What We’re Reading 12/22/09

Dec 22nd, 2009 10:09 AM UTC
By Chandler Smith

Washington Post: In Kenya, ethnic distrust is as deep as the machete scars
A striking depiction of the residual wounds in Kenya from the post-election violence.

AllAfrica.com: Uganda: Aids Patients’ Agony As Global Fund’s U.S.$4.2 Million Yet to Be Released
A story from an East African paper provides an on-the-ground perspective on how difficulty accessing funds for AIDS programs is affecting Ugandans.

Financial Times: Private sector goes into development finance
The first tentative moves by western banks and fund managers into microfinance are gathering momentum. Most of the big banks have set up divisions that provide financial services to low-income clients in emerging markets, particularly to those who have or wish to set up businesses. The infrastructure involved is burdensome and the returns uncertain, but this does not dim the belief of many in the sector that microfinance will outperform in the future.

NYTimes: Goodbye, Copenhagen
A New York Times blog gathers a colorful collection of opinions on Copenhagen from bloggers and climate change thinkers.

COP15: Climate-Change Conference
But although many will remember the Copenhagen climate summit as an unmitigated disaster, that’s too simple an assessment. For all its limitations, however, the Copenhagen Accord is the first real step to fighting climate change in the 21st century. The real value of Copenhagen of the summit may lie in what it teaches us about dealing with climate change — and much more. TIME outlines five outcomes from the summit.

Wall Street Journal: Time for a Climate Change Plan B
Lord Lawson, former U.K. chancellor of the exchequer in the Thatcher government, suggests that the time has come to abandon the “Kyoto-style folly that reached its apotheosis in Copenhagen last week, and move to plan B.” Plan B, he says, is that, “first and foremost, we must do what mankind has always done, and adapt to whatever changes in temperature may in the future arise…Beyond adaptation, plan B should involve a relatively modest, increased government investment in technological research and development—in energy, in adaptation and in geoengineering.”

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