Poverty economists: Should they put more skin in the game?
By Amol Agrawal

Ravi Kanbur of Cornell Univ writes this excellent piece on Poverty professionals/ economists. (HT: Chris Blattman Blog)

He laments how analysing poverty has become a great career path. Though he does not say it but economists still don’t know how to solve the poverty problem. So, it worsens the stated problem. It is all quite ironical.

This issue makes me uncomfortable within myself, takes me off my high moral perch when I talk (or lecture) to others about poverty, and it is an issue for which I do not have an answer. It is quite simply this—those of us, including me, who analyze poverty and discourse about poverty, seem to do rather well out of it. Working on poverty issues, whether in international agencies, in bilateral donor ministries, in academia, in think tanks, in foundations, or in many NGOs, has become a well defined career path, with ladders that one climbs and financial compensation to match. To be sure, the monetary compensation may not come close to that of the Wall Street Set or the Dalal Street Set. But the Development Set does fine, thank you very much. As Ross Coggins famously observed

The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep, our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

It is extraordinary how Coggins’ satirical poem resonates more than three decades later, and now surfaces frequently in the development blogosphere. Thus in the December 4, 2008 entry on his blog, Owen Abroad: Thoughts from Owen in Africa (http://www.owen.org/blog/116 ), Owen Barder invoked the poem when he wrote:

“I’m just back from the Doha Financing for Development Conference…..One topic that occupied the negotiators for hours was whether the UN, or another body such as the G-20, should host the next meeting about the financial crisis. (“Thus guaranteeing continued good eating / By showing the need for another meeting.”) I estimated that the Financing for Development meeting cost about $60 million….I have made myself a personal promise. I do not want to travel around the world telling poor countries what they should do and how they should change. I will concentrate on trying to persuade rich countries to change the policies and behaviours that make it difficult for the world’s poor to share that prosperity.”

He says the issue is much deeper.

This issue is much deeper than the one I began with, on the dichotomy between economics and other disciplines, or between quantitative and qualitative approaches to poverty appraisal. This syndrome applies equally to pretty much all protagonists in any development debate. No matter how heated the debate, it usually takes place in salubrious surroundings (In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations/We damn multinational corporations), and the professionalization and all that goes with it is clear on both sides of the table. My Cornell colleague, anthropologist Annelise Riles has pointed to the strong similarities between the groups on either side of the table in these gatherings. Not only are they professionals, but in a strong sense they are indeed part of the same community, bound by “a certain aesthetic of information of which the world of NGOs, nation states, international institutions, and networks is only one instantiation”.

What is striking about the class of poverty professionals (of whom I am one) is that the good living (granted, not at the billionaire or millionaire level, but pretty good nevertheless) is made through the very process of analyzing, writing, recommending on poverty. To me, at least, this is discomforting and disconcerting. I feel slightly ashamed within myself when I turn up to a poverty conference (perhaps even one where I am the keynote speaker), having flown business class, staying in an expensive hotel and (sometimes) being paid handsomely for attending. I recall many years ago, when I was in my twenties, telling the anthropologist Mary Douglas about how I was starting to do consulting for the World Bank on poverty issues, and how important it was to do this work. “And it’s not too bad for one’s own poverty either, is it?” came her worldly, knowing, reply. The seeds of discomfort sown by that comment have germinated and taken root, and now won’t let go.

He looks at several questions and paradoxes:

I recognize of course the paradoxes of making so much of my discomfort, with the implication that others should feel it too. First, it seems to let off the hook those who make a good living without attempting to help the poor in any way. Surely the moral dilemma of living well in the midst of poverty is one that should apply equally to all, and not particularly and peculiarly to poverty professionals? Why pick on those whose chosen profession is to help the poor, and berate them for doing well out of it?

By suggesting that their pay and benefits should not be “too high”, does this not penalize the children of the poverty professionals for their parents’ calling? Secondly, if highly skilled personnel are needed to attack poverty, then what’s wrong with paying the market rate for that skill? Surely the alternative is that these skilled professionals will find equally well paying jobs making widgets, and the attack on poverty will lose its best troops? Surely, the poor deserve the very best talent to address their needs?

And yet my doubts and discomforts remain.

Read the whole thing for more details.

So what are his suggestions? How do we end this moral issue?

My specific proposal, therefore, is that each poverty professional should engage in an “exposure” to poverty (also known as “immersions”) every 12 to 18 months. I do not mean by this rural sector missions for aid agency officials, nor the running of training workshops by NGO staff. What I mean is well captured by Eyben (2004); these are exercises that “are designed for visitors to stay for a period of several days, living with their hosts as participants, as well as observers, in their daily lives. They are distinct from project monitoring or highly structured ‘red carpet’ trips when officials make brief visits to a village or an urban slum….”

So immersions is much like getting some skin in the game. He looks at criticisms of this proposal as well and says there are limitations but atleast the poverty professional understands the issues better. Here is Action Aid on immersions. But again despite Kanbur mentioning it, immersions might turn into another fad. Looking at the costs of these poverty conferences, it might be good to earmark a certain % of funds for poverty purposes.

But otherwise, quite an honest introspection I must say. On reading few poverty and development papers, me and a friend called it analysing poverty sitting in Geneva. Some papers have such superfluous suggestions that it is not funny. I mean if poor countries could implement those suggestions, they wouldn’t be poor at first place.

Looking at the state of economics now, we can surely have more of these instead of just blaming others.

Storm Strikes Haven for Displaced Haitians

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Haitians jumped across a ditch at the site of a planned tent city called Corail Cesselesse that is meant for those who are most at risk from flooding or landslides at a camp in Petionville.


Heavy wind and rain earlier this week turned the Corail-Cesselesse camp north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from a supposed haven for earthquake-displaced families into a disaster site.


The summer storm tore up tents, knocked down solar-powered lights and provoked anger and anxiety in the camp, which was selected by the Haitian government to serve as a safe relocation site for thousands of people deemed at risk from flooding and landslides elsewhere.

About 1,700 of 7,000 Haitians who had agreed this spring to move from Port-au-Prince to Corail-Cesselesse, a remote camp in an inhospitable location, lost their shelter to the storm on Monday. About six people were hurt by debris that flew across the exposed desert plain where rows of family-size tents sat in a grid on a graveled surface.

A mother and baby were struck by lightning, said the camp manager, Richard Poole. The woman was badly burned, and the baby, taken away by ambulance, was reported by Haitian radio to have died.

Striking six months to the day after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the storm underscored for the camp’s residents just how vulnerable they remain. Reported by the Haitian media, it also broadly undermined faith in the country’s readiness for the hurricane season.

“I think this is a fair warning,” Leonard Doyle, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said Wednesday. “What happened was essentially a squall that led to some 344 tents being ripped asunder or damaged. One shudders to think what would happen when a proper storm arrived.”

Jocelin Belzince, a tailor and resident of the camp, said that the storm had sent a message. “Nature came and said Corail is not a good place for tents,” he said in a telephone interview. “They should not defy nature.”

Immediately after the storm had passed, international groups scrambled to replace destroyed and damaged tents with new ones, even as they prepared to move thousands more displaced people to tents on an adjacent lot.

But the storm also seems to have accelerated a plan to build sturdy transitional shelters for the camp’s residents. Mr. Doyle said construction could begin as soon as Thursday.

A Conference Call on Haiti

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/public-liaison/2010/07/15/haiti-a-status-update-on-recovery-and-reconstruction-efforts-six-months-later


A status update six months after the 2010 Haitian Earthquake

The U.S. Department of State invites you to participate in a conference call discussing reconstruction and recovery efforts six months after the earthquake.

Speakers:

* Patrick Gaspard, Director, White House Office of Political Affairs

· Julissa Reynoso, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Caribbean and Central American Affairs, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. Department of State

· Jerome Oetgen, Public Affairs Counselor, Embassy Port-au-Prince, Haiti

We will stream the discussion live via Blog Talk Radio . Tune in today, July 15th at 1:00pm ET to listen to the discussion.

Note: We will not accept questions from callers on blog talk radio for this conversation on Haiti. However, we hope to host future episodes on Foreign Policy topics that interest you and hope to allow questions via Blog Talk Radio then.

12 July 2010 Last updated at 09:08 ET
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Quake-stricken Haiti bears scars six months on

* Scars
* Unfulfilled promises
* Aid effort

By Matthew Price BBC News, Port-au-Prince
People wait in line for tents at the Canahan 2 camp for earthquake displaced people on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 30, 2010, More than a million Haitians live in relief camps, six months after the quake

If there is any hope for Haiti, you surely find it in the broad smile of six-year-old Telia Jacques.

She smiles despite her thin left leg that will not fully straighten, and despite the prominent vivid scar that runs down her forehead from the hairline to just above the right eyebrow.

And she smiles even though she - like her country - will forever be affected by the earthquake that destroyed so many lives.

Six months ago, Telia was lying on the floor of L'Hopital de la Paix, in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, wrapped in dirty, blood-stained sheets, her legs shattered, her head smashed open.

She had been crushed when her home fell on her.

Above her stood a desperate father, Astrel Jacques, pleading for the world to help.

The hospital had no medicine, and barely a doctor.

"Ca va?" he asked his daughter. "Oui," she replied, but she was not OK.

The next morning he realised he had to find a doctor. So he managed to get Telia into someone's car, and drove until he came across some aid workers. They helped him and his daughter across the border to the Dominican Republic.

There she spent a month and a half in different hospitals, and her life was saved.
Tarpaulin city

Another daughter and Mr Jacques' mother-in-law both died in the earthquake.

"Six months after not one day passes when I don't think about the earthquake," he says. "When I don't think about how our life was together. We lost everything. Everything has gone."

On the surface there is little change here.

The building material of necessity - blue plastic tarpaulin - covers much of Port-au-Prince.
Telia Jacques, 6, with her mother Bruna, Anse-a-Veau, Haiti. Telia Jacques spent six weeks in different hospitals

The slums that seethe under those tarpaulins were meant to be temporary. Now they house more than a million people and have an air of permanence.

So Fabula Gilme can count herself lucky - and that here is a relative term - in that she at least has a corrugated tin roof above her head.

Most of the time it protects her and her son Mackenzie.

"There are holes in the roof. Sometimes when it rains, it leaks on the baby - I don't know what to do," she says.

Mackenzie was born a week after the earthquake. He barely made it into this world. Fabula was almost too weak to give birth.

Outside her home there is a mound of rubble. The view from here has barely changed in the last six months.

"It's the same it was. Everyone is using corrugated roofs, and tents and tarpaulins. Houses haven't been rebuilt. There are still people sleeping in damaged homes. Some sleep in tents."

That pretty much sums up this capital city. Rubble still appears to lie everywhere. Small groups of workers - paid mostly by international aid - clear patches by hand. There is little sign of the much-needed heavy lifting equipment.
'Lost everything'

It partly explains why it takes so long to get up to Jean-Michel Fleurimond's home. Or rather what remains of it.

The paths in his village are blocked by rubble.

Jean-Michel has no family anymore. His two brothers are still buried under the rubble of their home.
A refugee camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Tarpaulin-covered slums litter the Haitian capital

"I lost my brothers and everything I own," he says.

Now he lives in a small tin shack, with bare earth for a floor. When it rains, the water runs right through the space, eroding the ground.

He pulls out two sheets of wood, and a thin white curtain. This is his "bed".

"Before, my life was good. I am an artist. I used to make artwork to pay for school. My mother used to help me pay, too."

"Since the earthquake, I've been on my own. I can't live how I want to because I don't have a job. I can't feed myself how I like to. It's very difficult."

He gets by thanks to the Red Cross. It pays him and others $5 (£3.30) a day to improve the camp. He helped to build the steps that lead through the shelters, for instance.

But they are squatters here, and they fear soon the landowner may move them on.
'Frozen in time'

Help has also come for Iselene Celne. Six months ago she was trapped under the rubble - she lost an arm, and both her hands.

Now her children help her run a tiny stall she's managed to start up with money from a small British charity, Tearfund.

"Without them, I'd be nothing," she says.

She shrugs with the stump of her arm.

"I'd have no money. I'd feel humiliated. Without the business what could I do?"
Iselene Celne and her children Iselene Celne lost an arm and both her hands

On the surface, there has been some progress here. There's clean water in the camps to drink and to wash with. Educational projects are starting up. The Haitian police are starting to patrol the city and the camps.

But few, if any, of the Haitians here feel that things are actually improving. It is as if their lives have been frozen in time.

A day after the earthquake, Astrel Jacques stood beside his dying daughter in the hospital and said: "We are fighting."

And now, half a year on, with Telia smiling next to him, he repeats those exact same words.

He and the rest of the survivors know that they will have to keep fighting, if life is to get any better.

10 July 2010 Last updated at 19:30 ET
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Quake-stricken Haiti bears scars six months on

* Scars
* Unfulfilled promises
* Aid effort

Man walks through rubble in Port au Prince Twenty million cubic metres of rubble are blocking Haiti's towns and villages, severely hampering attempts to build shelters

The human cost of the earthquake in Haiti has been huge; millions were left hungry, their homes, schools and hospitals destroyed and their livelihoods taken away.

The earthquake - the most powerful to hit Haiti for 200 years - caused maximum impact as it hit the most densely populated area of the country.

A government assessment said the damage was all the more severe because it came after a period of relative stability, when people had begun to see their living conditions improve.

An emergency flash appeal launched by the international aid community within days of the earthquake quickly reached its $577m (£380m) target - but that target had to be revised upwards a month later when the full extent of the humanitarian operation became clear.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued a new target of $1.5bn . The key aim was to provide an "environment for safe and healthy living for all affected people until reconstruction restores normality."

In April, the international community pledged a total of $9.9bn in immediate and long-term aid at a UN donor conference.
Bar chart of Haiti aid

By July, 64% of the flash appeal had been met, according to OCHA, either in direct funding or in binding commitments to provide funding.

However, there are fears the humanitarian situation will worsen with the coming hurricane season. Emergency shelters made from tarpaulin are not substantial enough to withstand heavy weather and many temporary camps are also prone to severe flooding.

"With so many people still so vulnerable after the recent earthquake, a serious hurricane this year could be devastating," said Sarah Muscroft, head of OCHA in Haiti.

Aid workers are distributing and building "transitional shelters" which have steel or timber frames and provide more protection than tarpaulins and tents, but they take a relatively long time to construct.

Efforts are also hampered by the estimated 20 million cubic metres of rubble created by the earthquake. The latest OCHA action plan aims to clear 10% of the rubble but it will take 90 days and cost $120m.
TYPES OF SHELTER - PROS AND CONS
Emergency shelter

EMERGENCY SHELTERS

Consist primarily of tarpaulins and fixings such as rope and nails.

Tents can also be used for emergency shelter but are less versatile than tarpaulins.

Emergency shelters can be distributed quickly but offer only limited protection against heavy rains.
Transitional shelter

TRANSITIONAL SHELTERS

Simple timber or steel frame structures that provide better protection, privacy and space.

Often have a concrete foundation and can last for years.

Can be reused when people find permanent homes.

Take longer to build but can be dismantled and moved if necessary.

Shelter in Haiti graphics fact sheet (pdf)

Source: IASC

In March, the Haitian government published a Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment (PDNA) which estimated the cost of rebuilding the country would be $11.5bn, spread across governance, environment, social sectors, infrastructure and production.

Social services were inadequate before the earthquake with many children not attending school and 38% of the population over the age of 15 were illiterate.

Reconstruction money will be spent on providing free primary education for all, improving access to health services and reducing malnutrition.

Money spent on infrastructure will include training in building techniques to reduce risks, restoring the road and telecommunications networks.

Before the earthquake, unemployment was running at 30%. Trade, tourism, transport and communication were all badly affected by the quake and so efforts will concentrate on economic growth to create new jobs, as well as improving working conditions.

* Scars
* Unfulfilled promises
* Aid effort

By Mark Doyle BBC International Development Correspondent
A man prays in a cemetery affected by the 12 January earthquake in Port-au-Prince on 10 July 2010 Six months after the quake, parts of Haiti look like the disaster struck yesterday

"We are waiting," said the Mayor of Leogane, Santos Alexis, as he sat under a tree outside his earthquake-shattered residence.

Like an estimated 1.5 million people made homeless by the devastating quake that hit Haiti six months ago, the mayor is still living in the open - in his case, in a tent.

Leogane, an hour's drive outside the capital Port-au-Prince, is close to the epicentre of the earthquake.

Although it has received considerable aid in the past six months - the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has built a sizeable field hospital there, for example - the place still looks, in the mayor's words, "like the earthquake hit yesterday".
Mayor of Leogane, Santos Alexis Leogane Mayor Santos Alexis is too traumatised to return to his house

Along the main street almost every sizeable concrete house is a wreck of sagging roofs, smashed pillars and crumbling concrete.

"I'm still traumatised," says Santos Alexis, "there's no way I'm going to return to my concrete house."

"During the quake I was flipped on to the floor - I thought the ground was going to split open like it does in the movies and swallow me up."

Aid workers in Haiti say the "emergency phase" of their work is now over.

They say they hit some of their targets, such as providing some basic shelter and stopping major outbreaks of disease.

But now this emergency Band-Aid has been applied, it seems that major economic and social surgery may be required - and the roadblocks to that happening are becoming apparent.
Donors demur

Delays have emerged in the publication - still less execution - of the government's reconstruction plan.

And the government says the international donors have not come up with the money to finance it.

Some of the delays are a direct result of the earthquake - over 200,000 were killed and whole urban areas were reduced to rubble in what was one of the deadliest natural disasters ever.

"Almost all the government ministries were destroyed in the quake," said Imogen Wall, a United Nations official working on aid co-ordination.
Continue reading the main story
Human rights lawyer Mario Joseph
“Start Quote

A tiny bourgeois group has grabbed all the wealth and the poor struggle to get the very basics of life”

End Quote Mario Joseph Human rights lawyer

"Twenty-five per cent of the civil servants were killed. The UN has had to provide basic desks and computers to help the government function again."

But Haiti's long-term social and political problems are also partly to blame for the slow response to the needs of the earthquake victims.

Haiti began its existence as a brutal French slave colony divided into sugar and coffee plantations.

When the colonialists were forced out, partly by a slave revolt, Haiti became the first free black republic in 1804.

The advanced nations of the time - notably France and the US - promptly imposed an embargo on the country, which prevented most economic and social development.

"We were a bad example for them," said Jean Renald Clerisme, a senior adviser to President Rene Preval, "because they still had slaves that they wanted to continue to subjugate."

The embargo on an economy designed to survive by plantation exports was crippling - and Haiti has still not recovered from that early shock.

During this period of isolation and stagnation a new black and mixed race elite also emerged to take control of the best land, creating a profoundly unequal society.
Title deeds buried

Most of the people living in tents today don't own land, and those that do don't have proof of ownership.

"In order to build anything you have to have land," said UN official Imogen Wall.

"But even before the earthquake only about 5% of people had proof of ownership. Many title deeds were then buried in the earthquake."

Activists who say they represent the poor in Haiti, like human rights lawyer Mario Joseph, say unequal land ownership is the heart of the problem.

"The system here doesn't respect the poor," he says.

"A tiny bourgeois group has grabbed all the wealth of the country and the poor struggle to get the very basics of life - clean water, food, health care and schools."
Continue reading the main story
Jean Renald Clerisme, a senior adviser to President Rene Preval
“Start Quote

In New York, we were promised $10bn, but we haven't received even 2% of this - How do you explain that?”

End Quote Jean Renald Clerisme Senior presidential adviser

The Haitian government does have the power to compulsorily purchase land.

But without very strong political leadership, which Haiti doesn't have at the moment, this will be difficult to achieve.

Which politicians are going to force the big landowners to sell at a fair price when many of those landowners finance the political parties?

Jean Renald Clerisme, the presidential adviser, says that in any case the Haitian government hasn't received the money it was promised by the donors, which it would need to buy land and reconstruct.

"At a big donors' meeting in New York, we were promised $10bn (£6.64bn)," he says. "But we haven't received even 2% of this money - how do you explain that?"

And he adds that much of the donor money, even when it is disbursed, goes straight back to its country of origin.

"They say they are sending money to Haiti, but much of it goes on experts and consultants from their own countries who are paid big dollar salaries they bank at home.

"And then when it comes to buying things for aid projects the donors insist on spending the money in their own countries. The people of Haiti only see a small proportion of these billions that are promised."

.