Posted on

No inclusive development without a post-growth economy

By Crelis Rammelt

Environmental degradation and social injustice are deeply enmeshed with the growth economy. Applying green and inclusive lubricants to its mechanisms is not the solution. We must abandon growth itself.

We live in a world where the richest 1% of the population earns as much as the poorest 50%. In the last 40 years, the average income of the 1% grew 11 times faster than the remaining 99%. Meanwhile, claims that extreme poverty has been reduced can only be upheld by setting the bar ridiculously low. Continue reading “No inclusive development without a post-growth economy”

Posted on

Social Impact Bonds: Doing real good or a wolf in a sheep’s clothing?

By Juan Fernández

Impact investing is on the rise. This is mainly fuelled by the rising public awareness on the societal and environmental impacts of investments – in both the positive and the negative sense. A 2020 report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), estimates the size of the impact investing market between $505 billion and $2.1 trillion in managed assets. Continue reading “Social Impact Bonds: Doing real good or a wolf in a sheep’s clothing?”

Posted on

Some steps for decolonising international research-for-development partnerships

By Katarzyna Cieslik, Shreya Sinha, Cees Leeuwis, Tania Eulalia Martínez-Cruz, Nivedita Narain and Bhaskar Vira | EADI/ISS Blog Series

While partnerships between researchers and practitioners from the Global North and Global South can be and often are intellectually and socially impactful, they remain highly unequal. Coloniality pervades these partnerships, influencing who leads research projects implemented in the Global South and whose interests are represented. Here, the conveners and panellists of a roundtable discussion on partnerships in academia that formed part of the recent EADI ISS Conference 2021 propose some steps for decolonising international research partnerships. Continue reading “Some steps for decolonising international research-for-development partnerships”

Posted on

Decolonising the university: between hope and necessity

By Gaya Raddadi

Calls for decolonisation are appearing all over the globe, in different forms. But what does ‘decolonisation’ mean? Each definition is rooted in the specificity of the contexts it is applied to, and in the aims it wishes to achieve. In my research on decolonising universities I propose  to consider it as the recognition of the historicity of processes of knowledge creation and reproduction. Continue reading “Decolonising the university: between hope and necessity”

Posted on

Sustainable Futures – Yes, but How? A critical book review

By Basile Boulay

Can we set ourselves an agenda for a sustainable future without questioning the fundamental nature of capitalism? Researchers from the university of Leeds working on Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) recently published an article asking for the ‘Permission to Say “Capitalism’ in environmental research, correctly stressing that the structural features of capitalism have a direct impact on climatic issues. Other scholarly work, such as Raphael Kaplinsky’s new book Sustainable Futures – An Agenda for Action, prefers to avoid this frontal question by focusing on the nature of technological change and how some of its effects can mitigate the disastrous economic and environmental consequences of the global economic system, and eventually lead the way towards a sustainable world for all. Continue reading “Sustainable Futures – Yes, but How? A critical book review”