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IDN Special by Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN - A huge funding gap threatens to torpedo efforts by the international community to cope with critical global development and environmental challenges. At least $324 billion will be required each year between 2012 and 2017 -- a reason pressing enough for a Committee of Experts to break taboos and explore innovative financing sources.
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By Richard Johnson

GENEVA  – The United Nations is leaving no stone unturned to galvanize action toward achieving by 2015 the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

In run-up to a gathering of heads of government and state at the UN in September 2010, Secretary-General has set up an advocacy Group of eminent persons. A "real collection of superheroes in defeating poverty" has been chosen to serve on the Group, co-chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

The "superheroes" include two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – the Bangladeshi pioneer of microcredit Muhammad Yunus and the Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai – as well as former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and businessmen and philanthropists Bill Gates and Ted Turner.

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By Jaya Ramachandran

PARIS - A new report has praised Britain to the skies for its profound commitment to helping countries in dire need of money and a wide range of resources vital for economic and social development, but cautioned that there is ample scope for doing things better for the benefit of the taxpayer at home and the poor abroad.
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By Ernest Corea

WASHINGTON DC - Somalia hit the top of the chart for the third consecutive year when the 2010 Failed States Index was recently unveiled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. Several African states followed Somalia in the first 20 listed. They are considered the worst failures.

The index was compiled on the basis of 12 criteria: demographics, refugees, illegitimate governance, brain drain, public services, inequality, group grievances, human rights, economic decline, security forces, factionalised elites, and external intervention.
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By Dirk Willem te Velde*

LONDON - Most developed G-20 countries are walking a tightrope, trying to balance actions to promote growth whilst ensuring fiscal sustainability. So most headlines about the G-20 Summit in Toronto were about the agreement on growth-friendly plans to reduce deficits, albeit at different speeds in different countries.

There was also coverage of the slower than expected progress on financial regulation, and on the agreement to implement bank levies only if and when countries want them. Beyond these headlines, however, the Summit Declaration contains what could become a new development agenda for the G-20, focusing on support for growth in low income countries (LICs). This means that there is much work to do before the G-20 summit in Seoul in November.
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By Richard Johnson

PARIS - Japan has been urged to reverse the pattern of decline in its international development cooperation budget and to make progress towards its committed aid targets and regain its former position as a leading donor.

A new review of Japan's official development assistance (ODA) says that though Japan considers aid as an important tool for building friendships with other countries and also wants its aid to benefit the country's economy in the medium term, the volume of Japanese ODA budget -- excluding debt relief -- continues to suffer decline.
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By Ramesh Jaura
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) - The United Nations Development Programme has found the Stone of the Wise Ones to achieve in the next five years deep and far-reaching goals that range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education.
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By Luc Gnacadja*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BONN (IDN) - Six to ten inches (18-25 cm) of topsoil are all that stand between us and extinction. There's far more to this than food. The things that live in and grow from this irreplaceable and finite resource also keep us clothed, the air and water clean, the land green and pleasant and the human soul refreshed. Only now are we starting to comprehend how the tiny life forms in soil sustain productivity and the greater environmental balance.

Already, we know that the species that live in soil are far more abundant than first thought. Microbes in the soil make up most of the biomass of life on earth. They may lack the charisma of the tiger or the orang-utan, but the sheer prevalence of soil-dwelling fungi, archaea, bacteria, rotifers and nematodes alone puts other species in the shade.
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By Jerome Mwanda

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NAIROBI (IDN) – The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's appeal to developed countries to make good on promises made repeatedly at summit meetings of the G8 and G20 and at the United Nations to double aid to Africa, comes at a right point in time and sets the record straight about an under-reported and much-maligned continent.

But Africa, too, has a promise to keep, he said in an address to the Cameroon National Assembly at Yaoundé on his way to the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. "Sustainable development can only be built on the firm bedrock of peace and good governance."
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By J. Chandler

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TORONTO (IDN) - At least one woman dies every 90 seconds from pregnancy-related causes and another 20 suffer infection or disability, while four million newborns die every year.

These grim numbers actually represent improvements over the last 20 years, during which many international gatherings have pledged investments in women that failed to materialize.
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By Jaya Ramachandran

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) - The EU Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and the development NGOs are in agreement that the European Union Member States are missing their aid targets. Though this is not the only point on which they see eye to eye, they are not "one soul in two bodies".

While agreeing that there was a decrease in 2009 from 2008 official development assistance (ODA) level, Piebalgs maintains that it corresponds to 0.42 percent of 27-nation EU's GNI (gross national income).
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By Jaya Ramachandran

BRUSSELS (IDN) - The 27-nation European Union and its member states contribute a lion's share of official development assistance (ODA) the rich nations give to the poor. For such programmes between 2007 and 2013, it has allocated 51 billion Euros. But a new report says that a bulk of the money is not being spent on achieving the goals the international community has set itself.

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