Global Development Network (GDN) presentation

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Title: Global Development Network (GDN)

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GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT NETWORK

Supporting high-quality, policy-oriented,
social-science research in developing countries

http//www.gdn.int/
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About us
The Global Development Network (GDN) is a public
international organization that supports high
quality, policy-oriented, social science research
in developing and transition countries to promote
better lives. It supports researchers with
financial resources, global networking, as well
as access to information, training, peer review
and mentoring. GDN acts on the premise that
better research leads to more informed policies
and better, more inclusive development. Through
its global platform, GDN connects social science
researchers with policymakers and development
stakeholders across the world. Founded in 1999,
GDN is currently headquartered in New Delhi.
An agreement establishing the Global Development
Network was signed by representatives of
Colombia, Egypt, India, Italy, Senegal and Sri
Lanka.
http//www.gdn.int/
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GDN Education Issues Paper
In middle-income and poor countries alike,
educational opportunities elude many children,
especially those from poor and disadvantaged
families, in large part due to economic, social
and institutional reasons. This paper reviews
governance and institutional challenges facing
educational systems in developing countries, to
serve as a background for GDNs Global Research
Project on Governance and Public Service
Delivery. This paper motivates the discussion
with a brief review of the development of
educational systems and human capital-based
research on the value of investing in education
and offers a framework for analyzing public
service delivery in the education sector. It also
reviews the growing body of evidence from
developing countries on what works and specific
remaining institutional challenges facing
governments agency problems, coordination
tensions, imperfect information, and incentives
related to the twin challenges of educational
access and quality. Substantial though uneven
progress has been made in terms of improving
access, at least to basic education, but
improving the quality of education remains
elusive, even where reforms have been tried. The
authors highlight how one of the most difficult
questions to study in the context of education is
what happens in the classrooms, how children
learn and how to control this through governance
measures in the sector.
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Finally, the paper concludes with key research
issues for future research, many of which were
picked up by the country case studies in the
global project
To what extent do existing processes for teacher
recruitment, training, compensation and oversight
create incentives for teacher and teaching
quality? How and why?
To what extent are teachers accountable to school
heads, parents and communities, line
bureaucracies, unions, political parties?
To what extent are school heads and teachers
accountable to parents and communities, line
bureaucracies, unions, political parties?
To what extent do processes in place allocate
financial and human resources to schools create
incentives for school quality? How and why?
To what extent do the processes in place measure
student and teacher performances

http//www.gdn.int/
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Accelerating Research on the Economy
Environment in Asia
Environmental issues are inextricably linked with
economics and vice versa. GDN has announced its
support to two leading institutions in Vietnam
and India who will produce and disseminate policy
relevant knowledge on two specific areas the
impact of climate change on agricultural
production, and the environmental economics of
slum redevelopment. The Foreign Trade University
in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Fields of View based in
Bangalore, India were selected on a competitive
basis to use yearlong grants of 40,000 each to
implement their own research capacity building
and research to policy programs. Together, these
institutions will cover countries along the
Mekong Delta, and across South Asia with an
online platform developed in Bangalore. The
Foreign Trade University in Vietnam will set up a
regional training program to train participants
on how to measure climate change impacts on
agricultural production in countries along the
Mekong Delta, including Cambodia, Laos and
Vietnam. The project focuses on advanced training
on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models
that use economic data to estimate how the
economy changes in response to changes in the
environment. Fields of View will develop and test
an online research platform to provide
policymakers working on slum development projects
in India and across South Asia with access to
relevant multidisciplinary research to assist
policy making. The project also has an outreach
component that will engage policy actors and
community members to use the platform. A kickoff
event is taking place in Hanoi on the 26th and
27th of October 2016 that will help both
institutions finalize their plans and link them
to expert mentors. Two advisors recruited by GDN,
and a support team from GDN, will attend. The two
teams from India and Vietnam will work together
for the first time, to learn from each other and
find areas of synergy.
http//www.gdn.int/
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Alexis Drogul, current representative of
Institut de Recherche pour le Development (IRD)
in Vietnam and Philippines ,who works on the
design of artificial intelligence tools and also
in developing policy tools to help fight
environmental disasters, says, The project in
Vietnam has the potential to turbocharge the
policy arena because it will generate empirical
substance, that can no longer be
ignored. Nicola Tollin, from the field of Urban
Resilience in Denmark who will mentor the project
in Bangalore, says, The project in Bangalore
will pull together resources to build a
systematic picture of what works, and what does
not, in the field of urban development a
desperately needed resource for a world that is
fast urbanizing. The grants are part of a
strategic effort at the Global Development
Network to build institutional research capacity
in developing countries around the world. GDNs
past efforts on institutional capacity building
in Bhutan, Ethiopia, and Vietnam Cambodia
showed that it is possible to strengthen research
in low capacity environments through small grants
with tailored external support. GDN started
systematically targeting institutions through a
new strategy in 2017, throughout its
programs. We believe that institutions rather
than individuals are strategic actors in the
production of local research that can contribute
to better policy decisions and more sustainable
development, says Francesco Obino, Head of
Programs at the Global Development Network. The
Global Development Network (GDN) is a public
international organization that supports high
quality, policy-oriented, social science research
in developing and transition countries, to
promote better lives. It supports researchers
with financial resources, global networking,
research management support, access to
information, training, peer review and mentoring.
Founded in 1999, GDN is currently headquartered
in New Delhi, an emerging powerhouse in the
global South.
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Adapting to climate change the need for
acceptance
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) recently released a special report on
global warming of 1.5ºC, which underscores that
actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions have
been too little and too late. Yet many projects
of adaptation still take the view that with just
a few small tweaks, existing livelihoods and
lifestyles can be adjusted to meet the challenges
of climate change. This column makes the case for
true acceptance of what is happening. Life will
change dramatically for many and that has
powerful implications for the path of development
and human wellbeing. When I lived in Ho Chi Minh
City in Vietnam, and complained how warm I felt,
a European acquaintance who had already been
there for years suggested that one adapts to
the hot and humid climate. She then went on to be
shocked when I mentioned that I didnt have air
conditioning inside my house. Its the first
thing I turn on when I enter a room, she said.
So how did that make her adapted to the sticky
climate? Air conditioners are the type of quick
fix that people seem to want in order to adapt to
a changing climate. They offer a chance to
continue in familiar lifestyles, which for most
northern Europeans includes cooler and dryer
weather. But air conditioners do not actually
make people adapt. In fact, they might even make
it more difficult to face the real climate
outside because of the contrast between dry,
air-conditioned air and warm, humid air.
http//www.gdn.int/
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This exchange prompted me to reflect on what
actually constitutes human adaptation and what is
just an action that people take to avoid
adapting? It struck me that there is a missing
dimension to current discussions of adaptation in
science, policy and particularly practice
namely, acceptance. Acceptance has to play a
much more important role in lifestyles over the
next few years. Like it or not, the climate is
going to change in ways that will challenge many
things that people around the world enjoy for
their entertainment, in addition to things that
are necessary for survival. Acceptance is
described in the book The Environment as Hazard,
first published in 1978. In the approach of
authors Ian Burton, Robert Kates and Gilbert
White, acceptance is considered to be one of the
four modes of coping with natural hazards,
alongside absorption, reduction and
change. Acceptance is important because it means
that people have to face up to what is happening.
In the context of migration being touted as an
adaptation strategy, there seems to be an
assumption that people can embrace living in a
new location, rather than preferring to live
their lives as before. I am not trying to
suggest that a dramatic change such as migration
is not a must for some people and a very useful
strategy for many others. But how many people are
really willing to leave their homes, their
countries and their networks behind as a first
choice? On another level, how many people can
willingly accept the possibility that there may
be fewer employment options in the future because
climate change has made certain jobs impossible
or non-existent? A 2010 study tackles adaptation
from the perspective of integral theory, which
underscores the importance of interior changes
in this case personal and cultural changes that
are necessary in the face of climate change. But
acceptance goes beyond individual consciousness
about climate change. It also has implications
for investment approaches. Should people accept
climate change and move into different livelihood
strategies that are less sensitive to the
climate? Or should they invest in activities that
are threatened by climate change and try to make
them less sensitive? Agriculture is the most
pertinent example, especially for smallholders
whose productivity could potentially increase
with minor investment in irrigation technology or
machinery. What role does acceptance play in
peoples choice of strategy? Does it matter more
in some cases than others? These are the types of
questions that should be asked when designing
adaptation strategies.
http//www.gdn.int/
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Policies and projects on adaptation need to
encourage acceptance of the fact that life will
change dramatically for many. This needs to be
accompanied by overt recognition that for those
who have yet to attain a decent level of
wellbeing, their path there may now be longer,
even non-existent.
This is an issue of justice and equity, which is
already a central concept in climate change
policy and practice. Where does acceptance as an
aspect of adaptation feature in the three ideas
of resilience, transformation and mainstreaming?
Rarely is the word mentioned in definitions
Resilience, in its least flattering
conceptualization, suggests maintaining the
status quo. That can be seen to contradict the
need for acceptance of change.
Mainstreaming the idea of integrating climate
change into policy implies that business-as-usual
can just continue as long as climate change is
taken into account, which may or may not force
people to accept that some change will be
extremely dramatic, and that there are limits to
how effective mainstreaming can be.
Transformation, which demands the greatest change
of the three ideas, could possibly involve
acceptance. After all, people have to accept a
new pathway implied in the idea of
transformation.
When the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change was written in the early 1990s, it
focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The
science of the time considered that the problem
could be contained before it got so big that the
changes would actually be experienced.
Now, nearly 30 years later, there is widespread
acknowledgement that actions have been too
little, too late, and that the planet is locked
into a certain amount of change, as noted in the
recent IPCC special report, Global Warming of
1.5ºC. This suggests, to some degree, that change
has been accepted.
Yet many of the adaptation projects that are
being funded still nourish the attitude that with
just some small tweaks, existing livelihoods and
lifestyles can be adjusted to meet the challenges
of climate change. It is almost as if people are
trying to avoid negative thinking, by blindly
pursuing actions that provide a sense of hope
that the transition of wellbeing into a changing
climate can be made, without direct or indirect
damage.

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