Why is Haiti so poor?
Some context on the current disaster’s aftermath in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Jared Diamond, of Guns, Germs and Steel fame, in his later book Collapse compares Haiti with Dominican Republic – located on the same island of Hispaniola – where incidentally Columbus landed in the Americas. He too attributed Haiti’s lower economic growth trajectory to ecological damage continuedover a hundred years. Haiti’s forest cover is almost entired destroyed (1% of trees in Haiti compared to 28% in Dominican Republic) with its attendant problems of soil erosion, decrease in fertility, population pressure on shrinking amounts of fertile land etc. Of course you have colonial shenanigans by France, the UK in the 19th century, US interventionism in the 20th making things worse. A great inspiring book to read, which also is mostly set in Haiti, Mountains beyond Mountains, Dr. Paul Farmer’s work to cure disease there. In this video, he speaks of the political crisis there, in addition to ecological crisis.
Among the answers were that “Haiti cut its colonial ties too early, rebelling against the French in the early 19th century and achieving complete independence”; and that “Haiti has higher than average levels of polygamy.”It’s pretty stunning that this almost entirely ignores the role of outside powers. Is Haiti poor simply because foreigners exploited it? Of course not, but one can’t understand why the country is in such terrible shape if you ignore the French and American roles in beggaring the country.
So here are a couple of suggested reading items: First, this post by Barbara Miller, a specialist in the anthropology of international development, who asks the exact same question posed by Marginal Revolution, and comes up with quite a different set of answers:
Colonial plantation owners grew fabulously rich from this island. It produced more wealth for France than all of France’s other colonies combined and more than the 13 colonies in North America produced for Britain. Why is Haiti so poor now?
Colonialism launched environmental degradation by clearing forests. After the revolution, the new citizens carried with them the traumatic history of slavery. Now, neocolonialism and globalization are leaving new scars. For decades, the United States has played, and still plays, a powerful role in supporting conservative political regimes.
Technorati Tags: Caribbean, Haiti, poverty
Popularity: 3% [?]
Financial crisis eliminated 2.2 mn jobs in Latin America
The economic crisis eliminated 2.2 million jobs last year in Latin America and the Caribbean, a figure that boosted the rate of unemployment from 7.5 percent to 8.4 percent, according to a report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).The ILO forecasts that this percentage, which reflects the 18.1 million of those currently jobless, could drop slightly to 8.2 percent in 2010. The international financial crisis did not strike Latin America and the Caribbean as hard as expected at the outset, but even so unemployment last year saw a reversal from the 2002-08 period, when the jobless rate declined from 11.4 percent to 7.5 percent.
The UN body said Monday that the unemployment rate increased in 2009 in 12 of the 14 countries studied. Only Peru and Uruguay escaped.The biggest increases were in Barbados, which jumped from 8.3 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2009; Costa Rica, from 4.9 percent to 7.8 percent; Chile, from 7.9 percent to 10 percent; and Ecuador, from 6.85 percent to 8.7 percent. The rate of unemployment in Colombia grew between 2008-09 from 11.5 percent to 12.3 percent.
Technorati Tags: Latin America, unemployment rate
Popularity: 4% [?]
Two BRICs – India vs. Brazil
Emerginvest Featured Analysis: Rebacca Wilder
In fact, the BRIC data, side-by-side, paints a darker picture for Brazil’s growth trajectory than that for India. Let’s see why.India, China, and Russia increased their respective investment shares of GDP over the latest decade- Brazil, too, but at a much slower rate. India (as I discussed in a previous post) has done this mostly through reducing barriers to inward foreign-direct investment.
However, more domestic saving is likely needed in India despite the falling of its consumption share (right graph) over the same 10-year period. India gets a bigger bang for each investment buck spent, so save more and supplement the inward FDI.
In stark contrast is Brazil, an economy that is clearly saving at a much lower rate than its peers. The consumption is a large 63.1% of GDP, essentially unchanged over the latest decade. And for a developing economy, the investment share is remarkably low in levels, 16.4% of GDP in 2008 (compared to India’s 32.2% share).
In all, the saving and investment story adds up to a level of productive capital stock. Without investment, there is no capital stock growth. And without capital stock growth, there is little productive GDP growth.
Currently India’s average income is low compared to its peers, based on years of questionable policy. Among the BRIC countries, India’s welfare measure (per-capita income) is the lowest, and that ranking is not expected to change by 2014 (see chart from a previous post, using data from the IMF World Economic Outlook in October 2009).Brazil, on the other hand, is not setting itself up for sustained growth. The country is now enjoying the economic benefits of policy reform and open capital markets, an economic adolescent if you will. The next step in Brazil’s development is clearly to adopt policies that grow saving and investment.
Technorati Tags: India, Brazil, BRIC comparison, economic fundamentals
Popularity: 6% [?]
Comparative Indo-LatAm Geography (mountains + rivers)
Length Comparison in an old Victorian map between the rivers in South America – the Amazon, River Plate (La Plata), and Orinoco (made famous in song by Enya) with the rivers Ganges and Indus.
Popularity: 5% [?]
India on verge of farm disaster: M.S. Swaminathan
- Image by leetucker via Flickr
India was the leading economy of the world for much of the last 2000 years from wealth generated from agricultural surplus. As Jim Rogers says, India should be the greatest agricultural country in the world, not America, with great weather, soils, climate. But, government policies militate against farming as a lucrative profession with antiquated laws on farm holding limits and buying policies for output.
Indian farmers are political cannon fodder; once they are economically empowered politicians are redundant. So, farmers will continue to be kept in economic intensive care by the political class. It can be a long wait for any meaningful changes in farm policies.
Traveling through the farm areas of Latin America in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina with great soils and weather help me imagine what a paradise, agricultural and otherwise, historic India with 50 million people over its current land area must have been. And farming in these Latin American regions is entirely in private sector hands and they are all export powerhouses. It is in these regions that Indian entrepreneurs should deploy capital for augmenting existing local agribusiness ventures or starting new ones. Priority areas include production of pulses and edible oils.
via The Economic Times.
MS Swaminathan, top farm scientist and one of the architects of India’s green revolution, has warned that the country would face a food crisis if agriculture and farmers were ignored.
“We are on the verge of a disaster. We will be in serious difficulty if food productivity is not increased and farming is neglected,” Mr Swaminathan said on the sidelines of the 97th Indian Science Congress being held here. “The future belongs to nations with grains and not guns. The current food inflation is frightening. If pulses, potatoes and onions are beyond the purchasing capacity of the majority, malnourishment will be a painful result,” he said.
“I want the government to act upon three major recommendations,” the Rajya Sabha member said. “It should change compensation laws as farmers do not have pay commissions like the sixth pay panel; attract youth to farming; and amend the Women Farmers’ Entitlement Act to allow women avail bank loans without their land as a collateral security .”
Popularity: 6% [?]
Toyota reveals its emerging markets car
Source: just-auto.com editorial team
Toyota has named and unveiled its new Etios emerging markets car at the 10th Auto Expo automobile show in New Delhi. It will build the Etios at a new plant in India and later, from around 2011, in Brazil.In India it will target family users with a ‘one class above’ theme. It will be pricier than other local competition but local parts will be used as much as possible to keep costs low.
Etios chief engineer, Yoshinori Noritake, said at the show: “I visited many Indian cities and homes to learn the market and to hear from the consumer directly. Over four years, more than 2,000 engineers have been involved in the development.” Indian production begins late this year and the annual sales target is 70,000 units.
Toyota Motor vice chairman Kazuo Okamoto said: “Our tagline of ‘World First, India First’ represents our choice of India for the global premiere of the Etios concept, following which exports to other countries will be evaluated.
Technorati Tags: auto, india, brazil, toyota world car, etios
Popularity: 7% [?]
Physalia – A Positive Energy Amphibious Garden To Clean Waterways
The Ganges could use this on its course.
Ecofriend
Eco Factor: Renewable energy generating amphibious garden to clean waterways.The UN estimates that rising at the current rate, population will soar to about 9.2 billion in 2050. However, even today more than one billion people don’t have access to potable water and more than three thousand people die every due to the lack of clean drinking water. Vincent Callebaut Architects have come up with a solution in the form of a floating garden that is 100% self-sufficient in terms of energy. Dubbed the Physalia, the amphibious garden is inspired by pneumatophorous called the “Physalia physalis”, which means “water bubble”. This aquatic system is a sum of nature and biotechnologies designed to navigate European rivers between Danube and Volga, between Rhine and Guadalquivir, or also between Euphrates and Tigris. The zero carbon emission architecture is designed to harvest renewable energy to make the prototype a positive energy one, where it can generate more energy that it consumes.
Technorati Tags: renewable energy, ecodesign
Popularity: 8% [?]
India’s 20 Percent Biofuels Mandate is Back
[T]he new incarnation of India’s 20% biofuels mandate (An indicative target of 20 percent blending of bio-fuels in diesel and ethanol by 2017) arrived in Delhi on Christmas Eve, bringing tidings of great joy to those inside and many outside the industry, including the announcement of a national biofuel fund for second generation biofuels.It was welcomed by a booming auto industry that has seen an unprecedented increase in new car sales due to the strong economy and the introduction of Tata’s Nano and its low-priced competitors—all capable of running E20 in petrol.
At the same time the Indian industry has become more internationally oriented. This year’s CII Biofuels Summit in Delhi was jointly sponsored by the India Brazil Chamber of Commerce and featured both Indian and Brazilian experts as speakers. An Indo-U.S. MoU has also been signed on second generation bio-fuels like cellulosic ethanol and algal biodiesel.
Biomass supply problems still remain an issue, but the industry has now reached the “2.0” stage of production technology, having incorporated the lessons of past failures along with current plant science and innovative However initiatives aimed at switching to dryland crops that do not require continual irrigation are beginning to pay off and Praj Industries recently showed a sustainable zero-waste production system for drought-tolerant sweet sorghum that produces only ethanol and compost for the next crop. A similar sugar cane system that the company implemented in Colombia has been hailed as a game changer for the international ethanol industry.
Technorati Tags: biofuels, india, brazil, colombia, ethanol, praj
Popularity: 7% [?]
Indian business owners loose top spot to Chile for 1st time in last 5yrs: Grant Thornton
The International Business Report (IBR) survey of over 7,400 privately held businesses (PHBs) across 36 economies, now in its 18th year, also highlights a group of ten economies where businesses are more optimistic about the outlook for their economies than International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts might suggest.Businesses in Chile, India, Australia, Vietnam and Brazil are the most optimistic in the world, all scoring over +70%.
Technorati Tags: business trends, 2010, india, chile, brazil
Popularity: 8% [?]
India’s 20 Percent Biofuels Mandate is Back
[T]he new incarnation of India’s 20% biofuels mandate (An indicative target of 20 percent blending of bio-fuels in diesel and ethanol by 2017) arrived in Delhi on Christmas Eve, bringing tidings of great joy to those inside and many outside the industry, including the announcement of a national biofuel fund for second generation biofuels.It was welcomed by a booming auto industry that has seen an unprecedented increase in new car sales due to the strong economy and the introduction of Tata’s Nano and its low-priced competitors—all capable of running E20 in petrol.
At the same time the Indian industry has become more internationally oriented. This year’s CII Biofuels Summit in Delhi was jointly sponsored by the India Brazil Chamber of Commerce and featured both Indian and Brazilian experts as speakers. An Indo-U.S. MoU has also been signed on second generation bio-fuels like cellulosic ethanol and algal biodiesel.
Biomass supply problems still remain an issue, but the industry has now reached the “2.0” stage of production technology, having incorporated the lessons of past failures along with current plant science and innovative However initiatives aimed at switching to dryland crops that do not require continual irrigation are beginning to pay off and Praj Industries recently showed a sustainable zero-waste production system for drought-tolerant sweet sorghum that produces only ethanol and compost for the next crop. A similar sugar cane system that the company implemented in Colombia has been hailed as a game changer for the international ethanol industry.
Technorati Tags: biofuels, india, brazil, colombia, ethanol, praj
Popularity: 8% [?]
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