Jan 07, 2010

Is Agro-Imperialism Really Agro-Opportunity?

Investors from countries with a lot of money but very little arable land—such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea and India—have purchased the rights to develop millions of acres for agriculture and export the yield for sale in their native countries. Observers implicitly conclude that the lease of Ethiopian land to foreign developers amounts to nothing less than exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. But does it have to be?

Nov 16, 2009

Saving the World By Lowering Your Expectations

Impatient optimists are like investors in subprime mortgages in 2007. They can be so blinded by the upside that they fail to do their due diligence. In the end, their impatience and pursuit of outsize returns fuels waste and disappointment. Patient optimists, by contrast, have lowered their expectations of any particular program or intervention, but not their belief in a better world over the long term. If we’re going to succeed in making the world a better place, we need to convince more people to lower their expectations, too.

Nov 11, 2009

Big Climate Impact for Little Climate Dollars

For substantially less than $10 million you can have a big impact on climate change by using the tools of behavioral economics to help individuals conserve energy. Specifically the widespread deployment of real-time use meters and commitment contracts can help people who want to save energy meet their goals—and it requires very little external funding.

Oct 15, 2009

Water Tabulations

Water use and preservation may be going increasingly high tech.

Sep 15, 2009

Progress on Climate Change. Really.

As the UN’s climate change conference draws nearer and debate on a possible cap-and-trade scheme in the US begins again, we’ll be seeing a tidal wave of reports on climate change. Almost all of them will be bad news, whether it’s further evidence of rapid change or pessimism about the prospects for concluding a meaningful agreement. But there is plenty of good news to be found.

Jun 25, 2009

Counter-productive

The new Carbon Counter in New York City is counterproductive. It gets the science exactly wrong.

Jun 22, 2009

The Food Crisis, Hovering at the Margins,

A year ago the global food crisis was front and center in international circles. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find the phrase appear at all. But the problems so evident last year have not been solved, they’ve mostly just been displaced from their position at the top of the crisis list. With the rapid spread of Ug99 wheat stem rust, we could be facing a food crisis soon that utterly dwarfs the last two years.

May 05, 2009

Thoughts from Day One of Council on Foundations

Some thoughts from the first day of the Council on Foundations Conference

Mar 25, 2009

Boldness and Social Return

Mar 04, 2009

An Era of Either/Or Choices

One of the results of the global recession will be a new era in philanthropy. The last decade has been marked by philanthropic abundance. The number of foundations and foundation endowments grew rapidly. Flush with cash, many donors were able to avoid difficult choices—they had the means to fund lots of organizations and lots of different approaches to the issues they cared about.
Clearly, the era of abundance is over. With diminished resources donors will have to choose what causes matter most to them and what approaches and organizations they truly believe in. Put another way, donors are now faced with either/or choices rather than both/and options.