Category: Uncategorized

This week’s issue of the Economist has three articles about development bloat (see here for my 2014 article in Foreign Affairs on the topic; see here for the blog post that led to Foreign Affairs asking me for said article on the topic). The first is a leader (i.e., editorial) titled “The 169 Commandments”:

 Moses brought ten commandments down from Mount Sinai. If only the UN’s proposed list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were as concise. The SDGs are supposed to set out how to improve the lives of the poor in emerging countries, and how to steer money and government policy towards areas where they can do the most good. But the efforts of the SDG drafting committees are so sprawling and misconceived that the entire enterprise is being set up to fail. That would be not just a wasted opportunity, but also a betrayal of the world’s poorest people. …

Their supporters justify the proliferation by saying the SDGs are more ambitious than their predecessors: they extend to things such as urbanisation, infrastructure and climate change. The argument is that cutting poverty is not a simple matter. It is rooted in a whole system of inequality and injustice, meaning that you need lots of targets to improve governance, encourage transparency, reduce inequality and so on.

There is truth in that argument, but the SDGs are still a mess. Every lobby group has pitched in for its own special interest. The targets include calls for sustainable tourism and a “global partnership for sustainable development complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships”, whatever that means.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, this should sound familiar.

The other two articles are more in depth, and are titled “Unsustainable Goals,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Hideous.” All three are essential reading if you have any interest in big-picture international development.

Farmers in Bolivia feel the pressure of global markets to grow large quantities of this agricultural produce, sometimes at the compromise of their own food and nutritional security. Unforeseen and increasingly high demands and limited supply cause for perpetual market tensions with farmers trying to keep up with an economy they were forced to participate in. These factors, coupled with standard within-country inequality, skewed export/import dynamics, and capitalist trade practices that remain in the favor of the powerful player in these dynamics – the core consumer – cause for Bolivian farmers to experience various negative externalities. Furthermore, environmental factors also must be considered, since growing such large amounts of quinoa has been causing for the degradation of the Andean soil: even the FAO outlines concerns for biodiversity, while otherwise touting the phenomenon.

While efforts have been put in place by farmer unions, cooperatives and development initiatives to mitigate some negative effects on the primary producers of quinoa, they have not been enough to protect the food security of these Andean farmers. Increased consumer consciousness is therefore essential in ensuring that these farmers don’t continue to suffer because of Western dietary fads.

From an article a blog post by Aarushi Bhandari on The Society Pages, in which the author makes a series of dubious claims about quinoa.

Indeed, there is no evidence supporting the claim that quinoa consumption in the North/West/whatever-is-the-appellation-du-jour-for-rich-countries threatens food security anywhere else. None.

Several European countries also tax sugary drinks, but, as with Mexico, it’s tough to tease out whether, or how much, the taxes affect consumption. Marc Bellemare, assistant professor in the department of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, took a close look at soda sales data (from Euromonitor International, which tracks sales of an astonishing array of food items around the world). He concluded that, depending on how you parse the data, you could claim anything from no impact to about a 2.6 percent decrease.

“In academic parlance, the results are not ‘robust,'” Bellemare says. …

The lack of a clear correlation doesn’t mean sugary drinks aren’t implicated in obesity and disease. … We cannot be sure, not by a long shot, that a tax on soda will result in improved public health.

From a longer column by Tamar Haspel in the Washington Post last week. A few weeks ago, Tamar got in touch with me telling me she had gotten her hands on Euromonitor data for soda sales (supplemented with information about soda taxes in Europe), and she asked me whether I could figure out whether taxes appeared to cause any decrease in soda sales.