Browse by Theme: Reviewed 2021

Borders, in the pastoral context of the drylands of the Horn of Africa with high levels of human and animal mobility, have little relevance and meaning to the populations living in border areas in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia and Somaliland. As international borders do not follow ethnic or eco-system lines, pastoral populations move freely across them. As a result, in the Horn of Africa’s border areas, it is essential to take these cross border movements and dynamics into consideration when implementing drought risk reduction programs as what happens on one side of the border affects the other.

Although cross border programming maybe across intra-country borders; ecosystem borders or ethnic borders, the discussion here is focused on international borders.

Three years after the 2007/2008 food price crisis, the cost of food items on both international and national markets are on the rise again.

Poor people, still suffering from the impact of the previous crisis, are being hit hardest. As well as the challenge of rising prices, agricultural commodity indices on both international and national markets have been increasingly volatile over the short-term – negatively impacting on both producers and consumers.

Assessments show that prices on international markets are likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.

Human and natural systems are influenced by climate variability and hazards, though the negative impacts are most severely felt in developing countries. Increased climate variability, such as the occurrence of more frequent droughts and storms and more erratic or intense rainfall patterns, is associated with climatic change. Such climate change effects will intensify significantly in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the transformative potential of inclusive local governance in generating more secure livelihood and coping strategies of extremely poor people. The research conducted in 2008 and 2009 looking at Care Bangladesh’s work at the Union Parishad level found that active citizenship of the poorest, often women, led to more equitable distribution of public resources. Care Bangladesh’s experience also highlights some interesting implication for policy both in the areas of social protection and governance.

This paper documents and systematises Peru’s recent experience in tackling malnutrition.

Through an intensive review of quantitative and qualitative evidence, it argues that success is not explained by the presence of favourable socioeconomic changes in Peru, and it explores the political determinants of success in three dimensions.

Horizontally, it looks at government efforts to form policy coalitions across representatives of different government and non-government agencies; it looks at the vertical integration of agencies and programmes between national, regional and municipal governments, and it analyses the allocation of  government resources used to fund the government’s nutrition effort.

Community institutions weakening in the wake of climate change

This document contains a community story from the Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP). The story addresses loss of traditional community social capital and safety net practices and has links to gender, traditional governance and environment issues.

This review focuses on the potential for the savings-led microfinance (MF) movement in sub-Saharan Africa to close an important gap in MF so that all poor people can access the financial products and services.

The three sections include (1) taking stock of where the savings-group (SG) movement fits within the larger MF sector and what different facilitating agencies (FAs) are doing in SG programming and where; (2) assessing program integration, in which SGs are implemented with other development programs, and linkage, in which SGs can opt into the formal financial sector; and (3) urging advocacy for changes in financial regulatory systems.