GDP - The Global Development Primer

What do Truckers in Canada, Islamophobes in the U.S., Hindu supremacists and incels the world over have in common?  Distorted visions of a golden age when they ruled as they liked.  Selective histories of nationalist glories are on the front steps of Capitols and Parliaments around the world.  Fuelled by half-baked histories and disinformation online, the rise of anti-establishment movements, white supremacy and nationalisms tend to follow a similar script.  Joining us today to unpack that script, and to understand why people fall for it, are Zenaib Farokhi and David R. Anderson.

Zeinab Farokhi is a doctoral candidate at the Women and Gender Studies Institute and Diaspora and Transnational Studies Centre, University of Toronto. She received her M.A in Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto, and an M.A in Sociology from Osmania University, India, and her B.A in History from Isfahan University, Iran. Her research interests include cyber feminism, transnational feminisms and diasporic studies.Farokhi's mixed-methods dissertation focuses on right-wing extremism, gender, and online radicalization. Her current doctoral work compares the usage of Twitter by Islamophobic right-wing extremists in India, Canada, and the US, focusing on anti-Muslim rhetoric in Hindu and white nationalist discourse.

David R. Anderson is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. David was born legally blind and grew up in the West Kootenays, a region of the southern interior of British Columbia and the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa and Sinixt First Nations. His dissertation, Seeing Otherwise: Nature, Blindness, Memoir, examines blind, minority, and nature memoirs via close reading practices to evidence how blind and other overlooked ecological sensibilities can promote more just political and environmental collectivities. With an interdisciplinary background in literature, education, and the environmental humanities, his intersectional research promotes the value of and strategies for creating practices of mutual vulnerability, care, and resilience in the face of multiple climate, social, and political crises.

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Russia has just declared Dontesk & Luhansk in the Donbas region of Ukraine to be sovereign states.  Peacekeepers are on the ground.  NATO nations are applying sanctions.  The government in Kyiv has said for months that Russia is attempting to usurp democracy in the country.  Yet Moscow says that it is merely peacekeeping.  Is it peacekeeping?  Is it warmongering?  Is it something else?

As we see the beginnings of a hybrid war emerging in Ukraine, Thomas Hughes joins GDP to help explain some of the factors that have led up to this escalation.  Will there be a full scale invasion?  What will become of the Donbas region?  Are cyberattacks on their way?  What could and should NATO nations do at a time like this?

Thomas Hughes is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen’s University. His primary areas of research are on confidence-building, arms control regimes, deterrence, and strategic culture. Thomas defended his dissertation, The Art of War Games: The Political Effects of Military Exercises in Europe, 1975-2018 in August 2021. He co-edited the 2018 volume North American Strategic Defense in the 21st Century, and has also published work on the use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft. Thomas gained his MA from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, Denver, and has also worked for the UN Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute.

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On October 25, 2021 military officers in Sudan staged a coup and took the capital.  Sudan's coup follows coups in Chad, Guinea, and two in Mali.  Madagascar and the Central African Republic experienced a failed attempt each.  For the past twenty years coups were becoming rare in the African continent, and they were never condoned or encouraged by members of the African Union, or the international community.  But now, there is an uptick in strongmen in uniform toppling democratic processes.  Why, and why now?  A long-standing expert on democratic institutions in Northern African and the Middle East, Milica Panic shares her thoughts about what is going on in Sudan, and the growing threats to democracies in the region.

Milica Panic is an accomplished program leader with more than 20 years of experience designing and managing complex governance programs, including deep experience working across both sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). Beginning her career as a peace activist in her native Serbia, Milica went on to design and implement programs focused on women’s political inclusion in South-East Europe, Russia and Palestine for Norwegian People’s Aid. Later she led governance and civil society programs for the International Republican Institute in Iraq, Sudan and South Sudan, before serving as IRI’s deputy regional director for Africa. Before joining Pact, Milica worked with DAI, where she served as a director on the project delivery team. Between 2016 and 2021, Milica was COP for the USAID Liberia Accountability and Voice Initiative, a project renowned for its innovative approaches to network building, adaptive management and politically smart programming.

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Check out the work of Pact:  https://www.pactworld.org

"You can shove your climate crisis up your arse", said Greta Thunberg.  "How many more signs do we need?", asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  "“And this is a chance, in my view, to make a generational investment in our economic resilience and in our workers and our communities throughout the world," said Joe Biden.  Another climate conference, and another year of incredible disasters linked to climate change.  Intensive hurricanes and cyclones.  Burning temperatures, and an entire town burned to the ground in minutes amid wild fires in British Columbia.  Are politicians finally taking definitive action on the climate crisis?  If they are?  What does it look like?  Can we pump the breaks on carbon intensive industries?  Do we have enough available alternatives at the ready to get the global economy off of carbon?  Here to answer these questions and to weigh in on the Glasgow COP26 conference, it's none other that our regular guest on GDP: Dr. Anders Hayden.

Anders Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He is particularly interested in the evolving balance between efforts to promote ecological modernization (“green growth”) and sufficiency-based challenges to the endless growth of production and consumption. He has written on efforts to promote "green growth" in Canada, Britain, and the European Union. His interest in the sufficiency approach has included examination of policies and initiatives to reduce hours of work as well as research on Bhutan, a country that has established Gross National Happiness, rather than Gross National Product, as its overriding goal. He is currently involved in research on the political and policy impacts of alternative measures of wellbeing and prosperity (“beyond GDP” measurement). He is the author of two books: When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption & Ecology (Zed Books / Between the Lines, 1999), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance (Routledge, 2020).

Follow his latest project about moving beyond GDP here:  www.beyondgdpindicators.com 

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Governments can be slow to help those in need, yet they often act fast against real threats.  Social media platforms, like Facebook (Meta) have been long critiqued for being bigger than governments, both in terms of subscribers and revenue. But is Facebook a threat to governments, democracies and to populations themselves?  Despite the birthday reminders, cute cat photos, and ability to sell goods locally, Facebook has enabled the spread of disinformation, intimidation, hatred and fear to the point where lives have been threatened.  In particular the patterns of disinformation show that women in politics are particularly targeted, and strategically so.  If social media is a potential threat to democracies, what can be done? Kristina Wilfore spells it all out in this 30 minute podcast. 

Kristina Wilfore is a seasoned international development professional having worked against authoritarian regimes around the world for the National Democratic Institute, International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and USAID-funded grantees - designing and implementing large-scale election integrity, political party, civil society and disinformation defense programs in post conflict and pre-revolutionary environments.

Through the 2020 general election in the US, Kristina managed the largest effort in US history to help civil society organizations and election stakeholders detect, respond to, and preempt orchestrated disinformation campaigns.

She has helped campaign professionals in Western Europe throughout Sweden, Spain, Finland and the Netherlands work against growing far-right populist movements, by improving message strategies and grassroots engagement with voters. In the 2019 EU election, she worked to expose online influence operations and pushback on disinformation, organizing digital forensic evidence for regulators on activities of malign actors. She has piloted public engagement campaigns to tackle disinformation head on in Kosovo, Serbia and Ukraine.

Kristina is originally from Montana where she began her journey in changemaking when at the age of 14 she organized a letter to the editor campaign to support Planned Parenthood after an abortion clinic in the state was bombed by anti-choice extremists.

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Check out the Parliamentary Centre's Democracy Dialogue Series Here. https://parlcent.org 

The Pandora Papers is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist's largest investigation into off-shore finance to date.  Almost 3 terabytes of data piece together a shadow world of offshore financial.  World leaders  and at least 130 billionaires rely on an offshore financial system that keeps taxes low, money opaque and above all guards the privacy of its clients.  Beyond the shocking inequalities from the world's billionaires harbouring their wealth in tax-havens, what role does the offshore finance system have in facilitating shady business?  From real estate, to art trading all the way to illicit trade at sea, the world of off shore finance is mysterious to many, but day to day business for a global super elite.  In this episode of GDP, we chat with Delphine Reuter from the ICIJ, to help piece together the bigger meaning of the Pandora Papers.  

Delphine Reuter, Belgium, is ICIJ’s data journalist and researcher.

She started collaborating with ICIJ on the LuxLeaks project in 2014.

Prior to joining ICIJ's Data & Research Unit full time, she described her position as "brain for hire." She's no data witch, but somehow working for ICIJ has sparked a love for spreadsheets, everything that requires research, and cross-border investigations.

Previously she was a freelancer working on investigative cross-border projects. She has also been a researcher for environmental organizations. More recently, she was a coordinator of journalism training for professionals and a teacher at IHECS, a journalism school in Brussels.

She holds a degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism (NY) and IHECS.

Check out the ICIJ here.

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COVID-19 is a global experience that conjoins us all.  But we live in very different realities of it.  Everyone on earth has been impacted by the virus and the public health measures that have responded to it.  Now with vaccines rolling out is the world coming together to move towards the post-pandemic era, or are we entrenching divisions in dangerous and untested ways?  

It's not just the vaccinated who will enjoy more liberties going forward, but rather those who receive a certain type of vaccine.  Double vaccinations of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, allow for free entry into North America, Europe and beyond.  For those vaccinated in Russia, China, Cuba and India, the borders may stay shut.  And for the 87.7% of people in low income countries who are awaiting a first dose?  Borders and opportunities will remain closed.  All the while some places like the U.S. and Quebec are preparing to give out 3rd doses.   

Dr. Bob is joined by his old friend and brother in arms in global health, Dr. Ryan Hoskins, to talk about why the preference of types of vaccine are among the reasons why the world is setting itself up to divide in dangerous ways.  

Dr Hoskins works as an emergency room physician, health policy researcher, and teacher, based at the University of British Columbia. He has worked, and continues to work, in a number of rural and remote communities across Canada, and has worked in parts of Latin America and Africa. He is interested in the cost-effectiveness of health in low-income settings, building a case for non-communicable disease treatment. He has a special interest in strep throat and rheumatic heart disease, a condition that is vastly overtreated in high income countries and under treated in low-income countries. He wishes our healthcare resource decisions were made with more transparency and more evidence.

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What are the police supposed to do?  If it is really about keeping the public safe, why are some members of the public specifically targeted and subjected to frequent surveillance, and why do black Americans continue to die at the hands of the police?  It's time to go beyond saying enough is enough, and to start putting policies in place so it happens never again.  Tari Ajadi is dedicated, through research and activism, to seeing policing change.  Approaching the nature of policing through a public health approach, Mr. Ajadi offers an approach to public safety that is, at its heart, is about building safe communities, especially for those who have been the very targets of police.  

Tari Ajadi is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Dalhousie University. His dissertation research compares how Black activists in municipalities in Nova Scotia and Ontario strategize to prompt change in policing and in health policy. A British-Nigerian immigrant to Canada, Tari aims to produce research that supports and engages with Black communities across the country. He has published articles in The Globe and Mail, The Chronicle-Herald, University Affairs, Canadian Government Executive, Canadian Diversity and The Tyee. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Association of African Canadians. He is a Junior Fellow at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance. He holds a MA in Political Science from Dalhousie University.

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