It’s Carnaval week/month in Bolivia – the time of year when most beer is drunk. Beer prices have just gone up again, now reaching an outrageous Bs. 9, or more, for a small can of standard beer in supermarkets. This corresponds to USD 3.64 for 1 liter of beer, way more than it costs in rich countries such as Denmark.
If we take into account the low level of wages in Bolivia and the high prices of beer, Bolivia becomes one of the most expensive places in the world for beer lovers. On average, Bolivians have to work about 145 minutes to afford 1 liter of beer (1), whereas in the United States on average they only have to work for 10 minutes (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Minutes of work required to purchase 1 liter of beer in a supermarket
Source: Author’s elaboration based on data from The Economist + Bolivian data (http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-chart-13?zid=319&ah=17af09b0281b01505c226b1e574f5cc1)
The impacts of Homo sapiens on this planet are enormous. We have turned about a fifth of the total land area of this planet into agricultural fields and pasture to feed ourselves; we are burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, thus altering the composition of the atmosphere and causing climate change; we are extracting at least 150 million tons of fish from the oceans every year; and we area leaving our trash everywhere. This predatory behavior has prompted John Gray, professor emeritus of London School of Economics, to call us Homo rapiens (1). Guilt over our adverse impacts is widespread, and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement goes as far as suggesting that humans should stop breeding in order to save the planet (2).
It is true that we are a rather successful and aggressive species, at least so far. But we have only been here for a few hundred thousand years and the 4.5 billion year old planet has been through a lot worse than humans. More than 99% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet went extinct before humans arrived on the scene. Most disappeared simply because they were not adaptive and competitive enough to survive over a long period of time (background extinction), while others disappeared in mass extinction events, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other land-based species 65 million years ago. Still, the level of biodiversity is probably higher than it has ever been (see figure 1).
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is about to end its 20th annual conference in Lima, Peru, and heads of state and negotiators from every country on Earth are fighting to get other countries to reduce their CO2 emissions as much as possible, in order to keep global warming below catastrophic levels.
This approach to tackling climate change has, as one might have expected, proven depressingly ineffective. Since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed on in 1997, CO2 emissions have increased steadily, with not the slightest hint of a slow-down. The level of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere has now reached 400 ppm (parts per million), which is more than ever before observed in the history of Homo Sapiens.
Fortunately, there are lots of creative, constructive and persistent people working on practical solutions for a happier, healthier, greener and more sustainable future. Of the thousands of inspiring, creative and constructive TED talks, I have selected three that focus on transforming our current climate change problems into opportunities by mimicking nature:
At a time when the global view of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) grows ever more polarized, the seventh meeting of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety[1] was both timely and symptomatic of the current divide. Agenda items were many and varied, including compliance to the protocol, financial mechanisms and resources, and socioeconomic considerations regarding the use of living modified organisms (LMOs)[2].
But the most hotly contested issue without doubt was the debate surrounding the attempted endorsement of the Guidance for Environmental Risk Assessment of LMOs (referred to from here on simply as “the Guidance”).
September 21, 2014PolicyComments Off on Day of Spring, Love, Peace and Ice
By: Lykke E. Andersen*
The 21st of September marks the beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere. In Bolivia, it is also the day of Love, Peace, Students, Doctors and Photographers (!!). Most relevant for this article, however, today is usually the day of the year that the extent of sea ice in the northern hemisphere reaches rock bottom, much to the concern of polar bears (or at least people concerned about polar bears). In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand, sea ice usually reaches its maximum extent on this day (possibly to the delight of penguins).
In this satellite era, the extent of sea ice is an easy-to-measure indicator about the state of the global climate (warmer climate -> less ice), but the extent of sea-ice itself also affects the global climate (less ice cover -> lower albedo (reflectance) -> warmer climate). Thus, many people watch this indicator closely, and the availability of several independent web-sites with daily updated data on sea-ice extent makes this possible, and even delightful (at least for data-freaks like me).
Thanks to the collaboration of Candido Pastor, Wilberth Tejerina and Edil Tellez, we had a very interesting program centered on the eco-tourism potential of the lowlands of La Paz. Photo credit: GLP films/IDRC
During the first week of September 2014, the California-based film company GLP films came to Bolivia to make a video about the Joint Mitigation and Adaptation Mechanism for the Integral and Sustainable Management of Forests and Mother Earth, which is Bolivia’s alternative to the international REDD+ mechanism to reduce deforestation (see expedition web-site).
The video project is financed by the Think Tank Initiative managed by the International Development Research Centre in Canada, and the resulting video is expected be featured at a side event at the COP20 in Lima in December 2014.
Under the direction of Lykke Andersen from INESAD, and with the help of many other institutions and individuals, a 6-person film crew, armed to the teeth with gear, visited La Paz, Rurrenabaque, Bella Altura, Pando, Santa Cruz, Concepción, and El Torno.
One common indicator used in many family planning and sexual and reproductive health research documents is that of unmet need for contraception/family planning (see Figure 1). In most cases, this unmet need indicator is followed by this description: percentage of women aged 15 to 49 who are married or in a union (1). Running into this indicator not only makes the feminist inside me stand up in protest, it also lets me know that the information presented on unmet need is incomplete. This unmet need data that only includes women who are married (2) is then generalized to be representative of the entire country/region/world.
Figure 1: Percentage of women with an unmet need for family planning (any method) among those aged 15 to 49 who are married or in a union: most recent data available
Source: World Contraceptive Patterns 2013 (United Nations, 2013), available from www.unpopulation.org.
August 4, 2014Forests & climate change, PolicyComments Off on Deforestation reduced – mission accomplished or too good to be true?
By: Lykke E. Andersen*
During the last decade, Bolivia had one of the highest per capita deforestation rates in the World (1). Apart from this being decidedly unkind to Mother Earth and exacerbating problems of wild fires, droughts and flooding in Bolivia, this also caused Bolivians to be among the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions in the World (approximately 11 t/CO2/person/year – more than almost all European countries and more than twice the global average) (2).
This was obviously a major problem in Bolivia, and at INESAD we have been working for several years on promoting policies to reduce deforestation. Thus, we should be thrilled by the recent news from ABT showing that Bolivia has reduced deforestation by 64% since 2010 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: ABT reports sharp reductions in deforestation in Bolivia between 2010 and 2013. Source: La Razon, 23 July 2014 (http://www.la-razon.com/sociedad/ABT-Bolivia-redujo-deforestacion-bosques-anos_0_2093790639.html#.U9I6T0RWunI.facebook).
But it almost seems too good to be true. I suspect that everybody working in this area are asking themselves: Can this really be true?
During the last decade, Bolivia had one of the highest per capita deforestation rates in the World (1). Apart from this being decidedly unkind to Mother Earth and exacerbating problems of wild fires, droughts and flooding in Bolivia, this also caused Bolivians to be among the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions in the World (approximately 11 t/CO2/person/year – more than almost all European countries and more than twice the global average) (2).
This was obviously a major problem in Bolivia, and at INESAD we have been working for several years on promoting policies to reduce deforestation. Thus, we should be thrilled by the recent news from ABT showing that Bolivia has reduced deforestation by 64% since 2010 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: ABT reports sharp reductions in deforestation in Bolivia between 2010 and 2013. Source: La Razon, 23 July 2014 (http://www.la-razon.com/sociedad/ABT-Bolivia-redujo-deforestacion-bosques-anos_0_2093790639.html#.U9I6T0RWunI.facebook).
But it almost seems too good to be true. I suspect that everybody working in this area are asking themselves: Can this really be true?
The logic is irresistible: if we send enough money to developing countries, poverty will be put to an end once and for all. We have got to help, it’s our responsibility. In the book The Idealist, Nina Munk portrays the charismatic Jeffrey Sachs and his Millennium Villages in Africa. How good intentions can have destructive consequences.
Already at a young age Jeffrey Sachs (1954) stood out: he received high grades in school, won math competitions, and displayed leadership qualities. He was already a successful economist when the Bolivian president Victor Paz invited him to help Bolivia in the mid-eighties. The country was poor and the economy was in chaos. Inflation reached 25,000%. Sachs wrote a plan for economic recovery. The strict fiscal and monetary policies caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their job or pension. But the “shock therapy” helped: inflation fell to 15%. As it turned out: the economy is controllable, as long as you are willing to make concessions.
Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
By: Lisbeth Vogensen*
By: Sanne Blauw*