Turning the scholarly pursuit into a development pursuit

By Dr. Joanes Atela, ACTS

In March, researchers, knowledge brokers and funders gathered in Pretoria, South Africa to share lessons and experiences on how a decade of ESRC-DFID research support has impacted on poverty reduction.The Conference came just a few months after the launchSustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  These goals articulate the value of research and capacity in accelerating growth and poverty reduction especially in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa where performance in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was relatively dismal.The three-day conference gathered some interesting perspectives and raised some overarching concerns for the future.    

Continue Reading

Public Private Partnership in the post-Kyoto climate regime: Unpacking the silent dilemma

By Joanes Atela

Unpacking Public Private Partnership (PPP)

Public-private partnership (PPP) has become a central driver of climate change actions- both in negotiations and implementation. Whether on clean energy, sustainable forest management or even climate smart agriculture, PPP has been emphasised as the panacea of hope for a climate resilient world. Amidst this hope, however, policy makers, donors and scientists alike have paid little attention to the diagnosis of this concept and whether the form in which it is currently framed carry any premise for the desired climate resilient world. From a layman’s perspective, the PPP Knowledge Lab defines PPP as “a long-term contract between a private party and a government entity, for providing a public asset or service…’’ The definition entails two key components: contractual/institutional and resources/monetary resources for delivering the contract. In most policy and scientific debates, the latter part of the concept ‘monetary resources’ appears to have taken precedence perhaps because it provides ‘direct fix’’ to climate problems and in the words of a Bonn-based  expert I interviewed during my PhD research ‘PPP critically avails resources for climate action because without money, you can do nothing’.

Continue Reading

Rethinking Africa’s Sustainable Development Pathways: transformative approach through the Africa Sustainability Hub

By Dr. Joanes Atela

  1. Sustainable development

Sustainable development (SD) remains a landmark policy and global development agenda since the 1992 Convention on Environment and Development. Anchored on the Brutland Commission report ‘Our Common Future’, sustainable development articulates the urge to harmonise the temporal and spatial redistribution of development with a natural resource base – in the words of Bruntland, ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

This self-justifying definition has been enthusiastically accepted by many across the globe – providing a platform for North-South political and socioeconomic bargaining, a strong operating ground for international development agencies, and – most importantly – a novel space for setting international research and development agendas.

Continue Reading

  • 1
  • 2