Oxfam’s top 5 climate justice wins since 2008

January 14, 2021
Tim Gore, a fellow Oxfamer who for years has contributed great pieces on climate change to FP2P, is heading off to become (deep breath) Head of the Low Carbon and Circular Economy Programme at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP). (Twitter: @tim_e_gore). Here are his outgoing reflections. Last month I ended an epic 12-year journey leading Oxfam’s policy and
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Can Financial Diaries help us understand life in fragile and conflict-affected settings?

January 13, 2021
Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of diaries as a research tool into issues such as governance and finance. Here Sandrine N’simire, Ishara Tchumisi and Patricia Stys, of LSE’s Centre for Public Authority in International Development, discuss their experiences conducting research using ‘financial diaries’ as part of LSE’s Water Governance project in Goma, DRC. This blog forms part of the Idjwi
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Africa’s new Free Trade Agreement: Great expectations, tough questions

January 12, 2021
Teniola Tayo argues that African cooperation is gaining momentum, but big challenges lie ahead. This post was first published on the ISS blog The start of trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement on 1 January 2021 marks the dawn of a new era in Africa’s development journey. Over time, the AfCFTA will eliminate import tariffs on
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Links I Liked

January 11, 2021
Nuff said ht Declan Walsh ‘What was essentially a big biker gang dressed as circus performers and war-surplus barbarians – including the guy with a painted face posing as horned bison in a fur coat – stormed the ultimate country club, squatted on Pence’s throne, chased Senators into the sewers, casually picked their noses and rifled files and, above all,
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Development Nutshell: round-up (21m) of FP2P posts, w/b 4th January

January 9, 2021
No excerpt
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Bigger? Smaller? And What about the Missing Middle? Great discussion on the future of Humanitarianism

January 8, 2021
For reasons I hope to be able to explain in a few weeks, I’m mugging up on debates in the humanitarian sector, and really enjoying the ‘Rethinking Humanitarianism’ podcast series from The New Humanitarian and CGD. Each episode provides a full transcript, but no accompanying blog, so I thought I’d summarize November’s discussion on forces of disruption and the future
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Has Covid been a tipping point for Universal Social Protection? Here’s what we know

January 7, 2021
Crises act as tipping points. Local crises and conflicts can galvanize a social movement or discredit a leader in a given location. Global crises change far more than that – the 2008 financial crisis has been credited with everything from sparking the rise of right-wing populism (hopefully now heading for a historical dustbin near you) to transforming norms around inequality
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You’ve got your Qualification and you want to change the world. Congrats. Now what?

January 6, 2021
I was asked to do an ‘inspirational 5 minutes’ at the end of our new-look LSE graduation ceremony just before the Christmas break (I guess they couldn’t afford Ali G, like Harvard). In many ways, I actually preferred the online to the real life version – more inclusive, and everyone can clap, whoop and holler in one go at the
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Links I Liked

January 5, 2021
Some good 2020 round-ups for those who were a bit distracted last year and want to catch up Top Africa Stories of the Year 2020 New Humanitarian most read posts of 2020 Highlights from the LSE Africa Centre blog Worldwide Protests in 2020: Carnegie Endowment The Best of 2020: What We Read While the World Burned Around Us (Research Edition)
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Summary of a weird (and record-breaking) year on FP2P

January 4, 2021
I like to kick off a new year on the blog by looking back to the one that’s just ended. I have to say, 2020 was in some ways a vintage year for bloggers (if not for anyone else). Lots of people stuck at home, with nothing better to do than surf social media, I guess. FP2P’s total numbers came
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