Tag Archives: Development

The Resilience Dividend – Judith Rodin

“Resilience building is a concept that can be learned and a practice that can be developed…Too often, however, resilience thinking does not really take hold until a galvanizing event or a major shock–such as Superstorm Sandy–brings the need into high relief.”

When we think of disaster response, we tend to think of infrastructure: levees in New Orleans, or rebuilding homes after an earthquake or tsunami. That’s fair, but it misses a key piece of the picture. Emergency response is in many ways about people. No one person (or almost no one) can have everything they need to weather a disaster, or rebuild after it. Networks have to come together to recover: communities, they used to be called. Rodin rightly highlights their importance, before and after, in ensuring the best possible response to crises.

Rodin practices what she preaches: as head of the Rockefeller Foundation, she has led disaster response programs in a huge number of regions. Urbanization, Climate Change, and Globalization, she points out, have each made the modern world potentially more vulnerable to volatile shocks, creating what Rodin calls a socio-ecological-economic nexus, where each creates problems that feed off the other two. Sadly, as a society we tend to ignore potential problems until they occur, at which point we often freak out and overreact, creating yet more problems.

The book sometimes feels poorly edited: it claims that Norman Borlaug retired in 1983 at age 65, then died 26 years later at the age of 95, for example. Even for Norman Borlaug, that’s tricky (he actually retired in 1979). It can also sometimes feel like a little brother to Taleb’s tremendous book on the same subject, Anti-Fragile. Rodin uses more examples, but doesn’t always seem to have thought issues through the same way Taleb has: she argues for centralized control of response without really considering alternatives, for example.

An important subject, and written by a hugely successful and important figure, but for me not perfect. It is important to highlight the essential role of people and communities in recovery, and the value of investing in them, but I would have liked to have seen it go a little farther, using some of the lessons from Anti-Fragile.

Location review – Myanmar

By special request, I’m going to try something a little different, and review not a book, but a trip: Myanmar! Summary: post-apocalyptic capital, amazing temples, phenomenal people, all changing at breakneck speed.

I’ve been backpacking for two weeks in Myanmar, and it’s been great. By far the best thing is the tremendous kindness of the locals; tourist infrastructure is a bit thin on the ground, but its more than made up for by the willingness of people to help.

It’s also a fascinating time to visit. Seven years ago, a sim card cost upwards of 5000 dollars. As little as two years ago, they cost $175, well out of the reach of most citizens. Today, they cost $1.50. In the last two years, internet access has gone from almost nonexistent to universal: every single person has a smartphone and uses 3G. It’s an enormous, almost unprecedented, leap, and is fuelling a dramatic country-wide evolution.

And it may change more. In November elections are due, with the results unknown. Regardless, people seem eager to talk about politics, a very positive change.

I can highly recommend Bagan, in particular. A plain littered with 2000 temples, the view at sunrise and sunset is utterly phenomenal. Yangon is quiet for a se Asian city, but rich with history and interesting. Lake Inle, a tourist hotspot, is well-beloved, but for me it was simply a nice lake, similar to ones elsewhere, and not unique to Myanmar like Bagan.

My highlight was the capital of Naypyidaw. Almost no tourists go, so transport is a little tricky, but it is unique. It was built ten years ago, in secret, and civil servants were given two months to pack up and move after the announcement. Apartment buildings are colour coded based on which employees should live there-green for the ministry of agriculture, for example. Though the official count is one million, many still commute, and so wide, ten lane streets are utterly empty of traffic. It feels post-apocalyptic, complete with forests still growing between various ministries.

I recommend it highly, and now is a good time to go. By the time you blink, it will be totally different again.

Unfinished Business – Anne-Marie Slaughter

“I want a society that opens the possibility for every one of us to have a fulfilling career, or simply a good job with good wages if that’s what we choose, along with a personal life that allows for the satisfactions of loving and caring for others.”

Ann-Marie Slaughter lit a fire with her publication of ‘Why Women Can’t Still Can’t Have It All’ in the Atlantic, arguing that women who manage to be mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. She suggested that there are limits – in time, energy, fertility, and desire – that are unavoidable, and that no one can do everything. She speaks from experience: she gave up a high-powered job under Hillary Clinton as secretary of state to return to a less demanding (though still very impressive) job as a professor at Princeton.

In her forthcoming book, she extends this argument, suggesting that though there are some unavoidable limits on humans, society also imposes a lot of artificial ones. She argues that most jobs can be sorted into caring or competitive roles: investment banking might be competitive, but sectors like healthcare and education are more about caring. Society underrates caring jobs, she argues, and those jobs have also traditionally been the responsibility of women. If we are to achieve a better society, we need to increase the value we place on those caring jobs, whether it is childcare or senior care, and also make the workforce more flexible to accomodate more mixing of options, allowing part-time work, more parental leave, and other arrangements. Society, she says, has unfinished business when it comes to workplace arrangements and to social norms.

It’s a solid point, and I quite like her almost Buddhist discussion of limits. Her analysis of the psychology of caring vs. competitive jobs can sometimes feel a bit trite, though: it’s well out of her area of expertise, and isn’t as strong as the similar discussion in Friend and Foe, for example. Still, she’s engaging with an important issue, and one that in the U.S. in particular is often dismissed. Things like parental leave programs can help give children that crucial good early start, and most countries could do with thinking it over a little more. In a sense, it’s a nice complement to Sandberg’s Lean In: Lean In describes how to do well in the world as is, whereas Unfinished Business seeks to suggest how the world should change.

Disclosure: I read Unfinished Business as an advance reader copy. You can read more reviews, or pre-order the book, on amazon: Unfinished Business. It is released September 29th.

1493 – Charles C. Mann

“To the history of kings and queens most of us learned as students has been added a recognition of the remarkable role of exchange, both ecological and economic…Columbus’s voyage did not mark the discovery of a New World, but its creation.”

I found this book fascinating. I had no idea North America didn’t have earthworms before Columbus, and that soil was brought over as ballast for ships that would return full of tobacco, nor that much of the silver mined in the New World was actually sold to China, who had collapsed their currency repeatedly for several hundred years (they were the first to introduce paper currency, due to a lack of available metals), and so were desperate for a precious metal they could use to stabilize it.

Mann’s thesis is that Columbus’ journey marked the beginning of true globalization, not because it marked the developed world discovering the new world (which isn’t really true anyway), but because it led to a worldwide mixing of ecologies and economies. Columbus himself may have been wrong about almost everything, but his voyage still had dramatic consequences, good and bad. The whole book is excellent, containing fascinating stories such as the evolution of potatoes from a poisonous plant that could only be safely consumed when eaten with clay (which bound the poison molecules to itself and could be excreted), to a worldwide phenomenon that allowed dramatic increases in population density across Europe and China and a (temporary?) escape from the Malthusian Trap. You can still buy the poisonous varieties in South America, complete with clay dust, by the way.

Ecological globalization wasn’t the only thing that happened around 1493, of course, and Mann is good about highlighting the complexity and agency of the peoples on both sides of the Atlantic before Columbus, something that is often neglected by European historians. In some ways he seems guided more by curiosity than anything else, omitting some things to focus on others he finds more interesting. Still, the ecological changes that resulted from the increased mixing have been dramatic, in ways we don’t notice because we don’t realize they could have been different. North American forests are very different with the presence of earthworms, because they decompose underbrush; today they are destroying terraces in Southeast Asia by making them spongy.

Highly recommended. Not perfect, and with such a wide scope details can sometimes suffer, but well worth the effort.

The Economics of Enough – Diane Coyle

“For more than a generation Western governments have been borrowing on a large scale from their own citizens but increasingly also from foreigners in much poorer countries. The cost of these promises will be piled onto taxpayers as yet unborn or too young to vote.”

At the moment, we appear to be leaving future generations a rather bad hand. Public debt seems to verge on the unsustainable, and the number of things they’ll to pay for, whether cleaning the environment or reducing inequality, seem to be increasing. Axel Weber, previously president of Germany’s Bundesbank, once joked that in face of spiraling debt, future generations “are doing the only thing they can. They’re avoiding being born.” One of the less common explanations for Europe’s demographic crisis.

A fairly basic law says that what cannot go on forever will stop. Whether it is climate change, public borrowing, inequality, or deteriorating social capital, says Coyle, we’re in the midst of a number of unsustainable trends, ones that can and must change. That means measuring things properly (as she discusses in depth in another book, GDP: A Short History), and making decisions as if the future matters, indeed as if we should leave the next generation with at least as much capital as we inherited.

In the end, Coyle is hopeful: by curbing our instinct to demand ever more, and making sure we think about the consequences for the future of our decisions today, she says, we can do a lot to leave future generations in a good position. This also means facing basic trade-offs, though, instead of pretending they don’t exist and borrowing to avoid them: she suggests, for example, that we should pick any two of efficiency, fairness, and freedom, but that not all three can be achieved simultaneously.

It’s not a new message, perhaps, but it is an important message. We could do a lot more to care for future generations (some days, it might be fair doing anything would be an improvement, Elon Musk excepted). Coyne mixes some practical suggestions with philosophical discussion, and if it doesn’t quite feel like she’s cracked the problem, she’s at least thinking about the right things.

Exodus – Paul Collier

“Individual migrants succeed in capturing the huge productivity gains from migration. But migrants collectively have an interest in precisely what individually is most detrimental: entry barriers.”

Some countries ban immigration entirely; some encourage it; some allow people to settle, but forbid them citizenship. The range in immigration policies spans almost the entire spectrum of possible options, and it seems unlikely all of them are optimal.

Immigration is a controversial topic, in the UK more than most. It’s also one where arguments are generally made with very little evidence on either side: it’s not impossible immigrants are good or bad for the economy/social welfare/tolerance/the social fabric, but it’s hard to know either way. With that in mind, an evidence-based look at immigration is welcome. There are a lot of good sections in Exodus, but unfortunately as whole it also has some weaknesses.

The book basically goes through the costs and benefits to the three groups affected by immigration in turn – migrants, recipient countries, and sender countries. That’s helpful, and Collier makes some insightful points on each. Overall, though, his argument is that the costs and benefits to societies from sending or receiving immigrants are probably small, and the benefits to individual migrants are huge, making at least some migration attractive. At some point, however, there might be too much immigration, given the effect on social fabric and public services.

At the extreme, the possibility of too much immigration seems plausible – purely from a population density perspective, that almost has to be true. The extremely salient question of how much is too much, however, goes entirely unaddressed. Exodus also relies on abstract models to make its points, the stock and trade of economists but something I suspect most other readers will not find convincing. Data is a better approach for this sort of controversial issue, and there the book has much less.

Overall, I think immigration is aching to be addressed in as rigorous, empirically- and evidence-driven a manner as possible, but I’m not sure Exodus is quite there. Presents a useful difference in perspective from usual accounts, but certainly not decisive.

Nurtureshock – Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

“The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring — because key twists in the science have been overlooked.”

Can you tell if children are lying? Most adults believe they can: they also frequently believe that boys are more prone to lying than girls, and that younger children lie more than older ones. Sadly, none of that is true. Parents do no better than chance at telling whether random kids are lying, and only slightly better than chance with their own children. Gender does not correlate with lying, and younger children actually lie less than older ones. Less is a relative term, though: in household studies, 96% of kids lie, an average of once an hour for six year olds. Threatening punishment doesn’t appear to make a difference: what helps is emphasizing that telling the truth makes parents happy (since that is often the goal of the child anyway), and the value of honesty more generally.

For all that we were all kids once, it turns out our intuitions about what they are like are depressingly poor. Nurtureshock aims to capture some of the counter-intuitive or novel ideas researchers have found from actually working with large numbers of children, rather than just guessing (Ahem, Freud). Seeing their parents fight isn’t bad for children, it turns out, if they also witness a successful resolution. If the parents end the fight without resolving it, or move it upstairs or otherwise out of the child’s presence, on the other hand, children tend to be more aggressive and act out more afterwards.

Nurtureshock tries to cover a wide range of issues, sometimes at the price of oversimplifying. Some of the chapters are also fairly well known, at least to me, such as Carol Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindsets. Others, though, raise some great points, ones parents may not even have considered, and even if the treatment is probably too brief to satisfy, it can serve as a useful starting point to tracking down more research. After all, research about kids is usually pretty cute, whether of children singing to themselves to resist eating a marshmallow, or managing to stand still for 2 minutes when asked to stay still, or 11 minutes if asked to mimic a soldier. A challenge for both parenting and teaching is that you often don’t see others parent or teach, and so rarely have your intuitions challenged: a little bit of critical reflection can go a long way.

The Rise of Rome – Anthony Everitt

“From Edward Gibbon onward, historians have pondered the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. But how was the empire won? What was it that enabled a small Italian market town by a ford on the river Tiber to conquer the known world?”

Rome, you might have heard, did pretty well for itself. The Western Roman Empire lasted just over a millennia (including the earlier Republic), while the Eastern managed closer to two. To put that in perspective, the Americans have so far managed about 250 years, and as a nation they’re not exactly bursting with youthful vigour. So how, you might ask, did the Romans manage it?

Everitt doesn’t answer this question directly, but he does tell the story of the early years of Rome, from its beginnings as an early hill town, overshadowed by nearby Greek and Etruscan settlements, to its climactic struggles with Carthage that would catapult it to world-power status. Rome saw its strength as government: they could not compete with the Greeks for poetry or culture, they argued, but they argued their ability to govern and organize a state was second to none. What makes it interesting, though, is the malleability of that government. In early Rome, there were no tribunes, no aediles – laws were kept secret, as holy books. It would be centuries before the Roman government became recognizable in its better-known form, the product of an ongoing struggle between different factions. Cicero would claim that was its strength: Greek cities could be ruled by one great man, but Rome was ruled by generations of wise ones. I’m not sure any country today could say the same, but then the Roman Republic did turn into a dictatorial empire, so it isn’t all role model.

Everitt’s strength is in the small details that help bring the ancient world to life. The Romans were helped in building a fleet, for example, because a Carthaginian ship was shipwrecked on Italy: building a replica was made easier because the Carthaginians used to mark all their warship pieces with different letters, so they could ship the pieces as a flatpack and then easily assemble them in port. For all that, I have to admit Everitt’s not to my taste. He tends to hold strong opinions, and cast judgment quickly on his subjects: I’m sure that suits some readers, but for me when there is no evidence, I prefer humility over unprovable claims and ambiguous judgments. Still, it’s a fascinating question, and if its one you’re interested in, the book provides a wealth of detail and information.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle by Michael Booth – Michael Booth

“Denmark was the happiest place in the world. The happiest? This dark, wet, dull, flat little country made up of one peninsula, Jutland, and a handful of islands to its east with its handful of stoic, sensible people and the highest taxes in the world? The United States was twenty-third on the list. But a man at a university had said it, so it must be true.”

Scandinavia is often referred to as some sort of paradise, where all is well and everyone is happy. Michael Booth, a Brit living in Denmark, tries to understand whether that reputation is deserved, and if so why. To spoil the ending, he believes we have much to learn from those countries, including their priorities, how they handle their wealth, and how they balance work and play while educating themselves and supporting each other. He also has serious concerns, about increasing fissures around race and social equality, alcoholism, a vast public service that is funded with an ever increasing share of total income, and – particularly in Denmark – a debt to income ratio that is double that of Spain and quadruple that of Italy.

The strength of the book, though, is in his witty, clever, and curmudgeonly perspective on it all. Booth is a funny and entertaining writer, and it makes the whole book work, part travel guide and part documentary. If you want a serious analysis of why Finland’s education system is one of the best in the world, why the suicides rates in Scandinavia are so high, or why Sweden is the 8^th largest arms exporter in the world, this isn’t the book for you. If you are planning on visiting the countries, though, or better yet moving there, The Almost Nearly Perfect People can teach you to avoid sitting next to the host at a party in Sweden unless you want to make a speech; give you advice on how to socialize with the remarkably taciturn Finns; and above all, make you laugh.

Disclosure: I read this as a Advance Reader Copy. You can get it on Amazon: Almost Nearly Perfect People.

Strange Pilgrims – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“He sat on a wooden bench under the yellow leaves in the deserted park, contemplating the dusty swans with both his hands resting on the silver handle of his cane, and thinking about death.”

Strange Pilgrims is a lightning tour of Europe, from wind-swept towns in Portugal and Spain to snow-clad Geneva and Paris. The central theme is of Latin Americans adrift in Europe, and many of the stories also involve death, either directly or as a motif. The focus is on what it is to be in a strange land, perhaps reflecting some of Marquez’s time as a virtual exile from Columbia. Might be valuable reading for UKIP or the Fronte Nationale, if they were looking to understand immigrants a bit better.

The name, somewhat obscurely, comes from the fact that it has taken Marquez years to write the stories (originally drafted in the 70s, they were published in 92): they have been pilgrims from the wastebasket to his desk and back multiple times, before finally emerging in their final – or at least current – form.

As is usual with Marquez, his stories are visually stimulating, creating whole pictures in your mind leavened with moments of humour. Several stories also feature magic realism, for which he is best known. Some are terrifying (one in particular, “I only came to use the phone”), and others are touching or inspiring. The line above opens the first of the 12 stories, a particularly good one about a former president trapped in Geneva by medical problems he cannot afford to have treated, nothing left but his dignity. In another, a newly-married couple travels to Europe only to find themselves trapped apart by a language and custom they do not understand, to a tragic end. All are worthwhile, and all bear Marquez’s classic stamp of humour mixed with stunning imagery and emotion.