The age of development: mission accomplished or RIP? Duncan Green April 2014

Let’s start with the good news story Title of recent Big Book – ‘the greatest escape in human history’ Cf wandering through country churchyards and feeling sad at number of dead children in centuries gone by A century ago in US – on the cusp of global superpower status, one in five kids died before age of 5, life expectancy was 54 years Cf Africa today Down to a mixture of economic growth and human knowledge And here’s the historic weather in a bit more detail

Global Poverty

Worldwide Battle Deaths

Shrinking Gap in Women’s Participation in Workforce

So much for the good news.....

Where do we go from here?

What is Poverty, anyway? Voices of the Poor Chronic Poverty Wellbeing

Or Powerlessness? Chronic Poverty – the hard core

Who’s in Charge?

Shocks are the New Normal The global financial crisis was a watershed event, triggering historic geopolitical change, including the shift from G8 to G20 and the rise of the emerging powers. It drew attention to the risks of an excessively ‘financialised’ global economy, but failed to lead to a reining in of the excessive size and volatility of ‘hot money’, condemning us to future financial crises, possibly starting with Europe in the coming months. More broadly, the advent of the G20 has failed to reenergise the multilateral system, with global talks on climate change, trade and arms control all paralysed. Some commentators are even talking of a ‘G zero’, with no-one in charge.

A Food System Meltdown The food price spike, which in many countries traumatised the lives of poor people to a much greater extent than the financial crisis, reversed decades of low and falling prices, threatening long-term progress on hunger and nutrition. That has led to renewed attention to food security worldwide, but with some unfortunate side effects such as ‘land grabs’ across the developing world by investors from rich countries.

Inequality

Globally, it’s the 2%

G20 could learn from Latin America

Climate Chaos

Closed v Open System

A linking theme: Complex Systems But it goes deeper than that. The unpredictability and systemic nature of the shocks has driven home the inadequacy of development thinking predicated on linear processes of change. That raises real challenges for traditional systems of planning and measuring results. Oxfam recently sent a complexity physicist to visit its programme in Northern Kenya, and the insights from this kind of interdisciplinary work are likely to play an important role in transforming our thinking in coming years.

But the aid business prefers linear

Implications: Thinking harder about ‘how change happens’ Fast Feedback Shocks as windows of opportunity Focus on problems not solutions Rules of thumb > best practice Fail faster (be a venture capitalist) Results for grown-ups (counting what counts; put more L in your MEL)

So which is it?

Remember These?

Thankyou!