Blog Contributor:
Kelly Hauser
As a member of ONE’s policy team, Kelly provides analysis on agriculture, economic growth and cross-cutting policy issues. She joined ONE from Oxfam America, where she researched and wrote about agriculture, food security, climate change and humanitarian-related issues. Kelly works in ONE’s DC office.
May 15th, 2012 3:56 PM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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What would you do if you had $75 billion and four years to improve the world’s well-being?
Recently 65 world-renowned researchers, economists and Nobel laureates got together and answered that question. They released their findings yesterday after more than a year of reviewing proposals and evidence, thanks to the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Being economists, they weighed their choices carefully using cost-benefit analyses. Seventy-five billion dollars may sound like a lot, but $18.75 billion (1/4 of $75 billion) represents only a 15 percent increase on top of the current $130 billion that developed nations spend annually on foreign aid.
Photo credit: Helen Keller International
Given the budget constraint, only 16 interventions stood out to the panel as worthy investments:
1. Bundled nutrition interventions in preschoolers
2. Expanding the Subsidy for Malaria Combination Treatment
3. Expanded childhood immunization coverage
4. Deworming of schoolchildren
5. Expanding tuberculosis treatment
6. R&D to increase yields, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change
7. Early warning systems to protect populations against natural disasters
8. Strengthening surgical capacity
9. Hepatitis B immunization
10. Using low‐cost drugs in the case of acute heart attacks in poorer nations
11. Salt reduction campaign to reduce chronic disease
12. Geo‐engineering R&D
13. Conditional cash transfers for school attendance
14. Accelerated HIV vaccine R&D
15. Extended field trials of information campaigns on the benefits of schooling
16. Borehole and public hand pumps
If you follow ONE’s blog and campaigns regularly, you’ll notice that ONE advocates for many of these interventions. Currently, Thrive –- ONE’s campaign to break the cycle of poverty and malnutrition — is campaigning for #1, #4, #6, and #7 (in bold above). Intervention #1 bundles micronutrients, deworming and nutrition education, and the panel’s Outcomes Report recommends that donors spend $3 billion of the $18.75 billion per year on this bundle — very similar to what ONE recommended in our report “Food. Farming. Future.” This research is also corroborated by what our friends at 1,000 Days have been saying for, oh, nearly 1,000 days.
Almost 300,000 ONE members have signed our petition to lift 50 million people out of poverty and prevent stunting in 15 million kids. Despite this and clear evidence that agriculture and nutrition interventions are best buys in development, it is still unclear whether the world’s richest governments are going to seize this opportunity. Now, with just four days until the G8 summit at Camp David, leaders need to take action on country-owned agriculture and nutrition.
Tweet at @ONEstreettweet to get your 40-character message to the G8 printed on the road.
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May 12th, 2012 9:20 AM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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Government-funded global agriculture programs are making a world of difference for many small farmers in rural Africa. Don’t believe it? Read the living proof:
The climate in Kenya’s Eastern Province is marked by extremes, alternating between floods and long periods of drought. When rains are scarce, wells and river beds dry up, forcing people to walk up to 15 km in search of water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. By harvesting rain from rock outcrops, the trek for water has become a whole lot easier.
Just as the roofs of buildings can be exploited for the collection of rainwater, so can rock outcrops be used as collecting surfaces. With funding from USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), Welthungerhilfe (WHH), a German relief organization assists Kenyan communities construct and manage rock catchment water systems designed to collect and store rainwater.
What is a rock catchment?
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May 9th, 2012 10:35 AM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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A few days ago, our friends at ActionAid USA released the report, “Pledges, Principles and Progress: Aid to Agriculture since L’Aquila,” which presents a new angle on donor L’Aquila pledge progress. The report is a valuable addition to knowledge about the extent to which donor countries are keeping their L’Aquila food security promises, and in my opinion, it jives well with Thrive, our campaign to end global hunger and poverty.
SEE ALSO: What is the L’Aquila Global Food Security Initiative?
According to the report, while the overall spending level of the 13 L’Aquila donors increased by 60 percent after they made their pledge, several donors, including Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, actually decreased their annual aid to agriculture after making a L’Aquila pledge. Of course, financial pledges were not the only pledges that donors made at the L’Aquila summit, but they are a very important indicator of a country’s commitment to addressing hunger and poverty.
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Apr 29th, 2012 9:24 AM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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Government-funded global agriculture programs are making a world of difference for many small farmers in rural Africa. Don’t believe it? Read the living proof:
Despite drought and famine, Sakina Mati would walk 6 miles a day in search of firewood for her family in southern Niger. Today, thanks to the Evergreen Agriculture movement, she no longer has to make this dangerous journey and has turned her sun-scorched land into a profitable mix of agriculture and forest.
It all began when Sakina met an NGO-sponsored trainer who came to her small village in the Maradi region in southern Niger and taught her the value of planting and managing native trees on her farm. Taking a risk, she took his advice and planted trees – she now has over 100 – and quickly learned how beneficial reforestation can be – the trees help prevent erosion on her farmland, pruned branches and leaves can be used to fertilize the soil and her goats feed off the bark. Now, instead of walking 6 miles a day for firewood, Sakina cuts down a few select trees as part of a management programme and sells them as firewood for a profit.
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Apr 24th, 2012 1:30 PM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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If the United States could have delivered 100 million more tons of food aid last year to the Horn of Africa crisis for the same cost, would you have voted for that? I would have. Currently in Congress, there is an opportunity to make our food aid dollars go much farther. It’s called the Farm Bill.
The Farm Bill is a massive bill that Congress puts together every five years. It covers mostly domestic agriculture policy, including farm subsidies, environmental conservation, food safety, rural community development and, in the international realm, food aid. On Friday, the Senate released its draft Farm Bill. Overall, the policy changes in the draft bill represent improvements to US food aid policy, but we think Congress could do more.
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Apr 17th, 2012 3:53 PM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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Government-funded global agriculture programs are making a world of difference for many small farmers in rural Africa. Don’t believe it? Read the living proof:
Since it was pioneered in Madagascar in the 1980s, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is proving that poor smallholder farmers can increase yields and at the same time reduce costs by simply changing the way they grow rice. The system is being adopted in other African nations like Mali with good results.
Photo credit: Kelly Hauser/ ONE. Taken from “The skinny on SRI“
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Jan 12th, 2012 3:53 PM UTC
By Kelly Hauser
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This time last year, I was in Haiti working with a sister city program and reporting to the ONE Blog. One of the most meaningful experiences I had there was when I met with the mountain community Savanèt, located near Jacmel. I had run into Jackson Jean-Batiste, the chair of their community committee Komité Relèvman Savanè, on a hike the day before, and he had asked me to meet with his organization. I was interested in learning about the earthquake- and food-related challenges they faced, so I did.
At the meeting, I was careful to let them know that I was not going to do anything for their community directly, and, although I would take what I learned to Washington, I would not be lobbying for their community, or even for Haiti, but for people around the world who also depended on land and faced similar challenges.
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