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Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Africa | Italy and France 'failing Africa' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8094401.stm

Italy France Bono One Africa Poverty G8

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Anti-poverty group One, set up by rock star Bono, said Italy had actually cut aid to Africa despite making ambitious pledges at a 2005 economic summit. And it accused France of reducing its aid targets and cutting its aid budget.
  • n 2005, the G8 pledged to increase aid to Africa by $25bn (£15bn) by 2010 - more than doubling the 2004 level of aid to the continent.
Pedro Gonçalves

Africa's arc of instability has myriad causes | Observer editorial | Comment is free | ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-mali-algeria-western-response

Mali Africa

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Mali, little known or not, now belongs inside the arc of instability that was once defined as stretching from Afghanistan, in the days when the Taliban took charge, through Pakistan to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa via Iraq and Yemen. Now the arc is rapidly extending westwards beyond the Arab lands to Nigeria, west Africa and the Atlantic seaboard. The common denominators are poverty, underdevelopment, illiteracy, mass youth unemployment, misgovernance, authoritarianism, corruption, suppression of women's rights and of human and civil rights in general. All this and western political and commercial meddling, too.
  • Despite all this disassociation, despite the looking the other way and the simplistic analysis pitting cut-throat, dynamite-wielding Islamist killers against innocents abroad, this bigger story in which Mali's plight is now entangled ultimately involves us all, more intimately and continuously than could any random threat of a terror bomb in Paris or London. A major shift in perception and in action is required. Otherwise, be it indirectly through mass migration, people trafficking, arms and drugs smuggling, epidemic disease, the pernicious poison of official corruption and abuse; or directly through resulting, premeditated ethnic and sectarian, religion-based violence, the nonchalant, unthinking condemnation of a vast swath of humanity to impoverishment, physical, material and spiritual, will inevitably return to haunt the more fortunate peoples of the west.
Pedro Gonçalves

China thinktank urges end of one-child policy | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ank-abolition-one-child-policy

China Society

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 31 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • A Chinese government thinktank is urging the country's leaders to start phasing out its one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015, a daring proposal to do away with the unpopular policy.
  • Some demographers view the timeline put forward by the China Development Research Foundation as a bold move by a body close to the central leadership. Others warn that the gradual approach, if implemented, would still be insufficient to help correct the problems that China's strict birth limits have created.
  • The official Xinhua News Agency said the foundation recommends a two-child policy in some provinces from this year and a nationwide two-child policy by 2015. It proposes all birth limits be dropped by 2020, Xinhua reported.
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  • "China has paid a huge political and social cost for the policy, as it has resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance at birth," Xinhua said, citing the report.
  • But it remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take up the recommendations. China's National Population and Family Planning Commission had no immediate comment on the report on Tuesday.
  • The government limits most urban couples to one child, and allows two children for rural families if their first-born is a girl. There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for minority families and a two-child limit for parents who are themselves both singletons.
  • The government recognises those problems and has tried to address them by boosting social services for the elderly. It has also banned sex-selective abortion and rewarded rural families whose only child is a girl.
  • the one-child policy – introduced in 1980 as a temporary measure to curb the surging population
  • Though the government credits the policy with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty, it is reviled by many ordinary people. The strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilisations, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.
  • Many demographers argue the policy has worsened the country's aging crisis by limiting the size of the young labour pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires. They say it has contributed to the imbalanced sex ratio by encouraging families to abort baby girls, preferring to try for a male heir.
  • Cai said the transition could keep population reform on the backburner or changes may be rushed through to help burnish the reputations of outgoing President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
  • leaders have so far expressed a desire to maintain the status quo. President Hu said last year that China would keep its strict family planning policy to keep the birth rate low and other officials have said that no changes are expected until at least 2015.
Pedro Gonçalves

Analysis - Russia's wealth gap wounds Putin | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...equality-idUKTRE7BJ1AB20111220

Russia

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • The gap between rich and poor in Russia is a growing problem for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he prepares to return to the presidency in an election next March.During his 12-year rule, as president and then prime minister, Russians have broadly speaking become wealthier than they were in the chaotic years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the citizen of Putin's Russia can easily lose even a modest sense of well being when confronted with the sometimes flamboyant ostentation of the rich.In Soviet times privilege was often a well guarded secret.
  • Many people cited the wealth gap in ditching Putin's ruling party in a December 4 election that cut its majority in parliament.
  • If a gap has widened between individuals, it is also evident between Russia's many poor regions and wealthy cities like Moscow and the booming oil heartland.
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  • Real disposable income has slightly declined this year, official data show, and the difference in income between the bottom 10 percent of the population and the top 10 percent grew by nearly one-fifth between 2000 and 2010.
  • As in other former Soviet republics, pensioners are among the worst off because they were too old to make the most of the opportunities offered by the free market that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.Moscow is home to 2.65 million retired people and some elderly people have taken part in the recent protests, although many more are young middle-class professionals.
  • The number of Russians who made the Forbes' list of the world's billionaires jumped from none in 2000 to 101 last year, with Moscow becoming the billionaire capital of the world.The average monthly salary in Russia, however, was only 21,000 roubles ($670) last year.
  • Dissatisfaction over income distribution played its role in United Russia's performance in the December 4 election. The party had its two-thirds majority cut to a slim majority after winning just under 50 percent of the votes cast.
  • Russia's Communist Party, which targeted hard-up voters in its election campaign, won almost 20 percent of votes and will have 92 representatives in the 450-seat lower house.
  • He still appears to have more support in the countryside, where disparities are probably less manifest, than in big cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg where bright lights and luxury boutiques contrast with grim suburban tower block developments."It is obvious that people are very unhappy with the display of wealth they see around them and with the lack of progress to ensure their lives are better
  • economists at Renaissance Capital investment bank in Moscow say that income inequality in Russia is adequate for gross-domestic-product-per-capita levels."Considering its wealth, the level of income inequality is far from excessive," said Ivan Tchakarov, a Renaissance Capital economist."In the BRIC universe (of emerging countries Brazil, Russia, India and China), Russia is only marginally more income-unequal than China and India, but far better placed than Brazil."China, however, with a population nearly 10 times that of Russia, had only 14 more billionaires last year, according to Forbes.
  • The poverty rate in Russia stood at 13.1 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank, affecting about 18.6 million people.
  • John Roemer, a Yale University political science professor, has said that switching from Russia's flat 13 percent rate of income tax to a progressive tax system would raise living standards for the population as a whole.
Pedro Gonçalves

China launches green power revolution to catch up on west | Environment | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...china-green-energy-solar-wind

China Climate Change Zhang Xiaoqiang US David Sandalow Europe

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 10 Jun 09 - Cached
  • China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.
  • Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.
  • "Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.
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  • "We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption."
  • That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe's claims to world leadership in the field, despite China's relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.
  • Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China's $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.
  • He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.
  • David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%."China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year."No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet's carbon emissions."
Argos Media

Argentina calls halt to a wall separating rich from poor | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...gentina-social-separation-wall

Argentina Society

shared by Argos Media on 12 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The Argentinian government is demanding a halt to construction of a controversial social "separation wall" intended to block off a well-heeled residential neighbourhood from a poor district on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in an episode that is turning into a national scandal.
  • The mayor of wealthy San Isidro, Gustavo Posse, had originally agreed to raise the wall as a crime prevention measure, arguing that it would prevent thieves crossing the highway and entering San Isidro.
  • The erection of the Buenos Aires wall has followed similar moves in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where projects have been undertaken to seal off large areas of slums, triggering protests.
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  • Leading calls against the wall has been Argentina's President, Cristina Kirchner, who last week told the mayor of San Fernando, Osvaldo Amieiro, that she was "astonished" at the proposal, describing it in terms that suggested social apartheid.
  • The controversy has emerged at a sensitive time. With legislative elections due in June, crime has emerged as one of the biggest issues, not least in the urban belt surrounding the capital, which has one of the highest rates of crime in the country. The crime rate in Argentina has nearly doubled in the past two decades
  • Argentina has announced a decline in the numbers living in poverty, but this was met with much scepticism by independent analysts in a country where inflation is running at up to 25%.
  • Argentina has also been hit hard by the economic downturn, with industrial output falling by 12.2% in February.
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