Poverty blogs

How ‘just giving money to the poor’ helps them adapt to climate change

Programmes which transfer money directly to the poor help them adapt to climate change. That´s what I´m suggesting in a new briefing paper to be presented at the upcoming conference on ‘Social Protection for Social Justice’, will be held at the Centre for Social Protection in Brighton between the 13th and 15th of April. 

'Just give money' or 'just give work' to the poor?

A previous blogpost on Due South discussed the potential for cash transfers to contribute to climate change adaptation. But 'just giving money to the poor' is not the only social policy programmes being implemented in the developing world. In India, a different approach is being tried: rather than guarantee the poor an income, the government guarantees them paid work, via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which came into being in 2005.

To Legalize or not to Legalize?

Did the drugs trade keep the global financial system afloat at the height of the economic crisis?

Collateral damage - and no farewell to arms

When arms sales jump by more than a fifth during a global economic downturn, you have to wonder who’s buying, who’s selling and what the implications are for poorer countries.

Richard Norton-Taylor, reporting in the UK Guardian, reports that the average volume of sales of arms — including weapons such as guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, military vehicles, ships and electronic systems — has increased by 22 per cent over five years compared to the previous five. Demand from South America and Southeast Asia has been particularly high.

The myth of ‘de-coupling’ as poor catch the recession cold

When did it start to sink in that poor countries are highly vulnerable to the impacts of the global recession?