General Conference 2008

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

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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.

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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…)

Chair: Nadarajah Shanmugaratnam, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway

Speakers: Sven Grimm, German Development Institute, Germany

John Humphrey, Institute of Development Studies, UK

Garth le Pere, Institute for Global Dialogue, South Africa

Nadarajah Shanmugaratnam opened the parallel session by commenting on the background of the EDC2020 project. He highlighted challenges posed by the European structure such as the growing number of new member states to the European Union which bring in a diversity of member state policies. On the other hand, the global South is also highly differentiated and is facing dynamic proces ses in many countries. Emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil implement their own South-South co-operation; in many states national governance failure can be observed and underdevelopment is not overcome yet. Therefore, the questions “How to address development issues in the new complex environment” and “Which issues have to be addresses in development co-operation or international relations” remain crucial.

EDC2020 project has identified three main emerging issues which European development co-operation is facing:

1. New actors in international co-operation
2. Energy security, democracy and development
3. Climate change and development

Sven Grimm , Research Fellow at the German Development Institute (DIE), gave a short overview of issues and aims of the project “European Development Co-operation to 2020“. In three topical work packages on emerging issues - namely New Actors in International Co-operation; Energy Security, Democracy and Development as well as Climate Change and Development - the three-year project aims at identifying different trends on the agenda for the next decade which impact on development co-operation. He referred to Charles Gore’s presentation in the plenary session II “Can Economic Growth Be Reconciled with Sustainable Development? On Knife-Edge between Climate Change and Millenium Development Goals” who had identified the same topics in his presentation. Sven stressed that various dates in the next years (e.g. 2015 for the MDGs) will force us to assess our work and to see whether we failed or were successful. The project is intending to provide input for those different scenarios. Issues, chances and risks of development co-operation will be analysed and policy advise will be given in a time when a number of reforms are pending on the European level and the future of the Lisbon Treaty is uncertain. The aid architecture is facing challenges with regard to the division of labour when new actors emerge on the international scene. (more…)

Notes taken by Agnes Pohle and Rut Schwitalla

WG 09.2 International Migration / Migration International

Session 2 Thursday 26 June 14.00-16.30

Session Title: Migration as a livelihood strategy in the policy context of sending countries

Chair: Béatrice Knerr

Co-Chair: Claude Auroi

Speakers:

· Treena S. Wu

· Kimberly C. Ochs

· Wildan Syafitri

· Christian Ambrosius

Issues highlighted in the discussion

In the session following issues arising from the presentations were discussed:

· Participants exchanged experiences in collecting data through interviews. It was mentioned that researchers might face difficulties in interviewing both remitters and remittance-receiver of the same family/household because of non-transparent relationships.

· In the case of Aceh (Indonesia) the influence of the violent conflicts was highlighted. Due to such conflicts female share among migrants increased significantly, because man went into hiding to avoid becoming involved into the war. Indirectly this resulted in a higher education level of women. (more…)

Notes taken by Agnes Pohle and Rut Schwitalla

Parallel sessions 1 Friday 27 June 9.00-10.30

1.1 Multilevel Governance and Livelihood Strategies of Migrants

Organiser: EADI Working Group on International Migration

Chair: Béatrice Knerr, University of Kassel, Germany

Speakers:

· Germán A. Zárate-Hoyos

· Massimiliano Cali

· Vesselin Mintchev

· Narayanan Nair Krishnan

· Rasha Moh’d Said Amin Istaiteyeh

Issues highlighted in discussion

As a follow-up to the presentations, the following issues were discussed:

· In order to profit from synergy effects, it would be helpful to link remittance flows with appropriate financial sector policies.

· Remittances could serve as a tool for poverty alleviation, but at the same time be a result of economic underdevelopment itself.

· Migration and remittances flows a multi-disciplinary field of research, being influenced by many factors. They might be analyzed separately, but finally linked together. (more…)

Notes taken by Agnes Pohle and Rut Schwitalla

Parallel Sessions 2 Friday 27 June 11.00-12.30 h

2.2 Migration and Development: Policy Coherence and Effective Partnerships

Organiser: OECD Development Centre, France

Chair: Ibrahim Awad, International Labour Office, Suisse

Speakers:

· Denis Drechsler

· Bachir Hamdouch

· Binod Khadria

Highlights arising from the discussion

In the session following issues were discussed:

· For measuring development it is important to choose a set of indicators. Among these could be remittances (most visible), knowledge transfer and labour market imbalance.

· Most remittances are sent by workers on low-skilled jobs which also contribute to poverty reduction in the countries of origin.

· “Brain drain” and “brain gain” are not clearly defined, and still are being controversially discussed.

· There is no agreement on the impacts of migration on development.

· Because of the lack of a social security system people often do not want to return to their country of origin.

· There are different definitions of highly skilled, skilled and unskilled workers. Indicators used are, for example, educational level or profession.

· Highly skilled education does not automatically lead to development. It might even imply a certain level of labour market imbalance.

· International migration flows in general are more and more difficult to measure, in particular as a result of increasing temporary and circular migration.

· The EU migration policy is in parts becoming more restrictive. Because there is a need for highly skilled labour force, several initiatives have been launched to facilitate in-migration of this group. The migration process for unskilled migrants, in contrast, tends to become more difficult.

· The competition between the U.S. und the EU for highly skilled migrants influences their immigration policies.

· Presentations and discussions of the session focused on remittances flows. Related questions of interest were the influence of Diaspora networks and the social costs of migration.

· The international community is requested to take over responsibility for creating employment and implementing development policies. Destination countries and migrants` countries of origin should cooperate to achieve positive results for those involved.

· It should be taken into account that migration has long-term implications.