In what sometimes looked like the worst of times, it was actually the best of times for ideas — and these ideas will shape how the world recovers in the years to come.
Driven by the need to do more with less, the year’s boldest innovators turned up better, simpler ways to use our shrinking resources to improve global quality of life.
- The notion that countries with plentiful natural resources will end up plagued by coup attempts and corruption may have finally been put to rest.
- Selling the “good life” works: Sometimes you have to persuade people to want what they need.
- Revenues from a state’s natural resources most efficiently prop up successful society if they bypass governments and are directly funneled via checks directly to citizens.
- Desperately poor countries, like Haiti, can be helped more efficiently than with government aid. By giving more visas to people who want to flee, personal remittances home soar, propping up personal wealth back home.
- Maps are put to work with great effect now, in disaster zones, by relief groups and to pinpoint crime areas.
- The International Aid Transparency Initiative provides easy-to-track results.
- Offering small rewards, like a pound of lentils, for participating in programs like vaccination schemes can boost results.
- “Putting a number on poverty” demonstrates that it’s not what you make, but what you do with it that matters.
- Dividing countries by natural borders (like regions with different religions) rather than straight lines, could reduce political and violent unrest.
(READ the ideas in the ForeignPolicy.com)