As Tom over at Humanosphere wrote a few days ago, there’s a cool initiative happening at Sheffield University that seeks to develop a global research agenda related to the post-2015 sustainable development goals process. (Disclaimer, I’m part of the steering committee.)
ID100: The Hundred Most Important Questions in International Development asks individuals and organizations from across policy, practice and academia to submit questions that address the world’s biggest environmental, political and socioeconomic problems. These will then be shortlisted down to a final set of 100 questions following a debate and voting process with representatives from development organizations and academia who will meet in July 2014.
The final list of questions will be published as policy report and in a leading academic journal. More on the consultation methodology here. Similar crowdsourced priority-setting exercises have worked in biodiversity conservation, food security and other areas, and they have been instrumental in framing global research priorities for policy development and implementation.
Anyone can submit up to five questions related to key issues in international development that require more exploration. You are encouraged to involve colleagues in the formulation of these questions.
Please submit your questions by March 25th – and check the submission guidelines before formulating questions. More information on the project can be accessed on the ID100 website. Hashtag: #ID100.
In the INGO sector, we often discuss ways that development organizations can better bridge development and ICTs. If you ask me, this video shows one of the best ways to achieve it: Hire people like David.
Hire young, local folks who have spent time in communities, who understand local realities, who are passionate about helping make things better, and who are hungry to do new things that make sense. Hire people who are humble; people who listen and who ask questions when they don’t know the answer.
Hire people who are curious, who seek out information, who are self starters, and who are not afraid to work hard, to try, to take risks and to fail. Hire people with creative fire who know how to work in a team, how to collaborate with others and how to learn from those around them. Hire young people who use and understand new technologies and who spend enough time out of the office to know how they can realistically be applied to development issues in difficult settings.
Hire people like David.
But don’t only hire them.
Once you hire them, make sure that they have the conditions to thrive and achieve to their fullest.
Make sure people like David have access to opportunities. Make sure that they get to attend regional and global internal and external meetings to share what they know, to learn, and to make contacts and connections.
Notice people like David. Reward them, honor them, and congratulate them regularly, even if they are too busy getting the job done to spend lots of time on self-promotion or office politics.
Make sure people like David have mentors and managers who can take roadblocks out of their way. Listen to them. Respect them. Question them, yes, but do so with the honest belief that they have the capacity to come up with ideas that can work even if they are not the ideas you would have come up with. Don’t feel threatened by people like David when they know more than you do about something. We can all learn from each other if the space for dialogue is open and sincere.
People like David are the present and future of development efforts.
People like David are the reason I have a hard time giving career advice to folks in the US who are looking for jobs overseas. I’d rather see people like David in these positions.
David recently won the “Most Promising Newcomer” award for the Americas region during Plan International’s Global Awards. Follow David at @2drodriguez and learn more about what he’s up to at the website Mis Derechos Ante Desastres (My Rights in the Face of a Disaster), the project Facebook page, or at @deantede.
Climate Extreme: How young people can respond to disasters in a changing world shares ways to prepare and reduce risks children and young people can face when disasters impact their communities and presents examples of crucial roles children have played in disaster preparedness, community education, hazard identification and in evacuation and first aid during disasters.
The report was authored by Amalia Fawcett from Plan Australia who says “Children and young people have the right to information that is tailored to them. Even complex scientific reports should be converted to child and youth appropriate versions, if the information is likely to affect them.”
Examples of young people having a real impact include:
Young people lobbied their government to get their school moved out of the path of potential landslides in the Philippines.
Girls and boys in Bangladesh have carried out household visits and community assemblies to share their skills and knowledge on early warning and household preparedness with others.
A school safety program in India involves children in conducting risk and vulnerability assessments in over 2,000 schools.
In Thailand youth are actively engaged in revising community based disaster risk management plans in flood affected areas.
In Vietnam, children are training their peers on how climate change could affect their communities.
Climate Extreme is based on the report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), featuring the extent to which climate change is affecting the number and severity of weather related disasters, investigating the current and predicted changes in our climate, how these affect disasters and what communities, governments and the international community can do to reduce risks people face.
Along with the IPCC report, Climate Extreme is being launched in New Delhi on May 3 and Bangkok on May 4.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body first established in 1988 by two United Nations organisations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects. As such it produces regular reports, the latest of which, the ‘Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.’
Children in a Changing Climate is a coalition of leading child-focused research, development and humanitarian organisations each with a commitment to share knowledge, coordinate activities and work with children as agents of change. Members of the coalition include UNICEF, World Vision, Plan International, Save the Children and Institute for Development Studies.
Australian Aid (the disaster response arm of AusAID) funded the production of the child-friendly version.
A version of this post originally appears on the World Bank’s Connect4Climate site.
Twenty years ago, at the Rio Earth Summit, 178 governments committed to a series of legally non-binding principles designed to commit governments to balance development and environment in a way that would bring a more sustainable future. Principle 10, the first international declaration that recognizes the rights of people to hold governments accountable for their policies regarding the environment, was one key result of the summit. It provides a means for people to engage in the decisions made by political leaders and government agencies about environmental issues that affect livelihoods and long-term wellbeing.
“Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided.” – Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration
Like Principle 10, the Zero Draft recognizes the need for broad public participation in decision-making, linked to a strengthened right to access information and to better civil society capacity to exercise that right. It notes that technology can make it easier for governments “to share information with the public and for the public to hold decision makers accountable” and that it is critical to work towards universal access to information and communications technologies. (Clauses 17 and 18). A recent analysis showed that participation, accountability, transparency, Principle 10/access to information and social inclusion/ equity are among the terms that share an ‘excellent’ level of interest among governments, UN agencies, civil society groups and other stakeholders.
Along with public participation, the Zero Draft also calls for “increased aid effectiveness, taking into account the Paris Declaration, the Accra Action Agenda and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation in ensuring that aid is effective, accountable and responsive to the needs and priorities of developing countries.” Greater coherence at international and national levels is urged, including “effective oversight of resources to ensure that developing countries have steady and predictable access to adequate financing, including by the private sector, to promote sustainable development.’
A role for Communications and ICT tools
ICTs can play a role in supporting Principle 10 and Zero Draft, and pushing for appropriate mechanisms for response and redress.
Mass media campaigns and communication for development (C4D) approaches have long been used to disseminate information and encourage environmental awareness and behavior change. New media has improved access to information and allows multi-channel communication rather than one-way broadcasts. Greater access to mobile phones and to new media channels mean that a broader population than ever before can be engaged in and/or participate proactively in defining and acting on Rio+20 and its outcomes.
In addition to information sharing and behavior change, ICTs have the potential to play a strong role in helping civil society organize and push for greater transparency, openness and accountability around Rio+20. As Chantal Line Carpintier suggests, “Rio+20 should also agree on an effective accountability process for all actors – governments, business and industry, local authorities, NGOs and other major groups and stakeholders. Accountability and ownership by all actors would favour implementation. There is growing support, for instance, for public reporting on sustainability performance. A registry of commitments is one of the tools that have been suggested to follow up on commitments made at Rio+20 to avoid previous lack of implementation.”
An effort similar to the open government partnership and the International Aid Transparency Initiative or the integration of sustainable development goals and Rio+20 commitments into these two efforts could be something to consider, along with a mandate for corporations to also open their activities to public scrutiny.
On-line organizing combined with both online and offline actions (in places that have ready access to social media) can help the world prepare for Rio and to push for its outcomes to be implemented.
Access, capacity and the communication cycle
Despite the great potential for ICTs in communication, change and accountability efforts, however; lack of access to ICTs and potentially low capacity to interpret data that might be presented on-line in such a registry is of concern in less accessible rural communities and among some marginalized groups.
Education levels, literacy, and other excluding factors such as poverty and gender discrimination can severely limit ICT and social media access for a large number of people. In addition, information produced in dominant cultures or languages can exclude or override those with less power. As Angelica Ospina notes in her post Knowledge Brokers, ICTs, and Climate Change: Hybrid Approaches to Reach the Vulnerable, “There are many misconceptions about what ‘reaching out’ implies, as in practice it requires much more than making climate change information and knowledge publicly available through Internet-based tools such as Web portals and online databases.”
Therefore, there needs to be, “a more holistic understanding of the information cycle, including the creation, acquisition, assimilation, management, dissemination and ultimately the USE of climate change information, particularly within vulnerable contexts. Beyond the provision of climate change information, it’s necessary to consider if/how the information is being integrated -or not- into decision-making processes at the local, regional or national levels,” she says.
The Children in a Changing Climate project uses a variety of participatory development and media tools for children and adolescents to explore and document climate change in their communities, and to share their findings and suggestions to adults and other decision makers.
From information and knowledge to practice
There is also a need “to identify, adapt and adopt innovative approaches for the effective delivery and the local appropriation of climate change messages, and most importantly, for the translation of information and knowledge -both new and traditional- into climate change practice.” This will require strong efforts as well as resources to create an inclusive environment that fosters greater participation, as mandated by Principle 10, and local ownership of sustainable practices.
“Working with knowledge brokers, also called “human infomediaries” who can help bring people together, identify local needs and transfer information and knowledge more effectively is one such approach to improve information and communication flows,” Ospina advises. “Human infomediaries support an active process that involves exchanges between people, facilitating the development of climate change strategies, adoption of adaptation and mitigation practices, and processes of local change and innovation.”
Building on Ospina’s observations on how to bring information to the “last mile,” meaningful ways to bring community knowledge and information into higher level discussions need to be found. Local communities have vast knowledge on resilience, climate patterns, local environments and local situations and histories that can be documented and shared using ICTs both to benefit themselves and to share at broader levels, improving South-South cooperation and innovation. Multi-media curricula such as the Children in a Changing Climate website bring together young people’s voices and opinions around climate change and environment.
Post Rio+20, digital tools are one of many information and communication mechanisms that local communities and their citizens can use to confirm, validate, contest and dispute information related to compliance with commitments being put forward by those responsible for upholding them. Participatory media approaches can be effective in bringing community members as well as duty bearers at local, district, national and global levels into discussions about climate change and sustainable development.
Why are you killing me? Girls in Kenya use poetry to engage adults in discussion on climate change.
Summing up
In summary, ICTs can play a strong role in education, participation and accountability processes if their integration is well thought through, appropriate to the context, and taking into consideration good participatory practices. Hybrid approaches that use a variety of online and offline tools can be effective for reaching populations and decisions-makers at different levels of responsibility, for ensuring that ICTs are not widening existing information and participation gaps and for upholding the goals set forth in Principle 10. Children and youth can and should play an instrumental role in bringing about awareness and accountability, especially since they will be the ones who reap the long-term results of the agreements sown at Rio+20.
Linda Raftree, LLC: I work as an independent consultant on digital development research, strategy and evaluation with an emphasis on responsible data use, inclusion, gender, and children and young people. I support organizations to develop, implement, and engage staff and partners in responsible data policy and practice. I enjoy facilitating and moderating convenings, workshops and learning-focused events.
MERL Tech: conference, blog, and discussion forum that facilitate discussion and learning about the role of digital data and new technology in monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (co-founder and lead organizer)
Technology Salon: convening and facilitating discussion on the role of ICTs in international development. (co-founder and NYC convener)
White Save Me: the app that helps white men deliver privilege with a simple tap of the finger. (co-creator)
This is a personal blog that does not represent official views of my current, past or future employers, affiliates or other organizations with whom I engage. Any opinions expressed herein are my own, and I take responsibility for them.
Anyone can submit up to five questions related to key issues in international development that require more exploration. You are encouraged to involve colleagues in the formulation of these questions.
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