I haven’t had a “breaking news” article in quite a while, but this may actually qualify: the G8 states concluded the meeting in L’Anquila with the announcement that they will from now on focus on a different way of developmental aid.
It has long been a well known and widely acknowledged problem that “helping” other countries by providing them with free food doesn’t help at all, and simply destroys the national markets (the local food producers can’t sell their own food, this bringing the country into an even worse economical situation). Of course this phenomenon is far more complex, but you know what I’m aiming at here).
The G8 have decided to forthwith support countries with development aid going more or less directly into the food – production (farmers, etc) and thereby supporting the market of the country that is receiving help in order to build their own proper economy. This seems like a very big step to me. Moreoever, it has been agreed upon paying 20 billion US-$ to the poorest countries.
Of course, this is not enough – as some organisations pointed out after the conclusion of the conference – but then again, it looks like a first step.
By the way: Germany is the second biggest donor of development aid (with 0.38% of the gross national product).
– Source: tagesschau.de
– Update (just links, I’ll update text later):
- http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/desertec114.html
- http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/desertec108.html
