people that earn wages living off of recycled materials. these are jobs that are somewhat messy, but often what happens is there are opportunities for their children to scale up and look at professional opportunities in the recycling field as well. this is one of the many, many examples that i encourage us to look at from latin america and from the developing world as the whole, and i think aid is a two-way street and we have an awful lot to learn from our neighbors to the south. thank you. [ applause ] . >> thank you, judith. so now we come to the point of the program where we invite the audience to ask questions of the panelists. and we have about 30 minutes, because this panel ends at 11:50. i understand we are encouraged

to leave the premises at about that time. question? yes, sir. do you have -- sorry. >> do i have to wait for the microphone? >> it's right above you. >> oh, there it is. the previous panel was on global warming, and so i want to know if there is a way to avoid this being a zero sum gain? you talked about development and i am very well aware of the fact that in pakistan, there is talk about putting in a huge dam that may raise carbon dioxide levels, so is there a way to not contribute to t

contribute to what the previous panel spent a lot of time on. >> did everybody hear the question? >> no. >> the question has to do with global warming. is there a way to sustain economic growth and not contribute to the problem of global warming? is that fair? okay. >> i just had a conversation with an environmentalist a week ago and there was a fascinating new model to look at pine rezins actually in mexico and other parts of latin america as a sustainable source. one of the things that i thought was very wise and i think i heard it from individuals from the environmental movement, if it's between feeding your family and a tree the tree always loses. and i think we are trying to create opportunities that are sustainable where communities have adequate opportunities to make good decisions. i think understanding and giving

a financial value to biodiversity, and to the natural resources of the country is necessary. it's becoming popular, but it's necessary and needed. the reason in a place like latin america where i work, you have some of the richest biodiversity in the world. and communities have done a great job, and they understand how you need to protect the resources. but if push comes to shove, and communities don't have a way to eat, you are looking at some real significant challenges to the environment and specifically to biodiversity. you are bringing up the whole energy and resource issue in the region. i think we need to be much more conscience about our consepltion. i think alternative energy is not enough. we need to think about

decentralized off the grid approaches to energy provision. whether it's a very small scale through soler and other communities and sustainable mechanisms and if not the energy demands are tremendous. we know as more and more people get access to cell phone technology, we need to plug in and have more and more sources of energy. i have seen some innovations in haiti that are fantastic. it started before the earthquake. it has taken off now. these are young guys who would have been gang members actually if they had not gotten together and did productive activities. they created backpacks with solar panels that are locally produced in haiti so kids with power up light sources so they can study at night. they are being used for streetlights, and much of haiti is being provided through solar packs. it's easy technology that would

maybe decrease the energy demands in the region where we work in the developing word. we ourselves -- what happens when your cell phone goes down? it's like your life is over. we have to talk about efficient energy and talk about scientific and technological solutions to contain the energy consumption. >> that's a great answer. the only thing i would reinforce, the economic growth model that our country pursued with increasing wealth and what have you is actually the biggest gains are by adjusting our own lifestyle. i think that's what we really have to be looking at. >> and coming to the zero sum question, i think you really get in trouble if you frame this as a zero sum debate, because then what you get is quite legitimate push back saying, well, you know, of course we are going to have cell phones and of course

we are going to build roads and dams if we need energy. and to understood that, there is going to have to be -- there is no getting around progress from the developed countries on climate change. i think your comment about choosing between the family and tree, that's true at a national level as well, and that has nothing to do with rich country or poor country. it has to do is there a bigger incentive than to provide electricity from a dam and if you can't provide one then you are going to have a dam. and that's a basic sort of question about how willing we are as a global community to deal with climate in a way that changes the incentives and that really has very little to do with how developed or undeveloped you are. >> okay. next question. yes?

>> is this loud enough? oh. >> i will repeat it for you after you are done. >> i am very proal truism, and stories like elizabeth's are important, but i think we should treat the symptoms rather than the cause. >> everybody hear the question? the question is essentially, does foreign aid essentially treat the symptom rather than the cause? is that fair? okay. >> i mean, i think that there is a lot of validity to what you are saying. we try to treat the symptoms rather than the cause, but there's something we need to understand, the root causes of some of the issues, gender inequality, for example. so i see in just -- you know, the past couple of years a lot more focus on addressing some of the root causes. as some of the developing

countries gain leadership and take ownership for their own problems, there's a lot more focus on the root causes than we have seen in the past than when donors really drove the aid agenda. >> so judith's analogy to development in this country is a great one. while you want to be conscious of the root causes and thinking about what you can do about them, in many ways your best long-term solution is empowering folks to go out and solve their own root causes. this is where we completely lose the string of. how do you help people empower themselves? basic education and basic health, and getting rid of conflict in their societies. and why do we care whether one person in zambia has a healthy baby or not? that's a child that has an opportunity to go after the root

problems. >> i think also if you look at some of the development literature in terms of what motivates communities, and often you see a combination, a crisis, that will move local communities. a couple inspired actors and good political conditions or some openings, so i think this motion of root cause to some extent, you can almost -- it sounds terrible to say but you can create -- there are many reasons why there is an equality. there are many reasons why there is poverty. you can address multiple root causes, and maybe through getting rid of the symptoms. we talk about aids and i think cynically if we just gave all of the money that we are spending in foreign assistance to low income communities, what would happen. giving money for training individuals, i think it could be a really revolutionizing idea to

get money into the hands of low income people, to some extent is yes, deialing with the symptoms but to some extent the cash transfers are an example of by encouraging healthy behavior and people to be responsible for themselves you do get the money into their hands and they have proven to be very responsible about how they use the money, and part of the reason for that is we understand looking at the role of woman in communities, you give those conditional cash tra transfers to women and they make sure their families are taken care of. >> research has shown the most ineffective entinterventions is educating young girls. [ applause ] >> yes, ma'am.

>> the other day i heard a program where a man was discussing -- i think he called it population growth literacy. he talked about brazil, actually, trying to do this literacy and has had some progress with it. i remember, of course, from the '60s there was a whole population growth, and it blew up in our faces because it seemed like it was repressive from our point. i wondered what your thoughts were on that? >> so the question has to do with what are the panel's thoughts on population growth literacy with respect to growth? >> i think carrie's last point was relevant to this. when women are given access to education, and population declines. and it's just -- it's happened everywhere.

it's just kind of a fact. so i think population growth literacy is a really interesting concept, but i think it has an awful lot to do with gender empowerment of women, because when women are empowered you have control of fertility. the example of elizabeth, she went out and took control of her health care. these are decisions that women need to be empowered to make. and ultimately, fertility is very much in the realms of the control of women. >> now that you said that, i want to come back to something judith said at the beginning of her remarks about gender and this panel. i wanted to invite the room to take a moment and look around at each other. >> it's mostly women. >> and this is my fifth panel so far at this conference. because my day job is mostly to do with quote unquote hard national security, i spoke to a

panel on turkey and spoke on the panel on nuclear weapons, and this is the only panel that i am on with two other women, and this is the only panel i have been on with this many woman in the audience, and it tracks with what judith said as this as a career field, and that's wonderful and terrific and leading to wonderful things and understanding the empowerment of women in every area you could name, but what that means is the national security field looks like it did 20 years ago. it's much better. i would not have been running a nonprofit 20 years ago. we have four-star women generals now. but when we talk about why there is not money for aid and you have a fight within an administrati administration, who are the reporters that cover the issues, and this divide is mirrored in

academia. and so i would challenge those of you who are young and who care about these issues that this field is not the only place you can work on them, and that it's actually critically important that we don't settle into some kind of unofficial gender where men make more and women clean up afterwards. i am very concerned about that. [ applause ] >> if i could just add one thing. i was on another panel on conflict resolution and transformation, and what we talked about was this exact phenomenon, and women in positional power is critical. women don't need to be involved but in positions of power. if we had our own country and congress, 17% of our congress are woman, and 20% of afghanistan's parliament are women. enough said. >> just very briefly.

if you want to get into international development i encourage you to look at economics and economic models. when we are talking about results, we are using metric numbers to understand results for development and don't get stuck in the ghetto of looking at a very small scale and you have to take it up to policy. there's a great organization in national security called w.i.s.e. it's a fantastic organization. if you know how to think strategicly in development terms and in military terms. >> there's another organization called white house. their goal is to put women in elective office and that's another thing to consider. >> upstairs? >> upstairs. we do have a question from a gentleman in the back row.

can i get to him after you -- >> here he comes. >> i can't see who is asking the question. ask your question, sir. >> you mentioned critique of aid from the left and that you thought that critique was incorrect. would you expand on that, please. >> i said i think it has some elements of validity. there are actually two critiques from the left. a domestic critique and an international critique. the international critique is one of the most interesting developments in the field that happened in the last decade or so which is that you have people from aid countries saying no thank you and we are better off without your aid. one of my favorite antidotes about this is from ghana where the ministry declared a holiday, a month where they refused to meet with any representatives of

any donor organizations or governments, and they said thank you very much and we need time to get our work done. carrie referenced the problem of coordination. and there are increasingly strong voices from traditional recipient aid countries, and they say you take away our power of choice and you impose your priorities on us, and you destroy our cultural traditions in the name of scale, and you try out ideas on us that don't work and you send us your rejects and we would have been better off without you. as i say, i think that critique is overblown. but for actually reasons that judith laid out, it's very important to hear and take seriously when we think about the kind of large-scale quick let's run in there and put on a show in the barn and build a democracy kind of foreign aid

that comes natalionaleynational. there is actually many aspects of it that don't come from ill will or don't come from sort of deep-seeded imperialism, but that do play out on the ground in ways that have been very damaging, and then this is a critique that we need to listen to. at the same time, you get the critique from the left that judith mentioned getting from her family. why would you -- famous words of john kerry. why would you build fire houses in iraq instead of the in the united states? well, maybe because we knocked down the fire houses in iraq. but secondly, because maybe as i said at the beginning of my talk, it's really important to the u.s. that country x have a functioning society where if somebody's house is burning down somebody could come and put it out. my problem with the domestic

critique, it's where we should not spend money overseas and should spend it at home. one thing to be progressive and that's to realize we are all connected and we don't have the choice of taking the ron paul choice saying the rest of the world can look after itself. >> a question from the gentleman against the back wall? >> the grassroots policy, i am not aware of what that is. >> the question is what is the grassroots policy? >> i think i mentioned a little bit about grassroots development which is the notion of bottom up development, so you take local community ideas or local community approaches. there's a big discussion right now about the kind of -- the bottom of the pyramid that is also kind of a little bit grassroots approach that the private sector is beginning to look at.

you have all these people that have tremendous needs that are getting access to financial resources and they need to purchase things, legitimate things, like cell phones or health care services, how can you provide services to the people that make up the bottom of the pyramid that is the world's population for the world's market. but the grass roots, it's not necessariesly grass roots policy, but grass roots development approach which is are locally based approaches. >> yes, ma'am. [ inaudible question ]. >> -- use of economic models and the importance of those models. are we beginning to redefine the paradigm for how we measure poverty new or development or cultural models that where, you know, we are always thinking about the dollar and a person's

take home income, but a lot of communities, poor communities of the world, don't think much about dollars. they think about whether or not we're growing enough food. >> so the question is there a need to broaden our definition of poverty or change it so that it's not measured on individual income? >> i think one of the challenges is when we're trying to make comparisons across cultures, we do tend to oversimplify and i think there is recognition that the models are often very simplistic. but if you look at for example what goes in to the human development index, it's often -- it's a minimal level of basic services. again, those services may be slightly different depending on the local context and someone mentioned to me here within the context of this conference a

discussion on the -- i don't think she's in the audience here, but she's involved with the happiness index and the discussion at the u.n. i think that's a challenging of models. but i don't want us to lose sight of the fact that having good health care one or two hours distance from your home, having access to clean safe drinking water, having access to basic education. these are things that i do see as universal rights and i think we don't want to cloud the motion of having local models and kin d of losing sight of soe of the others. most development practitioners are aware of the models, but it's so difficult to make comparisons across countries. and they are really needed to push poll city to be able to say, you know, that this country is doing better or that things are moving forward. it just makes governments feel really good about their progress or it kind of gives -- put s a spotlight on situation has are

particularly desire. we look at gaps that are tremendous in countries in the region between the indigenous population and the nonindigen s nonindigenous. almost as if you're looking at two completely different countries. so you need some of those measures but they're limited. >> and one more thing coming from your discussion of the gross national happiness index. i think we assume the traditional model assumes that you have to be rich to be happy or at least you have to be a certain level of rich to be happy. and i don't think that's necessarily true. and the gross national happiness index is interesting because it showed that people in china are actually happier than people in the united states. but -- and just a tiny little anecdote. my son spent a couple months in liber liberia, he was 16, and he was helping them teach soccer to kids who were formerly child combatants, many with missing limbs. and they lived in very dire conditions. but i said to him after a month and a half of doing this, what are you learning from this?

and his number one learning was, you know, mom, they're so much like us. the things that we have in common are exactly the same. and the things that are different from us are very small. and they're happy and they love each other. i think we assume that people who live in poor countries are recent happy a less happy are i thind i think fallacy. >> so a question from the woman here, we might have time for two more questions and i will -- you can have the second question if we have time defending on the length of the question and the answer. >> thank you for sharing your expertise and knowledge. it's been a great experience for me. you both or all of you had touched on the importance of measuring results and it was kind of a lead-on to her question. you had mentioned the paris declaration as a possibility.

i recently worked with an international ng oco and a lot our work had to incorporate or assimilate the mdgs. so i'm really interested to matter if you feel that the mgds have been a successful tool for measurement and if it has or has not been what's your tools for measurement. >> so the question is the mgd a good tool for measurement? >> millennium development goals. i think actually probably you've done a lot of work in this area, but the one thing i want to say, they're goals and underneath those goals are all sorts of different -- literally hundreds of different indicators that organizations or governments use to measure whether or not they're achieving the mgds. but i think you've done a lot of thinking so this, so i'll let you -- >> yeah, the millennium development goals were a set of

ten broad goals and as carrie said a bunch of sub targets adopted in 2005 because the deadline is 2015. and i'm going to comment on this from a public affairs perspective rather than from a development practitioner's perspective and maybe that's a partial answer to your question already there. and they did a tremendously good job of drawing attention to the problems that her intended to rectify. and especially in 2005, they got a lot of intention. you hear about them still in a lot of community groups, churches, my own church spent all of lent this year praying for the mdgs. that's really asking a lot of god given what i know about the m gch mdgs. couldn't we do something that's not my day job, please ?

so it was an inspired marketing stroke. but like many marketing strokes, the initial idea for the campaign was unsustainable and not closely connected must have to the reality of if, which is that these are enormously complex issues. it was a largely rhetorical campaign with no real ability to compel anybody to change what they do to make the goals happy. and there have been some amazing pieces of progress, some areas of even moving backwards. and that makes it easy to for people to say it was a meaningless pr campaign. so were i doing it over again, i would have picked fewer and -- well, this of course is very hard to do this at the u.n. where everybody has to be happy, but ideally withdrew have picked two or three and asked somebody to make some commitment as to how they would be actualized. so that's my critique in terms of getting people who aren't

immersed in this stuff to care and be motivated and involved. i'll let these two speak to the practitioner critique of whether it actually helped and how it helped our hurt on the ground. >> i think one of the challenges in latin america is that the local region was seen as moving on track. in fact there were some discussions in the early years about this is really about africa and development in africa. goals are good on gender, not so good on cultural and ethnic equality. and one of the challenges i think also is that they're taking averages. that's part of the reason why it's really easy it for latin america basically you don't have to have a lot of policy changes to make sure that the targets are met. because in countries and regions where you have inequality, it's really the gaps between the groups that are most important, not necessarily that growth is moving and things are moving in

the right correctidirection. we know the historic case of brazil where you had huge income inequality, yet you still had kind of brazil was moving towards targets. which is what is make hg kind of development so interesting in brazil is that brazil is saying it's not acceptable for us to meet targets when we have such levels of inequality and poverty in our inner country. so again i think some discussion on racial and ethnic equality or cultural difference, cultural values and maybe who are discussion i don't understand the averages with the commitments by the individual governments because then you have something to work for. it doesn't become an exercise for just certain parts of the world and not others. >> and i think they are what they were intended to be. larmly for public relations purposes, but also to get the donors aligned on the same subjects and to make a common commitment to each other. i think one of the reasons why they are important is that they do focus people on a few of the key