Policy

By Susana del Granado* and Gabriela Olivarez**

Questions surrounding the extraction of natural resources have been the topic of multiple debates in Bolivia. Most recently, two talks, one in La Paz[1] and the other in Santa Cruz[2], questioned the need of this extraction and analyzed the costs. However, the need to compare the extraction between the current and previous governments remains. This short article attempts to contribute to fulfill this gap by comparing the quantities extracted and the public investment between a government claiming to be state-led (2004-2013) and neoliberal ones (1985-2003).

The data shows that the quantities extracted of the main raw materials for export in Bolivia’s economy have increased in the state-led government (see figure 1), but public investment in industry and manufacturing has remained fairly constant (figure 2). Yet, the current government wishes – as established in both development plans (2007, 2015) – to transform Bolivia’s extractivist economy into an economy in which the extraction of raw materials is used as a springboard to achieve industrialization. Nevertheless, little progress appears to be taking place in the discursive trajectory of the current government led by Evo Morales. Furthermore Raul Zibechi, an Uruguayan researcher and journalist, in a recent talk in La Paz argued that industrialization from extractivism is an unattainable goal[3]. Read More »

By Anna Sophia Doyle*

I was browsing through one of my favorite environmental news and commentary sites (favorite as it’s both intelligent but also hilarious when reporting on very serious issues such as climate, food, energy, etc.) and came across a great article on whether eating meat could be eco-friendly.

Having wrestled with the subject myself and in honor of it being Meatless Monday, I thought I’d share some if the article’s insights with the Development Roast readers as well as a few other thoughts and related links. Read More »

By Susana del Granado *

Let’s suppose a billionaire has given you 1 million US$ with the sole instruction that you live wisely from it. Thus, you decide to put all the money in the bank at the highest annual interest rate in the market (5%) and live only from the interest, which means you have 50,000 US$ a year or 137 US$ per day to spend. Read More »

By: Fabián E. Soria* y Pablo A. Rivero*

Public administration is evolving towards Open Government, a new paradigm that makes use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) but also changes the processes and information management within the public sector in order to bring the government closer to the citizens and become more efficient.

There are two important factors in this topic: first, what does it exactly mean (and why is it important) to “open the data and processes in the public sector”. Second, who is this information for (i.e. who will make use of open data)?

Read More »

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

There is little doubt that human greenhouse gas emissions, mainly arising from the burning of fossil fuels and forests, are warming the planet. The physical properties of CO₂ in the atmosphere imply that a doubling of CO₂ concentrations from the current 400 parts per million (ppm) to 800 ppm would directly cause an increase in the average global temperature of about 1°C, and with that increase in temperatures we would also experience an increase in global precipitation. That much we know with a high degree of certainty.

Anything beyond that, however, is highly uncertain. While most climate models incorporate positive feedback effects that amplify the initial direct warming effect several times, historical data suggests that there are important negative feedbacks that help stabilize global temperatures. Most importantly, Earth’s temperature has oscillated within a relatively narrow band for hundreds of millions of years despite much higher and much lower CO₂ concentrations in the past (see Figures 1 and 2). In addition, during the last couple of decades, global temperatures have not increased nearly as much as suggested by the models with strong positive feedbacks. Thus, we should have only low confidence in our knowledge about feedback effects and temperature increases beyond 1°C.

Read More »

By Susana del Granado *

“A vision comes not from the intellect or the mind but from the heart, from the soul”

Donella Meadows

Today, June 5^th , we celebrate World Environment Day and, as a celebration, the United Nations Environmental Program has launched a campaign and a contest about “sharing your dream^[1]” to move people to imagine a sustainable future and to trigger discussion on the objectives for sustainable development^[2].

A vision is a desirable future and, by definition, it is a positive image of what you want to see in the future. Donella Meadows, an environmental scientist and leading author of “The Limits to Growth”, while presenting at an ecological economics conference, inspired and requested her audience to envision a sustainable future. To develop that vision, she asked them to get comfortable, to close their eyes, to take a deep breath, and to dream:^[3] Read More »

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Within the Bolivian government, there are parts that encourage a massive expansion of the agricultural frontier, and other parts that work to control deforestation in order to reduce the local and global impacts of climate change. These are pretty much opposing policies, so consider the following hypothetical question: How large an area would we have to reforest in order to compensate the carbon emissions caused by the expansion of the agricultural frontier by 2.5 million hectares, if we wanted to reach carbon emission neutrality by 2030. Read More »

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Fertility rates have been going down all over the World much faster than most people realize. Fertility rates in Bolivia, for example, have come down from 6.5 babies per woman in 1971 to 3.2 in 2013, which is typical of developing countries (1).

This evolution made me suspect that the problem of high teenage pregnancy in Bolivia perhaps has already solved itself, and that I don’t really have to worry about becoming a grandmother anytime soon.

However, a quick look at the latest Bolivian population census (2012) indicates that teenage pregnancy is still very common. Seven percent of all 15 year olds already have a child, and this share increases to a whopping 49 percent for the 20 year olds, many of which already have 3 children (see Table 1).

Read More »

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Today is International Women’s Day and you are likely to be bombarded with posts, articles and speeches listing all the ways in which women are wronged and discriminated against. Some of it is true in some places, and there are definitely problems that have to be dealt with, but the concept of Women’s Day still bothers me, for several reasons.

First, designating one day as Women’s Day would seem to imply that the other 364 days of the year are men’s days. That is a very long way from equality. Either we should have one Women’s day and one Men’s day, or neither of the two. Anything else would be discriminating.

Second, Women’s Day tends to perpetuate the perception that women are weak and repressed and unfairly treated. But why is it that in almost every country on Earth (except Botswana, Swaziland and Mali), women live longer than men? (1). Either women are built much tougher or they live easier, less dangerous and less stressful lives than men. Women are a lot smarter and stronger than feminists give them credit for.

Read More »

By: Lykke E. Andersen & Fabián Soria*

According to the latest Bolivian Population Census (2012), only 9.6% of households have Internet access (either fixed or wireless). Considering that the Bolivian Constitution puts telecommunications (including Internet) on par with water, sanitation and electricity as a basic human right, this coverage is outrageously low.

The main reason for the low coverage is the high cost. Even after nationalizing the telecommunications sector (2008) and investing USD 300 million in our very own telecommunications satellite, Tupac Katari (2013), Internet services in Bolivia remain patchy, expensive and slow compared to other countries in the region. For most Bolivians, having Internet at home is simply unaffordable.

Figure 1 shows that, for an average person in Bolivia, one hour of work would buy less than 1 day of a lousy 1Mbps (Megabits per second) Internet connection, whereas the average person in “developed countries,” such as the Netherlands, South Korea, Denmark, and China could buy several years worth of such a service for just one hour of work.

Figure 1: Internet Purchasing Power (days of 1Mbps Internet service that can be bought for one hour of work), as well as average download speed and average cost per Mbps.

Read More »