Today, students from Swarthmore College participated in a Hunger Banquet, an interactive event hosted by Amnesty International. Tim Burke, associate professor of history, moderated a discussion about world hunger and global inequality. Students also gave short presentations encouraging others to take action. They spoke about efforts–such as microcredit–that have made strides in advancing global development. The main goal of the Hunger Banquet was to offer students an interactive lesson and encourage the students to experience an emotional connection with the global poor, without the usual roster of starving children imagery. Representatives from Oxfam, an international relief group that works towards solving hunger, poverty and injustice, also attended the event.

Amnesty campus chapter president Linda Wang said, “I got involved with Oxfam in high school…and organized a successful hunger banquet at my high school, and have wanted to see it done on campus.”

Sound like a great idea for your community? Visit Oxfam’s website to find out how you can host your own Hunger Banquet.

Read more about Swarthmore’s event in their online newspaper.

Immigration has been a hot topic during this election season—and immigration impacts global development quite a bit. Increasing labor mobility can improve the economic conditions of both rich and developing countries.

As you may know, yesterday the Republican presidential candidates gathered for the CNN YouTube Republican Debates. Here are some highlights dealing with immigration:

Check out this playlist to see all the candidates talk about this contentious issue:

Missed the Democrats on YouTube? Here’s the recap of the CNN YouTube Democrat Debates.

Yesterday, Google unveiled a new initiative that seeks to develop electricity from renewable resources, such as solar and wind power, that will be cheaper than the electricity created from burning coal. In 2008, Google will expend significant resources for research and development and investments in renewable energy.

Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products, said “Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal….If we meet this goal and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well.”

Good business indeed. This initiative is good for the environment, which is good for global development. And we’re good with that.

Read more about Google’s initiative at their Press Center.

A new report found that poor countries are more likely to experience health problems due to climate change than rich countries.

Kevin Watkins, from the UN Development Program and author of this new report, spoke briefly on NPR this morning. His report concentrates on the immediate effects of climate change on poor countries. The report found that developing countries will be hit particularly hard by health problems, since they don’t have the resources to deal with environmental disasters, such as droughts and floods.

For example, people in Northern Ethiopia living in drought zones have no protection should one occur. This study looks at two groups of Ethiopian children, some born in an area experiencing a drought and others that weren’t. Guess what? Five years later, those who were born in the drought-affected area were far more malnourished—by 36% percent.

This drought also led to long-term malnourishment to over 2 million children in the country. This backed their parents into a corner. They had to sell their farming equipment to take care of the immediate needs of their children—but this left them no way to feed their families when the draught was over. Desmond Tutu refers to this as “Adaptation Apartheid,” which means that when something bad happens, rich countries are able to use their resources to withstand it, but poor countries are left high and dry.

Watkins’ solution to this problem is that rich countries should change the way they give aid, for example, giving more money to improve flood control and early warning systems. We should keep in mind the effects of climate change whenever we give aid money.

Want to listen to full story? Check it out on NPR.

When you think about Global Development, you might not first think about Western Union. But you should. Migrants from poor countries sent home $300 billion last year via Western Union, which is almost three times more than all foreign aid budgets combined.

Western Union has positioned itself as an advocate of migrant workers, who make up a large portion of their customer base. Such a large portion, in fact, that Western Union’s stock is driven by border migration forecasts. Western Union’s chief executive, Christina A. Gold, said “Global migration is the cornerstone of how we’ve grown.”

Some say that Western Union is providing an important service to migrants, giving them a safe way to send money home. There are critics, too. The hefty fees associated with sending the money have drawn complaints that they are taking advantage of the poor. Also, other critics are uneasy about the company’s role in profiting from and even encouraging illegal immigration.

Either way, it’s hard to deny Western Union’s influence on development economics and the current immigration debates.

Read the New York Times article to learn more about it.

Are you an exceptional high school student? Do you know one? NetAid is hosting the Global Action Awards, which honors high school students who have led an initiative that has had a direct impact on people in developing countries or raised global poverty awareness.

The deadline to enter is January 31st, 2008.

Find out more about NetAid at their website. You can apply online, too.

Later this week, UN AIDS scientists will adjust their estimates of people infected with AIDS from 44 milion to 30 million. The new calculation is mainly due to improved methods of collecting data.

Some researchers worry that past funding decisions have been based on these faulty numbers. The revisions may have also clouded the lessons we take away on how to slow the disease.

Officials from UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS Agency, don’t believe that the new estimates are a reason to slow support. UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot stated, “Unquestionably, we are beginning to see a return on investment — new HIV infections and mortality are declining and the prevalence of HIV leveling. But with more than 6,800 new infections and over 5,700 deaths each day due to AIDS, we must expand our efforts in order to significantly reduce the impact of AIDS worldwide.”

Decreased numbers of infections may also partially contribute to the new numbers.

The UNAIDS report said, “In both Kenya and Zimbabwe, there is increasing evidence that a proportion of the declines is due to a reduction of the number of new infections which is, in part due to a reduction in risky behaviors.”

Read the Washington Post or Reuters articles to learn more about the reassessment.

ABC news and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, hosted a panel of political analysts and foreign policy experts at UNLV on November 16th. They explored the tough issues the next candidate will have to face, especially concerning national security and foreign policy. Here’s an excerpt from Carlos Pascual, a vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, speaking about the importance of fostering partnerships with other countries:

“I think for the next U.S. president the biggest central challenge is going to be to restore American credibility and leadership in order to establish effective global and international partners. And that is going to be fundamental to securing American national security interests overseas….

Whoever the next president is is going to face a series of crises….They’re going to face a whole series of geopolitical challenges….Then there is a series of wider, almost existential structural systemic questions that we face in the world that we live in today, issues of energy security and climate change, non-proliferation, proliferation of nuclear weapons in particular, transnational terrorism, global poverty. And there is no way the United States alone can deal with these issues.

The only way we can do this is to effectively establish the kinds of partnerships with an international community that trusts one another and works by a rule-based system….
I think that whoever that president is, they’re going to have an aggressive agenda that demonstrates a change in American behavior…Because it is by acting in a way that starts to demonstrate that the United States, one, has values, and two, is committed to a rule-based international system that we’ll start to convince the international community that we are not unilateralists.”

Read the article for more transcripts from the panel.

According to an article on CNNMoney.com, a survey conducted in 11 countries found that respondents believe that corporations should bear more responsibility when it comes to societal problems—despite the respondents’ high levels of distrust for those same corporations and institutions in general. The people surveyed were “influential citizens,” defined as the 10-15% percent of the population who initiate change, not including elected officials.

Those surveyed from America, the UK, Canada, and Germany believe that corporations should play as much of a role as their governments in preserving the environment and acting to reduce poverty.

Read the article to find out more about the study.

Here’s what John Edwards had to say when a One Campaign member asked about his plans to combat global and domestic poverty: