Friday, January 7, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Rio De Janeiro-Hoping For The Best-Preparing For The Worst
Hoping for the best; preparing for the worst
Jan 3rd 2011, 6:58 by H.J. | SÃO PAULO
WILL Rio de Janeiro be ready to host the Olympics in 2016? The scale of the challenge is phenomenal. On top of the usual demands on transport and accommodation posed by big sporting events, this one is being held in a city where much housing is perched precariously, without foundations, on the sides of steep hills, and where crime rates are astronomical. The example of the Pan American Games, which Rio hosted in 2007, hardly reassures: the preparations went wildly over budget even though planned miles of new roads, as well as metro and train lines never materialised. Nor was the stinking Guanabara Bay cleaned up as promised. Air transport, in particular, is a serious worry. Both of Rio’s airports, the domestic Santos Dumont and the international Galeão, are already operating above capacity. The Brazilian market for flying is expected to grow by around 10% a year annually for at least the next three or four years. And then there are the droves of visitors who will flock to the Games themselves. At a conference in November Giovanni Bisignani, the chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, described Brazil’s air transport infrastructure as a “growing disaster” and said that if the country was to avoid a “national embarrassment” it needed to move immediately. “But I don’t see progress and the clock is ticking,” he added.
And yet some things are going right. The first is the success of the city’s “Pacification Police” Units, or UPPs—new round-the-clock community-style policing units that are being placed in favelas, or shantytowns. The policy was already proceeding, though slowly, when a sudden acceleration caused by a spate of carjackings in November forced the pace. The Complexo do Alemão, a big conglomeration of favelas, was pacified much earlier than expected—and is being held, rather, it must be said, against expectations. Since then both violent crime and property crime have fallen in Rio, as criminals have been deprived of some of their most convenient boltholes.
And the city is finally putting together an effective procedure for dealing with emergencies. In April more than 100 people were killed by mudslides after 28 cm (11 inches) of rain fell in just 24 hours. The response was uncoordinated and chaotic. “The mayor, Eduardo Paes, has identified emergency response as the most urgent problem facing the city in the run-up to the Olympics,” explains Guruduth Banaver of IBM. The company has just signed a big deal with Rio to supply this lack.
Mr Banaver is the chief technology officer for IBM’s “Smarter Cities” initiative, a package of consultancy, software and monitoring technology that creates an evolving “system of systems” that allows a quicker and more effective response to unpredictable events. “I’ve interviewed people who were there at the time, and watched the videos, and it’s clear that no one knew what was going on. Mobile phone networks were still working, and the TV stations broadcast emergency numbers, but the phone lines were overwhelmed.”
Mr Paes realised the one place he could get information on what was happening was from the city’s traffic surveillance cameras, and took himself in person to the centre where they were monitored. From a youth spent in Connecticut he remembered “snow days”, and declared a “rain day” with everyone who could stay indoors asked to do so. “That simple decision on its own is credited with saving lives,” says Mr Banaver.
If the rainy season is equally hard on Rio in 2011, the city will be better prepared. It now has a fine-grained weather forecasting system that will allow it to send people, supplies and vehicles to danger areas and put hospitals and officials on alert before anything happens. Staff are being trained to provide information on needs and resources via a dedicated phone number once the worst actually does come to pass. But it isn’t all about floods, or even crisis management, emphasises Mr Banavar: the point is to integrate processes and data right across the city’s transportation, public works and utilities. Maybe the Olympics will leave Rio a legacy worth having, after all.
The USA Now Has More Inequality Between The Rich And The Poor Than Brasil DOes
To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor
By TINA ROSENBERG
The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium. Parts of Brazil look like southern California. Parts of it look like Haiti. Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world.
Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country. Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians. Poverty has fallen during that time from 22 percent of the population to 7 percent.
Contrast this with the United States, where from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent of earners. (see this great series in Slate by Timothy Noah on American inequality) Productivity among low and middle-income American workers increased, but their incomes did not. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be more unequal than Brazil.
Contrast this with the United States, where from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent of earners. (see this great series in Slate by Timothy Noah on American inequality) Productivity among low and middle-income American workers increased, but their incomes did not. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be more unequal than Brazil.
Several factors contribute to Brazil’s astounding feat. But a major part of Brazil’s achievement is due to a single social program that is now transforming how countries all over the world help their poor.
The program, called Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) in Brazil, goes by different names in different places. In Mexico, where it first began on a national scale and has been equally successful at reducing poverty, it is Oportunidades. The generic term for the program is conditional cash transfers. The idea is to give regular payments to poor families, in the form of cash or electronic transfers into their bank accounts, if they meet certain requirements. The requirements vary, but many countries employ those used by Mexico: families must keep their children in school and go for regular medical checkups, and mom must attend workshops on subjects like nutrition or disease prevention. The payments almost always go to women, as they are the most likely to spend the money on their families. The elegant idea behind conditional cash transfers is to combat poverty today while breaking the cycle of poverty for tomorrow.
Most of our Fixes columns so far have been about successful-but-small ideas. They face a common challenge: how to make them work on a bigger scale. This one is different. Brazil is employing a version of an idea now in use in some 40 countries around the globe, one already successful on a staggeringly enormous scale. This is likely the most important government antipoverty program the world has ever seen. It is worth looking at how it works, and why it has been able to help so many people.
In Mexico, Oportunidades today covers 5.8 million families, about 30 percent of the population. An Oportunidades family with a child in primary school and a child in middle school that meets all its responsibilities can get a total of about $123 a month in grants. Students can also get money for school supplies, and children who finish high school in a timely fashion get a one-time payment of $330.
Bolsa Familia, which has similar requirements, is even bigger. Brazil’s conditional cash transfer programs were begun before the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but he consolidated various programs and expanded it. It now covers about 50 million Brazilians, about a quarter of the country. It pays a monthly stipend of about $13 to poor families for each child 15 or younger who is attending school, up to three children. Families can get additional payments of $19 a month for each child of 16 or 17 still in school, up to two children. Families that live in extreme poverty get a basic benefit of about $40, with no conditions.
Do these sums seem heartbreakingly small? They are. But a family living in extreme poverty in Brazil doubles its income when it gets the basic benefit. It has long been clear that Bolsa Familia has reduced poverty in Brazil. But research has only recently revealed its role in enabling Brazil to reduce economic inequality.
The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank are working with individual governments to spread these programs around the globe, providing technical help and loans. Conditional cash transfer programs are now found in 14 countries in Latin America and some 26 other countries, according to the World Bank. (One of the programs was in New York City — a small, privately-financed pilot program called Opportunity NYC. A preliminary evaluation showed mixed success, but it is too soon to draw conclusions.) Each program is tailored to local conditions. Some in Latin America, for example, emphasize nutrition. One in Tanzania is experimenting with conditioning payments on an entire community’s behavior.
The program fights poverty in two ways. One is straightforward: it gives money to the poor. This works. And no, the money tends not to be stolen or diverted to the better-off. Brazil and Mexico have been very successful at including only the poor. In both countries it has reduced poverty, especially extreme poverty, and has begun to close the inequality gap.
The idea’s other purpose — to give children more education and better health — is longer term and harder to measure. But measured it is — Oportunidades is probably the most-studied social program on the planet. The program has an evaluation unit and publishes all data. There have also been hundreds of studies by independent academics. The research indicates that conditional cash transfer programs in Mexico and Brazil do keep people healthier, and keep kids in school.
In Mexico today, malnutrition, anemia and stunting have dropped, as have incidences of childhood and adult illnesses. Maternal and infant deaths have been reduced. Contraceptive use in rural areas has risen and teen pregnancy has declined. But the most dramatic effects are visible in education. Children in Oportunidades repeat fewer grades and stay in school longer. Child labor has dropped. In rural areas, the percentage of children entering middle school has risen 42 percent. High school inscription in rural areas has risen by a whopping 85 percent. The strongest effects on education are found in families where the mothers have the lowest schooling levels. Indigenous Mexicans have particularly benefited, staying in school longer.
Bolsa Familia is having a similar impact in Brazil. One recent studyfound that it increases school attendance and advancement — particularly in the northeast, the region of Brazil where school attendance is lowest, and particularly for older girls, who are at greatest risk of dropping out. The study also found that Bolsa has improved child weight, vaccination rates and use of pre-natal care.
When I traveled in Mexico in 2008 to report on Oportunidades, I met family after family with a distinct before and after story. Parents whose work consisted of using a machete to cut grass had children who, thanks to Oportunidades, had finished high school and were now studying accounting or nursing. Some families had older children who were malnourished as youngsters, but younger children who had always been healthy because Oportunidades had arrived in time to help them eat better. In the city of Venustiano Carranza, in Mexico’s Puebla state, I met Hortensia Alvarez Montes, a 54-year-old widow whose only income came from taking in laundry. Her education stopped in sixth grade, as did that of her first three children. But then came Oportunidades, which kept her two youngest children in school. They were both finishing high school when I visited her. One of them told me she planned to attend college.
Outside of Brazil and Mexico, conditional cash transfer programs are newer and smaller. Nevertheless, there is ample research showing that they, too, increase consumption, lower poverty, and increase school enrollment and use of health services.
If conditional cash transfer programs are to work properly, many more schools and health clinics are needed. But governments can’t always keep up with the demand — and sometimes they can only keep up by drastically reducing quality. If this is a problem for medium-income countries like Brazil and Mexico, imagine the challenge in Honduras or Tanzania.
For skeptics who believe that social programs never work in poor countries and that most of what’s spent on them gets stolen, conditional cash transfer programs offer a convincing rebuttal. Here are programs that help the people who most need help, and do so with very little waste, corruption or political interference. Even tiny, one-village programs that succeed this well are cause for celebration. To do this on the scale that Mexico and Brazil have achieved is astounding.
On Saturday, I’ll respond to reader comments. I’ll also explain why this idea is so remarkably successful — and what we can learn from it.
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Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Earthquake Strikes Argentina On New Year's Day
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck a rural area of northern Argentina Saturday morning, but its epicenter was so deep that it gave only a light shake to towns nearby.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Saturday that the quake, initially registered at 6.9, hit at 6:56 a.m. about 150 kilometers (115 miles) northeast of Santiago del Estero at a depth of 563 kilometers (350 miles).
It was not immediately clear if there were any injuries or damage, but the earthquake was hardly felt in Santiago del Estero, the provincial capital, where Emilio Abdala, a receptionist at the 14-story Hotel Casino Carlos V, told The Associated Press that nobody felt a thing.
Dilma Sworn In As Brasil's First Woman President
BRASILIA, Brazil — Dilma Rousseff was sworn in as Brazil's first female president Saturday, capping a rapid political trajectory for the career technocrat and former Marxist rebel who was imprisoned and tortured during the nation's long military dictatorship.
Rousseff, 63, takes the helm of Latin America's largest nation, which has risen both financially and politically on the world stage under outgoing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Silva leaves office as the nation's most popular president with an approval rating that hit 87 percent in his last week in office. Rousseff was his hand-chosen successor.
Rousseff, wearing a white skirt and matching jacket, took the oath of office alongside Vice President Michel Temer in the national Congress. A heavy rain swept over Brazil's capital, Brasilia, as Rousseff arrived at the Congress in a 1953 Rolls Royce, her hand waving out the window to the thousands of cheering onlookers. Her security detail comprised six young women, clad in black and running alongside the car through the downpour.
Rousseff takes on the formidable task of maintaining Brazil's momentum.
In the eight years under Silva, Brazil sharply cut poverty while its economy boomed, and it has increased its political clout on the global stage. Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup and is expected to be the world's fifth-largest economy by the time the 2016 Olympics come to the nation.
Huge challenges also await Rousseff, who served as Silva's energy minister before becoming his chief of staff, where her tough managerial manner earned her the moniker "Iron Lady."
In addition to sweeping improvements Brazil needs in its infrastructure, security and education, she confronts the danger of following the charismatic Silva, who leaves office with an 87 percent approval rating.
"Dilma will have to meet high expectations that the country is on an upward trajectory and life will continue to get better for the average Brazilian," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue. "That will not be an easy challenge."
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Shifter said it could prove difficult for Brazil to maintain the pace of success it saw under Silva.
The external economic scenario could worsen, cutting into strong demand for Brazil's agricultural and industrial exports, particularly if anything should dampen China's growing appetite for Brazil's goods. The Asian nation this year passed the U.S. as Brazil's biggest trading partner.
And Rousseff will need a strong economy to improve the nation's woeful airports, ports, and roads – all vital in transporting Brazil's raw goods to market and in hosting the World Cup and the Olympics – events Brazilians hope will bolster their newfound image as a nation that gets things done.
Rousseff also will have to handle the unwieldy political coalitions required to govern Brazil. Silva, with his vast experience, his unique popularity and by sheer force of will was able to satisfy the leftist elements in his Workers Party, while at the same time employing orthodox economic policies to calm the business community that fretted early on about his socialist roots.
Rousseff lacks Silva's political acumen and charisma and it is not yet known if she will be able to command the far-flung components of the Workers Party while also keeping other factions happy in a coalition government.
But as Silva's hand-chosen successor, and a Cabinet member of his government from its start in 2003, Rousseff has the power of continuity going for her.
"Dilma represents a great novelty in Brazil," said Alexandre Barros, a political analyst with the Early Warning political risk group in Brasilia. "Before, every new government brought with it huge uncertainty. Everybody would shout about how Brazil was going to ruins. But now, with Rousseff, no. She represents what we've already seen."
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