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Will the Future EU Budget Water Down the Consensus on Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development?

By Amelia Hadfield and Simon Lightfoot

The European Union (EU)’s draft Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2021-27 is currently under negotiation. If approved, the EU’s development cooperation budget would increase by 30% despite Brexit. Given the possible political sensitivities around these discussions, the most recent peer review of the EU’s plans by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) did not swerve the issue and made a number of recommendations relating to the political context of the MFF negotiations. Continue reading “Will the Future EU Budget Water Down the Consensus on Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development?”

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Social Transfers: A Corner-Stone for Human, Economic and Political Development

By Markus Loewe and Christoph Strupat
(Image by UNICEF Malawi)

It is common wisdom that social transfer schemes are an important instrument of poverty reduction and human development. But evidence is increasing that fair and generous social transfer schemes are also important for economic growth and political stability. Continue reading “Social Transfers: A Corner-Stone for Human, Economic and Political Development”

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“Global Development? We Have Reached a Cul-De-Sac”

EADI President Henning Melber strongly supports the view that science is not neutral and needs to take clear positions. At the recent EADI Directors’ Meeting in October 2018 in Vienna we had the chance to ask him a few questions:

What are, in your view, the most pressing challenges for the global development research community?

Global development? We have reached a cul-de-sac. The signs are obvious that development, as it was promoted since the last several centuries, basically since the era of enlightenment, is nothing that provides a sustainable future. We talk a lot about sustainability in the meantime, even global sustainability, but we are not walking the talk. We are not living up to that. Continue reading ““Global Development? We Have Reached a Cul-De-Sac””

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Let’s Talk About Communication! Impressions from the EADI Research Communications Workshop

By Christiane Kliemann

It is no secret that in times of digitalisation and information overload, communicating research plays an increasingly important role – research institutes employing larger or smaller communication units in order to make their own voice heard in the cacophony of voices, opinions and media outlets.

“The ability to communicate is the key to being relevant”, Anna-Pia Hudtloff, Head of Communication at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) said at our recent two-day workshop on research communication. Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Communication! Impressions from the EADI Research Communications Workshop”

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Why We Need Alternatives to Development

By Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta

The seductive nature of development rhetoric, sometimes called developmentality or developmentalism, has been internalized across virtually all countries. Decades after the notion of development spread around the world, only a handful of countries that were called ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’, now really qualify as ‘developed’. Others struggle to emulate the North’s economic template, and all at enormous ecological and social cost. The problem lies not in lack of implementation, but in the conception of development as linear, unidirectional, material and financial growth, driven by commodification and capitalist markets. Continue reading “Why We Need Alternatives to Development”