Good COP, bad COP: How COP21 will impact on the SDGs
By Professor David Hulme
The 21st COP Summit started yesterday in Paris. After almost 20 years of climate talks, it is hoped that the international community will finally agree concerted action to tackle climate change. Though a tiny minority still debate the science, it is generally agreed that the world needs to reduce emissions so that warming of the climate due to human activity does not climb higher than 2 degrees celsius – remembering that a number of already-vulnerable countries are threatened by temperature rises of 1.5 degrees celsius.
Do the SDGs signal revolution or evolution?
By Heiner Janus
In his Global Development seminar last week, Professor David Hulme asked: Are the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the world’s biggest promise or just another development fad? The short answer: a bit of both.
Content-wise the 2030 agenda, including the SDGs, is transformative. The 17 goals and 169 targets contain every issue one could wish for in a global development agenda, such as eradicating poverty, combating hunger, better education and health, protecting the climate and even controversial issues like reducing inequality or promoting peace and security.
WATCH | Food Security in Africa: Crop Choice, Climate & Gender
Food security in Africa is challenged in three key ways – by competition between food and cash crops, by constrained access to productive resources, and through social norms.
This is the upshot of my 10-minute film on agriculture in Ivory Coast, which summarises evidence from past research, samples the views of local stakeholders and outlines the contours of a future research agenda. The film is investigatory in scope. Firstly, it seeks to uncover the mechanisms that determine the allocation of land and labour in Africa to food and tropical cash crop production, considering consequent impacts on food security. Secondly, it investigates the role gender-related social norms play within agricultural choices and outcomes.
Hear David Hulme on the MDGs to SDGs: Transformation or Evolution?
The next lecture in our Global Development Seminar Series takes place on Wednesday November 25, with Professor David Hulme. David’s seminar is titled From MDGs to SDGS: Transformation or Evolution?
The lecture will run 4.30pm-6pm in Cordingley Lecture Theatre, Humanities Bridgeford Street (HBS) building.
LISTEN | Sandra Halperin on Re-Envisioning Development
Royal Holloway Professor Sandra Halperin gave a compelling lecture last week at our Global Development Seminar Series. Drawing on her most recent book, Re-Envisioning Global Development: a Horizontal Perspective, Sandra critiqued Eurocentric tellings of development – calling for a broader narrative that acknowledges the horizontal spread of capitalist development, and the implications of this for global development thinking and practice today.
Listen to the talk:
Tackling Youth Unemployment in Arusha: From Knowledge to Action
By Nicola Banks
One of the consistent battles I face as a researcher is the feeling of uselessness I experience in each and every interview I conduct. This is not to say that I believe our research is ‘useless’ – anything but. Research must continue to play an important role in revealing the realities and the complexities of poverty and social injustice. And by doing relevant and timely research we can continue to press for greater prioritisation of important development issues. One of these priorities simply must be youth unemployment.
A new economic geography of trade and development?
In a new article published via Territory, Politics, Governance, Rory Horner reviews emerging evidence of the growth of South-South trade and argues for the need to move beyond win-win notions from development cooperation to highlight the commercial realities and very uneven geographies and development outcomes associated with this new economic landscape. Rory has synthesised the article for us below.
Vietnam’s PISA Surprise
By M Niaz Asadullah and Liyanage Devangi Perera*
Vietnam’s performance in the latest round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has created a stir among education experts and policymakers around the world. The country’s 15-year-olds participated for the first time in the 2012 assessment and ranked 17th in mathematics, 8th in science, and 19th in reading among 65 participating nations, placing Vietnam above the OECD average. At a time when Western countries are striving to replicate East Asia’s success in education, Vietnam has outranked the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In doing so, it has become an exception to the argument that educational excellence is not possible without a high level of economic development.
Hear Sandra Halperin on Re-Envisioning Development: A ‘Horizontal’ Approach
The next lecture in our Global Development Seminar Series takes place on Wednesday 11 November, with Professor Sandra Halperin. Sandra is Professor of International Relations and co-director of the Centre for Global and Transnational Politics at Royal Holloway (University of London). She will be speaking on Re-envisioning Development: A ‘Horizontal’ Approach.
The lecture will run 4.30pm-6pm in Cordingley Lecture Theatre, Humanities Bridgeford Street (HBS) building.
Next up at the Global Development Seminar Series
Semester 1 is well underway, and the first two lectures in our Global Development Seminar Series have been excellent. On 14 October we heard from IDS Director Melissa Leach on Equality, Sustainability and Security: Towards Transformations in Global Development (LISTEN), and on 21 October our own Dan Brockington spoke on The Paradoxes of Celebrity Advocacy (LISTEN).
Below are the details for the next three seminars. We’ll be posting more information about the session with Professor Sandra Halperin next week.