Opinion

Opinion

Global challenges need collective action: Why bright spots matter

Anxiety and uncertainty are core features of global development cooperation at the moment. Previous opinion pieces have highlighted the colossal fall-out of the termination of USAID, against a backdrop of declining ODA contributions. The news since the start of 2025 has felt unrelentingly bleak....

Peter Taylor

6 May 2025

Opinion

Success in a livestock-based economy: the case of land reform sites in Matobo district, Zimbabwe

What does success mean in a livestock-based economy? How has land reform influenced what success is possible in a dryland, marginal area? To explore these questions, we carried out success rankings in our two A1 sites in Matobo district. In one village 6 women and 5 men attended, while in the...

Ian Scoones

6 May 2025

Opinion

What does solidarity mean in practice?

I was coming out of a lecture that I was giving to IDS masters’ students on struggles against anti-gender backlash by women’s groups when I saw the news: 15 Palestinian medical workers brutally killed and buried in a mass grave by Israel. My blood boiled, and I wished that I could do...

Deepta Chopra

30 April 2025

Opinion

What is ‘success’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas?

What constitutes ‘success’ if you have land in the A1 land reform areas in Zimbabwe? This is the question we have been asking of local residents across our study sites in Mazowe, Gutu, Masvingo and Matobo districts. We have held 11 workshops in different sites, involving around 208 people...

Ian Scoones

28 April 2025

Opinion

Four essential tools (and skills) to use evidence effectively

As we navigate a deeply uncertain global environment, in which the rules-based order is being abandoned, the stakes have never been higher for taking an evidence-informed approach to policy and implementation. All those who seek to inform policy and interventions with evidence are under...

James Georgalakis

28 April 2025

Opinion

With aid declining, FfD4 must include concrete commitment to scale up investment in tax systems

I recently took part in the third high-level symposium of the UNDP’s Finance, Integrity and Governance Initiative with experts and negotiators involved in the Financing for Development (FfD4) process. The symposium focused on domestic resource mobilisation (DRM), the primary source of...

Giulia Mascagni

25 April 2025

Opinion

Deadly childbirths: the need to invest in maternal healthcare in Afghanistan

One woman dies in Afghanistan every two hours while trying to give birth and 167 children die in Afghanistan from preventable causes every day. In this bleak context, IDS alumna Tanjila Mazumder Drishti shares more about the dire state of care for pregnant women in Afghanistan and why it is...

Tanjila Mazumder Drishti, Regional Lead - Asia at Global Resource Mobilization and Partnerships, BRAC International

24 April 2025

Opinion

Livelihood bricoleurs: young people composing livelihoods in post-land reform Zimbabwe

To conclude this series and give a flavour of some of the themes explored across the previous nine blogs, this post presents a series of five cases offering in-depth reflections on how livelihoods are composed across a range of activities and in response to a variety of challenges. The cases...

Ian Scoones

23 April 2025

Opinion

Making sense of the circular economy in an unequal world

The global transition towards the circular economy is often presented in an idealised and apolitical way, as the recirculation of matter and energy within a closed economic system that encompasses a homogeneous humanity and nature. This model promises resource and energy security, as well as a...

Emilio Bertrand Bunge Gonzalez, MA Development Studies, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

Opinion

Woman or Indigenous? How the UN human rights treaties simplify discrimination

The UN human rights treaties separate rights into categories, misrepresenting the reality of some cases of discrimination. There are cases where Indigenous people have sought justice for states violating their cultural rights through the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights...

Sofie Nielsen, MA Gender & Development, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

Opinion

What gets measured gets done: the change of metrics needed for our food system

Some of us live to eat, and most of us eat to live, but there are still two billion people who suffer from some form of hunger or malnutrition. Why do hunger and malnutrition persist even when the world produces enough calories for everyone? Why is the food system a victim to and a villain of...

Karan Shinghal, MSc Climate Change, Development and Policy, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

Opinion

Making spaces inclusive: what restroom signs reveal

I identify as a woman. So, when I read the sign below, I thought: this is wrong. And I was right. Obviously. The irony of this moment made me angry, and suddenly, restroom signs were things I couldn’t un-see. Everywhere I went, they followed me. Despite trying to ignore them, the rage grew and...

Riya Behl, MA Power, Participation & Social Change, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

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Showing 1–12 of 2234 results

Global challenges need collective action: Why bright spots matter

Success in a livestock-based economy: the case of land reform sites in Matobo district, Zimbabwe

What does solidarity mean in practice?

What is ‘success’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas?

Four essential tools (and skills) to use evidence effectively

With aid declining, FfD4 must include concrete commitment to scale up investment in tax systems

Deadly childbirths: the need to invest in maternal healthcare in Afghanistan

Livelihood bricoleurs: young people composing livelihoods in post-land reform Zimbabwe

Making sense of the circular economy in an unequal world

Woman or Indigenous? How the UN human rights treaties simplify discrimination

What gets measured gets done: the change of metrics needed for our food system

Making spaces inclusive: what restroom signs reveal

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