WikiProgress Africa: Week in Review

vendredi 14 juin 2013

Week in Review

Hello everyone and welcome to another environment-themed week in review. Among the highlights we have World’s Oceans Day, OECD’s Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development, an article about the need to include domestic violence in the campaign to end hunger, and a report on the links between wildlife destruction and violence in Central Africa, among other reports

World Oceans Day. On June 8th each year, we celebrate the ocean, its importance in our lives, and how we can protect it. According to UNDP, more than 2.6 billion people rely on the ocean's fish as their #1 source of protein, as this video below shows. To stress the importance of protecting the ocean, the Council on Foreign Relations released this video, as part of its Global Governance Monitor initiative, to show how the world’s oceans are governed.

OECD released a report on Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development. It responds to developing country concerns about the technical challenges arising from early efforts to "go green" and documents a wealth of examples from developing countries. This blog post by Jan Corfee-Morlot of OECD’s Development Cooperation Directorate disseminates the main points of the report.
The African Development Bank’s Gender, Poverty and Environmental Indicators on African Countries states that green growth can be instrumental in the sound management of Africa’s natural assets and that the infrastructure deficit in many countries could be an enabling factor for greener investments. Countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda have already taken the lead.

Kony’s Ivory: How Elephant Poaching in Congo Helps Support the Lord’s Resistance Army by the Enough Project shows the link between illegal poaching (in Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic) and the financing of rebel groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Sarah Degnan Kambou of the International Centre for Research on Women stresses the need to include violence against women in the worldwide campaign to end hunger. She urges G8 leaders include factors such as domestic violence that affect women's ability to produce, process and prepare food for their families, in their upcoming meeting this month.
The Institute for Economics and Peace released the 2013 Global Peace Index. Iceland is still the most peaceful nation while Afghanistan is at the opposite end. The report shows that the economic impact of containing violence cost $9.46 trillion in 2012, equivalent to 11% of global GDP and the double of the world's agricultural production.
To finish this week in review, the Overseas Development Institute uploaded a video on what works and why, as part of its Development Progress series. The animation sets out how the Development Progress project aims to uncover the 'what', 'where', 'how' and 'why' of progress so that a better understanding can be built, suggesting how hurdles in development can be overcome. In less than 15 years, Ethiopia has seen a 5 fold increase in primary education enrolment and has almost achieved gender parity.