Month: August 2015

Reorienting the War on Drugs in Colombia and Afghanistan

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By Ariel Gandolfo & Miguel Eusse

The United States’ multi-billion dollar War on Drugs in Afghanistan and Colombia has failed. Afghanistan supplies 80 percent of the world’s opium, which is derived from poppies and used to make heroin, while Colombia is home to around 43 percent of the global coca supply. Despite continued efforts to crack down on the production of heroin and cocaine in these countries, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose 36 percent between 2012 and 2013, to record levels. In Colombia, approximately 2.6 million acres of coca were sprayed with toxins between 2000 and 2007, yet cocaine production rose during the same period, and more recently increased by 44 percent between 2013 and 2014.

Coca field fumigation. Source: Policía Nacional Colombiana

Coca field fumigation. Source: Policía Nacional Colombiana

In Colombia and Afghanistan, farmers grow coca and poppies because they are profitable, but also because there are no viable alternatives to earn a living. Governments are now realizing that criminalization and eradication programs are not enough, and they are changing strategies to foster alternative opportunities to drug cultivation. These new approaches are supported by multilateral and bilateral organizations such as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and USAID. Continue reading →

Can Morocco Continue to Attract Foreign Investment?

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By Motoki Aoki

In the past five years, the Kingdom of Morocco has been the most rapidly transforming economy in the unstable North African region—and arguably even in the world. Morocco has made an incredible leap in the World Bank’s 2015 Doing Business index, ranking 71 out of 189 economies compared to 130 in 2009. This dramatic improvement attracted the attention of the private sector, drawing even more foreign cash into the kingdom. In 2014, Morocco became the second-largest destination for FDI in North Africa and the third-largest recipient of FDI on the African continent. This year, Morocco continues to win foreign investors’ attention.

Last month, French aircraft company Figeac Aéro announced plans to invest $29 million to open a production plant in Morocco, generating 500 direct jobs. The French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen will invest $632 million in a low-cost vehicle assembly factory, with production scheduled to start in 2019. This is estimated to create 4,500 direct jobs and 20,000 indirect jobs by the time the factory is operational. Additionally, Japanese company Furukawa Electric, the world’s third-largest fiber-optics manufacturer, is poised to invest $8 million to build a Moroccan plant and tap into the growing demand for communications infrastructure in Africa. Not only do these private investments create jobs, they also boost exports of vehicular, aeronautic, and electronic equipment.

Port_of_Casablanca

Casablanca is an important trade and financial hub for both Morocco and the African continent.

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Challenges for a Public Private Partnership in Pakistani Healthcare

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By Motoki Aoki

Pakistan’s Punjab Province, home to more than 101 million people, has the potential to become one of the world’s largest economies in the twenty-first century. However, a strong economy requires a healthy populace. Despite robust economic growth over the last decade, the Punjab government allocates as low as 0.7 percent of its spending to healthcare, compared to the OECD average of 8.9 percent. Infant mortality in Punjab is 77 deaths per 1,000 live births, and mortality for children under five is 112 in 1,000, compared to the OECD averages of 2.9 and 4.2 respectively. Although Punjab has made a gradual progress on these two health indicators in the last decade, both are still short of the MDG targets of 52 deaths per 1,000 live births for under-five mortality, and 40 deaths per 1,000 live births for infant mortality.

The major issues in Punjab’s health services run the gamut from financial mismanagement to insufficient resources to absenteeism of doctors and other staff. In light of its failure to achieve MDG targets, the government of Punjab announced in June that it will outsource day-to-day operations and management of all public health facilities in 10 districts to private parties starting in November 2015. These locations span from the smallest healthcare facilities to district hospitals, totaling 669 health facilities. The government will continue to own the physical facilities and remain accountable for overseeing the quality of healthcare delivered. Continue reading →

Green Infrastructure: Leveraging Natural Processes for Affordable Water Management

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The global development community is gearing up to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September, illustrating a key shift in development priorities. Rather than focusing purely on goals and indicators, as the MDGs did, this new set of goals will additionally focus on the sustainability of development. One huge task is to provide global water security. Amidst rapid urbanization, water security in cities is a growing struggle, and providing water sustainably is even more of a challenge. A possible solution to this lies in “green infrastructure.”

“Green infrastructure” refers to a type of infrastructure engineered to maximize natural processes to manage water, mainly for cities and urban areas. These natural processes can include filtration through certain soils, flows of water through aqueducts and other gravity-based processes, or storing run-off water in certain specified land areas. These “green” processes can help control polluted run-off and erosion, as well as helping to sustainably and continually provide clean water for cities. Green infrastructure is distinguished from “gray infrastructure,” which includes the more typical basins, sewage systems, pipes, and filtration centers. Gray infrastructure can be expensive, cumbersome, and often subject to degradation over time. In many cases “green infrastructure” offers a sustainable way to manage, store, and distribute water because it utilizes natural processes instead of imposing artificial systems.

Lima, Peru is revitalizing a pre-incan canal system to more effectively manage water treatment and management.

Lima, Peru is revitalizing a pre-Incan canal system for more effective and sustainable water management and treatment.

One example of green infrastructure was recently in the news for its innovative approach to providing water to Peru’s desert capital city, Lima. In response to a growing water shortage, Lima has dedicated $22 million to restore an ancient, pre-Incan canal system. The canals funnel water from mountain streams into the mountain itself, where it percolates, filtrates, and releases slowly over the course of the dry season. “Gray infrastructure” water management techniques would send the water too quickly to Lima, which would result in mudslides and erosion in the wet season and severe water shortages in the dry season. The green infrastructure solution adds at least 1 cubic meter per second of water to the city. This solution is also cheaper than building a canal or storage facilities, especially in light of the rapid urbanization of the region. Lima is expected to grow by at least 700,000 people in the next five years, and green infrastructure solutions are flexible and sustainable even with that growth. Continue reading →