Showing posts with label latin america. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latin america. Show all posts

Fair Trade in Kuwait

, , , , 3:07 PM | 0 comments

I would normally get fair trade products for certain key items, such as coffee and bananas that are personally important to me (I used to live in several countries in Central America). How can we get grocery stores, particularly for example Sultan Center, to incorporate more fair trade products on their shelves. Anybody have thoughts?

Al Jazeera English Interview on Juarez Murders

, 6:36 PM | 0 comments

The continuing problem of femicide in Juarez has been a cause dear to my heart for quite some time. I continue to be positively impressed with Al Jazeera's coverage and scope of topics, often times about victims that other media channels just do not talk about. Each year, the tally mark of victims keeps rising, and yet there is silence on behalf of Mexican authorities.


The Economics of Happiness in the Middle East

, , 7:40 PM | 2 comments

One of my former professors, Dr. Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution, first introduced me to the concept of quantifying happiness through surveys as a an indicator of a country's development. In short, as much as GDP or PPP per capita, infant mortality rates or literacy might be able to be used as a measure in the end all that really matters is whether Country X is happy or not, no?


Well mixing philosophy and economics to better understand the psychology of a people provides for some interesting and unexpected country rankings for sure, and material wealth and happiness do not necessarily have a positive correlation. Some studies that look more deeply into how people "feel" in order to add breadth to traditional development economics hard statistical data include the World Values Survey, The Satisfaction with Life Index, and now the Happy Planet Index.

The HPI combines happiness (a simple 1 to 10 scale) with sustainable living, as measured by the ecological footprint. We use ecological resources (and no one knows this better than Kuwait) as a means to achieve "long, happy, fulfilling lives". The HPI is an index of "happy life years" (life satisfaction multiplied by life expectancy) per unit of the ecological footprint.

The justification for this? According to research designers, "we should not lose sight of the fact that economic growth is just one strategy to achieve well-being, and in terms of natural resources, a demonstrably inefficient one. Rather than pursuing growth at all costs, even if detrimental to well-being and sustainability, leaders should be striving to pursue well being and sustainability, even if detrimental to growth."

I like this philosophy, and I believe this kind of measure puts much of the material happiness from oil revenues in this region more in check, where happiness would be otherwise severely inflated in the Gulf region. Here, happiness has cleverly been linked to sustainability and progress of societies can be reflected in their relationship to the environment.

Amazingly, Latin America with all its problems of debt, inflation, inequality, crime, violence, corruption and political instability surpassed OECD countries on the HPI index. They attribute this high ranking of the region to its unmaterialistic values and aspirations, as well as strong social capital through civil society. The top ten rankings are as follows (assuming an 89.0 HPI target for 2050):

1. Costa Rica (76.1)
2. Dominican Republic (71.8)
3. Jamaica (70.1)
4. Guatemala (68.4)
5. Vietnam (66.5)
6. Colombia (66.1)
7. Cuba (65.7)
8. El Salvador (61.5)
9. Brazil (61.0)
10. Honduras (61.0)

How does the Middle East fair? Here are the rankings for the region:

13. Saudi Arabia (59.7)
26. Jordan (54.6)
38. Syria (51.3)
50. Yemen (48.1)
56. Palestine (47.7)
67. Israel (44.5)
79. Iraq (42.6)
81. Iran (42.1)
83. Turkey (41.7)
110. Lebanon (33.6)
111. United Arab Emirates (28.2)
128. Kuwait (27.0)

Interestingly enough between UAE and Kuwait and after Kuwait until the final ranking are all Sub-Saharan African countries, meaning that UAE and Kuwait are not much happier than SSA in terms of well-being taking into account sustainability. Perhaps most curious is the fact that Luxembourg, coming in at 122 on the ranking, is sandwiched between Sudan and UAE. United States ranks relatively low at 114. What accounts for the major gap between Saudi Arabia, which comes up incredibly high on the HPI and Kuwait, which takes the lowest place for the Middle East?

AL-Jazeera English: "Chiquita: Between life and law; People & Power"

, , 5:55 PM | 0 comments

I have been anti-Chiquita for a long time, especially after having lived in Central America.  Chiquita has a long, sordid history of short-changing small banana republics and is currently a major player in the displacement of small farmers in many banana-exporting countries, which has led to banana trade wars between the United States and the European Union in ongoing WTO disputes.  I'll be happy to share a paper I wrote in graduate school on the topic for a class I took on game theory upon request.  Al-Jazeera's in-depth reports continue to surprise me in their scope.  



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