George Monbiot with a nice exercise in how changing our vocabulary can help reframe the way we talk and think about impending environmental Armageddon I just installed Unpaywall. Fab extension to Chrome that finds you the ungated version of any academic paper. Open Access rocks. I’ve also got a proper podcast channel now, check out the latest interview with Yuen Yuen

A recent civil society and government jamboree in Tanzania prompted some interesting reflections from Aidan Eyakuze, Executive Director of Twaweza. Who needs civil society organizations (CSOs)? If government does its job well, responding to citizens’ needs, delivering good quality services, safe communities and a booming economy, then what is the purpose of the diverse range of NGOs, trade unions, religious groups,

Nice graph of advanced v emerging + developing economies, share of global GDP. Anyone fancy drawing a squid on this, to give Branko Milanovic’s elephant graph some competition? Speaking of Branko, here’s his gloriously written review of 15 authors’ attempts to chart a future for social democracy. The son of South Sudan’s President explaining how he got his money. Extraordinary.

If you repeat the same story often enough, at some point you start to wonder if you’ve really just made it up, or at least embellished it beyond recognition. One such story, which I often tell at the start of a How Change Happens presentation, is about the Chiquitano Indians of Bolivia and their successful struggle for land. So I

Honestly, it really isn’t a ‘scary time’ for men. Thanks Lynzy Lab Stewart “Ninety-five percent of economics is common sense.” Ha-Joon Chang in the LSE student paper, on Brexit, trade and Kpop, after launching this year’s series of Friday afternoon guest lectures at the LSE. Details of top line up of future speakers here. It’s only week 1, but I’m

Second post from a great visit to Mexico last week to launch the Spanish language edition of How Change Happens. Few things get development folk fired up as much as mining. For many NGOs and grassroots organizations, not much has changed since the Conquistadores: mining is plunder. Given their long history in terms of pollution, community division, and human rights

Thea Hilhorst’s post has generated a lot of traffic and interest, so it’s time to push you a bit. We’ve come up with 9 statements reflecting different views of the relative importance of the issue, and the kinds of measures development workers and academics should take. You can select a maximum of 4 of these – those you most strongly

US subtitler v Dr Who (who is from Huddersfield) Oxfam’s new ‘Make Change Happen’ MOOC (free online course) kicks off next week. Register here. Fox News TV presenter falls off chair. Colleague pretends nothing happened and goes into next segment. Weird. Adding formulaic pro-diversity statements to job ads actually reduces the number of applications from minority groups. Other approaches like

Stefan Dercon of the Blavatnik School of Government introduces two new reports. Am I alone? Was I the only one who could not believe it when the World Development Report 2016 said that 85 per cent of jobs in Ethiopia could disappear due to automation? Am I also the only one who sighs when a young entrepreneur claims the app

Whatever the eventual decision, some images of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings are indelible – like the expressions on the faces of the women behind him…… I’m heading to Mexico this week to launch How Change Happens in Spanish (Como Ocurren los Cambios). Will stick up links to events as I get them. Enjoyed talking to Frank News about what constitutes

Ann Huddock of Counterpart got in touch recently to discuss the idea of a post on how much she hates the word ‘empowerment’ (she’s banned it in Counterpart comms). In the end, we decided that the word had already got enough criticism, but I put out a tweet asking people to nominate other devspeak words we should ban, and my

Why commas really do matter An extraordinary piece of investigative journalism by BBC Africa uses all the digital arts to track down the culprits of an atrocity captured on an anonymous video – 2 women & 2 young children are led away by a group of soldiers. They are blindfolded, forced to the ground, and shot 22 times ‘More than