Explore Challenges
- 13 OCTOBER 2010: Plastic pollution in the oceans
- 1 DECEMBER 2010: Can the UK ever be sustainable?
- Natural disasters: how can we improve?
- Not In My Back Yard
- Digital Divide in the UK?
- Importing goods, exporting drought?
- The challenges and opportunities of an ageing society
- Engineering our climate
- The future shape of Capitalism
- Migration: skills and the job market
- Razing the Rainforest
- London under water
- Concreting the countryside
- Future of low carbon energy
- Africa in the 21st Century
Trade vs Aid
The G8
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States
October 2007
G8 repeated their pledge from 2005 to increase aid to Africa by $25 billion
The G8 promised faster progress towards achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015 including writing of debt
e.g. $17 billion of Nigeria's debt
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)
A scheme to create a Free Trade Area (FTA) between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries
Flags of the G8 countries
Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)
Exists to ensure developing countries are not forced to open their markets and have the flexibility to use tariffs for sustainable economic development
Source: World Trade Organisation (WTO)
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC)
exists to ensure deep, broad and fast debt relief and thereby contribute toward growth, poverty reduction, and debt sustainability in the poorest, most heavily indebted countries.
e.g. When the HIPC completion point is reached Malawi will receive a 100% debt cancellation of money owed to the IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank under the new Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative
Can free trade ever truly exist?
International trade rules in theory allows countries to produce goods they are best at producing, and trade their surpluses for products they cannot produce. However, subsidies, tariffs and quotas can often lead to corruption