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	Food Crisis Requires Sustained Commitment from the G8 by Center for Global Development   June 12008   On the eve of the G8 foreign ministers meeting next week, the Africa Progress Panel issued a report urging international action to deal with the urgent threat of world food prices, while also calling for G8 leaders to take immediate steps to fulfill their previous commitments to Africa.   The Africa Progress Panel states in its report that the world food crisis ”threatens to destroy years, if not decades, of economic progress” as “100 million people are being pushed back into absolute poverty.”   “Unless some way can be found to halt and reverse the current trend in food prices there will be a significant increase in hunger, malnutrition, and in infant and child mortality,” the report warns.   CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran served as rapporteur to the panel, and drew on her own work as well as the work of several colleagues at CGD to help inform the panel.   “The G8 member countries must continue to focus on economic development and good governance to promote growth in Africa,” said Ramachandran. “I hope the stocktaking of progress made by African governments and civil society will serve as a reminder that Africa is a continent on the move and that the international community must engage constructively on the key issues of food production, climate change, openness to trade, and good governance.”   The eleven-member Africa Progress Panel, which is chaired by Kofi Annan, and includes Tony Blair, Michel Camdessus, Peter Eigen, Bob Geldof, Graca Machel, Linah Mohohlo, Olusegun Obasanjo, Robert Rubin, Tidjane Thiam and Muhammad Yunus, was launched in 2007 as a unique and independent authority on Africa to focus world leaders’ attention on delivering their commitments to the continent. In the report, which assesses the state of the continent in 2008, the panel members highlight six policy areas requiring immediate attention at the forthcoming G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan:   The Food Crisis: Measures must be undertaken to increase the quantity of food on international markets and to provide greater financial assistance to international agencies such as the World Food Program and to the governments of affected countries.   Aid Levels and Quality: G8 countries must urgently fund shortfalls against their targets to double assistance to Africa by 2010. These increases must be accompanied by clear timetables and increased transparency in order to improve the quality of aid. The G8 must also focus on innovative efforts to improve the delivery of aid.   Trade: A comprehensive rethinking of trade policy is needed to boost agricultural production around the world.   Climate Change: The G8 must increase funding for renewable energy and invest in adaptation and the prevention of deforestation.   Infrastructure: Strategies to connect farmers to markets must be developed in conjunction with efforts to increase access to water and improve sanitation.   Good Governance: While there has been significant success in improving governance, the resolution of current crises requires greater and more consistent efforts by the African Union, individual African governments and the international community as a whole.   On the emergence of new trading partners with Africa such as China, India and the United Arab Emirates, the report states that China and other new entrants have brought the continent “new dynamism and significant new resources”, creating “greater opportunities for Africa’s development.” However, it counsels that “if Africa’s development is to stay on track, it is crucial for both old and new actors to comply with agreed-upon principles of co-operation in the areas of aid, trade, development finance, and debt sustainability.”   Kofi Annan, the chair of the Africa Progress Panel, says: “Africa has made substantial progress in recent years. However, the current food crisis threatens to reverse many of the hard-fought gains that have been made. With 100 million people on the brink of abject poverty, the cost of food will not be measured in the price of wheat and rice, but in the rising number of infant and child deaths across Africa.”   “The G8 is also off-track. European leaders at the forthcoming European Council Summit must move decisively to fund shortfalls in aid. Every G8 country has a critical role to play, by working together to deal with immediate threats and by honoring the longer-term commitments they have already made. The whole international community has a stake in seeing Africa become a secure, stable and prosperous continent.” Visit the related web page
	The Hidden Costs of Money by Peter Singer   When people say that “Money is the root of all evil,” they usually don’t mean that money itself is the root of evil. Like Saint Paul, from whom the quote comes, they have in mind the love of money.   Could money itself, whether we are greedy for it or not, be a problem? Karl Marx thought so. In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, a youthful work that remained unpublished and largely unknown until the mid-twentieth century, Marx describes money as “the universal agent of separation,” because it transforms human characteristics into something else.   A man may be ugly, Marx wrote, but if he has money, he can buy for himself “the most beautiful of women.” Without money, presumably, some more positive human qualities would be needed. Money alienates us, Marx thought, from our true human nature and from our fellow human beings.   Marx’s reputation sank once it became evident that he was wrong to predict that a workers’ revolution would usher in a new era with a better life for everyone.   So if we had only his word for the alienating effects of money, we might feel free to dismiss it as an element of a misguided ideology. But research by Kathleen Vohs, Nicole Mead, and Miranda Goode, reported in Science in 2006, suggests that on this point, at least, Marx was onto something.   In a series of experiments, Vohs and her colleagues found ways to get people to think about money without explicitly telling them to do so. They gave some people tasks that involved unscrambling phrases about money. With others, they left piles of Monopoly money nearby. Another group saw a screensaver with various denominations of money.   Other people, randomly selected, unscrambled phrases that were not about money, did not see Monopoly money, and saw different screensavers.   In each case, those who had been led to think about money – let’s call them “the money group” – behaved differently from those who had not.   When given a difficult task and told that help was available, people in the money group took longer to ask for help. When asked for help, people in the money group spent less time helping.   When told to move their chair so that they could talk with someone else, people in the money group left a greater distance between chairs.   When asked to choose a leisure activity, people in the money group were more likely to choose an activity that could be enjoyed alone, rather than one that involved others.   Finally, when people in the money group were invited to donate some of the money they had been paid for participation in the experiment, they gave less than those who had not been induced to think about money.   Trivial reminders of money made a surprisingly large difference. For example, where the control group would offer to spend an average of 42 minutes helping someone with a task, those primed to think about money offered only 25 minutes.   Similarly, when someone pretending to be another participant in the experiment asked for help, the money group spent only half as much time helping her. When asked to make a donation from their earnings, the money group gave just a little over half as much as the control group.   Why does money makes us less willing to seek or give help, or even to sit close to others? Vohs and her colleagues suggest that as societies began to use money, the necessity of relying on family and friends diminished, and people were able to become more self-sufficient.   “In this way,” they conclude, “money enhanced individualism but diminished communal motivations, an effect that is still apparent in people’s responses today.”   That’s not much of an explanation of why being reminded of money should make so much difference to how we behave, given that we all use money everyday. There seems to be something going on here that we still don’t fully understand.   I am not pleading for a return to the simpler days of barter or self-sufficiency. Money enables us to trade – and thus to benefit from each other’s special skills and advantages. Without money, we would be immeasurably poorer, and not only in a financial sense.   But now that we are aware of the isolating power that even the thought of money can have, we can no longer think of money’s role as being entirely neutral.. It would be a mistake to assume that allowing money to dominate every sphere of life comes without other costs.   * Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
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