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Category: Policy

Published June 15, 2011

A Division of Labor for Aid?

That is a new idea advocated by Nemat Shafik, the outgoing Permanent Secretary in charge of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) in a new working paper. For Shafik,

  • The United Nations should be in charge of peace and security issues and humanitarian affairs;
  • The World Bank and regional development banks should be in charge of development finance;
  • Bilateral agencies (e.g., USAID and DFID) should be in charge of delivering health and education interventions; and
  • Foundations and philanthropies should be in charge of development innovations.

This strikes me as a sensible idea. The division of labor suggested by Shafik would increase accountability — something that is in short supply in the development world. The only difficulty is that such a division of labor will be extremely difficult to enforce if it comes to pass, what with everyone trying to get credit for “helping out.”

(HT: Roving Bandit.)

Published June 13, 2011

Kristof on Food Safety

From a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times this weekend:

“We would never think of trying to keep our children healthy by adding antibiotics to school water fountains, because we know this would breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s unconscionable that Big Ag does something similar for livestock.

Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the United States House of Representatives, has been fighting a lonely battle to curb this practice — but industrial agricultural interests have always blocked her legislation.

‘These statistics tell the tale of an industry that is rampantly misusing antibiotics in an attempt to cover up filthy, unsanitary living conditions among animals,’ Slaughter said. ‘As they feed antibiotics to animals to keep them healthy, they are making our families sicker by spreading these deadly strains of bacteria.’

Vegetarians may think that they’re immune, but they’re not. E. coli originates in animals but can spill into water used to irrigate vegetables, contaminating them. The European E. coli outbreak apparently arose from bean sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany.”