The growing water crisis for billions threatens global progress on everything from poverty to hunger to green growth. Yet no one is stepping up to deliver and coordinate the funding needed to avoid a catastrophic future. Jo Trevor sets out the urgent need for smart water financing – which is the focus of an Oxfam event at this week’s Marmalade Festival in Oxford.

What are the lessons for activists from the cut in the UK development budget? Did big agencies get their messaging all wrong? How much damage did the closure of DFID do? Or the departure of David Cameron as PM? Katy Chakrabortty unpacks the implosion of UK aid…

After decades of delay, the move from burning fossil fuels to renewables is firmly underway – but the fairness of this unfolding transition is not inevitable. In fact, there is a real danger the world will simply swap one exploitative and unjust system for another. Natalie Shortall introduces a new Oxfam paper that calls on the UK to get wholeheartedly behind a “just transition”.

Each Olympic/Paralympic games is now followed by a major global nutrition summit in the host city. Sunit Bagree of Results UK sets out what campaigners will be looking for this time, including billions in extra funding, giving grants not loans and supporting the most cost-effective interventions.

Global inequality will continue to spiral in a skewed system of international finance and governance that heavily favours the Global North, says Anthony Kamande in the latest blog in our Davos series.

Local actors can deliver programming that is up to 32% more cost-efficient than international ones, one study suggests. Yet, particularly in fragile contexts and conflict zones, international actors still seem reluctant to localise. Economist Sophie Pongracz looks at cash transfers to explain why it’s time for the humanitarian sector to take a proper look at the evidence on cost-effectiveness.

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.

Top tip: if you’re in a meeting discussing anything to do with finance, at some point look wise and say ‘you do realize, blockchain is likely to change everything.’ Of course, there is always a terrifying chance that someone will ask what you actually mean. Worry not, because IDS has produced a handy bluffer’s guide to help you respond. Blockchain

Peter Chowla of the Bretton Woods Project introduces its new report, which asks why the World Bank is still stuck in pre-crisis thinking about finance and what civil society should do about it. ‘Banksters’ have become famous since the financial crisis just five years ago. Media portrayals of New York’s ‘Wall Street’ or the ‘City’ in London have frequently vilified

The private finance people in development baffle me. They speak a different language; great swirling clouds of jargon, the fuzziest of fuzzwords, all laced with a level of macho market can-do talk that makes me deeply suspicious. Baffled but sceptical – not a good place to be. And there’s a lot going on at the moment – new ideas, a

Oxfam is always keen to employ unusual suspects, none more so than Will Martindale, a banker turned “do gooder” (right, and no, that isn’t his Oxfam desk). Here he reflects on his first 100 days working among the (supposed) angels. Banking. Most hate it. Few understand it. And I miss it. I miss the pace, the energy, and the super smart