Could the informal economy be the route to deliver the big sustainable development ideals such as the Green Economy, Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduction strategies, given that its share is rapidly increasing and that the poor mostly operate here?
At the latest provocation from IIED and Hivos, held in Brussels last week (22 June), a group of around 60 policymakers, academics and development practitioners gathered to discuss, among other things, the role of CSR in achieving development goals such as poverty reduction and the empowerment of small-scale farmers.
The fifth in a series of seminars on markets and small-scale farmers took place in Brussels, Belgium on 22 June 2011. View video and reports from the event
Across the developing world, food systems and supply chains are changing — exports are rising, particularly in fresh foods, supermarkets are playing an increasingly important role and there is a growing number of standards for safety, ethics and environment.
In The Hague, Stockholm and Paris we have heard the call for more support to producer organisations through which small-scale farmers can have a voice in the market. This call was re-iterated at the latest IIED/HIVOS provocation ‘Making markets work for smallholders or wage labour?’ — held in Manchester, United Kingdom, last week, in collaboration with The University of Manchester.
The gender and generation programme of work brings together the work of IIED and its partners to analyse and integrate gender and generation issues in all its activites, and to engage and contribute to the emerging debates.
Within development circles, there’s a common, if recent, mantra that the key to reducing poverty in the global South lies in investing in agriculture. Increasingly that investment focuses on building bridges between small-scale farmers and private markets in approaches known as ‘markets for the poor’.
Development policymakers, academics and practitioners gathered at a ‘provocation’ seminar in Stockholm, Sweden last week (3 March 2011) to discuss whether their approaches to supporting small-scale farmers sh
To promote in-depth research and allow time to successfully monitor outcomes, the Urban Poverty and Environment team at the International Research Centre for the Development of Canada (IDRC) set up a Focus Cities project. This film shows experiences from one of the Focus Cities, the City of Moreno, Buenos Aires, Argentina by IIED-América Latina.
The first of a series of ‘provocative seminars’ on smallholders and the ‘pro-poor markets’ agenda took place in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 28th September 2010. Local and international participants gathered to discuss a series of questions put forward by ‘provocateurs’ from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
These pages focus on the role of local organizations in international development and environmental management. Many profiles of local organizations can be downloaded at no charge.
Three new briefs are now online and free to download:
Getting land for housing; what strategies work for low-income groups?
What role for mayors in good city governance?
Citizen driven action on urban poverty reduction.
In urban areas, the struggle by low-income groups to get housing and basic services is often a struggle to get land on which to build or to get tenure of land they already occupy.
