As you’ve probably heard, Obama and Huckabee were the winners of last night’s Iowa Caucus.

In Obama’s victory speech, he gave a nod to climate change and poverty as some of the topics he would address as president. In December, Obama committed to strengthen our security through a global development strategy.

Watch his speech:

Huckabee also mentioned some global development issues when he appeared on the “Early Show” the morning of the caucus. He said people “in the Republican establishment think I’m a little too liberal for them because I actually care about hunger, poverty, disease and the environment.”

Watch the segment:

The race for nomination is far from over—make sure to check out the rest of the candidates’ stands on global development issues on our candidate page and on One.org’s On the Record page.

The process of selecting the U.S. presidential nominees will begin tonight. If you want to follow the Iowa Caucus results, the Iowa Republican and Democratic parties are posting the results online in real time.

Where do the candidates stand on global development issues? Learn more here on our blog.

What is a caucus? Why is it important? This article in the LA Times can help.

Curious to find out what the results could mean for each candidate? Take a look at this handy guide by Chuck Todd, the Political Director of NBC News.

The World Bank said mid-December that they raised a record $25.1 billion for developing countries. Why is this significant? First of all, The United States ceded its spot as the top contributor to Britain. This is caused in part by the slipping value of the dollar against European currencies, but it also points to our commitment to global development. We currently only pledge .19% net aid as a portion of our economy. More importantly, the large increases in both Britain and Germany’s pledges indicate that relations between the World Bank and Europe are strengthening.

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, said, “The Europeans were looking for a sense of direction and some confidence in where the bank was going. This shows there is a renewed confidence.”

On another hopeful note, several countries that were once recipients of this money, such as Egypt and China, are now contributors.

Of course, as you know by now, there’s much more to global development than aid–other factors such as trade, investment, security, migration, and the environment are essential when considering our policy. Take a look at the Commitment to Global Development Index (CDI).

Read the New York Times article for more about this topic.

Public Radio International (PRI) just received a 3-year, $5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to produce and distribute content on global development and health topics. This is good news for people who care about global development—the more we talk about it (and our media talks about it), the more our future leaders will know that Global Development Matters to us, and will be able to shape US policy accordingly. PRI’s programming currently reaches around 11 million listeners each week.

PRI President and CEO Alisa Miller said, “This transformational grant will enable PRI to increase Americans’ understanding of the impact that global health and development issues have in today’s world….People and nations of the world are more interdependent than ever before, yet many media outlets continue to withdraw from international news. PRI is uniquely capable of aggressively developing compelling content, global reporting and interactive strategies to fill this urgent need.”

Stories on global development and health might focus on trade policy and how it affects developing countries’ food supplies, the effectiveness of development assistance, or personal stories of those with HIV/AIDS.

In addition to radio broadcast, coverage will also include online engagement tools through PRI’s website and other partner websites: blogs, podcasts, searchable transcripts, and mobile phone segments.

Read the press release to learn more.

Over the next 10 years, competition for jobs in developing countries will be tough—it is estimated that a billion young people in developing countries will be competing for 300 million jobs. In this recent interview in Motley Fool, Mercy Corps’s President Nancy Lindborg talks about their Silent Disasters program, which addresses the crises that fall through the cracks of public attention. One of the ways Silent Disasters seeks to improve youth unemployment is through job training kits. These kits fund training programs specific to different regions, such as Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon. Kids learn to participate in the global economy, thrive in a steady job, and become financially literate. Teaching young people about finance can benefit their entire community.

UNICEF released a report that shows our progress towards the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which seek to unite countries’ efforts to improve education, halt the spread of AIDS, alleviate poverty, and more. We are making some advances–more than 1.2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2004, and since 2000, the use of insecticide-treated nets among children has tripled in many cases in Malaria-affected countries. However, there is much more to be done, and we are not on track to achieving many of the goals. If we are going to reach these goals by the target date of 2015, we must improve rich country policy.

Here’s a good video that gives you an overview of the Millennium Development Goals:

You can also read this article in the Guardian to learn more.

The following post appeared in the Center for Global Development’s blog, Views from the Center on December 6th:

Late last week, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her global development agenda, promising to fight HIV/AIDS, end malaria deaths, continue her leadership on basic education for all, expand women’s opportunity and children’s health, eliminate poor country debt, and improve U.S. development assistance. Advance market commitments for vaccines and consideration of a cabinet-level poverty and international development agency are also part of her global development agenda.

The Clinton campaign says:

America has a long and proud history of fighting poverty and encouraging economic development around the world. But that commitment has lagged relative to our own wealth, and in comparison with other prosperous nations. We need again to reclaim this great tradition, which is a testament to the kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the American people. America has long represented the ideal of opportunity. We must once again reclaim our leadership in promoting opportunity around the world. We do this first and foremost because it is right. And we do it also because it is smart. Gnawing hunger, poverty, and the absence of economic prospects are a recipe for despair. Globalization is widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots within societies and between them. Today, there are more than two billion people living on less than $2 a day.

Committing to global development because it is right and it is smart are dual rationales echoed in the Center for U.S. Global Engagement’s Impact 08 framework, Smart Power: Building a Better, Safer World, ONE Vote 08’s campaign, and CGD’s own Global Development Matters website.

Other highlights of Clinton’s global development agenda include:

1. Investing $50 billion for global HIV/AIDS by 2013 to ensure universal access to treatment, prevention and care.

2. Committing to the goal of ending all deaths from malaria in Africa, beginning with a $1 billion per year investment in addition to U.S. commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and encouraging the use of research prizes and advance market commitments to spur innovation to address diseases in poor countries.

3. Continuing Hillary Clinton’s leadership in achieving free basic education for all, with a specific focus on girls in poor countries and the opportunities created through secondary as well as primary education.

4. Increasing women’s involvement in economic, political, and social sectors around the world as a tool for development and expanding access to health care, reducing maternal mortality and improving access to reproductive health and family planning services.

5. Improving health and opportunity for children through investments in nutrition, vaccines, public health and anti-trafficking.

6. Eliminating debts of the poorest countries including complete debt cancellation for all Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and expanding HIPC to an additional 20 poor countries.

7. Maximize the impact of U.S. development assistance by spending an additional 1% of the U.S. budget on foreign assistance; reviewing all U.S. foreign assistance efforts, in consultation with field experts, and considering consolidating program authority under a single cabinet-level poverty and international development agency; improving coordination with other donor countries; and better tracking, monitoring and evaluating U.S. funds for development assistance.

I again encourage my colleagues to comment further on the specifics of Clinton’s proposals. I know they will applaud her support for advance market commitments for vaccines, and idea born out of CGD research, and will be interested in her consideration of a cabinet-level agency for development, and focus on girls’ secondary as well as primary education. CGD senior fellow Kim Elliott has also taken notice of Clinton’s trade policies that are not mentioned as part of her global development agenda, but will have a strong impact on poor countries (See: Senator Clinton’s Disappointing Stance on Trade).

Clinton’s global development agenda, released last Thursday, is a welcome addition to the proposals Obama announced two days earlier. I am reminded that John Edwards too put forward a global poverty proposal in March this year. So, we have three candidates talking about global development so far and three agendas we can now compare, discuss, and debate. I invite readers to send me any other statements they hear from the presidential candidates, and am hopeful that we will see similar announcements from the rest of the presidential hopefuls, on what we know is not a partisan issue.

As you may know, developing countries are the most at risk when it comes to the effects of global warming. They depend quite a bit on agriculture and are also more closely located to the equator. At the Bali Conference, there has been talk of a new environmental policy deal that would create a fund for developing countries. The fund is a completely new item from the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

Saleemul Huq, a climate specialist at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, has some ideas about how this fund might work. A country that can’t meet its carbon emissions caps can currently invest in projects in developing countries. Huq’s idea is to take a percentage of those investments and put them in the fund to the countries that need it most. He said, “This is not development assistance. This is the polluter paying the victim of pollution.” There will have to be other methods that contribute to the fund as well, since much more money is needed than Huq’s solution could provide. But it’s good that some great minds in environment and policy are working on it.

The new deal is hoped to close in 2009.

Read NPR’s article to learn more.

The U.S. ranks #2 in the world’s worst environmental offenders, according to environmental groups at the global warming conference in Bali . Our greenhouse gas emissions and environmental policies contribute to this ranking. Saudi Arabia snags the gold at #1 worst environmental offender. Australia trails just behind the U.S. at #3—however, they just signed the Kyoto Protocol, so they may be on their way to a ranking that contributes to environmental well-being.

We are the only industrialized nation that hasn’t yet signed the Kyoto Protocol. If we add our name, we could make great strides in global development–since climate change affects developing countries first and worst.

Read the entire article here.

Yesterday’s NPR Democratic Debate covered only three topics: Iran, China, and Immigration.

As you know, immigration has a great affect on global development. Here are some boiled down points from the candidates:

Biden said that employers have an obligation during their hiring process to know whether or not the job is being given to an American versus an illegal immigrant.

Clinton said we need better enforcement against those who hire undocumented workers, but that we should have some sympathy for them—and that if the US produces enough jobs, immigration isn’t as much on an issue.

Dodd thought that immigration could be used as a wedge issue by Republicans.

Edwards defended a previous statement that immigration doesn’t drive down wages by turning the discussion towards the loss of good middle class jobs. He also called for comprehensive immigration reform.

Gravel said that the way we’ve been approaching the problem is not going to solve anything. He also said that we should open our doors and if we have jobs for immigrants, they’ll get them and if not, they’ll go home.

Kucinich said that we should cancel Nafta and provide a path to legalization for undocumented workers.

Obama thought that employers who hire illegal immigrants should be penalized, but immigrants should have also a chance to acquire legal status.

Read the full article or the transcript for more.