ONE’s Sergius Seebohm is reporting from the ground for the Nov 29 – Dec 2 Doha conference. Below, he talks about the city of Doha, Qatar, itself.

The capital of Qatar is a fascinating place. The vision of Sheikh Hamad bin Chalifa Al Thani, who is audaciously reinventing his country to be a leading player in the 21st century, is visible everywhere: skyscrapers are growing into the sky where only a few years ago there was nothing but sand. Together with his wife, Sheika Mozah Bint Nasser al Misned, the Emir is investing the wealth stemming from rich oil and gas resources to modernize Qatar. One of the best known expressions of the Emir’s ideas was the establishment of the broadcasting station Al Jazeera in 1996.

The Qataris were aware of the fact that they would not be able to bring about an economical upswing all on their own. So they invited guest workers from around the globe to help build the country. About 80 percent out of Qatar’s approximate 1.5m inhabitants are foreigners. College professors, engineers, but also maids, taxi drivers and construction workers: it is a vivid and multinational community – which is impossible to overlook in Doha’s streets – and which contributed to transforming Qatar into one of the most modern places in the world within just a few years.

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250 people, from civil society organizations around the world, met for 2 days this week to prepare for the upcoming Doha conference. The purpose of these two days was to discuss the outcome-document of the official Doha conference and suggest specific improvements.
 
The drafting committee had done a good job, and paragraph-by-paragraph, the participants compiled their comments on the document. Some of the main suggestions were full reiterations of existing aid commitments. Another important issue discussed was adapting finance to help developing countries avoid major development setback due to climate change. And many delegates wanted the UN Tax Committee upgraded into an intergovernmental body, to strengthen and coordinate the fight against tax evasion.
 
The Civil Society Declaration – the final document on the civil society meetings at Doha – had been a very rough draft when the conference started. After breaking out in six working groups , it became a substantial document. Our ONE staff in Doha engaged in those meetings: Andreas Huebers attended the session on systemic issues, emerging issues and the follow-up process. Mikiko Imai attended the session on increasing international financial and technical cooperation.
 

The final Civil Society Declaration emphasizes energy, food climate and finance. It states that northern governments are responsible for these crises but that the consequences are felt globally, particularly in the south: “Most countries are falling far short of meeting their aid commitments. Overcoming these crises requires decisive action and leadership from the global community.”
 
Looking at the actions by governments in the US and Europe to save financial systems, it is not surprising that the Civil Society Document comments: “The swift and massive response to bail out banks with more than three trillion USD of guarantees and funds, is in very stark contrast to their failure to respond decisively to the unabated crisis of poverty.”
 
The declaration is not uploaded yet but will be available at http://www.ffdngo.org/.
We will observe during the coming days to what extend world leaders will listen to these demands.

- Sergius Seebohm

Last month we announced that our sister organization (RED) has partnered with Starbucks. Well beginning tomorrow, November 27th, Starbucks will begin donating five cents from the sale of any (STARBUCKS)RED EXCLUSIVE beverage at all company-owned and licensed stores in the United States and Canada to the Global Fund to invest in AIDS programs in Africa.

This offer will last until January 2nd, 2009. (RED) as you know, has already raised $112 million for the Global Fund. So stop by a Starbucks this holiday season, and get a cup of joe for a great cause.

-Chris Scott

On Monday, one of ONE’s partners – Bread for the World – released their annual Hunger Report. The report, entitled Hunger 2009: Global Development: Charting a New Course, focuses on how particular changes and investment in approaches to development can combat the global hunger crisis.

In addition to the global financial crisis, the world is in the midst of a food and a fuel crisis. In less than two years, the number of people who are hungry globally has increased by 75 million, and 100 million people are at risk of being pushed into poverty. Paying more for food – especially for poor families who already spend half or more of their income on food – means shifting to fewer, less nutritious meals per day, and reducing expenditures on other necessities like education and health care.

As the Hunger Report explains, there are several causes for the increase in food prices including an increased demand from people who have moved out of poverty, drought in major grain-producing regions like Australia, fuel price hikes, and years of poor policy choices by the developed world – like subsidies and tariffs – that have ravaged agricultural sectors in the developing world.

The Hunger Report proposes two primary solutions for ensuring long-term global food security. The first is to invest in agriculture in the developing world. Historically, the U.S. and other Official Development Assistance (ODA) providers have addressed hunger by investing in food aid. While in certain emergent situations food aid is vital, the long cycle of hunger and poverty that has left millions vulnerable to the smallest increase in food costs can only be addressed by developing local agricultural sectors.

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This week, President-elect Barack Obama is rolling out an economic team that will serve in his administration during a time of global financial distress. Two of his appointments announced yesterday bring with them strong backgrounds on global development policy. Here are some brief bios on each of them:

Mr. Timothy Geithner, appointment for Treasury Secretary, has supported initiatives to provide vaccines for children dying of preventable diseases, worked to lessen the burden on countries with significant debt, and advocated for the U.S. to fund basic health care to immunize, prevent and treat infectious diseases in the poorest countries. He is currently the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Formerly, he served at the Treasury Department and as a senior official at the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Lawrence Summers, appointment for head of the National Economic Council, has worked to achieve debt cancellation for developing countries and promoted policies that will make education available for African women. He served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan and as a Chief Economist for the World Bank before taking posts in the United States Department of the Treasury. He served as the U.S. treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001.

You can find more information about President-elect Obama’s economic team here.

And check out the Center for Global Development’s take on the appointments here.

-Chris Scott

A team from ONE is going to Doha this week for the UN Financing for Development Conference. This is a follow-up conference to the 2002 conference, where the famous Monterrey Consensus (well, famous at least among development geeks like us) was adopted by the heads of states around the world. The “Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus” (phew, long name!) aims to “assess the progress made, reaffirm goals and commitments, share best practices and lessons learned and identify obstacles and constraints encountered, actions and initiatives to overcome them and important measures for further implementation, as well as new challenges and emerging issues”.

The Doha Conference occurs at an economically challenging time, but we are going to try our best to make sure that the rich countries don’t backtrack on their development promises, and to try to explore new opportunities for funding development. In particular, we are going to focus our efforts on the following points:

• G8 countries to reiterate their existing commitment to increase ODA and reassure developing countries that these will be forthcoming
• International community to explore concrete steps that can be taken to advance innovative financing mechanisms, including carbon finance for development
• Encourage new donors, especially oil exporting countries, to follow the example of Scandinavian and other countries, to spend more on fighting poverty

  
Stay tuned to the ONE Blog for updates from our team on the ground in Doha!

-Mikiko Imai

UPDATE: ONE’s policy brief for Doha conference.

NPR aired a fantastic piece this morning about the food crisis in Zimbabwe. You can check out the interactive feature at NPR.org, complete with photos and a stunning audio slideshow. Definitely recommended!

Excerpts below, full piece here:

The U.N. says that a little less than half of Zimbabwe’s population — about 5 million people — will need international food assistance by the end of the year, with talk of a full-scale humanitarian emergency. Lee says the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people this month alone, but that stocks will run out by year’s end.

“At the moment, we have no food supplies for distribution in January and February, just when the crisis is reaching its peak,” Lee says. “So we can get to enough people in Zimbabwe, we can provide them with sufficient assistance, but we need additional resources, and we need those additional resources now.”

President Robert Mugabe’s critics blame his land reform and redistribution policies for triggering the current food crisis and economic meltdown. Productive white-owned commercial farms in this region used to be part of the Zimbabwean miracle — the regional grain basket — until they were occupied by Mugabe allies, and many farmers and workers were driven from their lands.

-Chris Scott

Irish Times: Creative accounting suspected in ‘Barroso billion’ aid effort
A look at whether the EU’s billion dollar aid package and some “doubts over whether the full aid package constitutes brand new money or is simply existing cash already pledged by the EU or member states repackaged.” ONE estimates that €760 million of the €1 billion is additional money at the EU level. Oliver Buston, European director of ONE, welcomed the deal and applauded those who made it happen. He also stated, “we know that the real test on additionality is yet to come – when national treasuries write the cheque they must not take this funding from their bilateral aid programmes.”

Wall Street Journal: Big Players Scale Back Charitable Donations
The WSJ takes a look at how the current economic conditions are affecting charitable giving. Overall, donations are down significantly as “billionaires and large banks are pulling back on commitments or scaling back pledges.” Some donors, such as Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. have folded or been bought out. Others are simply scaling back. But it’s not all bad news. Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged to expand annual disbursements.

FoxNews.com: If You Live In This Great Country, You Have a Lot To Be Thankful For
Governor Mike Huckabee reflects on his trip to Rwanda with ONE this past July. He recalls some of the extreme poverty he observed and asks his readers to be thankful this holiday season for what they have.

-Chandler Smith and Chris Scott

Some interesting news from the world of agriculture and development: last week South Korea announced plans to plant corn in Madagascar, reflecting a growing trend in the region to secure cropland abroad to address the duel challenge of recent food price increases and a shortage of cropland at home.

Daewoo Logistics, a South Korean company best known for its automobile production, has secured rights to develop 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar; 1 million will be used to grow corn and 300,000 will be used for palm oil production. This scheme will enable Daewoo to produce 10,000 tons of corn in 2010 and 5 million tons of corn annually – more than half of South Korea’s annual need – once the land is fully developed, which will take about 15 years. Daewoo plans to manage its plantations directly and use labor from South Africa.

The area that Daewoo will be planting in Madagascar is approximately equivalent to 240 large US farms. Currently, South Korea imports corn primarily from the US. In 2007 the US harvested approximately 37 million hectares of corn, and is expected to harvest about 32 million in 2008.

South Korea is one of several countries following the trend of developing agricultural commodities abroad. Companies in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Kuwait have done the same. Especially considering the fear of decreasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Africa because of the global economic crisis, new investments like South Korea’s are encouraging for Africa’s economic climate. It is unclear, however, why Daewoo intends to staff their farms with South Africans rather than local people from Madagascar.

-Beth Adler

WSJ: Obama’s Opportunity to Help Africa (op-ed, George Clooney et al.)
This opinion piece calls for peace in Sudan and the Congo and asks President-elect Obama to make this region a priority. The writers claim that amidst the global crisis, there are three major reasons for renewed hope. First, this is an issue on which China and the U.S. can align. Second, the writers claim that President-elect is uniquely fitted to inspire hope and lead on this issue. Lastly, the American public, especially our younger generation, is increasingly interested in what happens outside of our borders, and particularly in Africa.

Guardian: Aid Appeal (editorial)
A call to make sure that international development remains a priority even as markets across the globe take a hit.

Associated Press: Zimbabwe bars Carter, ex-U.N. chief
Zimbabwe has refused to let Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and a South African human rights advocate Graca Machel visit the country for a humanitarian mission, the three said Saturday. All three are members of the Elders, a group formed by former South African President Nelson Mandela to foster peace and tackle world conflicts.

-Chandler Smith