Reframing R+20: zero ten twenty

The media portal that seeks change, tve, has started to post a series of short films that follow the lives of 11 boys and girls born in different countries round the world in 1992 - the year of the first Rio Earth Summit, where world leaders signed up to a blueprint for a greener, fairer world – a world that would safeguard resources for future generations. ‘Zero, Ten, Twenty’ is tve's flagship, long-term project that seeks to document what it’s been like to grow up in a fast-changing, 21st century world – how globalization and the Earth Summit have impacted on their lives, and what now are their hopes, fears and ambitions for the future, on the eve of the new Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. The stories of these children, from Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Latvia, Norway, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, England and USA, constitute a unique diary of global change. This first entry is an overview of a series of films that will emerge. It really is something quite remarkable -- a partial transcript of our world.

Memories of the Sahel

An excellent perspective of the food crisis in the Sahel from expatriate Africans from the region living in New York. Perspective is everything.

Thanks to David Styan for showing me this.

UN food envoy decries 'shocking' conditions in Canada

A hard-hitting article on what Oliver de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has found on his mission to Canada, his first to an OECD country:

UN food envoy decries 'shocking' conditions in Canada

land matrix | land portal

 The International Land Coalition has created a new website that compiles data about large-scale land deals around the world.  It is quite a remarkable site, and worth exploring:

Land Matrix | Land Portal

resistance to land grabbing in Mali and Uganda

An excellent expose of the impact of land grabbing in Mali: Followed by an excellent expose of the impact of land grabbing in Uganda:

What does the rapid uptake of mobile money transfer in Kenya really mean for financial inclusion?

An excellent analysis of mobile money transfer that pours cold water on the way that it is perceived by the global development institutions:

What does the rapid uptake of mobile money transfer in Kenya really mean for financial inclusion?

current activities, winter 2012

This winter I will continue teaching our first year introduction to international development at Trent University, Human inequality in global perspective. I will also do my graduate teaching, Development economics, on the Master's in Development Practice Program at Emory University, Atlanta, USA. My administrative responsibilities as Chair of the Department of International Development Studies will continue, particularly in light of the academic planning exercise now being undertaken by the University. I will continue my advisory work for the Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme' Gender Team. This will see me travel to once more to Korea as well as the Middle East. I will also finish the revisions to my current paper on contextualizing land grabbing in the developing world, and return to my as-yet unfinished manuscript, Hungry for Change? Farmers, Agrarian Questions and the Global Food Crisis. It will be busy.