Has Kosovo's first year of independence truly been "totally successful," as Prime Minister Hasim Thaci asserts?

Nearly half of all Kosovars live in poverty, and there are only enough jobs for one out every two people.

Kosovo's economy is heavily dependent on remittances from abroad and foreign aid, two income sources expected to decline given the global financial crisis. And the foreign investment promised by the government has yet to materialize.

There remains untapped potential in the mining industry. Geologists recently discovered vast amounts of high-quality lignite coal (up to 15 billion tons) and considerable nickel, lead, zinc and bauxite deposits, and traces of gold.

But you have to wonder who would want to invest in any industry in a country ranked in the top fifth of the world’s most corrupt countries by Transparency International. Then there's the the threat of the mob. The UN mission in Kosovo estimates organized crime to account for some 15-20 percent of Kosovo's economy.

"For 10 years we linked every problem to status," said Shpend Ahmeti, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Pristina, referring to Kosovo's struggle to separate from Serbia. "We thought independence was going to simplify things. It has not. Independence has removed a mental block among Kosovars. Now, in every poll, the priority is not status, but jobs. We've moved from survival, to development and prosperity as a great need we don't yet have."

Food banks are having trouble meeting growing demand. Photo: Steve Rhode (flickr)

Many people visiting their local food bank these days have never been there before, according to a recent story in the New York Times.

Once a crutch for the most needy, food pantries have responded to the deepening recession by opening their doors to what Rosemary Gilmartin, who runs the Interfaith Food Pantry here, described as “the next layer of people."

A 30-percent increase in demand for food bank services has even affected some of the most affluent counties. Kathleen DiChiara, of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey calls that "the canary in the coal mine."

The Department of Agriculture estimates that 36.2 million people already struggled to avoid hunger before the economic crisis. Every one of the 180 food banks included in a recent survey reported an increase of demand, and 72 percent of them weren't able to meet their community's needs.

Private companies and the U.S. government are trying to fill the void. PBS reported that Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo donated a combined $3.7 million to food banks across the country late last year. The newly passed stimulus package includes $19.9 billion for food stamp-related programs.

On his recent trip to Elkhard, Indiana, President Obama spoke about the current strains on local food banks:

Slum life might not be a dead-end for kids in Dharavi, India. Photo: lecercle (flickr)

Even before it cashed in on eight Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire had sparked a global conversation around the film's depiction of slum life in India.

Critics say Slumdog's dramatized images of destitution, squalor and prostitution send a distorted message to audiences. It also overlooks the resilience of India’s hardworking slum-dwellers, Gautaman Bhaskaran writes in the Japan Times:

Is this not what the developed West wants to see of India: its underbelly of crime, corruption and poverty that appears all black, dark and depressing, with little gray or goodness?

Meanwhile, economist Howard Husock draws a more hopeful message from the film: that slum life is not, in all cases, inescapable.

By finding a hero who rises from shacks and degradation, the film reflects a surprising new consensus that even as slums proliferate around the world at a greater scale than ever before, they could, with the right mix of policies, be the launching pads for upward mobility rather than dead-ends.

Over the last half-century, slums around the world have been transformed from temporary settlements into thriving urban centers, Husock writes in Forbes. In Mumbai’s Dharavi slum (where Slumdog was shot), small businesses are multiplying at a staggering rate.

But residents in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, are less concerned about entrepreneurship and infrastructure than they are about a redevelopment project that would demolish their community. A plan to convert shanties into upscale apartments and office towers would uproot Dharavi residents from homes where they’ve lived for years — in some cases, for generations.

"This city has always been about diversity of habitats," urban planner and activist Rahul Srivastava told India’s Economic Times. "We have low-rises and high-rises, villages and slums. Why can't we make slums acceptable living spaces?"

Global Citizen Corps leaders host a fundraiser for World AIDS Day. Photo: jessicaphansen (flickr)

On last year's World AIDS Day, Sam held an afterschool open-mic event to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. Rachel got 200 people to sign a letter asking for more government attention on AIDS — and sent it to Barack Obama. Lily had a candlelight ceremony in memory of those who have died from the disease.

So who are these youth?

They're all members of the Global Citizen Corps leadership program — a national network of high school students that are committed to ending global poverty.

Global Citizen Corps leaders build awareness in their communities by organizing informative events at their schools that focus on issues like climate change, HIV/AIDS, world hunger, and access to education.

Dozens of teens are making a difference. Jaime wrote an article her high-school newspaper to raise awareness about global poverty. Kate hosted a "blackout" at her school, cutting off the water to show students how climate change can impact people's lives.

Global Citizen Corps is looking for more dedicated and compassionate youth to join the program. Students gain access to Mercy Corps resources and agree to host informative events at their school or in the community. Leaders will also have the opportunity to lobby for access to education in Washington D.C. and participate in the annual leadership summit in New York City.

The 2009-2010 High School Leadership Program is now accepting applications. The deadline is April 15, so apply today.

Despite rising unemployment, average hourly wages went up 4 percent in the past year. Photo: James Yu (flickr)

It's tough finding a job in this economy. There have already been 3.6 million job losses since the start of the recession. So would you believe that hourly wages have risen almost 4 percent in the past year?

How can this be? According to an economic theory called "adverse selection," employers are better off increasing wages rather than cutting them. Cutting pay often prompts the most productive workers to look for employment elsewhere, leaving the company with the laziest, most unproductive workers. Higher wages are also good for employee morale. This same wage phenomenon occurred during the Great Depression.

Not all companies are subscribing to "adverse selection" theory — Hewlett-Packard and FedEx are planning to cut worker pay. But as the saying goes, a happy worker is a productive worker, and as the New Yorker notes, productivity is key to a healthy economy.

A child running through the streets of his favela. Photo: carf (flickr)

Brazil's fight to eliminate the drug trade in its urban slums has been violent and expensive.

An estimated 1,300 people were killed by police in 2007 alone with a staggering murder rate of 150 homicides per 100,000 people in the Rio slums — that's 10 times greater than Chicago's.

And crime is costly. One UN report says the economic and social costs of Brazil's crime represents 10 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product. Spending on crime means there's less money available for education, health care and other social services.

But in the hope of ending the war and expelling the drug trade, the government is changing its policing philosophy and trying a new approach in two slums (favelas in Spanish and Portuguese): Santa Marta and the City of God, made famous by a film of the same name released in 2002.

Rather than conducting what some call "hit-and-run" drug raids, police are entering communities and staying. They are getting to know the residents and attempting to build trust. Coupled with this new policing strategy is a $17 million investment in communities that's paying for new infrastructure such as a soccer field, housing and wireless Internet connections.

“We are working in a way that the state is present in the day-to-day life of poor people," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tells the BBC. "In the past it was only the police intervening with lots of brutality which punished the guilty and the innocent — very often only the innocent. Now we have police there, who are becoming a community police force.”

(To hear more from President de Silva, check out this BBC interview.)

Reuters reports that for now, the drug lords are gone from these communities. But while changing strategies offers hope, it won’t be easy to make a permanent change. After years of neglect and abuse, residents are slow to trust. Many are afraid the police will leave and they will have to answer to the drug lords once they return.

“If you ask the residents here what is better — the government or the parallel power — I bet you the huge majority will say the parallel power until they get used to the new reality," says the head of a residents' association in Santa Marta. (Watch a BBC report on how the new policy is changing Santa Marta.)

There are nearly 1,000 slums in Rio, and many question the program’s viability in favelas more sprawling than Santa Marta and the City of God. Although many are skeptical of the new policing strategy, the increased security coupled with the investments in infrastructure is certainly a step in the right direction.

Kenya is looking to the jatropha tree as a way of reducing the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and developing a biofuel industry.

A clean-burning oil can be extracted from the jatropha tree's seeds, which can be immediately used to power generators or be refined into biodiesel. The trees can grow even in the driest and most nutrient-depleted soils, so it doesn’t have to take up arable land needed to grow food.

Faith Odongo, a senior official at Kenya's Ministry of Energy, says that about 5,000 hectares of land are being set aside for cultivation and expects that the plant could help the country “reduce fossil fuel imports by 5 percent in the next four years” and give farmers a viable crop to grow.

Whether jatropha is a viable alternative to fossil fuels is debatable. But Continental Airlines powered a Boeing 737 for a two-hour test flight on jatropha oil mixed with algae and aviation fluid. The Los Angeles Times calls jatropha one of the "new generation of so-called sustainable biofuels that could help airlines cut fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions."

But there are drawbacks. One tree only produces two liters of fuel and the trees don't reach full maturity for four to five years.

Yet these drawbacks haven't stopped countries like India, which has set aside 100 million acres for jatropha trees and expects to use the yielded oil to "account for 20 percent of its diesel consumption by 2011," according to Time.

In this video, Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege explains how farmers in eastern Kenya are seeing their economic situation improve as a result of planting jatropha trees.

This week's comment contest winner is anonymous, which is technically against the rules, but we liked the comment anyway.

Anonymous commented on a 2006 article that questions whether China or India will become the dominant global force of the 21st century.

This is a belated comment on the article in June 2006. I believe many Indians these days have moved on from the pre-2006 India Shining or India Poised hype.

I am responding in particular to the comment in the 2006 article that the economy China has only recently overtaken that of Britain despite Britain having a small population and resources compared with China because 'Britain has all of the economic dynamism associated with free societies.'

If that be the case, why is India's economy, being a democracy which adds creativity and dynamism to an economy (according to the author) and not to mention a population which will soon bigger than that of China is not bigger than that of China's or indeed that of Japan's, Germany's, Britain's, France's and Italy's?

As to people in India feel empowered by the ballot box why do so many Indian people choose to live in slums then? Surely such empowered and happy people will choose better than living in slums? Perhaps Indian people need so many religions in their country to tell they really live in a wonderful paradise?

As to the better command of English, of course, India is notorious for poor literacy rate in the world especially amongst the female population. Successful economies like Japan and Germany, of course prove that you need more than being able to speak English to make your a country a success.

Global Envision is offering a $25 cash prize to the weekly comment contest winner. Read more about the contest here, and good luck!

A ventor illegally sells bags of charcoal on the side of the road. Photo: Scott Gregory Photography (flickr)

Charcoal is Malawi's cheapest energy source, but local dependency on charcoal fuel is stripping the country's forests. The charcoal trade is illegal in Malawi, and now government and environmental groups are scrambling to find affordable forms of alternative energy for heating and cooking.

A shift away from charcoal seems implausible for many residents of the tiny southeast African country, where electricity and other energy options are much more expensive. Voice of America reports that Malawians, who earn an average of $19 a month, would have to fork out $30 for a new electric hot plate, where a locally made charcoal stove costs only $2.

Environmentalists say the charcoal trade is responsible for the loss of 50,000 hectares of native forests — the highest deforestation rate in Southeastern Africa.

Police roadblocks have failed to significantly impede charcoal trafficking. Malawi charcoal producer John Manda told VOA why he continues to ignore the charcoal ban:

I have been burning charcoal for 20 years. This is where my bread and butter come from; this is where I get money to pay school fees for my children. Although I know that it is not legal, there is no way I can stop without government giving me an alternative business.

Charcoal is one of the few industries in Malawi that benefits the poor, economist Patrick Kambewa told IRIN. In 2007, Kambewa published a report on charcoal consumption, trade and production which estimated that around 93,000 people depend on the charcoal industry for employment. (Malawi has a population of over 10 million.) Kambewa suggests that industry regulation — not criminalization — is a wiser way to address charcoal consumption.

"[Criminalizing the charcoal trade] has not helped matters, and all government ought to do is look into issues of taxation and rehabilitation of forests," said Kambewa. "People should be trained on how to manage forests at community level. They should be told about the importance of reforestation and the need to manage such resources.

Malawi is trying to wean itself off charcoal. The locally-based Wildlife and Environmental Society is training people in other profitable vocations like beekeeping and fruit juice production. Meanwhile, the government, with assistance from the European Union, has launched a six-year program that promotes sustainable forest management. The program will also push for expanding use of wind and solar energy. But VOA says people are skeptical that these efforts will fail to reduce the temptation of the lucrative charcoal trade.

In refugee camps in Sudan and the Congo, Mercy Corps trained locals to build and use fuel-efficient stoves, reducing the demand for firewood and ultimately cutting consumption by 50 percent.

"Buy American." Photo: Wedingo (flickr)

The controversial "buy American" provision in the economic stimulus packages has added fuel to the firey protectionism debate and has the power to hurt Americans and the world alike.

The "buy American" provision requires all public works projects funded under the recently passed stimulus to use only American steel, iron, and manufactured goods. The clause also changes how the government awards contracts for these projects. Normally, contracts are given any company that can do the best job for the lowest price. But under the new clause, an American company will be awarded the contract if their bid is less than 25 percent higher than foreign companies.

What does all this mean? It means goods from countries like China, India, and 100 other developing countries cannot be used in infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus. Burton G. Malkiel, a professor of economics at the Princeton University, explains to China View why in the past "buy American" has resulted in a reduction in trade for the U.S. and the rest of the world:

In 1930, just as the world economy was sinking, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which essentially shut off imports into the U.S., he recalled. "Our trading partners retaliated, and world trade plummeted," said Malkiel. "Most economic historians now conclude that the tariff contributed importantly to the severity of the world-wide Great Depression...Later, as one of his last acts, President Herbert Hoover made the situation even worse by signing a 'Buy America Act' requiring all federal government projects to use American materials."

British Prime Minister Gordan Brown joined the chorus, urging against the "buy American," arguing that:

The thing we know about protectionism is in the end it protects nobody, least of all the poor.... It would be short-sighted at this time to renege on promises we've made to the poor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and numerous heads of state have come out in protest against the clause. Brazil is even planning to challenge the clause at the World Trade Organization.

Protectionism during recessions has been known as "beggar thy neighbor" policy, because in trying to protect ourselves we hurt others. In other words, if one country puts up trade barriers, their policies hurt their neighbors, which can prompt these neighboring countries to adopt the same harmful barriers. We are all a part of the global economic crisis, we can't get out of it alone. The New York Times Op-ed columnist Douglas Irwin explains why "buy American" could harm the U.S. economy in the future:

American manufacturers have ample capacity to fill the new orders that will come as a result of the fiscal stimulus [...other countries are] right to be concerned. Once we get through the current economic mess, China, India and other countries are likely to continue their large investments in building projects. If such countries also adopt our preferences for domestic producers, then America will be at a competitive disadvantage in bidding for those contracts.

Two Indian technology firms that benefit from U.S. job outsourcing are planning to hire more Americans, according to today's Wall Street Journal.

The reasons are more political than economic. The U.S. Congress is expected to clamp down on the number of visas they hand out to skilled foreign nationals, so companies like Infosys and Winpro need to hire U.S. workers if they're to grow their operations here.

The move certainly doesn't signal a reversal of the outsourcing trend, but it is an indication of how growing protectionist sentiment in Congress could impact labor flows.

President Obama made an important anti-protectionist statement yesterday while in Canada — assuring America's largest trading partner that despite his critiques of Nafta while on the campaign trail, the Obama administration plans to "enhance" trade, rather than create barriers between the the two countries.

Now is a time where we've got to be very careful about any signals of protectionism, because as the economy of the world contracts, I think there's going to be a strong impulse, on the part of constituencies in all countries, to see if they can engage in beggar-thy-neighbor policies.

Obama took the opportunity to reiterate his pledge to revamp Nafta side agreements to include environmental and labor protections, stating:

My hope is that as our advisers and staffs and economic teams work this through, that there's a way of doing this that is not disruptive to the extraordinarily important trade relationships that exist between the United States and Canada.

Latvia's government collapsed following weeks of financial instability. The New York Times explains some of the events leading up the resignation of Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis:

[T]he country’s export-driven economy, which burned red-hot when easy credit flooded the world banking system, has ground to a halt. Unemployment has rocketed in Latvia, while those who have managed to hold on to their jobs are receiving significantly less pay. Public discontent, unsurprisingly, is rising, while trust in the government has plummeted. Violence broke out in January after about 10,000 people gathered for a peaceful demonstration. Scores of protesters battled police officers and ransacked stores, and 40 people were injured.

Last month GDP shrank by 10.5 percent and is expected to shrink 12 percent by the end of 2009 — a number some analysts say is optimistic. Latvia is the first member country of the European Union whose government has fallen as a result of the economic crisis.

An unexpected side effect of the increasingly open borders in the European Union: language confusion.

The BBC reports that Irish police recently cracked the mysterious case of Prawo Jazdy, a driver who was alleged to have racked up dozens of speeding and parking tickets throughout the nation.

It turns out that "Prawo Jazdy is actually Polish for driving license and not the first and surname on the license," Irish police determined. Searching the file, Guardians of the Peace of Ireland determined that traffic officers had cited "Mr. Prawo Jazdy" over 50 times.

Poles are the largest ethnic minority in Ireland, according to the 2006 Irish census. The majority of them are recent arrivals who immigrated to Ireland seeking work after Poland joined the EU in 2004.

"If nothing else is learnt from this driving-related debacle," the BBC writes, "Irish police officers should now know at least two words of Polish."

While reviewing his social security statement, W. Hodding Carter realized his family was living beyond their means. About $30,000 per year beyond their means. In Extreme Frugality: Doing the Unthinkable, a weekly article on Gourmet magazine's website, Carter journals his family's experience of trying to live a more frugal lifestyle.

Carter explains how they got into such a predicament:

Thanks to those heady days of refinancing, deft shuffling of credit-card debt, deceased grandparents, and a lucrative house sale, however, we had lived, year after year, as if we were making $120,000. Like 70 percent of our fellow Americans, we were living off our VISA cards with no means of paying them off any time soon.

Carter's family had racked up $75,000 in credit card debt while holding little equity in their house. With a $550 monthly budget for six people — after paying for his mortgage, insurance and credit card payments — the Carter family embarked on their new adventure.

Food habits were the first to change. The family stopped eating out, made their own bread and shopped in bulk. They bought chickens for the free eggs and fertilizer they provide. Their oil furnace was replaced with an unused wood stove. Carter is excited about starting "anew", even though the transition has been difficult.

The Carters are not alone. The average American household owes more than $8,200 in credit card debt and — until the economic crisis hit — was saving only about one percent of disposable income. But there are signs that things are turning around.

Government figures show that over a nine-month period ending in December, the personal saving rate more than tripled to 3.6 percent. Harris Poll findings reveal that 54 percent of households spent less on recreation and entertainment, while half of Americans shopped at discount stores in 2008.

Will people continue this increasingly thrifty mindset after the economy rebounds, or fall back into another spending craze? The Carters have been able to successfully change their ways for two months — but will the novelty of gathering chicken guano for fertilizer lose its luster over time?

The Carter's stopped eating out and started buying in bulk. Photo: bcmom (flickr)