MDGs matter only minimally for development in Côte d’Ivoire

By Bruce Byiers

Preparation of the European Report on Development 2013 is now well underway. It will focus on “Elements for a Post-2015 Agenda” and aims at feeding into the debate about what development framework should replace the Millennium Development Goals after their expiry date in 2015. As part of the background research work for this report, the ERD team is conducting four country case studies (in...

Celebrating the Voluntary Guidelines on Governance of Land and recognizing the need to move beyond

By Frauke de Weijer

This article was published on 11 May and is available on ECDPM’s Talking Points blog.

Increasing scarcity of natural resources is leading to large changes in ownership and usage of water and land, with negative outcomes for the poor. The changes in land use patterns in developing countries are also not contributing to a transition to a more environmentally sustainable resource use....

Structuring options for a green economy – what does the ERD say about the ingredients, recipes, and cooks?

Green economy deliberations are central to both the G20 Development Working Group where the discussions centre on inclusive green growth and the Rio+20 negotiations, where informal negotiations resumed last week. Over the last week we informed both fora on how the ERD is framing the green economy. The framework used in this year’s European Report on Development, Confronting scarcity: managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth, is proving to be useful for the debate on the green economy....

Bonn2011 Conference: the water, energy and food security nexus

In November 2011, the German Federal Government organised a three-day conference in Bonn on the water, energy and food nexus, very similar to the nexus at the centre of the forthcoming European Report on Development 2011-2012. This nexus approach to thinking about natural resource management is becoming increasingly mainstream: the World Economic Forum dedicated a whole section to the water-energy-food nexus in its 2011 Global Risks Report and Shell turned its...

Managing natural resources in the context of increasing scarcities: developing country experiences

One in five roses on the EU market is dependent on the effective management of one relatively small river basin in Kenya. Lake Naivasha is surrounded by the world’s largest flower companies who are dependent on fresh water withdrawal from the lake. Together these companies were responsible for some 10% or approximately US$400 million of Kenya’s total foreign exchange revenue in 2008 and directly employed 20,000 individuals (indirectly the sector...

Harvesting questions: the results of the first two ERD consultations, and a quick look ahead

During the next few months, a team of authors from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the German Development Institute (DIE) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) will be busy with drafting the 2012 European Report on Development (ERD). Similar to the first two editions, this report will be prepared through a collaborative effort, to which many researchers from other institutions and parts of the world will contribute.

The focus of this report will be on how natural resource management can promote inclusive and sustainable growth. Within this...

Land grabs, the ‘WEL nexus’, and a lot of questions

On the 18^th and 19^th May, ECDPM hosted the partners currently engaged in formulating the 2012 European Development Report. This was a follow-up to previous meetings in London and Brussels and aimed at furthering discussions on the structure and content of the report among whilst also bringing in experts on the topics relating to the title of the report:...

Forests: an increasingly competitive use of land

As the global population grows and diets change, the need for agricultural production becomes greater. It is likely that this increased production will come not only from agricultural yields but also agricultural expansion. Added to this, increased demand for biofuels – largely driven by policy measures adopted by the European Union and the United States – also leads to increased demand for productive agricultural land.

Much agricultural expansion has previously occurred on...

Transparency and social impact – is there a link?

Contributed by Alex Beech, the Communications Officer for aidinfo.

For some time now, there have been murmurings in the air about a transformation in aid. The issue underpinning this debate is transparency, and the potential it has to improve the effectiveness of aid, increase social impact, and move us closer towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals....