China Has A Plan to Reduce Household Air Pollution. But Who Benefits?

Kentaro IEMOTO Beijing Air Pollution… Sanlitun , Beijing, China Via Flickr CC License

China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, though in recent years the government has sought to reduce the country’s reliance on coal for energy. This includes transitioning away from coal for home heating. Dirty burning coal from home heating units is a major pollutant, particularly in northern China that both causes significant harm to individual health and also contributes to climate change.

In 2014, the government launched what is known as the household heating energy transition program. This program sought to replace household coal heating units with electricity, natural gas, or cleaner burning coal. Like many Chinese infrastructure projects it was a massive undertaking. It was also directed by the government, top down, and mandatory for homes that used dirty burning coal. 

My guest today, Lunyu Xie is Associate Professor at the School of Applied Economics , Renmin University of China. She conducted a unique cost-benefit study of this program that analyzed the effectiveness of the household heating energy transition program.  What makes Lunyu Xie’s study so significant is that she uses data from household surveys to see how this major government program may benefit end users–or not. 

Household energy from dirty burning sources is a major pollutant around the world–particularly in developing countries. The Chinese plan was able to enact a massive transition away from dirty coal, but is that model replicable elsewhere? We discuss this question and more in this episode of the podcast, produced in partnership with SETI

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Today’s episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.

Why Aid Agencies Should Be More Transparent

Publish What You Fund is a global campaign for aid and development transparency. The group’s goal is to ensure that every donor is open and transparent about what they are funding. In our conversation, Gary Forster explains why transparency in aid is so important and identifies some of entities that rank highest and lowest on the aid transparency index.  The data compiled by Publish What You Fund also offers a very good birds-eye view of aid and development spending, so we also discuss some of the broad trends that he has seen in recent years among donors. This includes the impact of COVID-19 on foreign aid and development assistance.

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Why Does Chile Have Such Bad Air Pollution?

Chile has some of the worst air pollution in the Western Hemisphere. It is partly a matter of geography  — many cities are in valleys that trap pollution. But it is also the consequence of how many Chileans heat their homes. Wood burning home heat stoves are very common in much of Chile, and these stoves burn dirty and emit harmful pollution.  

My guest today, Carlos Chavez, is a professor of economics at the School of Business and Economics at Universidad de Talca in Central Chile. His research has focused on the use of wood-burning heating stoves in Chile and government policies that could reduce the prevalence of wood-burning stoves and improve air quality.   In our conversation, we discuss why so many people in Chile heat their homes this way and how he was able to create a research project that suggests some effective policy remedies.   

Chile is a higher income country, yet the way that many households create energy by burning wood is something far more common in poorer countries — it is generally not associated with countries at Chile’s level of wealth.  This makes Chile an interesting case study that I am glad to bring you today.   

Today’s episode is part of a series of episodes that will be published over the next few months that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy

Global Health and the Future We Want — A UN 75 Consultation

The United Nations turns 75 year this year. Rather than celebrate with a diamond jubilee, the United Nations is instead embarking on a listening tour. The UN is seeking feedback from as many people in as many communities as possible, all around three big questions:

What Kind of World do We Want to Create?

Are We on Track? What is Needed to Bridge the Gap?

Here in the United States, the United Nations Association is hosting “global consultations” around these questions. They are gathering groups to solicit input that will be relayed to leadership at the United Nations ahead of a major meeting in September to mark the UN’s anniversary.

Today’s episode is part three of a three part series that gives listeners an inside look into how the UN is commemorating its anniversary. In part one of this series, I moderated a global consultation that discussed those big questions, but using the lens of gender equality. In part two, we used discussed those questions in the context of climate and the environment. 

In today’s episode, I moderate a consultation about global health. This episode kicks off with my 15 minutes interview with Kate Dodson, Vice President for Global Health at the United Nations Foundation. We discuss the COVID-19 pandemic  — specifically how the World Health Organization and other United Nations entities are responding. We also discuss what reforms might make the WHO more effective at responding to future global health emergencies.

After that interview concludes, the consultation begins. For the podcast, I edited this down to include some of the questions and answers discussed.

 

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Take the UN75 survey

COVID-19 and the Caribbean

My guest today Geneive Brown Metzger is the former Consul General of Jamaica in New York. She is  President of the Caribbean American Maritime Association and  host of the new Caribbean affairs podcast Diplomatically Speaking. 

In our conversation she explains how COVID-19 is impacting the Caribbean, this includes not only the domestic affairs of the various countries in the region, but also foreign policy. In particular, Geneive Brown Metzger explains how China is using this moment to advance its interests in the Caribbean — at a time when the United States under the Trump administration has been generally neglectful of the region. The Caribbean has quietly become yet another venue for China’s global development and infrastructure building projects, under what is known as the Belt and Road Initiative

If you have twenty minutes and want a good explanation of how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the people and governments of the Caribbean, have a listen

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COVID-19 is Interrupting Childhood Vaccines on a Global Scale

Barbara Saitta is a nurse with Doctors without Borders who specializes in vaccination campaigns, primarily in poorer countries. She tells me that because of supply chain interruptions, a number of countries are running out of routine childhood vaccines. This includes vaccines for measles, polio, and the all-important pentavalent vaccine that protects against five common diseases. What is so alarming about the interruption of routine childhood vaccines is that there is a direct correlation between mass immunization and avoiding mass death.

We kick off with a discussion of how vaccine campaigns generally operate in a developing country with poor infrastructure, before having a broader conversation about the impact of COVID-19 on routine childhood immunizations.

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How COVID-19 is Undermining the Freedom of Expression Around the World

David Kaye is the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. He has held this position for the last three years, which has given him a unique vantage point–and unique platform–to monitor trends in the suppression of free speech. He recently submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council examining how governments and other entities are using the covid 19 pandemic as a pretext to clamp down on free speech.

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How a Large Global Humanitarian Organization is Responding to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Credit: CARE Philippines

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, international non-governmental organizations were stretched thin responding to crises in Yemen, Syria, Bangladesh, and South Sudan and natural disasters around the world. With the coronavirus pandemic layered on top of these existing emergencies, how are humanitarian relief organizations responding, preparing and adapting? I put this question to Susannah Friedman, Humanitarian Policy Director for CARE, which is one of the larger global humanitarian organizations, with a staff of over 6,000 in more than 100 countries.  In this conversation she explains how the coronavirus is impacting CAREs work, and how CARE is adapting to it. This in includes an extended conversation about the unique affect this outbreak is having on women and girls in vulnerable situations.

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The Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Effect on Low Income Countries and Global Development

The COVID19 pandemic will have major implications for international development. This includes in countries where organizations like the World Bank and other global development institutions have made major investments in the past decade. Amanda Glassman, senior fellow and executive vice president of the Center for Global Development explains the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic to low income countries, and what organizations like the World Bank can do to help mitigate this crisis.

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The Coronavirus and the United Nations

The coronavirus, COVID19, epidemic is impacting institutions around the world, including the United Nations. In this episode, Voice of America UN Correspondent Margaret Besheer explains how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the life and work of the United Nations, including the Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, and more.

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