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	UN official welcomes partnership with private sector towards realising anti-poverty targets by Georg Kell Director of the UN Global Compact Office   Sep 2008   A senior United Nations official has lauded the involvement of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight anti-poverty targets world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015, noting the increasingly vital role played by the private sector in tackling today"s most pressing challenges.   “The private sector, it is increasingly recognized, has the capacity and the power to make a difference,” Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Office, told a news conference at UN Headquarters today.   The Compact pledges participating businesses – now numbering some 5,000 in over 100 countries – to observe principles regarding human rights, labour rights, environmental sustainability and the fight against corruption.   Mr. Kell welcomed the involvement of the CGI in the work of the UN, stating that its “innovative model of securing actionable commitments has not only been an inspiration for the CGI members but for many other voluntary initiatives.”   Ever since former United States president Bill Clinton set up the initiative in 2005, CGI members have made commitments designed to, among others, reduce poverty and hunger, work toward education for all and combat disease.   CGI members commit themselves to action in one of four focus areas, which this year are education, climate change, global health and poverty alleviation.   “Through those four focus areas, CGI members are doing their part toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals set out by the United Nations,” Mr. Harrison said.   An example of this is the commitment made two years ago by corporate member Procter and Gamble to provide clean, safe drinking water to one million African children. Working with 17 non-governmental organizations (NGO), the company is distributing a product known as PUR, which, when put in dirty water, produces potable drinking water.   “The initiative had reached over 700,000 children so far, clearly addressing several of the MDGs,” said Mr. Harrison.   He added that, over the past three years, members have made nearly 1,000 commitments valued at upwards of $30 billion to improve more than 200 million lives in over 150 countries. Over 230 of those commitments have been completed to date.   24 September 2008   UN Secretary-General appeals to business leaders to help tackle global food crisis.   The first ever United Nations Private Sector Forum brought business, civic and Government leaders together to work with the world body on a long-term response to the global food crisis and endemic poverty.   The Forum also launched the “Business Call to Action”, aimed at engaging private enterprise in achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, as well as the “Framework for Business Engagement with the United Nations”, developed to more effectively mobilize private sector efforts in that regard.   “The talent and reach in this room is enormous,” the Secretary-General said as he outlined the strategies and challenges involved in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. “If you use it to help people who are suffering, we will all live in a more prosperous and stable world.” To do that, “we need to bring in knowledge, resources and innovation in a way that links sustainability with opportunities for growth”, he said, calling for stepped up investment in agriculture.   The global food crisis is far from over. In fact, commodity prices remain significantly higher than in previous years. Rice, for example, is still 133 per cent higher than at this time last year.   As a result, the number of vulnerable people is continuing to increase. United Nations data suggest that an additional 75 million people have slid into hunger due to the food crisis, lifting the total figure now to well above 900 million. The nutritional status of many poor, among them millions of children, is further declining.   Indeed the situation may get worse, water insecurity in all parts of the world will increase dramatically, and so will the effects of land degradation and climate change.   Countries must reverse the negative trend of chronic underinvestment into the agricultural sector, and improve fair trade and ensure that the world’s 400 million smallholder farmers benefit from developments efforts.   Kemal Dervis, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), noted that the world spent $1.3 trillion on arms and more than $1 trillion on importing oil. A plan to spend $700 billion to prop up investment banks was now under consideration. In that context, the amount of investment it would take to increase sustainable development around the world was not daunting.   Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, said the best way for the Business Call to Action to bring about results was to bring together the partnerships represented by the participants present. “We know exactly what has to be done,” he said, adding, however, that increased will, effort and investment were needed. Successes in Africa should encourage such efforts, he maintained, referring to the establishment of enterprises in Rwandan villages by Ericsson and other firms.   John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said that, even though some food commodity prices were falling, there was absolutely no sign that the food crisis was over. A large portion of the world was still hungry, while small farmers and developing countries in general needed investment to become more productive.   In his presentation, former US President Mr. Bill Clinton said that, during his entire presidency, there had been almost no discussion about increasing people’s ability to grow, store and market their own food.   Recently, the World Bank President had admitted that the institution had followed a mistaken strategy by failing to invest in small producers, and it now had to make up for the consequent severe organizational and investment shortfalls plaguing smallholder agriculture.   Mr. Clinton said he welcomed the change in the World Bank’s strategy. However, out of necessity, the world would have to turn much more to local agriculture for its needs. There had been decades of “system neglect”, which Governments could not overcome on their own. He said private-sector investment was crucial.   Describing a project of the Clinton Foundation to grow and market Rwandan coffee in a more profitable way, he said that the Millennium Village project provided models for efficient small agriculture, which, however, must be comprehensively put in place in African countries. Hopefully the Forum could encourage them to adapt the models to their needs, working with international organizations and the private sector.   Mr. Bob Geldof, from the African Progress Panel said it was disgraceful that, in an affluent world, hunger was still increasingly affecting people by the tens of millions each year. The initiative to halve extreme poverty by 2015, launched in 2000 was, therefore, one of the greatest efforts begun in modern times.   The huge subsidies paid to agriculture in the developed world should be dispersed among developing countries. A logical approach to the business of Africa was needed. There was nothing “exotic” separating the continent economically from the rest of the world. “Why aren’t you there?” he asked the business leaders present.   Closing the Forum, World Bank president Mr. Robert Zoellick said there must be a human rescue for the food crisis. Inclusive and sustainable globalization must be created, with a focus on reducing the vulnerability of those at the bottom. International institutions must also be bolstered, since resources were only available for short-term objectives at the moment.   To build agricultural production over the medium and long term, particularly in Africa, immediate attention must be paid to property rights, seed quality, irrigation systems to overcome vulnerability to drought, and a host of marketing problems. The World Bank he said, intended to increase its investment in those areas by about $4 million to $6 million per year.   With the right policies and the right private-sector engagement in Africa, a real difference could be made, he said. One of the big issues following the global financial crisis would be developing a non-monolithic “flexible network system” of finance, of which the private sector would be an important part. Visit the related web page
	$17,000 an hour. No success required by Nicholas D. Kristof New York Times USA   Sept 2008   Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.   You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.   Last year, Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you"re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000. Oh, nevermind.   I"m delighted to announce that Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.   This isn"t a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It"s a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former CEO of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.   So, Fuld, you"ll be pleased to know that I"ve picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!   Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we"re caught in a deepening economic crisis.   Well, it is. But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders cash.   Three decades ago, CEOs typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, CEOs of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.   John McCain seems to think that the problem is that CEOs are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We"re all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Fuld.   "Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day," said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School.   A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight. As Warren Buffett has said, "in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, CEO pay remains the acid test." It"s a test that corporate America is failing.   These huge paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.   That"s enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.   Do we truly believe that CEOs like Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?   Perhaps it"s understandable that CEOs are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O"Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.   John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: "The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."   As for Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn"t worth his time. Visit the related web page
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