October 31, 2024
If everyone used private jets and superyachts like 50 of the world’s richest billionaires, the remaining carbon budget to stay within 1.5C would be burned up in just two days. Nafkote Dabi introduces Oxfam’s new climate report, which spells out how the emissions of the super-rich are driving inequality, hunger and heat-related deaths.
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Governments across the globe are giving up on the fight against inequality: here’s what they should do instead…
October 23, 2024
New Oxfam analysis shows global Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) has just hit a new low. Anthony Kamande shares insights from Oxfam’s biannual CRI report that ranks 164 countries’ policies – and offers three big policy changes that should be firmly on the agenda at this week’s World Bank/IMF annual meetings.
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Why is inequality so sticky? The political obstacles to a fairer economy
June 6, 2024
Theory tells us that democracies should become more equal. So why are they still so unequal? Gideon Coolin, Emanuele Sapienza, and Andy Sumner on their new UNDP paper that unpicks the politics of inequality.
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Forgetting Rana Plaza
April 24, 2024
Guest post from Naomi Hossain, from SOAS, on the 11th anniversary of the tragedy in Bangladesh Despite heated and even violent contention around monuments and memorials in recent years, the politics of memory are still seen as largely symbolic. Apparel industry workers can tell you that this is wrong: memorials matter materially. For survivors of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster,
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The Battle for Tax Justice will be fought country by country: here are five useful tips for activists
April 4, 2024
Guest post from Paolo de Renzio, introducing his new (Open Access) book Taxes are funny. Most people think that they pay too much, and that others don’t pay enough. Many often try to pay less of them, but they also complain about the poor quality of the public services they fund. Politicians get credit for saying they will not raise
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Unequal: Why India Lags Behind its Neighbours (Book Review)
March 22, 2024
If you’re in the development world, you may have seen passing reference to the apparent anomaly that India, the giant of South Asia, has been overtaken in terms of social progress by Bangladesh, its poorer and slower-growing neighbour. You may vaguely put it down to religion, or (lack of) caste, or Bangladesh’s vibrant NGO scene. Unequal: Why India Lags Behind
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How the pregnancy penalty supercharges global inequality
March 7, 2024
In a blog for International Women’s Day, new parent Anthony Kamande reflects on the heavy cost his partner and family have paid for the simple act of having a baby. In one of the proudest moments of our lives, my wife and I became parents on Valentine’s Day. But for us, as for millions of others having babies across the
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Corporate power is driving up inequality. This is how to make corporates work for the common good instead – this year’s Oxfam Davos report
January 15, 2024
Oxfam’s annual ‘Davos Report’ has become a bit of an institution. On the eve of this year’s megarich schmoozathon, Anthony Kamande introduces the main findings of the 2024 version. Full paper here. Last Christmas eve, my cousin Lucy came to my rural village. She needed some help. Lucy’s son had excelled in the national exams and was selected to join
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Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World
December 14, 2023
I was lucky enough to attend the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley’s extraordinary speech at LSE last week (Video here or audio file here). Props to outgoing Oxfam CEO Danny Sriskandarajah and whoever else from Oxfam was involved in pulling it together, along with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, who hosted. It was jaw-dropping for both the performance, interweaving
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Will growth be enough to end poverty? New Projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
October 17, 2023
Guest post by Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman and Andy Sumner Today, October 17th is the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (you already knew that, right?). In new analysis for UNU-WIDER, we assess progress towards the global poverty-related SDGs, specifically monetary poverty, undernutrition, child and maternal mortality, and access to clean water and basic sanitation.
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Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.
September 21, 2023
Fancy some good news? A fascinating piece in today’s Guardian outlines the magnitude of the norm shifts that have taken place in the UK after the last 40 years, based on the latest British social attitudes (BSA) survey, which is marking its 40th year of mapping Britain’s cultural and political landscape. Underneath the left-right pendulum shifts of political debate, the
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Who Decides What Constitutes ‘Knowledge’ on Climate Change?
August 31, 2023
Thanks to Irene Guijt for sending over her 2021 chapter (gated, sorry – boooh!) on ‘The urgency for epistemic and political climate justice’, co-authored with Jacobo Ocharan and Velina Petrova for an edited volume, Knowledge for the Anthropocene. Don’t worry about the slightly intimidating title (confession: I always find ‘epistemic’ sending me scuttling back to the dictionary, along with ‘ontological’,
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