Devpolicy Talks

Tess Newton Cain sits down with Astrid Boulekone, General Manager of the Vanuatu Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Blog available here: http://devpolicy.org/pacific-conversations-private-sector-development-in-vanuatu-with-astrid-boulekone-20140306/ Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpol...

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed is the Founder and Chairperson of BRAC, the world's largest NGO. https://crawford.anu.edu.au/devpolicy/events Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org. Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au. Follow us on Twitter, Faceb...

Frances Seymour is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development based in Washington, DC, and a Senior Advisor to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In her keynote address, she argued that, while reducing forest loss will depend on domestic political will and profound institutional and governance changes in forest countries, there are also options available to rich country governments...

This plenary session provided updates and new analysis of aid from three emerging superpowers – China, India and Brazil – from three leading experts. Dr. Rani Mullen is Director, Indian Development Cooperation Research and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. Dr. Tongquan Sun is an Associate Professor at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of So...

Roger Ridell is an associate at Oxford Policy Management and is a development and aid specialist with some 40 years’ experience. His 2008 book Does Foreign Aid Really Work? was the first attempt in more than 20 years to survey the evidence around whether aid actually works. Roger’s keynote address provided an updated assessment on aid’s impact, discussed what impact we ought to expect aid to have...

Julie Bishop, Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered the opening address at the 2014 Australasian Aid and Development Policy Workshop. A transcript of her speech is available here: http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2014/jb_sp_140213.html Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.o...

Tess Newton Cain sits down with Kolone Vaai, Principal Consultant at KVAConsult Ltd and former Financial Secretary for the Government of Samoa (1984-1990). Blog post available here: http://devpolicy.org/pacific-conversations-the-economy-of-samoa-with-kolone-vaai-20140122/ Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to o...

In July and August 2013 the Development Policy Centre surveyed 356 stakeholders in the Australian aid program, from the senior executives of Australia’s biggest NGOs and development contracting companies, to the officials of multilateral, partner government and Australian government agencies. The survey asked them what they thought about the Australian aid program, what they liked, what they didn’...

As troops withdraw and aid declines, this is a critical period of transition for Afghanistan. At this forum, the speakers questioned what has been achieved to date. The event also included the Australia launch of The Asia Foundation’s Survey of the Afghan People 2013. This is the biggest public opinion poll in Afghanistan, covering all 34 provinces. Through face-to-face interviews, over 9,000 Afgh...

Ashlee Betteridge sits down with Daisy Plana to discuss her new role as the Senior Social Worker and first CEO of the PNG Family and Sexual Violence Case Management Centre (CMC).The CMC is a newly registered NGO, currently in the set-up phase. Blog available here: http://devpolicy.org/moving-beyond-the-medical-for-family-and-sexual-violence-survivors-in-png-20131212/ You can read about the rationa...

The Pacific region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which carry the risk of significant economic costs. The Asian Development Bank’s report on the economics of climate change in the Pacific aims to raise the level of understanding of all sectors and stakeholders on possible impacts of climate change, with analyses that lead to regional strategies supported by national p...

The unfolding crisis in Syria has left more than eight million people displaced from their homes. Cut off from vital services, desperately in need of water, food and health care, today an entire generation of Syrians are teetering on the brink. How does the international community respond to such a crisis? Luciano Calestini, currently coordinating UNICEF’s humanitarian response in Lebanon where mo...

Tess Newton Cain sits down with Odo Tevi, who was Governor of the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu for the last 15 years, to discuss the Vanuatu economy. Blog post available here: http://devpolicy.org/in-conversation-with-odo-tevi-on-the-vanuatu-economy-20131329/ Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at...

The small states of the Asia and Pacific region face unique challenges in raising their growth potential and living standards relative to other small states due to their small populations, geographical isolation and dispersion, narrow export and production bases, exposure to shocks, and heavy reliance on aid. Higher fixed government costs, low access to credit by the private sector, and capacity c...

After decades of poor economic performance, Africa is doing much better, with higher economic growth. Why? What role did aid play? And what are the lessons for the Pacific? Jim Adams knows both Africa and the Pacific well. In the 2014 Harold Mitchell Development Policy Lecture, he focussed on how effective economic reform emerged in Africa and related institutional and capacity issues. Drawing on...

The most serious problems that developing countries face are increasingly international in nature. Climate change, water scarcity, communicable diseases, food insecurity and the depletion of forests and fisheries—all these things call for cooperation at the regional or global levels, as well as action at the national level. Such cooperation is often mediated by international organisations and much...

Tess Newton Cain sits down with Katy Leroy, a constitutional lawyer who has lived on Nauru for seven years. Until very recently she was Parliamentary Counsel for Nauru with responsibility for drafting legislation and advising the Speaker of Parliament and parliamentary committees. A full transcript of the interview is available here: http://devpolicy.org/pacific-conversations/6.%20Transcript%20of%...

Throughout the developing world, millions of people lack access to safe water and improved sanitation, which has high social and economic costs. The World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) has been advising client governments on the effective engagement of domestic private sector in the delivery of services and the development of water and sanitation markets that cater to the poor. In this...

Oxfam's Duncan Green speaks with Devpolicy's Associate Director Robin Davies about the realities of doing development in complex systems. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org. Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au. Follow us on Twitter...

How do we plan, campaign and work in development when we don’t know what is going to happen and we don’t know what solutions will work? Aid professionals know that real life has a way of ignoring our plans and procedures, but often we block out that knowledge in order to keep functioning. In this talk, Duncan Green asks what would we do differently, if we acknowledge and try to adapt to the messin...

Until recently, discussions on a new post-2015 framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals mostly revolved around general principles or else very particular features of a possible landscape. Now, several proposals for an integrated post-2015 agenda have emerged. Most prominent among these is the illustrative framework offered by the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel (HLP) of Eminen...

Decades of conflict have eroded the physical and social fabric of Afghanistan, with severe impacts on the lives of children. Kerry Boland, consultant to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), talked about her experience building formal and informal mechanisms to protect children in Afghanistan. Kerry drew on her expe...

Australia’s aid program has increased massively over the last decade, but its future is unclear, and aid policy has become controversial. The Labor Government has repeatedly delayed its target to lift aid 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI), and just this month slashed $900 million from the forward estimates for aid. The Coalition has not put any date to achievement of 0.5. There are also...

Since the mid-1990s, economic growth rates in large and populous middle-income countries have substantially outpaced those in OECD countries. This has reshaped the global economy and favoured convergence in global income per capita. The process of ‘shifting wealth’ was led by China and India, but other countries are also contributing to it, including Brazil and South Africa. In spite of the persis...

Aid agencies increasingly stress the importance of value for money, but what does this mean, and might a managerial focus on results actually undermine aid effectiveness, or simply result in aid confusion? This public forum addressed these questions from a variety of perspectives. Speakers at the forum were: Dr Cathy Shutt, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex and convenor...