Even while they ignored climate change at the G20 London Summit, the gulf between rich and poor countries was widening in Bonn, in the last round of talks (ending last week) before a negotiation text is drafted for the big UN conference in Copenhagen in December. For an Oxfam update on the talks see here. No progress was made on

A significant new addition to the growing chorus of voices expressing concern on hunger and food prices. The food crisis has not gone away since last year, even if the general economic meltdown has driven it from the headlines. World Bank officials have been warning that plantings may be down this year; the FAO has found that consumer prices in

One of the G20 Voice bloggers at the London Summit last week was a rather distinguished-looking, silver haired Chilean who turned out to be Daniel Kaufman. He used to work at the World Bank, where he was one of the 46 employees who blew the whistle on Paul Wolfowitz in a letter to Wolfowitz and the bank’s board that argued

Now the dust has settled, we’ve caught up on lost sleep, and recovered from that slight hint of Stockholm Syndrome created by the collective hysteria of a summit, it’s time to stand back and think about what happens next. As part of that exercise, here are the forward-looking processes that the G20 put in place to review, monitor, propose further

OK, this is the last post on the G20 for a few days. This is Oxfam’s more considered analysis of the communiques and accompanying intelligence gleaned over the course of the last few days. Hope it makes sense. Summary (for full paper click here): G20 leaders met for the second time in London on 2 April, as the global economic

I’ve been up since 5am writing on Oxfam’s post mortem on the G20 summit (will post on it later today), but have been completely distracted by this email that just came in to alert me that Fidel Castro is citing Oxfam’s work, including our latest killer fact, in his regular ‘reflections of Comrade Fidel’ column in Granma, Cuba’s Communist Party

So, it’s 7.30pm, some 14 hours after I started blogging this morning, and Obama is wrapping up his press conference. He looks exhausted. And the big question is, has this been a historic day or not? The answer is ‘maybe, but it’s too early to say’, but at least there’s a ‘maybe’ in there. I feel unusually optimistic for the

The big day dawns in a fog of confusion and press reports of rifts between continental Europe and the Anglo Saxons, following what were portrayed as rival press conferences by Obama and Brown in one part of London, and Sarkozy and Merkel in another. Today will show how much of this was just playing to the domestic gallery – Sarkozy

Had a great day yesterday meeting my fellow g20voice bloggers, a wonderfully diverse crew from every corner of the world who will be blogging furiously at the G20 summit today. I led a discussion on how to read the communiqué that should emerge some time this afternoon: this can be pretty stressful, since they are written in diplomatic code and

Here are the main findings of a new paper of mine on the impact of the global economic downturn on Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s part of Oxfam’s series of studies of the development impact of the global crisis (for an overview click here). Top line message, how governments are responding to the crisis is to a large part

Here are some killer facts on the global economic crisis and the response. First the bail out: globally, as of January 2009, a calculation for Oxfam shows that banks and other financial service firms have already received or been promised at least $8.424 trillion. The breakdown is $903 billion of government capital injections; $661 billion of toxic asset purchases; $1.38