Blogs and Think Pieces
Highlights ...
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The concept of resilience, and “resilience thinking”, goes beyond understanding resilience as ability to withstand shocks. It has the potential to inspire much more than the palliative interventions to which it seems to be relegated by its latest use in global policy documents, from the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to the New Urban Agenda. This think piece introduces the concepts of resilience and transformative change, highlights useful links between them, and outlines some of the policy implications of resilience thinking for transformative change.
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This think piece argues that the commitment and right to quality education for all will ring hollow without serious measures to overcome the access and inclusion barriers that face millions of school-age migrant children and youth. These access and inclusion challenges are particularly pressing in countries of the Global South, which are also striving to expand and improve their education systems.
Also...
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Just returned from the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) in New York, the annual UN platform to review SDG implementation, UNRISD Director Paul Ladd reflects on talk and action, and the commitment needed from rich as well as from poor countries to keep the promises of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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Combining agricultural and social protection interventions to support small family farmers is an innovative approach to combating poverty and hunger that is gaining credibility in sub-Saharan Africa and making its way into international development discourse. This blog post explores evidence of how social protection is contributing to improving both social and economic outcomes for poor farmers.
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Despite progress made by countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in reducing poverty and unemployment during the 2000s thanks to economic growth and investments in social programmes, a recent economic downturn has reversed this trend. Innovations in policy and institutional arrangements have since been introduced in an attempt to keep poverty and unemployment down. This blog post looks at the nature of these recent innovations and examines their transformative potential for improving people’s livelihoods.
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The gig economy and its innovative approach to employment is attracting increased attention in policy debates. Often assumed to be the purview of younger, tech-savvy generations, these new forms of work are however increasingly being adopted by seniors. This piece explores why more and more older people are moving into the gig economy and what this tells us about the state of traditional pension systems in a changing world.
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The United Nations’ Financing for Development Forum held at the end of May in New York was notable for the first major admission in a formal outcome document that at the current pace, the Sustainable Development Goals will not be reached. The Forum—which deals with all aspects of finance and the financial architecture that regulates finance—intended to work towards reforms that would make finance work for development. This blog post looks at what progress was made, and where political blockages are still holding things up.
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Históricamente Costa Rica ha sido reconocida en el mundo, y con razón, por sus políticas ambientales, y en especial por su preocupación por un desarrollo turístico sostenible. Sin embargo, el fuerte desarrollo turístico-residencial que se produjo en el país desde principios de los años 2000, y la forma en la que se ha seguido creciendo tras la crisis financiera del 2008, ponen de manifiesto problemas y prácticas insostenibles que no se pueden ignorar.
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Latinoamérica ha sido un espacio de experimentación de varios modelos de desarrollo. En su mayoría estos modelos han enfatizado en el crecimiento y la estabilidad de la economía, lo que ha llevado a desequilibrios ambientales y a exacerbaciones de diferentes tipos de desigualdad en el continente. Este blog propone tres orientaciones macro que, de ser tenidas en cuenta por gobiernos y hacedores de política, podrían construir un enfoque alternativo y transformador de desarrollo.
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Avalanches and earthquakes are not simply ‘natural' events but are fundamentally the result of local dynamics of power and privilege that leave people vulnerable in the face of dangerous climatic and geological hazards. Contemporary disaster risk reduction policies therefore need to reimagine the very political system within which such disasters occur, instead of focusing on leaner, meaner technical interventions. This blog posts considers how an eco-social approach to disaster resilience can help deliver transformative outcomes in the long term.