Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities use 65% of the World’s land; how much do they actually own?

September 30, 2015
Andy White, the Coordinator of the Rights and Research Initiative (RRI) introduces a new report. A new, unprecedented legal analysis has revealed that despite using and inhabiting up to 65% of the world’s land, Indigenous Peoples and local communities—a population of about 1.5 billion—possess legal rights to barely 18%. That’s a huge gap. And it’s a gap that explains a
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Hello SDGs, what’s your theory of change?

September 29, 2015
As Jed Bartlett would say, what’s next? Now the SDGs are official, there will be big discussions on financing and a geekfest on metrics and indicators. Both are important. But to my mind the big task is to collectively think through what the SDGs are meant to change and how they can best do so – in other words a
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Links I Liked

September 28, 2015
Dilbert does the World Bank (h/t Makarand) Interesting stuff on Ebola Fascinating example of positive deviance. Why were 284 villages with community-led total sanitation Ebola-free, despite being close to the centre of the outbreak? How West African governments fought the epidemic. Report from the Africa Governance Initiative reinforces Doing Development Differently on national systems and PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) Gender
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Who is the richest man in history? The answer (ICYMI) might surprise you

September 25, 2015
3rd in this series of re-posts of the most read FP2P pieces over the summer comes from Ricardo Fuentes, who has since gone off to be big boss at Oxfam Mexico. Here he introduces Oxfam Mexico’s new report on one of Mexico’s many claims to fame – the richest man in history. In his 2011 book, The Haves and The Have Nots, 
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Low-fee private schooling: Prachi Srivastava responds to The Economist (ICYMI + other summer posts on private sector & development)

September 24, 2015
Continuing the catch-up series for those who’ve been away/not been receiving email notifications, the 2nd most read post from the last 3 months was this great response to a particularly one sided Economist piece. Prachi Srivastava is one of the experts on ‘low-fee private schooling’ who was interviewed for last week’s remarkably one sided Economist Paean to the Private (my words
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The Politics of Results & Evidence. Most read post from this summer (ICYMI)

September 23, 2015
OK, Oxfam’s IT whizzes finally seem to have fixed a really frustrating problem – several thousand people who had signed up for email alerts about new FP2P posts haven’t been receiving them for the last 3 months. Many of them assumed Oxfam had finally got round to sacking me and/or I’d got fed up with blogging/gone under a bus. Sorry
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Some cautionary thoughts on this week’s SDGs summit

September 22, 2015
The crescendo of discussion and debate over the successor to the Millennium Development Goals reaches its climax this weekend in New York, with the Sustainable Development Summit. The Guardian has a good scene setter. I’ve ploughed a contrarian furrow on the SDGs so far, so why stop now? Here are some things you might want to keep in mind over
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Links I Liked

September 21, 2015
[Welcome back email subscribers – and heartfelt thanks to the IT wizards who sorted out the glitch. More on this tomorrow] Europe’s refugee crisis: The cartoonists are having a field day [h/t Helge Torvund]  The Onion has a satirical go with an 11 step guide to how migrants reach Europe (step 6: Trudging; Step 10: Angela Merkel bestows each migrant
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How are disasters linked to inequality? Review of ‘The Disaster Profiteers’

September 18, 2015
[The IT guys tell me they’ve finally found a fix on the email notification problem. If you get an email about this post for the first time in months, please either leave a comment, or vote in the poll to the right, to tell us it’s working] Debbie Hillier, Oxfam’s Humanitarian Policy Adviser  reviews The Disaster Profiteers: How natural disasters
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What are the key principles behind a theory of change approach? Top new ODI paper.

September 17, 2015
Craig Valters of ODI is consistently incisive on Theories of Change, cutting through the flannel surrounding one of the aid business’ favourite new(ish) fuzzwords to identify what is genuinely significant. His new, crisply written paper is a must read for anyone interested in how change happens, doing development differently, or the results agenda. Some excerpts: ‘The development industry is unbalanced
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How can INGOs get better? A surprisingly interesting conversation with some Finance Directors

September 16, 2015
Spent an afternoon with a bunch of NGO Finance Directors this week. I was presenting Fit for the Future (memo to self, never write another paper about the future of INGOs – their thirst for navel-gazing is limitless). The discussion was more interesting than you might think – money is the lifeblood of the aid business, and FDs have the best
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Aid and Development: A Brief Introduction. Book review of handy new bluffer’s guide

September 15, 2015
One of the best things about Aid and Development: A Brief Introduction, by Myles Wickstead, is the user-friendly format: a 90 page basic introduction to the aid system from World War Two to the SDGs, followed by a 65 page compendium of 20 ‘key words and concepts’ from aid effectiveness to the UN system. Another plus is the author: Myles
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