Development & Aid
– In recent days, two major developments have injected new life into international action on climate change. At the G20 summit in Australia, the United States pledged 3 billion dollars and Japan pledged 1.5 billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), bringing total donations up to 7.5 billion so far. The GCF, established through […]
The United States proposed Tuesday that the international community write off 100 million dollars in debt owed by West African countries hit hardest by the current Ebola outbreak. The money would be re-invested in health and other public programming. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be detailing the proposal later this week to a summit […]
President Barack Obama is under significant pressure to impose a range of restrictions on travellers coming to the United States from West African countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak. Yet public health experts and development advocates warn that such restrictions would harm the already reeling economies of Ebola-hit countries in the region, and squeeze […]
Lawmakers here are urging President Barack Obama to put transparency in the extractives sector at the centre of an upcoming trip to Myanmar. While the government of Myanmar has recently engaged in a series of bilateral and multilateral pledges to make its lucrative but highly opaque mining and oil and gas industries more transparent, advocates […]
Most of the world’s governments are taking measures to reduce the worst and most hazardous forms of child labour, according to a major report released here Tuesday by the U.S. Labour Department. In its annual assessment of progress toward eliminating that kind of exploitation, the 958-page report found that roughly half of the 140-some countries […]
A year after a U.S. company was accused of engaging in the systematic importing of flooring made from illegally harvested timber, pressure is mounting on federal agencies currently investigating the allegations. In September 2013, federal authorities executed search warrants of two of the offices of Lumber Liquidators, the largest specialty flooring company in the United […]
Canada’s tar sands oil boom may be in jeopardy and it appears the ruling Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not have any plan B in its ambition to remake this resource-rich country into “an energy superpower.” “This is one of the sectors that creates some of the most jobs, not just in […]
Joeva Rock is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC, focusing on colonial legacies in West Africa.
Zoe Pearson is a PhD candidate in human geography at Ohio State University. Thomas Grisaffi is a social anthropologist who currently works as a research fellow at the UCL Institute of the Americas. They both research coca politics in Bolivia and are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus. This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com
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