Governments are pursuing trade policies that harm workers and serve multinationals. Last summer's European dairy farmer uprising shows how farmers and food system workers can unite and fight back.
Well, that’s it for the Manchester conference and this is the last blog I’m going to write. The last soggy vegetables have been cleared away from the tables, and I’m not referring to the academics who took part. British institutional food is a wonder to behold and a nightmare to digest, as a leadi
When I was a PhD student in the late 1970s I was taught that there was no one route to poverty-reduction, but that since some countries had already reduced poverty pretty well we should learn from their experience. Not exactly rocket science is it? Read on...
It’s day two of the Manchester conference, and yes, it is still gray and rainy, the natural camouflage of this city that it wears to disguise its charms. The focus has turned to how poverty can be reduced, especially what the academics call “chronic” poverty which affects at least half-a-billion o
It is critically important that the heads of state attending the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit consider the best way to support the complex and difficult process of making sustainable human progress in poorer countries. Those working within the development sector who know that the cur
Is world poverty declining and if so why? It’s a deceptively simple question with no straightforward answers, as keynote presenters Joe Stiglitz and David Hulme confirmed at this morning’s opening session (well, it is an academic conference so what did you expect?) Read on...
Michael Edwards says welcome to Manchester Ten years of war against poverty - what have we learned? That’s the question that brings 500-or-so scholars and activists to Manchester this week to debate the causes of, and remedies for, global poverty, and I’ll be blogging from the conference on openDe
“Is it working?” is the question most commonly asked of aid. In response, aid agencies feed the public a diet of overwhelmingly “good news stories” to convince them that it is working. This diverts attention from the central question: how to reduce the major gap between what aid currently does and
Aid commitments should be met not despite but because of the current financial crisis, and aid allocations prioritised for the poorest, and most vulnerable countries - are among the recommendations in this reply to Phil Vernon.
Phil Vernon asks if overseas development aid is working. This is a good moment, he argues, to take a step back and ask ourselves whether we would call today’s aid policy and practise successful in providing sufficient impetus to overcome the strong forces worldwide that keep people poor. Four imme
This is a good moment for taking a step back and asking ourselves whether we would call today’s overseas development aid policy and practise successful – successful, that is, in providing sufficient impetus to overcome the strong forces worldwide that keep people poor
