Cars, mostly olive green Russian jeeps, weave in and out of the five-storey apartment blocks of downtown Dalanzadgad. Running through the centre of the capital of Omnogobi is a gardened boulevard, where families hide from the hot sun under trees.
That one road, and the few feeding into it, are the only enforced guides for drivers. It can be seen across Mongolia – settlements crisis-crossed by drivers looking for the shortest route to their destination. It doesn’t help that there are no natural or manmade barriers to prevent drivers going their own way.
In Dalanzadgad, a UNDP project to protect the environment from off-road driving has had an unexpected outcome: it has galvanized the community to make the streets safer by adding over 100 traffic signs. The project “Soil and Road” under UNDP’s Environmental Public Awareness Programme (EPAP), started modestly. According to project director and local Khural head Mr. Byambasuren, the number of vehicles in the area shot up from 800 three years ago, to 1,500 today. Most of these vehicles drive off-road, kicking up dust and destroying flora, contributing to desertification.
“The disease rate here is very high because of the dust and we have many traffic accidents involving children,” says Byambasuren.
With a small grant of Tg 2.5 million from EPAP the project was able to organize workshops for local drivers where they signed a contract to not drive off-road, facing stiff penalties from the traffic police if caught.
A media campaign was also organized and posters and brochures distributed. The local traffic police were so impressed by the project they decided to chip in a further Tg 2 million to construct traffic signs and install concrete calming barriers.
At first they explored the possibility of buying ready-made signs but found the costs too prohibitive.
“We wanted to get signs that glowed at night but they were too expensive. We decided to make our own out of old oil drums.”
In a room thick with the smell of fresh paint sits the traffic signs. They all use internationally recognized symbols and only upon closer inspection, reveal their past life sitting on top of an oil drum. Each sign costs Tg 2,000 to make. In addition to the signs traffic calming concrete barriers have been installed in 20 places throughout Dalanzadgad.
Next year Byambasuren will target the large ger districts that surround the centre of Dalanzadgad. He has a message for any driver who doesn’t obey: “We will be banging on their heads with lectures if they break the rules!,” he says with a laugh.
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The ongoing economic crisis in Europe is forecast to harm the economies of the world’s poorest countries if it continues, according to a study by the United Kingdom’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) (odi.org.uk).
As an example, Kenya’s shilling currency has weakened and increased the cost of imports, leading to a surge in inflation, while the number of European tourists has declined, according to Business Daily.
Raging since 2009 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13856580), the eurozone crisis has seen several European countries struggling to pay debts built up during the boom years, and this has threatened the currency compact among countries that use the euro single currency (http://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/html/index.en.html). Several countries have introduced harsh austerity measures to try and rein in the debts and stabilize economies while keeping countries within the eurozone.
This has had the consequence of dramatically raising unemployment levels, reducing consumption of goods and services and increasing poverty rates in many European countries. Some governments have responded by reducing the amount of legal labour migration allowed into their countries.
The study estimates that the euro crisis could amount to a loss of US $238 billion for poorer countries from 2012 to 2013 as aid, trade, investment and remittance payments sent home to relatives and friends are damaged by the crisis.
This would particularly harm export-dependent, emerging-market countries. The study found demand was weakening for products from low and low-to-middle income countries. This would in turn harm growth in these countries. Growth in the past decade has helped many countries lift millions of people out of poverty and enabled the growth of new middle classes, who in turn use their rising incomes to purchase consumer goods and invest.
The crisis will cause developing countries’ currencies to drop in value if they are pegged to the euro, and for countries to be economically harmed because of austerity policies in European countries, said the study’s author, Dr. Isabella Massa.
“The EU remains the largest single export market for poorer countries, although it is the emerging BRIC economies which are their main source of imports.”
The European Union (EU) (http://europa.eu/index_en.htm) is the biggest market in the world and the largest importer of goods from developing countries. The ODI report found a 1 per cent drop in global export demand has the knock-on affect of reducing growth in poor countries by 0.5 per cent. The countries most at risk from the crisis are Mozambique, Kenya, Niger, Cameroon, Cape Verde and Paraguay.
For example, 17 per cent of Ivory Coast’s exports go to the EU. Mozambique sends 14 per cent of its exports to the EU and Nigeria sends 10 per cent.
Tajikistan in Central Asia was the most highly dependent economy on remittance payments from its workers living outside the country to prop up its GDP (gross domestic product). Remittance payments from Tajik citizens outside the country made up 40 per cent of GDP.
Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were both heavily dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI) from Europe in 2010.
Many countries have also grown used to strong demand for their resources in recent years as China has rapidly developed and urbanized, sucking in more and more resources from around the world, including sub-Saharan Africa.
“Poor countries are vulnerable to the euro crisis not only because of their exposure (due to dependence on trade flows, remittances, private capital flows and aid) but also because of their weaker resilience compared to 2007, before the onset of the global financial crisis,” said Massa.
“The ability of developing countries to respond to the shock waves emanating from the euro area crisis is likely to be constrained if international finance dries up and global conditions deteriorate sharply.
“The escalation of the euro crisis and the fact that growth rates in emerging BRIC economies, which have been the engine of the global recovery after the 2008-9 financial crisis, are now slowing down make the current situation really worrying for developing countries.”
Despite the gloom, there are many positive and powerful antidotes to this economic crisis, including rising South-South trade and innovation, which shows it is possible to reduce dependency on wealthy-developed countries alone for economic prosperity.
Published: September 2013
Resources
1) UNRISD: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development: The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is an autonomous research institute within the UN system that undertakes multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on the social dimensions of contemporary development issues. Website: unrisd.org/
2) The Global Urbanist: News and analysis of cities around the world: planning, governance, economy, communities, environment, international. Website: globalurbanist.com
3) OECD: The global economic crisis is entering a new phase amid signs of a return to positive growth in many countries. But unemployment is likely to remain high and much still needs to be done to underpin a durable recovery. This website will track the recovery. Website: http://www.oecd.org/general/tacklingthecrisisastrategicresponse.htm
4) African Union: This vision of a new, forward looking, dynamic and integrated Africa will be fully realized through relentless struggle on several fronts and as a long-term endeavor. The African Union has shifted focus from supporting liberation movements in the erstwhile African territories under colonialism and apartheid, as envisaged by the OAU since 1963 and the Constitutive Act, to an organization spear-heading Africa’s development and integration. Website: http://www.au.int/en/
5) Youth-Inclusive Financial Services (YFS-Link) Program website: The first space for financial services providers (FSPs) and youth-service organizations (YSOs) to gather, learn and share about youth-inclusive financial services. Website: http://www.makingcents.com/ourWork/yfsLink.php
6) Triple Crisis Blog: Global Perspectives on Finance, Development and Environment: Website: http://triplecrisis.com/
7) African Economic Outlook: A unique online tool that puts rigorous economic data, information and research on Africa at your fingertips. A few clicks gives access to comprehensive analyses of African economies, placed in their social and political contexts. This is the only place where African countries are examined through a common analytical framework, allowing you to compare economic prospects at the regional, sub-regional and country levels. Website: africaneconomicoutlook.org/en
Brazil is well known for its stylish swimwear, with styles usually targeted at young women and those with more conventional, media-friendly body shapes. But now a company is making visiting the beach more comfortable and empowering for plus-size women.
Prior to the arrival of plus-size swimwear, women turned to over-sized t-shirts and baggy shorts to hit the beach. Now, Brazilian companies are pioneering fashionable and sexy swimwear for women of all sizes.
Brazil has a well-known beach culture – a culture celebrated over the years in popular pop tunes like ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_from_Ipanema). The country has successfully turned its alluring beach culture into lucrative businesses,including fashion enterprises that have become global brands. The global hit brand of beach flip flops Havaianas (havaianas.com) is a good example.
Lehona (lehona.com.br) makes ‘Moda Praia’ – plus-size – swimwear for women. The swimsuits are specially designed to flatter larger body shapes and give women the confidence to go back to the beach. It is seeking to end the discrimination inherent in beach culture that favours the “thin, the rich and the chic.”
Body shapes have been changing in Brazil – as they have been across the world and the global South. While one cause is the global obesity crisis -ballooning as diets change with rising prosperity – there is also another, more positive cause: greater access to nutrition and increasing consumption of milk and meat tends to lead to larger body shapes. This has happened across the world and in many countries irrespective of the racial and ethnic background of the people. Norwegians in Northern Europe were once some of the shortest people in Europe and suffered from poverty and malnutrition. But, as food security increased and nutrition improved, they have over time become the second tallest people in Europe behind the Netherlands (The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition,and Human Development in the Western World since 1700).
For Brazil, malnutrition was widespread until recently. Records show 10 per cent of the country’s rural northeast in the 1970s was considered underweight.
The Brazilian statistics institute has found the past decade’s economic boom has had another consequence as well as lifting many millions out of poverty. It has found 48 per cent of adult women and 50 per cent of adult men are now overweight. This compares with 1985, when 29 per cent of women and 18 per cent of men were overweight.
Diets have changed in the intervening years. Rice, beans and vegetables are now in competition with potato chips, processed meats and sugary soft drinks.
And apart from nutrition and diet changes because of increasing incomes,there is also a cultural change. While the wealthy are more used to lifestyles with plenty of exercise, newly prosperous people do not necessarily have the fitness habit. One study found just 10 per cent of Brazilian teens and adults exercise regularly.
The Lehona brand has become a quick hit and receives many telephone calls and emails from would-be customers, its owners claim.
The Brazilian cultural expectation for women’s beachwear is skimpy, showing more rather than less. This prejudices women who do not have slim body shapes or who are not under 30.
Started in 2010 by clothing designer Clarice Rebelatto and run by her son Luiz Rebelatto, Lehona was started out of personal need.
“Honestly, the problem went way beyond just bikinis. In Brazil, it used to be that if you were even a little chunky, finding any kind of clothes in the right size was a real problem,” said Clarice Rebelatto, a size 10, to The Associated Press.
“And I thought, ‘I’m actually not even that big compared to a lot of women out there, so if I have problems, what are they doing?’”
The approach to the swimsuits is counter to many other brands targeting plus-size women. They are bold and emphasize the shape rather than try to cover it up and hide it.
The brand sells itself through specialty stores for large and tall women in Brazil. A bikini sells for around 130 reais (US $66).
“Some brands, they don’t want their image to be associated with chunky women= Only the thin, the rich and the chic,” Luiz Rebelatto told The Associated Press.
“We’re working from the principle that bigger women are just like everyone else: They don’t want to look like old ladies, wearing these very modest, very covering swimsuits in just black.”
The plus-size market has even been taken up by conventional Brazilian swimwear manufacturer Acqua Rosa (http://www.acquarosanet.com.br/site/). It released its plus-size line in 2008 and claims sales now account for 70 per cent of their total sales.
One woman frequenting Copacabana beach copacabana.info) in Rio de Janeiro is Elisangela Inez Soares. She is happy and confident with the new swim suits.
“It used to be bikinis were only in tiny sizes that only skinny girls could fit into. But not everyone is built like a model,” concludes Soares.
Published: May 2012
Resources
1) Start a Fashion Business: A website packed with step-by-step advice on starting a fashion business. Website: startafashionbusiness.co.uk/
“I think you [David South] and the designer [Solveig Rolfsdottir] do great work and I enjoy Southern Innovator very much!” Ines Tofalo, Programme Specialist, United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation
David South Consulting 
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