The MacArthur Foundation announced ten universities to receive funding for the new degree program yesterday, bringing the funding from MacArthur for this project to $16 million. The first students matriculated at Columbia University in 2009, and by 2013 the foundation expects the programs to be producing 400 graduates a year from around the world.

The two-year degree is multidisciplinary—the health sciences, the natural sciences and engineering, the social sciences, and management—with a focus on application and fieldwork.

Since today’s problems—like climate change, poverty and sustainable development—are interconnected, students need to be prepared to think across disciplines, so the argument goes. If ending global hunger (Millennium Development Goal number one) requires technical knowledge of health and nutrition, agronomy, agricultural supply systems, as well as managing organizational change, then this degree proposes to equip graduates with basic knowledge on all those topics.

The idea for the new global program comes from the Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs, an architect of the Millennium Development Goals, and John McArthur, the head of the NGO that supports the Millennium Village Project, who articulated their vision in a 2008 report on education for development professionals.

Here’s what this program assumes the world needs more of:

a new generation of development practitioners who can understand the “languages” and practices of many specialties, and who can work fluidly and flexibly across intellectual and professional disciplines and geographic regions.

This sounds pretty good. In fact, I’m a generalist myself, which is how I ended up in this job, where I write about a global health issue one day and an economics paper the next.

But what if what the world really needs more of something else? What if it needs more specialists, more people with deep knowledge about the regions they study and work in? What if it needs people who are well-versed enough in their own disciplines to be critical of half-baked development ideas cooked up by aid planners who know just enough about every topic to believe they have the answers?  What if the world needs more specialists to evaluate the quality of the work in each specialty?

Curriculum and course materials proposed by the central “Secretariat” for development practice are housed in Columbia’s Earth Institute. Will the new programs produce students with a standardized, narrowly-prescribed view of how to approach development problems? Or will the melding of disciplines encourage critical thinking and help straddle the theory-policy divide, making global cooperation run more smoothly and international aid more effective?

I hope it’s the latter. But here’s one discouraging clue: The draft 2009 syllabus for the development practice degree’s required “foundation course,” offered at Columbia and several other universities around the world through web conferencing, reads like a synopsis of the degree itself. And all the readings for the course’s introductory week, the week devoted to foreign aid and policy, and the week on the Millennium Villages Project are authored by either Jeff Sachs, John McArthur, the Millennium Villages Project scientists, or the UN.

Hat tip to Michael Clemens.

The original post author has deleted the post, finding his words a bit too harsh and annoyance misplaced.

The original Sachs video, which was produced as part of a series by Ericsson,  is here.

From ICTWorks.org post:

Sachs has a new video out about ending global poverty, and I find it very disturbing…..Sachs (and all the white people) sitting in very nice, even posh settings, but black people are filmed from a car in poverty settings. Does that mean we can take time and get face-to-face with whites, but best to stay in the car and drive by black people quickly?

Speaking of animals, what’s up with the cameos of wild animals? Are they counted in global poverty numbers? Or does Sachs feel all of Africa is zebras and giraffes?

While his narration is palatable, I am really disappointed in the video work – too many stereotypes he should know better than to promote.

The video is on the blog site.

Needless to say, any opinions expressed here are those of another blog and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Aid Watch,  its bloggers, its sponsors, or any blood relative or social acquaintance of any of the above.

My post criticizing Sachs on climate change got many negative responses yesterday. The main problem was that I was much too terse about an issue that people care a lot about (you should probably apply a “weekend discount” to things I post on weekends!). So some understandably jumped to conclusions about what I was saying, which were inaccurate.

Honestly, I know very little about climate change. But I do know a little bit about political economy, which offers cross-disciplinary insights to the climate change discussion. So let me try again.

What I was NOT saying:

Here’s how to solve global warming. How and whether we know man-made global warming is scientific fact (I think it is from what I have read). That I am qualified to provide any detailed guidance on climate change.

What I was saying:

There is no such thing as a neutral technocratic solution. All solutions are political. The aura of the neutral technocracy just winds up giving cover to some political interests who have their own agenda.

The poor have very, very little political power. Because of this, other things equal, they were more likely to be victims of environmental destruction in the first place. And because of this, they could still lose out in attempts to reverse environmental destruction. I am talking here about poor individuals, not about poor country governments.

Current policy discussions on global warming show little sensitivity to these political realities.

I want to protect her privacy and not involve her directly in what is at times a nasty debate, so let me just says she is a college junior who has studied and thought a lot about the environment. I have listened to her and learned a lot from her, but anything I say here is my own opinion and I don’t want to or claim to represent her opinion.

Sachs’ opinion column that provoked her was in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American. Sachs is impatient with the political process in the US on Climate Change and invokes the neutral technocratic solution:

Let’s hear more from the president’s science adviser, John P. Holdren, Nobel laureate energy secretary Steven Chu, the National Academy of Sciences and other authorities. The public will learn to appreciate that the scientific community is working urgently, rigorously and ingeniously to better understand the complex climate system, for our shared safety and well-being.

Except, just as in Sachs’ approach to ending global poverty, there is no such thing as a neutral technocratic solution. Sachs’ solution sounds instead patronizing and top-down.  Any such solution has winners and losers, and the politically powerless poor at the bottom are more likely to be among the losers  ( What about the poor in West Virginia who see their streams polluted and their mountaintops removed to get “clean coal”?)

More generally, and closer to my usual debate with Sachs: Why should the solution to global warming be decided by rich country technocrats? Is this an environmental version of the White Man’s Burden, that rich country environmentalists patronizingly impose their solutions on the rest of the world?

Who can offer the most help to the desperate children of Haiti? Is it Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Sachs, the World Bank or the UN? Is it the many experts who are calling for a Marshall Plan to “fix” Haiti once and for all, or the donor nations that have pledged billions for the task?

Personally, I would choose people like Eric and Nicole Pauyo. The Haitian-Canadian couple, who live in a prosperous suburb of Montreal, have taken in eight nieces and nephews left orphaned by the Jan. 12 earthquake. “I didn’t think twice,” said Nicole, who’s 62. The Pauyos have already raised three kids of their own. One of them is at Harvard.

For Haitians, the best way to improve their lives is to leave Haiti. More than a million Haitians now live abroad, including 100,000 in Canada. Life in Haiti, meantime, has become worse. Children go hungry, and barely a third finish primary school. About a 10th are restaveks (from the French reste avec , or stay with) – virtual child slaves who are sent to work as unpaid servants in the city by their impoverished parents….

It’s based around a blog called HR International (to keep our blog’s PG-13 rating, I will not at this time spell out what HR stands for).  I found out about it because I am one of the 3 people that @hreliefint is now following on Twitter, along with @jeffdsachs and @talesfromthehood (the latter tipped me off).

A sample of of the HRI blog (from the small part that is printable in a family blog):

Ed and I know a thing or two about emergency coordination as we go back to the days in Aceh, where I’ve hired him to develop HRIs fishing-boat distribution strategy, a program that is currently being monitored and evaluated by HRIs M&E wing: initial findings indicate that this program will become yet another world’s best practice. The 800,000 or so USD that have remained unspent in that program will come in handy as HRI is preparing a dignified launch of the findings report in Bali, with a mass distribution component aimed at making one M&E report available to each family in Aceh and beyond.

What accounts for the explosion in development satire? Of course,  I am as guilty as anyone.  Based on random introspection, observation of a selection-biased sample of the aid industry, and unfounded guesses, the answer is obvious:  it’s because of the increase in BS in development & aid. As the BS force keeps exponentially growing, there was bound to be an opposite force of protest.

We are using the only weapon that us weak people oppressed by the BS ruling elites can use: satire. As BS keeps rising, satire is going to keep exploding in revolt. A few of us (not me)  may go over the edge to the extremes of the HRI blog. So, just to be clear, you BS’ers in aid: all this bad taste is YOUR fault.

(anon): Just noticed that @bill_easterly is following @jeffdsachs but not vice versa / Hilarious

@bill_easterly: This hurts :>) RT  Just noticed that @bill_easterly is following @jeffdsachs but not vice versa

@jeffdsachs: Hello friends, thank you for the warm welcome.

@jeffdsachs: RT @EndOfPoverty: mobile phones and internet in Africa means changes to life in fields, in clinics,… http://fb.me/5LOwcWe

@bill_easterly: I agree w u on mobile potential RT @jeffdsachs mobile phones in Africa means changes to life in fields, in clinics,… http://fb.me/5LOwcWe

(anon): Pigs just flew!! RT @bill_easterly: Agree w u on mobile potential RT @jeffdsachs mobiles in Africa means changes to,… http://fb.me/5LOwcWe

(anon): WHAT? My entire belief system just corroded to nothing RT @bill_easterly I agree w u on mobile potential RT @jeffdsachs http://fb.me/5LOwcWe

(anon): Hell just froze over! RT @bill_easterly:I agree w/ u on mobile potential RT @jeffdsachs mobile phones in Africa (cont) http://tl.gd/c0m70

(anon): Ahem, @jeffdsachs where are you? The whole developmentgeek twittersphere is waiting for you to reply to @bill_easterly

OK let’s remain calm. It’s only been one hour, and Professor Sachs may have a less compulsive/healthier relationship with his iPhone/Crackberry than some of the rest of us.

*&^$#@%*()^% I just burnt the cookies, gotta go.

UPDATE: 3/1/10 8:16am: another T from Jeff:

@jeffdsachs: @uncultured Thank you so much for the kind words. Your project is amazing and your videos, truly inspiring. Keep up the great work! {about 21 hours ago via TweetDeck}

in response to:

@uncultured: The one who inspired me to believe we can end extreme poverty (and to start my project) is now on Twitter – @JeffDSachs #FollowFriday

Economists are unpopular because we say there is always SOME resource that is overbooked in aid, and aid is Forced to Choose: who is going to get the Last Seat on the Plane?

Politicians and advocates try to argue their way out of the Scarcity and Tradeoffs, using one or another of these proven strategies:

(1)   There really is no scarcity

This is Sachs’ central argument for more money in aid –you should never be forced to choose who should live and who should die, so you should always ask for more aid money. This has been effective as advocacy, but still doesn’t make aid money an infinite resource – there is still a limit on how much rich people will give. And the scarce resource is not only money – it is also political capital, rich peoples’ attention, or effective and accountable aid workers in the field. So using AIDS as an example, sure you should do some of both treatment and prevention – but how much of each? In the end, they are still competing for limited Seats on the Plane.

(2)   Our project doesn’t use any scarce resources

This argument is usually made by omission. The Millennium Villages don’t advertise that they are dependent on one extremely scarce resource — Western experts — perhaps it would then become obvious that they are neither scalable nor sustainable. And of course there is a big tradeoff between the Millennium Villages and better projects you could do with this scarce Western expertise. A better project replaces the scarce foreign expertise very soon with more abundant local expertise and labor – such as training programs to transmit foreign technical skills to locals, who will in turn pass it on to other locals.

(3)   My cause actually is the same as your cause

Advocates of one cause often argue many other causes NEED their cause. If the necessity is absolute, then indeed the tradeoff disappears. If it is less than 100 percent absolute, there is still a tradeoff. Hey, Other Passenger who took my seat: don’t claim that You are so Important that it’s pointless for Me to get on a plane without You! Unless You are the Pilot.

In summary, there really is scarcity and aid really is forced to make intelligent choices. Be sure to give a seat to the pilot.

In development economics everyone knows that natural resources are a curse. A well-known study by Sachs and Warner found a negative correlation between resource abundance and growth rates, while subsequent studies have shown a negative relationship with democracy.

The Curse enjoys wide appeal. Aid skeptics like that it implicates oppressive domestic government and nationalized industries. Aid supporters are drawn to its emphasis on geography (destiny!) and the indictment of global markets. And on the popular level, no one makes a better villain than oil companies. But popularity doesn’t stop the story from being hot, flat, and wrong.

New research argues that empirical work on the Curse suffers from two interrelated problems. First, it uses dependence (the share of GDP from that resource) and calls it abundance (the stock of a resource in the ground). But dependence in turn depends on institutional quality—if you have sound institutions, natural resources take their place along other industries. If not, natural resources will by default constitute a large share of GDP because poor institutions stifle an advanced division of labor. When you look at cross-sectional data using dependence as a proxy for abundance, it will look like natural resources compromise institutional quality.

That reliance on cross-sectional data is the second major problem. The Curse story does not claim that Nigeria is Britain plus oil, but rather that Nigeria is less democratic than Nigeria would be in the absence of oil. One way to get around this problem is to test whether oil makes country X less democratic using panel data with fixed country effects. That’s fancy econometric speak for taking into account other factors that might make country X more or less democratic—its history, institutions, culture, etc. Fixed effects also allow testing a corollary of the Curse known as the “First Law of Petropolitics”: as oil prices go up, oil-rich autocrats crack down on democracy even more.

Digging into the recent research:

• Christa Brunnschweiler and Erwin Bulte tackle the first problem. They find a positive correlation between resource abundance and both growth and institutional quality, and argue that it is conflict and poor institutional quality that lead to dependence.
• Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo offer a great review of the second problem. They present evidence that even natural resource dependence does not undermine democratization.
• Romain Wacziarg corrects for both problems, testing for the effects of high oil prices on democracy using panel data. Again, there is no evidence for the Curse.

These studies argue that, while the Curse is plausible, domestic institutions are simply too persistent for it to matter much. Will belief in the Curse likewise prove too persistent in the face of new and better evidence?