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COVID-19 and the Economic Stories of our Time

By Simon Mair

What is the economy? Speaking to the NGO Our Economy, one interviewee described the economy as “a giant blob or mass that feels like it has its own consciousness.” In popular and academic discussion of the economy it can seem like we’re talking about a child or pet that we have to nurture. The economy is often portrayed as self-aware entity, something separate from but dependent on us. What will happen to “the economy” because of the coronavirus? Have we “sacrificed” the economy to save lives? Continue reading “COVID-19 and the Economic Stories of our Time”

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Resource Grabbing in a Changing Environment

By Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong, Amod Shah, Corinne Lamain, Elyse Mills, Natacha Bruna, Sergio Coronado and Yukari Sekine | EADI/ISS Blog Series

We are living in an era where people’s daily lives are deeply intertwined with the impacts of global markets and the threats of climate change. Even good intentions for mitigating and adapting to climate change can jeopardise natural resources and rural livelihoods. These seemingly abstract issues are becoming increasingly clear through both research and the role of the media, sparking questions such as: How do attempts to address climate change prevent farmers from working their lands, or negatively affect the livelihoods of forest users? Why are fishers organising themselves to resist interventions intended to protect marine areas? How do human rights groups and indigenous communities resist the state and powerful companies despite civil society space being increasingly limited? Continue reading “Resource Grabbing in a Changing Environment”

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Limits to learning: when climate action contributes to social conflict.

By Dirk Jan Koch and Marloes Verholt | EADI/ISS Blog Series

REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, has been one of the holy grails of international efforts to combat climate change for the past 10 years: over 10 billion dollars have been pledged to this cause by donor countries. Although REDD+ aims to reduce deforestation rates while increasing the welfare of landowners, research has shown that it also negatively impacts indigenous communities and has contributed to conflict. While hard work has been done to improve REDD+ programs, there are serious unintended effects of this much needed climate change action program. We wondered if organizations will do something about these unintended effects and would like to stimulate debate on that. We found that there are limits to what they learn: some unintended effects are likely to persist. Continue reading “Limits to learning: when climate action contributes to social conflict.”

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Can we understand the prospects of development without understanding its environmental dimension?

By Imme Scholz

Development Studies aim to understand the root causes of poverty and its reproduction and how social inequalities emerge and are stabilized. This is a broad endeavour with a number of academic disciplines contributing, with quite a few success stories if we look at the economic and the social dimensions. However, while maintaining the focus on human wellbeing, we ought to change the mainstream understanding of this task and need to include the natural evnironment and its threats in the research on development. Continue reading “Can we understand the prospects of development without understanding its environmental dimension?”