Will this week’s aid and development gabfest in Mexico be just another boring conference or a milestone in ensuring development works for the poor?

April 14, 2014
It’s aid week here on the blog. To kick off, Oxfam policy adviser Nicola McIvor sets the scene for a big international conference in Mexico. Tomorrow and Wednesday, Angus Deaton and I have an argument about whether aid helps or harms development. Who knows, you may even get to vote. The development world is at a critical juncture as Mexico
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What about the 1 in 7? Important progress in getting DFID (and other donors) to get serious on disability

April 10, 2014
Disability campaigners Mosharraf Hossain and Julia Modern on a new report on disability and development Back in 1988, I was denied a job in the Bangladesh civil service. This wasn’t because I didn’t have the skills to do the job – I had a Masters in Economics from the University of Dhaka – but because I am disabled. I contracted
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What are the limits of transparency and technology? From three gurus of the openness movement (Eigen, Rajani, McGee)

April 7, 2014
After a slightly disappointing ‘wonkwar’ on migration, let’s try a less adversarial format for another big development issue: Transparency and Accountability. I have an instinctive suspicion of anything that sounds like a magic bullet, a cost-free solution, or motherhood and apple pie in general. So the current surge in interest on open data and transparency has me grumbling and sniffing
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Are ‘serious games’ a better way to prepare for climate change than scenario planning?

April 2, 2014
Had a nice little lightbulb moment last week, when I spoke at a meeting to launch yet another ODI paper. This one, ‘Planning for an Uncertain Future’ summarized some work by ACCRA (the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance), of which Oxfam is a member. The lightbulb in question was making a connection between two issues discussed in previous blog posts:
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Missing in Action: Why do NGOs Shy Away From Geopolitics?

April 1, 2014
Didier Jacobs, my strategic adviser equivalent at Oxfam America, wonders why this blog hasn’t mentioned some of the big geopolitical events of recent weeks, and what it says about NGO advocacy. Last month, a significant event inflected the world order: Russia invaded Crimea. Not a word about it in these columns so far. Whether their mission is poverty alleviation, environment
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Have we just squandered a good crisis, and a golden opportunity to kick-start climate action?

March 28, 2014
For years I, along with others like Alex Evans, have been saying ‘the politics of global carbon reduction is stuck, it will require a major climate shock in the rich countries to unblock it’. The argument is that major scandals, crises etc are required to create a sense of urgency, undermine coalitions of blockers, and convince everyone that a new
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Why the system for managing the world’s food and climate needs to be more like my car

March 25, 2014
Today, Oxfam is publishing a briefing on its ‘food and climate justice’ campaign. Here’s a post I wrote for the launch. When I get into my car in London, I step into a system designed to get me safely from A to B. It has seat belts, airbags, and an increasing number of electronic warning devices. The traffic system has rules
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Killer factcheck: ‘Women own 2% of land’ = not true. What do we really know about women and land?

March 21, 2014
Cheryl Doss, a feminist economist at Yale University argues that (as with ‘70% of the world’s poor are women‘ ) we need to stop using the unfounded ‘women own 2% of the world’s farmland’ stat, and start using some of the real numbers that are emerging (while also demanding much better gender data). For advocates, nothing is better than having
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Research → Policy; understanding NGO failures and trying to be funny on inequality: conversations with students

March 14, 2014
I’ve been meeting some impressive students this week. Last night I was at a very swanky dinner organized  by the LSE Student Society of its massive International Development department (rising to 300 uber-capable one year Masters students). Tricky gig – how do you make the topic (inequality) funny, as required by the after dinner speaker genre? Your responses to my
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Why scenario planning is a waste of time – focus on better understanding the past and present instead

March 13, 2014
Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. TS Eliot, Burnt Norton A few years ago, I used to rock up for the occasional UK government-convened scenario planning exercise (I know, exciting life or what?). They were usually run by ex Shell or BP ‘foresight people’ turned
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How can advocacy NGOs become more innovative? Your thoughts please.

March 11, 2014
Innovation. Who could be against it? Not even Kim Jong Un, apparently. People working on aid and development spend an increasing time discussing it – what is it? How do we get more of it? Who is any good at it? Innovation Tourette’s is everywhere. Most of that discussion takes place in areas such as programming (what we do on
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How can you tell whether a Multi-Stakeholder Initiative is a total waste of time?

March 10, 2014
Exfamer turned research consultant May Miller-Dawkins (@maykmd) tries to sort out diamonds from dross among the ever-proliferating ‘multi-stakeholder initiatives’. Have you ever had to decide whether or not to join a multi-stakeholder initiative? When I was at Oxfam there was a disagreement about whether or not to join a fledgling MSI. Some staff believed that the industry was going to use the
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