Global Development Network (GDN)

1. GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT NETWORK Supporting high-quality, policy-oriented, social-science research in developing countries http://www.gdn.int/

2. About us The Global Development Network (GDN) is a public international organization that supports high quality, policy-oriented, social science research in developing and transition countries to promote better lives. It supports researchers with financial resources, global networking, as well as access to information, training, peer review and mentoring. GDN acts on the premise that better research leads to more informed policies and better, more inclusive development. Through its global platform, #GDN connects social science researchers with policymakers and development stakeholders across the world. Founded in 1999, GDN is currently headquartered in New Delhi. An agreement establishing the Global Development Network was signed by representatives of Colombia, Egypt, India, Italy, Senegal and Sri Lanka.   http://www.gdn.int/

3. GDN Education Issues Paper In middle-income and poor countries alike, educational opportunities elude many children, especially those from poor and disadvantaged families, in large part due to economic, social and institutional reasons. This paper reviews governance and institutional challenges facing educational systems in developing countries, to serve as a background for GDN’s Global Research Project on Governance and Public Service Delivery. This paper motivates the discussion with a brief review of the development of educational systems and human capital-based research on the value of investing in education and offers a framework for analyzing public service delivery in the education sector. It also reviews the growing body of evidence from developing countries on what works and specific remaining institutional challenges facing governments: agency problems, coordination tensions, imperfect information, and incentives related to the twin challenges of educational access and quality. Substantial though uneven progress has been made in terms of improving access, at least to basic education, but improving the quality of education remains elusive, even where reforms have been tried. The authors highlight how one of the most difficult questions to study in the context of education is what happens in the classrooms, how children learn and how to control this through governance measures in the sector.

4. Finally, the paper concludes with key research issues for future research, many of which were picked up by the country case studies in the global project: • To what extent do existing processes for teacher recruitment, training, compensation and oversight create incentives for teacher and teaching quality? How and why? • To what extent are teachers accountable to school heads, parents and communities, line bureaucracies, unions, political parties? • To what extent are school heads and teachers accountable to parents and communities, line bureaucracies, unions, political parties? • To what extent do processes in place allocate financial and human resources to schools create incentives for school quality? How and why? • To what extent do the processes in place measure student and teacher performances http://www.gdn.int/

5. Accelerating Research on the Economy & Environment in Asia Environmental issues are inextricably linked with economics and vice versa. GDN has announced its support to two leading institutions in Vietnam and India who will produce and disseminate policy relevant knowledge on two specific areas – the impact of climate change on agricultural production, and the environmental economics of slum redevelopment. The Foreign Trade University in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Fields of View based in Bangalore, India were selected on a competitive basis to use yearlong grants of $40,000 each to implement their own research capacity building and research to policy programs.  Together, these institutions will cover countries along the Mekong Delta, and across South Asia with an online platform developed in Bangalore.  The Foreign Trade University in Vietnam will set up a regional training program to train participants on how to measure climate change impacts on agricultural production in countries along the Mekong Delta, including Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The project focuses on advanced training on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models that use economic data to estimate how the economy changes in response to changes in the environment. Fields of View will develop and test an online research platform to provide policymakers working on slum development projects in India and across South Asia with access to relevant multidisciplinary research to assist policy making. The project also has an outreach component that will engage policy actors and community members to use the platform. A kickoff event is taking place in Hanoi on the 26th and 27th of October 2016 that will help both institutions finalize their plans and link them to expert mentors. Two advisors recruited by GDN, and a support team from GDN, will attend. The two teams from India and Vietnam will work together for the first time, to learn from each other and find areas of synergy. http://www.gdn.int/

6. Alexis Drogul, current representative of  Institut de Recherche pour le Development (IRD) in Vietnam and Philippines ,who works on the design of artificial intelligence tools and also in developing policy tools to help fight environmental disasters, says, “The project in Vietnam has the potential to turbocharge the policy arena because it will generate empirical substance, that can no longer be ignored.” Nicola Tollin, from the field of Urban Resilience in Denmark who will mentor the project in Bangalore, says, “The project in Bangalore will pull together resources to build a systematic picture of what works, and what does not, in the field of urban development – a desperately needed resource for a world that is fast urbanizing.” The grants are part of a strategic effort at the Global Development Network to build institutional research capacity in developing countries around the world.  GDN’s past efforts on institutional capacity building in Bhutan, Ethiopia, and Vietnam & Cambodia showed that it is possible to strengthen research in low capacity environments through small grants with tailored external support.  GDN started systematically targeting institutions through a new strategy in 2017, throughout its programs. “We believe that institutions rather than individuals are strategic actors in the production of local research that can contribute to better policy decisions and more sustainable development,” says Francesco Obino, Head of Programs at the Global Development Network. The Global Development Network (GDN) is a public international organization that supports high quality, policy-oriented, social science research in developing and transition countries, to promote better lives. It supports researchers with financial resources, global networking, research management support, access to information, training, peer review and mentoring. Founded in 1999, GDN is currently headquartered in New Delhi, an emerging powerhouse in the global South.

7. Adapting to climate change: the need for acceptance The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released a special report on global warming of 1.5ºC, which underscores that actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions have been too little and too late. Yet many projects of adaptation still take the view that with just a few small tweaks, existing livelihoods and lifestyles can be adjusted to meet the challenges of climate change. This column makes the case for true acceptance of what is happening. Life will change dramatically for many – and that has powerful implications for the path of development and human wellbeing. When I lived in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and complained how warm I felt, a European acquaintance who had already been there for years suggested that ‘one adapts’ to the hot and humid climate. She then went on to be shocked when I mentioned that I didn’t have air conditioning inside my house. ‘It’s the first thing I turn on when I enter a room’, she said. So how did that make her adapted to the sticky climate? Air conditioners are the type of quick fix that people seem to want in order to adapt to a changing climate. They offer a chance to continue in familiar lifestyles, which for most northern Europeans includes cooler and dryer weather. But air conditioners do not actually make people adapt. In fact, they might even make it more difficult to face the real climate outside because of the contrast between dry, air-conditioned air and warm, humid air. http://www.gdn.int/

8. This exchange prompted me to reflect on what actually constitutes human adaptation and what is just an action that people take to avoid adapting? It struck me that there is a missing dimension to current discussions of adaptation in science, policy and particularly practice – namely, ‘acceptance’. Acceptance has to play a much more important role in lifestyles over the next few years. Like it or not, the climate is going to change in ways that will challenge many things that people around the world enjoy for their entertainment, in addition to things that are necessary for survival. Acceptance is described in the book The Environment as Hazard, first published in 1978. In the approach of authors Ian Burton, Robert Kates and Gilbert White, acceptance is considered to be one of the four modes of coping with natural hazards, alongside absorption, reduction and change. Acceptance is important because it means that people have to face up to what is happening. In the context of migration being touted as an adaptation strategy, there seems to be an assumption that people can embrace living in a new location, rather than preferring to live their lives as before. I am not trying to suggest that a dramatic change such as migration is not a must for some people and a very useful strategy for many others. But how many people are really willing to leave their homes, their countries and their networks behind as a first choice? On another level, how many people can willingly accept the possibility that there may be fewer employment options in the future because climate change has made certain jobs impossible or non-existent? A 2010 study tackles adaptation from the perspective of integral theory, which underscores the importance of ‘interior’ changes – in this case personal and cultural changes that are necessary in the face of climate change. But acceptance goes beyond individual consciousness about climate change. It also has implications for investment approaches. Should people accept climate change and move into different livelihood strategies that are less sensitive to the climate? Or should they invest in activities that are threatened by climate change and try to make them less sensitive? Agriculture is the most pertinent example, especially for smallholders whose productivity could potentially increase with minor investment in irrigation technology or machinery. What role does acceptance play in people’s choice of strategy? Does it matter more in some cases than others? These are the types of questions that should be asked when designing adaptation strategies. http://www.gdn.int/

9. Policies and projects on adaptation need to encourage acceptance of the fact that life will change dramatically for many. This needs to be accompanied by overt recognition that for those who have yet to attain a decent level of wellbeing, their path there may now be longer, even non-existent. This is an issue of justice and equity, which is already a central concept in climate change policy and practice. Where does acceptance as an aspect of adaptation feature in the three ideas of resilience, transformation and mainstreaming? Rarely is the word mentioned in definitions: • Resilience, in its least flattering conceptualization, suggests maintaining the status quo. That can be seen to contradict the need for acceptance of change. • Mainstreaming the idea of integrating climate change into policy implies that business-as-usual can just continue as long as climate change is taken into account, which may or may not force people to accept that some change will be extremely dramatic, and that there are limits to how effective mainstreaming can be. • Transformation, which demands the greatest change of the three ideas, could possibly involve acceptance. After all, people have to accept a new pathway implied in the idea of transformation. When the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was written in the early 1990s, it focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The science of the time considered that the problem could be contained before it got so big that the changes would actually be experienced. Now, nearly 30 years later, there is widespread acknowledgement that actions have been too little, too late, and that the planet is locked into a certain amount of change, as noted in the recent IPCC special report, Global Warming of 1.5ºC. This suggests, to some degree, that change has been accepted. Yet many of the adaptation projects that are being funded still nourish the attitude that with just some small tweaks, existing livelihoods and lifestyles can be adjusted to meet the challenges of climate change. It is almost as if people are trying to avoid negative thinking, by blindly pursuing actions that provide a sense of hope that the transition of wellbeing into a changing climate can be made, without direct or indirect damage.

10. CONTACT US • Address: 2nd Floor, West Wing, ISID Complex, 4 - Vasant Kunj Institutional Area, New Delhi - 110070, INDIA 110070, India • Website: http://www.gdn.int/ • Phone no: 04323949-4