I took part in a fun podcast recently on ‘water for development’. I was in the company of some people who actually know about the subject (Michael Wilson, Rosie Wheen, Melita Grant and Rachel Mason Nunn). I was playing my favourite role in this final wrap-up conversation of a series of discussions, that of informed ignoramus burbling on about how

Vanita Suneja of WaterAid reports on what is being done to prevent South Asia running out of underground water Major capital cities in South Asia – Dhaka, Delhi, Islamabad, Kabul and Kathmandu – are showing groundwater stress with the water table receding at an alarming rate.  In Islamabad, the water table fell to 30 feet below the surface in 2016,

There’s a political earthquake going on in Delhi right now. Biraj Swain (Exfam India, now campaigning and researching on water) looks at its immediate impact on poor people’s access to water and electricity. Last month marked the first month in office of the anti-corruption movement turned political party, the Aam Admi ‘Common Man’ Party government in Delhi, India. Two days

I don’t do much on water (as my pal Henry Northover at WaterAid never fails to remind me) but last week, I was in Tajikistan to help our team think through their water-related work. They already run the Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation (TajWSS) network, which combines a high level ‘convening and brokering’ approach to finding solutions to the country’s

In the corridors of Oxfam and beyond, ‘convening and brokering’ has become a new development fuzzword. I talked about it in my recent review of the Africa Power and Politics Programme, and APPP promptly got back to me and suggested a discussion on how convening and brokering is the same/different to the APPP’s proposals that aid agencies should abandon misguided attempts to

This is the summary slide from a recent powerpoint on the global challenges facing humanity between now and 2030. It sets out the key questions (easier to read if you click on the slide). The answers to any one of which might well be ‘no’, with scary consequences. And please don’t try and dismiss this as ill-informed climate alarmism. It’s from