Wednesday, March 26, 2008

[EQ] Common Wealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet

Common Wealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet

Jeffrey D. Sachs – ISBN 9781594201271 - 18 Mar 2008 - The Penguin Press

Common Wealth Forum: http://www.sachs.earth.columbia.edu/commonwealth/reviews.php

"……The global economic system now faces a sustainability crisis, Jeffrey Sachs argues, that will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The changes will be deeper than a rebalancing of economics and politics among different parts of the world; the very idea of competing nation-states scrambling for power, resources, and markets will, in some crucial respects, become passŽ. The only question is how bad it will have to get before we face the unavoidable. We will have to learn on a global scale some of the hard lessons that successful societies have gradually and grudgingly learned within national borders: that there must be common ground between rich and poor, among competing ethnic groups, and between society and nature.

The central theme of Jeffrey Sachs's new book is that we need a new economic paradigm-global, inclusive, cooperative, environmentally aware, science based-because we are running up against the realities of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained through more cooperative processes, relying as much on public policy as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy, land, and biodiversity.

The "soft issues" of the environment, public health, and population will become the hard issues of geopolitics. New forms of global politics will in important ways replace capital-city-dominated national diplomacy and intrigue. National governments, even the United States, will become much weaker actors as scientific networks and socially responsible investors and foundations become the more powerful actors.

If we do the right things, there is room for all on the planet. We can achieve the four key goals of a global society: prosperity for all, the end of extreme poverty, stabilization of the global population, and environmental sustainability. These are not utopian goals or pipe dreams, yet they are far from automatic. Indeed, we are not on a successful trajectory now to achieve these goals. Common Wealth points the way to the course correction we must embrace for the sake of our common future…."

Conference: State of the Planet 08

March 27-28, 2008

Website: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sop2008/

The Earth Institute - Columbia University

Registration to watch live online: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sop2008/

Agenda

Thursday, March 27, 2008

9:30 a.m.

Welcome: John C. Mutter, State of the Planet Steering Committee

9:45 a.m.

Opening Remarks

Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University

10:00 a.m.

Keynote

Kofi A. Annan, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations
President, Global Humanitarian Forum

10:20 a.m.

Session 1: Eradicating Poverty as the Poor Population Expands

Moderator: Matthew Bishop, The Economist

Session Keynote

Asha-Rose Migiro, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations

Panel

Gregory Clark, University of California-Davis

John McArthur, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Erik S. Reinert, The Other Canon Foundation, Norway

Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
Laurence Tubiana, Sciences Po Paris

1:45 p.m.

Global Health and the Foreign Policy Agenda

Jonas Gahr Støre, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Norway

2:15 p.m.

Session 2: Addressing Areas of Conflict in Our Changing World

Moderator: Jonathan Ledgard, The Economist

Session Keynote

Jan Egeland, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Panel

Kathryn McPhail, International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM)

Andrew Morton, United Nations Environment Programme

Jill Shankleman, J. Shankleman Limited

David Victor, Stanford University

4:15 p.m.

Improving Health for Sustainable Development

Alice Dautry, President, Institut Pasteur

4:45 p.m.

Closing Remarks

Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

6:30 p.m.

Special Evening Event

The Economist Debates: The United States and Climate Change

Proposition: "The United States will solve the climate change problem."

Host: Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, The Economist

Friday, March 28, 2008

9:30 a.m.

Special Lecture: The Challenge of Sustainable Development in the Next Administration

Jeffrey D. Sachs

10:00 a.m.

Keynote

Barbara Thomas Judge, Chairman, UK Atomic Energy Authority

10:30 a.m.

Session 3: Identifying Energy Solutions for Sustainable Development

Sponsored by the
Columbia Business School Energy Club and
School of International and Public Affairs Energy Association

Moderator: Edward Mcbride, The Economist

Session Keynote

Paula DiPerna, Chicago Climate Exchange

Panel

Eron Bloomgarden, EcoSecurities

Michael Grubb, UK Carbon Trust

Klaus S. Lackner, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Roberto Rodrigues, Superior Agriculture Council of São Paulo's Federation of Industries

2:00 p.m.

Session 4: Responding to Accelerated Environmental Change in the Arctic

Sponsored by the
Royal Norwegian Consulate General

Moderator: Geoffrey Carr, The Economist

Panel

Ken Drinkwater, University of Bergen, Norway

Grete K. Hovelsrud, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research

Eystein Jansen, University of Bergen, Norway

Peter Schlosser, The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Daniel M. White, Institute of Northern Engineering

4:10 p.m.

Closing Remarks: Jeffrey D. Sachs

* * * *

This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMS Area]

"Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is".Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings
and interpretations included in the Materials are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Pan American
Health Organization PAHO/WHO or its country members".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAHO/WHO Website: http://www.paho.org/
EQUITY List - Archives - Join/remove: http://listserv.paho.org/Archives/equidad.html

    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.

[EQ] Reaching the Poor Policy Briefs: Cambodia - Mexico

Reaching the Poor Policy Brief Series

The World Bank - March 2008

New Reaching the Poor Policy Brief Series, are now available. This installment of two briefs focuses on addressing demand side health care financing, with two cases from Cambodia and Mexico.

English versions of this installment are attached and electronic files of these four new briefs will be made available in English, French, Spanish and Russian
World Bank’s website: http://go.worldbank.org/PUJ2E7T1Z0

Health Insurance Initiatives

· Mexico (Seguro): Providing Subsidized Health Insurance for the Poor
English (pdf 132kb) | French (pdf 134kb) | Spanish (pdf 119kb) | Russian (pdf 851kb)

Public Private Partnerships

· Cambodia: Contracting Health Care Services for the Rural Poor
English (pdf 150kb) | French (PDF 173kb) | Spanish (PDF 157kb) | Russian (PDF 1MB)

This policy brief series is produced by the World Bank Institute with financial support from the Government of the Netherlands.

Motivation:
It has been known for too long that the poor and socially vulnerable die earlier and suffer more from diseases, high fertility, and malnutrition, than the better-off in most countries. This fact has motivated bigger investments in the health sector on the naïve assumption that spending on health is spending on the poor. The overwhelming evidence in the last 10 years have shown that simply spending more on health does not necessarily equal reaching and helping the poor. The Reaching the Poor Program has sought to find evidence that spending in health can be pro-poor and to begin to understand the conditions necessary to attack inequality.

Vigilance, Hope, and Hard Work The research phase of the Reaching the Poor Program funded by the World Bank, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch and Swedish Governments, supported evaluations of health programs.   A critical finding of the research phase was that health programs do not have to be pro-rich. Addressing and reversing inequality, however, is not easy.
Common success characteristics include:
(i)   an explicit objective of reaching the poor;
(ii) analysis of the bottlenecks facing the poor;
(iii) adapting   solutions   to   address   local   conditions;
(iv) experimentation;
(v) monitoring; and
(vi) patience.

Each Brief will highlight the main achievements of successful attempts to address health service use inequality. They are short and policy oriented, but they are based on longer and technical evaluation documents. The wide variety of policy instruments that have proven successful shows that there is not one way of addressing inequality, but that motivated policy makers and advocates can make a difference.

Abdo Yazbeck, Lead Health Economist
World Bank Institute, the World Bank

The RPP II Team (in alphabetical order): Ann Goldman, Jo Hindriks, Michelle Morris, Mary Mugala, Tanya Ringland, Chialing Yang and Abdo Yazbeck

* * * *

“Materials provided in this electronic list are provided "as is".Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings
and interpretations included in the Materials are those of the authors and not necessarily of The Pan American
Health Organization PAHO/WHO or its country members”.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAHO/WHO Website: http://www.paho.org/
EQUITY List - Archives - Join/remove: http://listserv.paho.org/Archives/equidad.html

    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.

[EQ] Maternal Health

Maternal Health

Fifth Report of Session 2007–08 Volume I

UK House of Commons -International Development Committee

Published on 2 March 2008 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office

Available online as PDF file [ 75p.] at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmintdev/66/66i.pdf

“….Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), which seeks to reduce by three-quarters the level of maternal mortality by 2015, has seen the least progress of all the MDGs. A key factor in this collective failure has been insufficient political will to drive actions to improve the health of women, both at the international and national levels.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has been a leading donor to maternal health programmes. It deserves credit for its creation of international

partnerships, its willingness to address sensitive issues such as abortion, its support to research and its consistent focus on strengthening health systems.

Major challenges remain. Only two in five women in sub-Saharan Africa deliver their babies with the assistance of a skilled attendant and this is largely unchanged since the early 1990s. Addressing the huge shortage of midwives worldwide and increasing the availability of emergency obstetric care to all women has been and must remain at the centre of DFID’s approach. Increasing access to basic drugs and equipment—including family planning supplies—is also vital.

It is also crucial to address the gender inequalities that prevent women fulfilling their right to health. Improvements to health information systems in developing countries need the continuing support of DFID so that policies and programmes can be evidence-based and progress towards MDG 5 can be tracked reliably.

Lack of data from countries with some of the worst death tolls, a tendency to under-report maternal deaths and the use of national averages create uncertainty about the real scale of maternal mortality, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Whilst the number of maternal deaths for 2005 is cited as 536,000, it could be as high as 872,000. We fear that the higher figure could indeed be nearer the truth. It has also been estimated that for each woman who dies, 30 further women will become disabled, injured or ill owing to pregnancy, so it is reasonable to assume that millions of women suffer in some way due to childbirth.

Inequalities in access to maternal care are driven primarily by poverty. DFID should continue to support the abolition of charges for health care and help governments to identify and address the major barriers to care, especially for the poorest women and in conflict settings where demand for maternal care is higher and access more difficult.

DFID cannot single-handedly bring about the progress needed to reach MDG 5. It needs to step back and prioritise carefully in order to maximise the series of crucial opportunities offered in 2008. The Department must play to its strengths and support other actors, especially the UN, in playing their part. Only then will maternal health receive the urgent political commitment that it deserves…..”

Report

Summary

Background and acknowledgements

1 Introduction

The global maternal mortality burden

DFID’s response

The key bottleneck: a failure of advocacy and political will

2 More than a medical problem: maternal health as a development issue

Addressing gender inequalities

Girls’ and women’s education

Gender-based violence

Socio-economic empowerment

Other demand-side barriers

Transport

Strengthening civil society’s capacity to hold governments to account and influence policy

Ensuring pro-poor health financing

A rights-based approach

Unsafe abortion

3 Securing political will: global strategies for maternal health

The UN: challenges and opportunities in its current approach

Other major global initiatives

The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

The Global Campaign for the Health MDGs

Seizing opportunities

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria

The Japanese Presidency of the G8

The UK’s role in stepping up advocacy

4 Strategies for success

What works in preventing maternal deaths

The example of Nepal

What works in strengthening health systems

Boosting human resources

Increasing the availability of equipment and supplies

Balancing the demand and supply-side of care

Working in conflict-affected and fragile states

The need for improved health information systems to monitor progress

5 The challenge for DFID

DFID’s current mix of aid instruments and policies

Financing strategies

Budget support and maternal health

DFID’s human resource capacity

Managing expectations of DFID’s work and aid harmonisation

DFID’s comparative advantage

Re-appraising priorities

6 Conclusion

Recommendations

List of written evidence

List of unprinted written evidence

* * * *

    IMPORTANT: This transmission is for use by the intended recipient and it may contain privileged, proprietary or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this transmission to the intended recipient, you may not disclose, copy or distribute this transmission or take any action in reliance on it. If you received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately by email to infosec@paho.org, and please dispose of and delete this transmission. Thank you.