23 November 2012 • 21:34 0
By Heikki Holmås, Minister of International Development, Norway.
This is the first blog post that relates to a meeting on ‘Education: Equity and Learning for all – looking beyond 2015’, organized by Save the Children in Oslo on 20th November, 2012. This piece was originally posted (minus the image which is from Save the Children's new 'Born Equal…
Filed under: Development, MDGs
6 September 2012 • 19:48 0
Mobilizing scientific and technical expertise for local, national, and global problem solving
The SDSN will work together with United Nations agencies, other international organizations, and the multilateral funding institutions including the World Bank and regional development banks, to mobilize scientific and technical expertise to scale up the magnitude and quality of local, national and global problem solving, helping to identify solutions and highlighting best practices in the design of long-term development pathways.
The global network will accelerate joint learning and help to overcome the compartmentalization of technical and policy work by promoting integrated approaches to the interconnected economic, social, and environmental challenges confronting the world.
The network should therefore spawn a new kind of sustained problem solving, in which experts, leaders, and citizens in all parts of the world work together to identify, demonstrate, and implement the most promising paths to sustainable development.
Filed under: Development, MDGs, News, Research, united nations, unsdsn
4 September 2012 • 11:24 0
Working out how to help the world’s poorest depends on where they live
WHERE do the world’s poor live? The obvious answer: in poor countries. But in a recent series of articles Andy Sumner of Britain’s Institute of Development Studies showed that the obvious answer is wrong*. Four-fifths of those surviving on less than $2 a day, he found, live in middle-income countries with a gross national income per head of between $1,000 and $12,500, not poor ones. His finding reflects the fact that a long but inequitable period of economic growth has lifted many developing countries into middle-income status but left a minority of their populations mired in poverty. Since the countries involved include giants like China and India, even a minority amounts to a very large number of people. That matters because middle-income countries can afford to help their own poor. If most of the poverty problem lies within their borders, then foreign aid is less relevant to poverty reduction. A better way to help would be to make middle-income countries’ domestic policies more “pro-poor”.
Now Mr Sumner’s argument faces a challenge. According to Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution and Andrew Rogerson of Britain’s Overseas Development Institute, “by 2025 most absolute poverty will once again be concentrated in low-income countries.” They argue that as middle-income countries continue to make progress against poverty, its incidence there will fall. However, the number of poor people is growing in “fragile” states, which the authors define as countries which cannot meet their populations’ expectations or manage these through the political process (sounds like some European nations, too). The pattern that Mr Sumner describes, they say, is a passing phase.
Messrs Kharas and Rogerson calculate that the number of poor in “non-fragile” states has fallen from almost 2 billion in 1990 to around 500m now; they think it will go on declining to around 200m by 2025. But the number of poor in fragile states is not falling—a testament both to the growing number of poor, unstable places and to their fast population growth. This total has stayed flat at about 500m since 1990 and, the authors think, will barely shift until 2025. As early as next year, the number of poor in what are sometimes called FRACAS (fragile and conflict-affected states) could be greater than the number in stable ones. That would imply something different to Mr Sumner’s view: instead of being irrelevant to poverty reduction, foreign aid will continue to be vital, since fragile states (unlike middle-income ones) cannot afford to help the poor but instead need help themselves.
via Free exchange: The geography of poverty | The Economist.
Filed under: Development, Economy, MDGs, Poverty, Research, fragile states
10 August 2012 • 12:32 0
SID Council Member Ms. Betty Maina was appointed on July 31 by the UN Secretary General to the High-Level Advisory Panel to advise on the global development agenda beyond 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Advisory Panel include 26 members from civil society, private sector and governments.
The Panel is part of the Secretary-General’s post-2015 initiative mandated by the 2010 MDG Summit. Member States have called for open, inclusive consultations involving civil society, the private sector, academia and research institutions from all regions, in addition to the UN system, to advance the development agenda beyond 2015.
The work of the Panel will reflect new development challenges while also drawing on experience gained in implementing the MDGs, both in terms of results achieved and areas for improvement. For more information on the post-2015 process visit http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/beyond2015.shtml
Filed under: Africa, Development, MDGs, Poverty, post-2015, sid, un
10 August 2012 • 12:13 1
The report Agriculture, Food Security, and Inclusive Growth is a compilation of lectures and discussions organised in 2011 by SID Netherlands Chapter in cooperation with the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and NCDO. It contains contributions by UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter, Camilla Toulmin (Director of the International Institute of Environment and Development, Kevin Cleaver (Associate Vice-President of International Fund for Agricultural Development), and Andries du Toit (Director of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies). Download: http://sidnl.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sid_agriculture-food-security-inclusive-growth_booklet.pdf
Filed under: Africa, MDGs, Rural Economies, Value Chains, food, food security, inclusive growth, sid
20 January 2012 • 07:42 1
News that another $72 million has been committed for a second stage of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) has led to another round of critical discussion as to what can be learning from this entire endeavor. The Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog and Lawrence Haddad at the Development Horizons blog offer some critiques. In response to the latter, Jeffrey Sachs and Prabhjot Singh offer a rather stunning reply which seems worth discussing from the point of view of what is possible with impact evaluations. World Bank’s David McKenzie
dissects some of their statements.
Filed under: MDGs, Methods, Rural Economies
14 January 2011 • 12:52 0
It is a coincidence that two things have happened simultaneously – and the coincidence will be a happy one if the two can be brought together.
On the one hand, Europe has emerged from eight years of introspection with new structures, a new leadership team and a new platform (the Lisbon Treaty) for more effective collective action.
On the other hand, the global financial crisis has provided a sobering wake-up call about the extent of mutual inter-dependence and the scale of the challenges the world must face. The global challenges will shape international development cooperation in coming years and have already led to new thinking and new approaches.
The financial crisis affected all countries and revealed new vulnerabilities. The most affected suffered a combination of falling export volumes and values, lower financial flows, lower remittances, and sometimes lower aid. Although global recovery has begun, it is uneven in scale and speed. Countries entered and will leave the recession very differently equipped to manage the next wave of challenges. There is likely to be greater differentiation among developing countries as a result. Climate change will be by far the biggest of the next wave, but developing countries must also deal with rapid urbanisation, demographic change, and a whole range of global risks, from disease pandemics to the risk of new food crises. Fragile states pose an especially demanding challenge, to their own populations but also to the global community. A new age of challenges requires a new approach.
via Europe’s World – The only Europe-wide Ideas Community – Partner Posts.
Filed under: Africa, Development, Economy, European Union, MDGs
22 February 2010 • 20:48 1
Fallout from the financial crisis will change the landscape for finance and growth over the next 10 years, a new World Bank report concludes. Developing countries facing higher borrowing costs, lower credit levels, and reduced international capital flows. 2010′s Global Economic Prospects report examines the consequences of the financial crisis on both the short- and medium-term growth prospects of developing countries. Although global growth has resumed, the recovery is fragile, and unless business and consumer demand strengthen, the world economy could slow down again. It concludes that the financial crisis has taken its toll on achieving the 2015 poverty Millennium Development Goal (MDG). Newly updated World Bank estimates suggest that the crisis will leave an additional 64 million people in extreme poverty in 2009 and some 50 million in 2010 relative to a no crisis scenario. Source: ELDIS, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGEP2010/Resources/GEP2010-Full-Report.pdf
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