Should rich countries focus aid on fragile states? Drop development and just fund humanitarian work? Make aid a tool of soft power? The current debate on how to spend dwindling aid budgets is a depressing read, says Neil McCulloch. Let’s stop thinking about how to “buy results” and instead look at how best to support domestic initiatives for progressive change.

Will Paxton and Guy Lodge’s call last week to protect bilateral aid spending has sparked a lively debate, notably a counter argument we also published to prioritise multilateral spending from Kevin Watkins. Here they address Kevin’s (polite) criticisms, arguing for a better balance between multilateral and bilateral aid – and that listening to countries and communities leads to giving priority to jobs and growth, even if, as Kevin argues, aid has not been very effective in delivering them.  

Protecting bilateral spending from excessive cuts is going to be the first and most important step to ensuring the FCDO can still exert influence in an era of 0.3%, say Guy Lodge and Will Paxton. They discuss the new world of a lower UK aid budget and the pitfalls and opportunities it presents.

The UK government needs to listen to Iceland’s progressive prime minister when she says robust welfare policies are the antidote to far-right extremism. And what’s more, investing in social infrastructure – in care, in health, in schools – is essential to driving the growth the government wants, says Amy Brooker of the Women’s Budget Group.

Amid a worldwide backlash against women’s rights, and after its own aid cuts that further threaten those rights, it has never been more urgent for the UK government to speak up loudly for global gender equality, says the Gender and Development Network.

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…

Thinking about a career in international development? Duncan Green explores the future of the aid sector and the prospects for those who want to work in it…  This post is adapted from his shiny new blog about activism, influencing and change, hosted by the LSE.

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”.

FP2P’s Duncan Green has a shiny new blog about activism, influencing and change, hosted by the LSE, which we’ll be sharing highlights from here. You can also subscribe here. In this post from the new blog, he shares some advice from humanitarian leaders in this bleak time for the sector – including talk more often to staff and partners, “watch the fog closely” and “don’t blabber” – and offers a couple of thoughts of his own.

If you want to be rid of aid that advances US interests, don’t celebrate now: that aid isn’t going anywhere, says Terence Wood.

Twenty years after he watched Nelson Mandela’s rousing launch speech in Trafalgar Square, Dominic Vickers reflects on the impact of the landmark Make Poverty History campaign for trade justice, debt relief and better aid – and wonders if a new generation can take up the cause again. 

The recent £1.5 billion cut in the aid budget heralds an era of “less money, more policy”, with any return to spending 0.7% of GDP a long way away, says Andy Sumner of King’s College London. As we await three reviews of development policy, early signs suggest climate change and diplomatic interests will drive priorities – and there is little chance DFID will be reborn.