* Tackling the Policy Challenges of Migration: Regulation, Integration, Development.  Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  Paris: OECD, Feb 2012, 120p, $39pb.   The current governance of migration is both insufficient and inefficient.  Restrictive and non-cooperative migration policies affect development in migrant-sending countries and have counterproductive effects in the countries that implement them. The lack of integration policies generates costs for society.  Focuses on South-South migration, regulation of migration flows, integration of immigrants, and impact of labor mobility on development.   (MIGRATION * DEVELOPMENT AND MIGRATION)

 

* Perspectives on Global Development 2012: Social Cohesion in a Shifting World.  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.  Paris: OECD, Nov 2011, 200p.  “Shifting wealth" – a process that started in the 1990s and took off in the 2000s – has led to a completely new geography of growth driven by the economic rise of large developing countries, in particular China and India.  “The center of economic gravity of the world has progressively shifted from West to East and from North to South, resulting in a new geography of growth.” More than 80 countries grew twice as fast as the OECD average in the last decade, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.  The resulting re-configuration of the global economy will shape the political, economic and social agendas of international development as those of the converging and poor countries for the years to come.  Recent events in well-performing countries in the Arab world (but also beyond such as in Thailand, China and India) seem to suggest that economic growth, rising fiscal resources, and improvements in education are not sufficient  to create cohesion; governments need to address social deficits and actively promote social cohesion if long-term development is to be sustainable.  This report examines social cohesion in fast-growing developing countries and provides policy makers with recommendations for ways to strengthen it. A cohesive society works towards the well-being of all its members, fights exclusion and marginalization, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust, and offers its members the opportunity of upward mobility.  Social cohesion is viewed through three different, but equally important lenses: social inclusion, social capital, and social mobility.  Concludes with a policy agenda for social cohesion, including sustainable fiscal policies, employment and social protection policies, enhancing civic participation, and coordinating actions across policy areas.  [NOTE: An important re-grouping of the obsolete “Third World” category into “converging” and “poor” countries.]                                                            (DEVELOPMENT *

* Better Policies for Development: Recommendations for Policy Coherence.  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.  Paris: OECD, Sept 2011, 80p.  “Around 40-45% of the world’s employed are unable to earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$2/day poverty line, and millions work in hazardous conditions.  The IEA World Energy Outlook 2010 estimates 1.4 billion people worldwide still lack access to electricity, projected to fall only marginally to 1.2 billion by 2030.  Some 2.7 billion rely on traditional use of biomass, with a projected increase to 2.8 billion in 2030.   Focuses on areas requiring collective action by the entire international community and features 18 development policy topics divided into four broad categories: 1) sustainable economic growth (macro-economic policy, trade, investment, financial regulation, science, technology & innovation); 2) economic governance (taxation, anti-corruption, illicit financial flows), 3) environment and natural resource security (climate change, food security, water security, energy security), and 4) society (conflict and fragility, labor, education, migration, health). (DEVELOPMENT * DEVELOPMENT POLICY: OECD OVERVIEW)

* Global Development Horizons 2011—Multipolarity: The New Global Economy.  World Bank.  Washington DC: World Bank Publications, June 2011, 180p (8x12”), $35.  The days of US global economic dominance are numbered. By 2025, a multi-polar world will emerge in which economic clout is spread across developed and emerging economies.  Transition to a new world order with more diffuse distribution of economic power is under way through three major international economic trends: 1) the shift in the balance of global growth from developed to emerging economies, 2) the rise of emerging-market firms as a force in global business, and 3) the evolution of the international monetary system toward a multicurrency regime.  Emerging and developing counties accounted for 46 % of international trade flows in 2010, up from 30 % in 1995.  Cross-border mergers and acquisitions originated by firms based in emerging markets represent nearly one-third of global M&A transactions.  The risk of investing in emerging economies has declined dramatically, while emerging economies’ financial assets and wealth have expanded: emerging and developing countries now hold three-fourth of all official foreign exchange reserves.  The Bank projects emerging economies to grow an average of 4.7%/year through 2025, more than double the 2.3% forecast for advanced economies. (Also see the companion website http://www.worldbank.org/GDH2011, for this first edition of a new “flagship” report.)  

* Development Financing and Economic Insecurity.  Edited by Rob Vos.  NY: United Nations Publications and Bloomsbury Academic Publications, July 2011, 256p, $38.  Despite the rise in recent decades of the average income level, economic insecurity has increased in both developed and developing countries.  Increasing economic insecurity is harmful for human welfare: economic volatility and job uncertainty exert negative influence on productive investment, thereby hurting long-term development, while job and income insecurity negatively influences the material and psychological well-being of people.  Examines the causes of economic insecurity and how improved financial systems, macroeconomic policies, and microfinancing schemes could mitigate insecurity.

 (DEVELOPMENT * ECONOMIC INSECURITY RISING WORLDWIDE)

 

* Human Development Report 2011: Sustainability and Equity—Challenges for Human Development.  United Nations Development Programme.  NY: United Nations Publications, Nov 2011, 180p, $43.  Examines the urgent global challenge of sustainable development and its relationship to rising inequality within and among countries, as well as long-term inequality trends at national and global level.  Notes that “those who will suffer most from climate change are disproportionately those least responsible for environmental deterioration.”  Seeks to identify policies that would make development both more sustainable and more equitable in coming decades.                   (INEQUALITY RISING *

* The Plundered Planet: Why We Must – and How We Can – Manage Nature for Global Prosperity.  Paul Collier (Prof of Economics, Oxford U).  NY: Oxford UP, Nov 2011, 224p, $16.95pb.  Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency.  The author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing builds on his work in developing countries to confront the global mismanagement of natural resources, and charts a course between unchecked profiteering and environmental romanticism to offer realistic and sustainable solutions to complex issues.  Collier proposes 1) a series of international standards that would help poor countries rich in natural assets better manage those resources, 2) policy changes that would raise world food supply, and 3) an approach to climate change that acknowledges the benefits of industrialization while addressing the need for alternatives to carbon trading. (ENVIRONMENT * DEVELOPMENT AND NAURAL ASSETS)

* Patterns of Potential Human Progress, Volume 3: Improving Global Health—Forecasting the Next 50 Years. Barry B. Hughes (Prof of Pol Sci and Director, Pardee Center for International Futures, U of Denver) and four others. Boulder CO: Paradigm Publishers, Jan 2011, 352p (8x11”), $49.95pb.  (Free PDF download at www.ifs.du.edu).  Uses the International Futures (IFs) simulation model to explore prospects for human development that appear to be unfolding globally and locally, how we would like it to evolve, and how better to move in desired directions.  Volume 1 explored prospects for reducing global poverty and Volume 2 considered education [see Pardee Center in GFB index].  This volume focuses on possible futures for the health of peoples, health outcomes we might expect given current patterns of development, opportunities for intervention and achieving alternative health futures, and how improved health futures might affect broader prospects of countries, regions, and the world.  Topics include measuring the disease burden, drivers of health, proximate risk factors (undernutrition, obesity, tobacco use), environmental risk factors (sanitation, air pollution, climate change), and integrated scenario analysis.                                                                                         (WORLD FUTURES * PARDEE

* Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.  Abhijit V. Banerjee (Prof of Economics, MIT) and Esther Duflo (Prof of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, MIT).  NY: Public Affairs, April 2011, 336p, $26.99.  Reappraises the world of the extreme poor, their lives, desires, and frustrations.  Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, and harmful misperceptions at worst.  Identifies new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, and that poverty below $1 a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.  The authors are co-founders and directors of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, which supervises randomized control trials in dozens of countries. 

 

*The Day After Tomorrow: The Future of Economic Policy in the Developing World.  Edited by Otaviano Canuto and Marcelo Giugale.  Washington DC: World Bank, Sept 2010/300p/$35.  More than twenty World Bank practitioners deliver their policy agenda for, and likely economic evolution of, developing countries in the post-crisis era. 

** Patterns of Potential Human Progress.  Vol 1: Reducing Global Poverty.  Barry B. Hughes (Prof of International Studies and director, Pardee Center for International Futures, U of Denver) and five others. Boulder CO: Paradigm Publishers, Aug 2009/352p/$39.95pb (free pdf at www.ifs.du.edu).   The first in a new series inspired by the UN Human Development Reports and Millennium Development Goals, using the large-scale International Futures program developed by Hughes over three decades.  Explores a multi-issue database and a wide range of scenarios, looking 50 years into the future.  Chapters discuss the character and extent of poverty, the need for a long horizon, measures of poverty, poverty reduction strategies, framing uncertainty with proximate drivers (population, economic growth, distribution), levers to change the future of poverty (fertility, human and social capital, governance, infrastructure, natural capital, knowledge), international drivers (trade and FDI, worker remittances, foreign aid), the multiple faces of poverty and its future (in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe), conflict and poverty, and corruption and poverty.  Concludes that the horizon of global goal setting should be at least to 2030, and 2050 seems reasonable.  The difficulty of rapid progress should be explicitly acknowledged, and global goals should not pretend to be appropriate for all regions and nations.  Finally, the global development community needs integrated reviews of progress toward goals, with analysis of potential for future progress.

* Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way. Steve Radelet (senior adviser, office of US Secretary of State; former senior fellow CGD).  Washington: Center for Global Development (dist by Brookings Institution Press), Sept 2010/125p/$18.95pb.  Describes too-often-overlooked positive changes in much of Africa since the mid-1990s: rise of democracy, stronger economic management, end of the debt crisis and engagement in a more constructive relationship with the international community, spread of new technologies (mobile phones and the internet), emergence of a new generation of leaders in 17 countries: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Principe, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.                       (DEVELOPMENT * AFRICA * REGIONS/NATIONS)

*Delivering Aid Differently: Lessons from the Field.  Edited by Wolfgang Fengler (lead economist, World Bank, Nairobi) and Homi Kharas (senior fellow in Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institution).  Washington: Brookings Institution Press, Aug 2010/275p/$28.95pb.   For many years after WWII, development aid was delivered mainly through government institutions.  Today, many new donors and nongovernmental organizations have stepped in, and nearly every nation today is part of the “aid business,” either as a recipient or a donor.  The entry of many new players into what is now a $200 billion/year aid industry demands fresh kinds of coordination.  Argues for differentiated delivery of aid from a diverse group of donors supported by shared networks of high-quality information on needs, aid inputs, and aid outcomes.  This can prevent waste (estimated to tens of billions dollars a year) while still providing fair and sustainable assistance.      (DEVELOPMENT * “AID INDUSTRY”: NEW PLAYERS)

*Capacity Development in Practice.  Edited by Jan Ubels, Naa-Aku Acquaye-Baddoo and Alan Fowler.  London & Sterling VA: Earthscan (dist by Stylus), Sept 2010/336p/$34.95pb.  The international development community values improvement of organizational capacities, yet this practice is poorly understood and regarded as a distinct specialist domain. A group of practitioners make capacity building better appreciated, more professional, and increasingly effective in achieving local, national, and international goals.                                                       (DEVELOPMENT * CAPACITY-BUILDING)

*Deconstructing Development Discourse: Buzzwords and Fuzzwords.  Edited by Andrea Cornwall and Deborah Eade.  Warwickshire, UK: Practical Action Publishing (dist by Stylus), Aug 2010/320p/$29.95pb.  Raises major questions on the way we think about development. Examines key terms in current development discourse, as the language of development shapes imagined worlds and justifies interventions in lives of real people.   Examines sloppy thinking and catch-all terms such as ‘civil society,’ ‘poverty reduction,’ ‘partnership,’ and empowerment.’  

* Climate Finance: Regulatory and Funding Strategies for Climate Change and Global Development.  Edited by Richard B. Stewart (Prof of Env. and Administrative Law, NYU), Benedict Kingsbury (Prof of Intl Law, NYU), and Bryce Rudyk (Center for Environmental and Land Use Law, NYU).  NY: New York U Press, March 2010, 352p, $25pb. (www.climatefinance.org).   Preventing risks of severe damage from climate change requires enormous amounts of public and private investment to limit emissions, while promoting green growth in developing countries.  Attention has focused on emissions limitations commitments and architectures, but the crucial issue of mobilizing and governing the necessary financial resources has received too little attention.  The 36 essays show how a complex mix of public funds, private investment through carbon markets, and structured incentives is needed.  This requires national and global regulation of cap-and-trade and offset markets, forest and energy policy, international development funding, international trade law, and coordinated tax policy.

* Foresight for Smart Globalization: Accelerating and Enhancing Pro-Poor Development Opportunities (Special Issue).  Edited by Clement Bezold (Chair, Institute for Alternative Futures, Alexandria VA), Claudia Juech (Managing Director of Research, Rockefeller Foundation, NYC) and Evan S. Michelson (Senior Research Associate, RF/NYC).  Foresight, 11:4, 2009/85p (www.emeraldinsight.com); 36p Oct 09 IAF/RF Summary Report available free at www.altfutures.com.  Papers from a March 2009 workshop held at the RF conference facilities in Bellagio, Italy.  Topics include foresight and anticipatory governance (by Leon S. Fuerth, former advisor to Al Gore), pro-poor energy responses to climate change (e.g. targeted subsidies to shift consumption patterns, microfinance, integrated policy approaches), pro-poor applications of science and technology (on foresight studies by RAND, the Millennium Project, and the APEC Center for Technology Foresight), and resilient pro-poor economic governance.  Recommends fostering national foresight capacity (foresight seen as “an important set of silo-busting tools” and as “systems thinking that forges paths for action while embracing complexity”), modeling inequity more explicitly, and large-scale participatory approaches. [Also see World Future Review, 1:6, 80-85 for long review of Summary Report.] (DEVELOPMENT * PRO-POOR DEVELOPMENT * FORESIGHT AND DEVELOPMENT * METHODS)

* The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity.  Paul Collier (Prof of Economics, Oxford U).  NY: Oxford U Press, May 2010/224p/$24.95.  Author of The Bottom Billion (Oxford, 2007; FS *29:12/472) and former director of World Bank development research addresses the global mismanagement of nature as a matter of planetary emergency.  Proposes a series of international standards that would help poor countries rich in natural assets better manage these resources, policy changes that would raise world food supply, and the need for alternatives to carbon trading.                                               (DEVELOPMENT; ENVIRONMENT)

* The Idea of Justice.   Amartya Sen (University Prof, Harvard U). Cambridge: Harvard UP-Belknap Press, Sep-09/304p/$29.95. Author of Development as Freedom and many other books argues that the idea of justice plays a real role in how people live, but the prevailing theory of social justice in a perfectly just society ignores practical realities. Rather, a focus on what is “more” or “less” just is needed.                                                                                          (DEVELOPMENT * JUSTICE)

 

* Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency. World Bank. Washington: World Bank Publications, Apr-09/256p/$29.95. Provides a development perspective on the global economic crisis, assessing impacts on developing countries, setting out priorities for policy response by LDCs and the international community, and suggesting ways in which the private sector can be better mobilized to support development goals in the aftermath of the crisis.       (DEVELOPMENT * ECONOMIC CRISIS)

 

* A World of Difference: Encountering and Contesting Development. Eric Sheppard (Prof of Geography and Assoc Director, Interdisc. Center for the Study of Global Change, U of Minnesota) et al. NY: Guilford Publications, Year 2009/665p/$60. Textbook on the nature and causes of global inequality, contemporary approaches to economic development. Chapters describe differentiated ways of knowing (measuring and mapping development, colonial encounters, neoliberal globalization), differentiated livelihoods (contested environments, challenges to rural livelihood, managing tropical ecosystems), and differentiated social relations encountering global strategies (trading primary commodities, mining, transnational production, global finance markets, etc).                          (DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW)

 

* One Billion Rising: Law, Land and the Alleviation of Global Poverty. Edited by Roy L. Prosterman (Prof Emeritus of Law, U of Washington; founder, Rural Development Institute), Robert Mitchell (RDI), and Tim Hanstad (president, RDI). Amsterdam U Press (dist by U of Chicago Press), Aug 2009/450p/$39.95pb. Most of the world’s 1.4 billion poorest people are still rural, and the vast majority of these populations lack ownership of—and rights to—the land that forms their principal source of livelihood. Land reform and related legal work have transformed the lives of millions of families, but not all such efforts at pro-poor development have succeeded; lawyers from RDI assess land tenure reform efforts around the world. (DEVELOPMENT * LAND REFORM * POVERTY AND LAND REFORM)

 

* Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart. NY: Oxford UP, Oct 2009/272p/$16.95pb. Two former World Bank officials and UN advisors argue for a reorientation in the international response to create capable states. First published in May 2008 (254p/$24.95), this paperback edition adds a new preface.  (WORLD POLITICS * FAILED STATES)

* Climate Change and Global Poverty: A Billion Lives in the Balance? Edited by Lael Brainard (VP and director, Brookings Global Economy and Development program), Abigail Jones (Brookings Global), and Nigel Purvis (Climate Advisors). Washington: Brookings Institution Press, March 2009/250p/$22.95pb. Climate change will inflict damage on every continent, but will hit the poor especially hard, impeding or reversing hard-fought human development claims as new threats emerge to food, water, health, etc.                                                                        (CLIMATE CHANGE * DEVELOPMENT)

 

* Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South. Joseph Hanlon (Open U), Armando Barrientos (World Poverty Institute, U of Manchester), and David Hulme (WPI/UofM). Kumarian Press, April 2010/288p/$24.95pb. Amid all the complex theories about causes and solutions to poverty, one idea is basic: researchers have found again and again that cash transfers given to significant portions of the population transform the lives of recipients, who use the money wisely to start a business, feed families, or send a child to school. This quiet revolution bypasses governments and NGOs, letting the poor decide how to use their money.                                    (DEVELOPMENT)