: heatwaves have been causing record-high temperatures in countries from Canada to Australia in recent years. The effects of climate change (including increased frequency and severity of floods, hurricanes, and droughts), while felt locally, demand a global response, which should set binding targets that take into account countries’ contributions to the problem and to the solution.
Jordan has been actively pursuing policies and programmes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Over the past 15 years, Jordan’s annual emissions per capita fell from 3.5 tonnes to 2.5 tonnes. But Jordan, like the vast majority of countries, accounts for a negligible share of global CO2 emissions – just 0.04% annually. So even if Jordan was to turn its whole economy green overnight, it would hardly make a dent. This does not absolve us of responsibility, but we cannot overlook the fact that emissions are concentrated: the top 20 emitters account for almost 80% of the annual total, with the United States and China alone accounting for 38%. In many countries, the ramifications of climate change for water supply have been staggering. In the case of Jordan, it made an already tight constraint much more acute. Rainfall was previously the saviour for rural communities that engaged in seasonal rainfed agriculture and herding on semi-arid land. Over the last decade, however, a steady decline in average annual rainfall and an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts have undermined these modes of agriculture, deepening the socioeconomic divide between rural and urban areas.
Jordan is by no means unique: the World Health Organisation estimates that half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025. In essence, what was previously a regional challenge has now become a serious global governance issue with environmental, political, and economic ramifications. More broadly, other manifestations of climate change, and the lack of an internationally coordinated response to them – not to mention to additional threats such as the Covid-19 pandemic – suggest that something is seriously wrong at the global level. According to the recent sober assessment by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world will not meet the 2015 Paris climate agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C unless it makes huge additional cuts in CO2 emissions.
Quite simply, the results of the world’s climate efforts are dangerously inadequate. According to the Climate Action Tracker, current policies put the world on course to be an alarming 2.7-3.1C warmer by 2100, relative to pre-industrial levels. Yes, many emerging green technologies are promising and should be supported. But in the absence of a global approach, these innovations risk merely redistributing the impact of climate change among countries and regions. Raising awareness and nudging (and shaming) policymakers is necessary, but not sufficient to avert what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has referred to as a “climate catastrophe.” Climate-change mitigation must be pursued as a global public good. The problem is that such goods are plagued by collective-action problems because the costs tend to be spatially and temporally concentrated while the benefits are diffuse. These difficulties can be tackled only by global governance structures that reduce the cost of collective action, internalise externalities, and counter short-term biases in decision-making. To address climate change more effectively, we need global governance arrangements that amount to a new global social contract. Existing international governance structures can serve as a foundation for these new institutions, but will need to be amended and supplemented to address specific problems related to public goods and collective action. For starters, we need a governance structure whose jurisdiction is limited to global public goods that cannot be provided adequately at the national level. Nation-states would be free to opt-in and opt-out, with the benefits of opting in outweighing those of opting out. Decisions would be taken on a majoritarian basis, with no single country having veto power. There would also be appeals and adjudication process that allows decisions to be challenged. Second, a custodial entity would keep track of global natural wealth accounts to address intergenerational equity issues. This entity should be able to place items on the global governance institution’s agenda and to appeal decisions. Lastly, a regime of incentives and disincentives would aim to preserve nature and biodiversity and tax those who consume it, taking wealth and income disparities across countries into account. Establishing global governance mechanisms that focus on the public goods and collective-action challenges of climate change will not be easy. Concerns and fears related to a “democratic deficit” and the need to protect national sovereignty are legitimate, and cannot simply be brushed aside. Nevertheless, we are not starting from scratch. The World Trade Organisation provides an example of a strong and successful global governance structure with binding rules. It is thus both ironic and sad that the WTO has failed to incorporate trade-related environmental and human-rights issues into its regulations in order to ensure a level international playing field. After all, with its sanctioning authority, the WTO is best positioned to link issues such as greenhouse-gas emissions and labour rights to trade rules.
Jordan cannot successfully tackle today’s global climate challenges on its own. Nor can the Middle East, owing to regional conflicts and rivalries. Now that the world has become a village, the task facing the region is instead to agree with other countries – our fellow villagers – on how to mitigate our own excesses and avert an existential threat. This can be achieved only by finding suitable ways to hold ourselves and each other accountable. The solution lies in establishing a global governance system that is based on the nation-state but has the capacity to sanction harmful behaviour. Some might regard the idea of creating such a structure as far-fetched. But unless we do, there is scant hope of preventing the climate crisis – already apparent in Jordan and around the world – from continuing to destroy countless lives and livelihoods. – Project Syndicate
• Omar Razzaz is a former prime minister of Jordan.
A new vision for the global trading system must encompass equitable access to the benefits of trade for all of society, and some nations have signalled support in this regard.
Reforms to trade policy could have a meaningful impact on domestic economic inequality if a range of concrete steps are taken.
The WTO, and trade policy and practice more generally, can be reframed to reflect the notion of economic justice, and the time to make this shift is now.
Divides and discrimination within countries along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender and Indigenous identity have resulted in longstanding social, economic and political challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has further laid bare the stark inequalities among societal groups.
Yet resistance and restorative action have spread too. Social movements for racial justice in the United States have inspired similar initiatives in other countries. The #MeToo movement spotlighted sexual abuse and harassment and catalysed broader conversations about women’s participation in economic, social and political life. Meanwhile, some governments are coming to terms with their historical and current treatment of Indigenous peoples.
In this context, a new vision for the global trading system must encompass equitable access to the benefits of trade for all sections of society. This is an important aspect of building support for trade, as emerging research indicates that minority groups are often either negatively affected by trade shocks or do not have equitable access to the opportunities it provides.
Some countries have signalled support in this regard. For the first time, the US’s trade agenda includes the goal of racial equity. Canada, Chile and New Zealand signed a Global Trade and Gender Arrangement in August 2020. The relationship between trade and the rights of Indigenous peoples has been increasingly recognized in international economic agreements, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Image: Usman Ahmed and Aditi Sara Verghese (2021)
Understanding the problem
The effect of trade on inequalities between countries is well covered in economic literature. Differential trade impacts within countries among different income groups, between small and large firms, and on labour is well studied and discussed.
The effects of trade on different societal groups within countries – whether based on race, ethnicity, nationality, Indigenous identity or gender – has received less attention. This may be because domestic policies are considered the most direct way to tackle these inequalities. However, trade constitutes 58% of global GDP and is an important aspect of economic empowerment. And, while domestic policies can help with inequities created by trade if properly designed, reforms to trade policy could also have a meaningful impact on domestic economic inequality if a range of concrete steps are taken.
Developing and implementing inclusive policy
Better policymaking begins with better data. Governments should understand the industries that underserved populations are most likely to own and work in or rely on for inputs and final products. For instance, in 2016, minority-owned businesses represented 19% of US firms, but only 12.8% of US manufacturing firms. Governments should examine tariff lines to determine if they are discriminatory against those sectors that have a disproportionate representation of minority businesses and workers.
Underrepresented groups must be actively invited to participate in developing trade policy and negotiating positions. The advantages of such engagement were apparent in the provisions for Indigenous peoples in Canada’s trade agreements, for instance. New Zealand has carved out exceptions in their agreements to respect commitments made to Māori.
Trade agreements can also improve labour standards and remove discrimination against minority, migrant and female workers through labour chapters. These should include commitments by advanced economies to support and build capacity for the implementation of the necessary domestic reforms by trading partners.
Technical assistance and capacity building efforts that often accompany trade agreements must take into account equity considerations. Organizations should actively measure impacts of their initiatives on women and minority groups.
Inclusive trade in practice
Businesses also have an important role to play in enabling inclusive trade. Many have stepped up to publicly support movements for minority rights and inclusion. Investments in minority businesses can help raise the overall wellbeing of underserved communities. Supplier diversity programmes can support women-owned, minority-owned and Indigenous businesses to meet procurement standards, access financing and comply with export and import requirements.
Access to trade finance for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) could result in major gains for those underrepresented groups and for the broader economy. The IFC estimates that 70% of women-owned formal MSMEs in developing countries are unserved (or underserved) by financial institutions, with an estimated funding gap of $285 billion.
New technologies and digitalization can also make trade more inclusive – whether by enabling MSMEs to connect and transact with international buyers, providing natural language processing for translation, or automating trade processes that might otherwise lend themselves to discriminatory practices.
Public-private partnership for economic inclusion
Active engagement by all stakeholders at all stages of the process – from research, consultation and policy development to implementation and capacity-building – will be essential in realising a truly inclusive approach to trade.
Businesses and civil society organizations have an opportunity to voice support for government action through the World Trade Organization on these issues in the runup to the 12th Ministerial Conference. Moreover, governments can work with the private sector and civil society organizations to create programs like trade finance guarantees targeting underserved populations.
What is the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact summit?
It’s an annual meeting featuring top examples of public-private cooperation and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies being used to develop the sustainable development agenda.
It runs alongside the United Nations General Assembly, which this year features a one-day climate summit. This is timely given rising public fears – and citizen action – over weather conditions, pollution, ocean health and dwindling wildlife. It also reflects the understanding of the growing business case for action.
The UN’s Strategic Development Goals and the Paris Agreement provide the architecture for resolving many of these challenges. But to achieve this, we need to change the patterns of production, operation and consumption.
The World Economic Forum’s work is key, with the summit offering the opportunity to debate, discuss and engage on these issues at a global policy level.
International trade has done yeoman’s work in lifting millions out of poverty, driving economic growth and encouraging economic integration that reduced incentives for armed conflict between nations. There are green shoots that make the current moment an ideal time for trade to address domestic socio-economic divides.
We believe that the World Trade Organization, and trade policy and practice more generally, can be reframed to reflect the notion of economic justice and that the time to make this shift is now.
Read the Global Future Council on Trade and Investment paper on “International Trade and Economic Justice” here.
Originally posted on Destination NOW: Once again, my image of what the Sahara Desert would be like only slightly reflects reality. I didn’t expect to find this very productive farm amidst sand dunes. The farmer’s father, once a member of a nomadic tribe, used ancient techniques to find water. The family hand dug two wells:…
Originally posted on The All I Need: TOPICS: election, failed state, Gaddafi, Libya There were many who thought in 2011 that the death of Muammar Gaddafi would lead to a process of democratic reconstruction in Libya, which, despite the hopes, has not yet become a reality. On October 20, 2011, after the end of the…
“The crimes committed that night under the authority of Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic. “ This was therefore the verdict announced by Emmanuel Macron, Saturday, October 16, during a long-awaited ceremony in memory of the Algerian victims
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