Save the World!

Saw the Al Gore movie "An inconvenient truth" this weekend. It really blew my mind and I would recommend that the entire planet watches it. We are in serious trouble - it's just that we need to start changing to try and make a difference. Problem for developing countries is the obvious "why shouldn't we have some of the good life - cars, factories, power stations?". The answer is: "Sorry, the developed world blew it, and it's too late". Essentially, isn't that what Kyoto said by enabling developing countries to grow while the developed put their houses in order!

Helping developing countries get on with it

Well, I am now ready for this week's WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Committee meeting having completed the IEC's report. I am trying to help the developing countries represented at this meeting of the need to get involved - to get down to it. I hope that we will have some success in getting through the governmental representatives and reaching out to the actual industries and end-users out there. So often we hear of the need for computers and money and money. In reality I think that is part of the old world thinking. We need to move beyond just getting the privileged few travelling on expensive trips around the world when there is perfectly good and cost effective technology to get the people that really matter in touch with the tools and resources available.

Getting the developing world to get on with it!

Well they say that blogging is a way of getting an issue off one's chest. Well I want to have a moan about the developing world and its interaction with the developed world.

What I am frustrated about is:

1. How developing countries continue to be tied to their former colonial "masters".
2. Why the international support community continues to treat developing nations as children.
3. Why developing countries continue to believe in burdensome bureaucracy in the form of weighty government institutions.

And that's just for starters!

Developing countries need to start showing the rest of the world what they are made of. They must stop the begging attitude and start to show what they are capable of. In that way I hope that the developed world will start to treat developing countries with the respect they deserve. Too naïve? Please let me know.