General Conference 2008

Birgit Habermann (Commission for Development Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences) asks in her blog and critically reflects the discussions at EADI’s General conference at http://www.kef-online.at/de/r4d-news/conference-global-governance-for-sustainable-development.html.

There was some really interesting stuff going on in the parallel sessions as well, particularly in the roundtable on assymetries in N-S partnerships. All in all I feel that EADI is in some areas not taking leadership. We had a very good session on cooperation and training, but as in some of the other discussions I felt many people still feel they have to defend development studies rather than taking it as it is, and contributing with it to a global sustainability debate. Development studies are not what they were in the 1970ies and 1980ies any longer, and it is time that DS finds its new role. By refusing to accept the necessity of this, and the need to adapt to a very different situation in 2008 compared to 1968 DS acts against its very own principles, and that makes me very sad. However, there are some encouraging developments, and I very much hope that DS manages to ‘leap-frog’ into a new era, bringing with it the way of thinking in cross-disciplinary ways,its theoretical foundations, a certain amount reflexivity and the ability to be more than just a discipline in a box not able to communicate with others…

Read more…

Report by Katja Hujo

On 24 June 2008, as part of the EADI 12th General Conference, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) held a workshop entitled “Rethinking Poverty Reduction Strategies: the Role of Social Policy”. This workshop concentrated on the legitimate role of the state in social policy, particularly for poverty reduction.

Although poverty reduction is currently high on the agenda of international development, there are concerns that many countries will be unable to make meaningful dents in their poverty figures. Critics affirm that the deflationary adjustment model that gained prominence in the 1980s still imposes constraints on the types of anti-poverty strategies that countries can adopt. Moreover, lessons have not been drawn from the experiences of late industrializers that have been successful in reducing poverty in very short periods. These countries did not focus on poverty reduction in particular, but on long-term processes of structural transformation that included employment expansion and/or the pursuit of universalist social policies.

The experience of the now developed countries demonstrates the critical role of social transfers for reducing poverty, where social-democratic models have been the most successful at doing so. Yet, the role of social protection goes beyond risk management and poverty reduction. A broad approach takes into account that social policy has the potential to contribute to economic development, (gender-) equality and equity, democratization and political legitimation, as well as social cohesion. Social policy is concerned with redistribution, production, reproduction and protection and works in tandem with economic policy in pursuit of national, social and economic goals. Indeed, UNRISD research shows that for social polices to be inclusive and equitable, the various roles of social policy must be equally represented in a national social policy strategy. In particular, pursuit of the productive and protective objectives of social policy should not come at the expense of the redistributive or reproductive ones.

The following topics were presented and discussed at the workshop: (more…)

In June, 450 development researchers met in Geneva at the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) conference entitled ‘Global governance for sustainable development: the need for policy coherence and new partnerships’.

The IKM research programme of EADI (Emergent Issues in Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) and International Development ) has commissioned a small cross-disciplinary group of artists and designers to prod uce an installation that creatively expresses the work IKM is engaged in. The installations includes a Google Earth interface to some of IKM’s projects and related information that expresses their concept of "multiple knowledges", exhibited alongside artwork and other physical displays that capture IKM’s ethos. The installation was shown for the duration of the conference, here are some pictures. Read also Sarah Cummings’article on the Giraffe blog .

Speaking in the second plenary session at the EADI General Conference, Charles Gore (UNCTAD) argues that we are witnessing a paradigm shift in development thinking. After 25 years of structural adjustment programmes, we are entering a new ‘development era’. But what is the nature of this emerging period? According to Mr. Gore, five elements need to be taken into consideration to define this new way of thinking: resource scarcity; radical global inequality and radical global interdependence; emergence of the BRICS+; globalisation of expectations without globalisation of opportunities; conceptual confusion, where global issues are still addressed with national frames of references.

Video and text by EUFORIC

See more videos from the EADI General Conference 2008.

Panel: Bina Agarwal, Lee Stapleton, and Eliakimu Zahabu

Chair: Jon Lovett

The approach in this parallel session was to engage the audience in a more participatory discussion rather than to have three presentations and question and answer session. The three panel members represented different strands of Sustainable Development. Each spoke in turn to propositions on specific themes of sustainable development related to natural resources, technology and participation. The audience was invited to respond as to whether or not they agreed with the propositions and the speakers.

Bina Agrawal spoke to the propositions on participation .

• Proposition 1. Participation enables voices of the poor to be heard at the global table.

• Proposition 2. Transaction costs of participation are too high and central government control is a more effective way of linking global and local.

Non-participation by the poor is costly but much depends on whether or not participation is nominal. You can have participation for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. An example of the former is that community consent is a requirement for conservation of natural resources, eg forests and water. The intrinsic reason is that you should be able to have a voice in decisions that affect you. However, participation doesn’t mean that you can have influence. Social norms can exclude you from participation in groups. Here there is a distinct gender dimension – women’s participation in a group can be passive while men’s is active. (more…)

Report on Parallel Session

If development is about change, how can real change which involves a whole community be brought about? Valerie Brown used an analysis of the types of knowledge brought to bear on the dynamics of a community and how the relationship between these knowledges can lead to either inertia or development. Using it as an example of the diversity of knowledges which exist in all the many communities with which the Local Sustainability Project of the Australian National University has worked, she told the story of a change process in the community which hosts the world’s largest lead smelter. The starting point was one of heavy pollution and ill health, masked by anxiety about the impact of any change on employment. Individuals, the community, the mine company, the town council and local professionals, such as doctors, all looked at reality from their own set perspective, neither engaging with the problem or with the perspectives the others. The change process started as a worried grandparent, related to a local trade union official, changed the focus of attention from employment to child health. Gradually the various knowledges – the individual, communal, organisational and specialist – moved out of their protective silos to communicate with each other on joint solutions to what came to be seen as a joint problem. “How”, Valerie Brown concluded by asking the audience, “do you address the multiple knowledges in your own community? Who wins? Who loses? Whose truth prevails?” (more…)

During the EADI Genal Conference 2008, we cought up with John Humphrey from the IDS. Mr. Humphrey states that China’s role in development cooperation, and in Africa in particular, is still marginal in terms of ODA. The real issue is that China is doing things in a different way compared to traditional player and challenges the way development has been done so far, especially by linking aid to trade and investments. For the EU this means to rethink the way it links development with other sectoral policies such as trade, security and environment.

Video and text by EUFORIC

See more videos from the EADI General Conference 2008.

Discussion Working Group Gender and Development

Wednesday 25 June 2008-06-26 14.00 – 18.00

Chair: Christine Mueller, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, Germany

Rapporteur: Irna van der Molen, Technology and Sustainable Development, University of Twente

Announcements:

• Thursday at 13.30 there will be a presentation by Christine Verschuur and Fenneke Reysoo of the IUED on a Masters programme on Gender and Development at IUED
• EADI has established an EADI price, to encourage young researchers. If you have an interesting paper, please submit this to the EADI secretariat.
• The Working Group on Gender and Development organize a workshop on Gender and Corruption, from 10-11 November, at GTZ headquarters in Frankfurt. More information can be found on www.eadi.org and in the newsletter. We would like to encourage young scientists to submit papers
• The Working Group on Gender and Development has submitted a proposal to the EU, which was evaluated very positive, but has not received financing.

Irantzu M. Azkue, HEGOA Institute of Development Studies and International Cooperation, University of Basque Country, Spain. “Gender and Peace Building: Women’s Peace Activism in El Salvador” (more…)