All hail the Myanmar development miracle

Although it is the poorest country in Southeast Asia and is often described as one of the most miserable places on earth, Myanmar appears to have made good progress in improving the quality of life for its people, according to the latest UN Human Development Report.

An analysis of the UN stats by The Economist (disclosure: I sometimes contribute to it) shows that the quality of life in Myanmar (measured in terms of health, education and wealth) has improved at a faster rate since 1990 than in other nations such as Indonesia, South Korea, Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

Myanmar also fares better than you might expect in the UN's overall league table of human development, coming in at 138, ahead of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya and Ghana (download PDF of full report here).

It is often said by Burma watchers that, unlike almost any other government in the world, the junta have zero interest in improving the quality of life of their own people (see this editorial, for example, by Alison Vicary and Sean Turnell on why the West should retain sanctions).

So what's going on then? Is the UN data merely a statistical outlier?

Firstly, Myanmar has advanced from a pretty low base in 1990 so the improvement needs to be put in that context. Also, there may be question marks over the reliability of the Myanmar data.

Regardless, it's an interesting anomaly. Anyone care to proffer any alternative theories?

Hat-tip to New Mandala for the sanctions piece. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Tianyake.

Is Philippines typhoon really an example of climate change?

Various key negotiators at the crucial UN climate treaty talks in Bangkok have cited the Philippines typhoon as an example of the damage that climate change is causing in Asia.

Yvo de Boer, who was dubbed the Crying Dutchman after breaking down during the last big round of climate talks in Bali in 2007, claimed that Typhoon Ketsana was "the most recent tragic example" of climate change, according to AFP.

Heherson Alvarez, the chief Philippine climate negotiator, concurred that "Ketsana is clearly a manifestation of the consequences of global inaction in addressing the immediate impacts of creeping climate change."

But can we really argue with confidence that this is the case?

Tempting as it is for negotiators to use the devastation wreaked in the Philippines and Vietnam as a stick with which to beat the big carbon emitters, it seems intellectually fraudulent to claim that selected catastrophic contemporary weather events are direct consequences of medium-long term climate change.

Photo courtest of IRRI Images.

Bangladesh: new initiative to combat malnutrition

This story of mine was recently published by IRIN, the UN's humanitarian news service:

DHAKA - There have been mixed reactions to a private-public partnership to popularize a nutritional supplement known to reduce the incidence of anaemia in infants and young children.

The supplement, known as Sprinkles, is a blend of powdered micronutrients which, when sprinkled onto food, provides children with all the necessary vitamins and minerals.

Renata, a leading generic drugs manufacturer based in Dhaka, will produce, market and sell the food supplement alongside BRAC (Building Resources Across Communities), the biggest NGO in the developing world, and the Social Marketing Company (SMC), a not-for-profit enterprise.

But the cautious Bangladeshi government has declined to comment on Sprinkles or its promotion. Fatima Parveen Chowdhury, director of the government-run Institute of Public Health Nutrition (IPHN), explained that since Sprinkles is a new product, the government would only be in a position to comment once its effect on Bangladeshi children had been established.

Read the rest here.

UN fund kowtows to China press restrictions

The Common Fund for Commodities is a little-known inter-governmental financial organisation, set up under the auspices of the United Nations to help fund the exploitation of commodities from bananas to bamboo in developing countries.

The Common Fund is holding a big international conference in China later this month on "the importance of commodities in economic development of Asian countries and on the role the Common Fund can play in assisting countries in the region to make full use of their commodity-related potential".

As part of the Common Fund's drive to reach out and explain its work to the wider world, it initially announced that it would sponsor journalists to cover the conference, paying either for their flight to China or hotel costs.

I was one of the few who contacted the Common Fund about this opportunity and they seemed keen to get me to come along, promising to set up interviews with all the head honchos so that their work could be better understood.

However, having submitted all the necessary registration documents, I was surprised to receive the following email yesterday from Charles Jama in the Common Fund's communications department in Amsterdam:

I regret to inform you that we have reconsidered the media sponsorship program for the China meeting and will not be extending the offer to journalists NOT based or credentialled by the Press Bureau in the MoFA in Beijing.

The call for journalists to apply for sponsorship on the Common Fund's homepage was removed yesterday.

When I asked Guy Sneyers, the chief operating officer of the Common Fund, if he wanted to provide an official explanation for this sudden change of heart, he replied with a one-word answer: "no".

It is very disappointing (if not entirely surprising) to see an inter-governmental organisation with 107 member states that was set up under the UN framework caving in to Chinese press controls in such a meak fashion.

Without any proper explanation from the Common Fund, I can only guess at the reasons for their rapid about-turn. It was quite possibly simply because they could not be bothered to deal with the voluminous paperwork and bureaucracy necessary to procure a visa for a visiting journalist in China.

If that's the case, they are playing straight into the hands of the Chinese government which, like other authoritarian regimes, makes it very complicated for journalists to get visas precisely because they want to put foreign reporters off coming in the first place.

So that's Chinese censorship 1, UN 0.