Topic: Natural disasters

When disaster strikes in the shape of floods or droughts, aid agencies traditionally ship in food and blankets, often over great distances. But increasingly, people are trying out a novel alternative – give people envelopes full of cash and let them buy what they need. I’ve just been reading an evaluation of two such exercises […]

Read this paragraph: ‘Despite the recent creation of a United Nations High Level Task Force, there is still little coordination or collaboration among UN organisations, the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors. There is no functioning global mechanism to ensure coordination and policy coherence of the various actors, thus adding complexity to the […]

I’m no apologist for the Cuban government, but it’s noteworthy that despite its much lower GDP per capita, Cuba keeps beating much richer countries in social and environmental league tables drawn up by some highly respectable NGOs. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Oxfam America contrasted the carnage in New Orleans with Cuba’s extraordinarily effective […]