Reconsidering Development (RD - E-Journal - Universiy of Minnesota)
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Global trends in meeting the educational rights of children with disabilities: From international institutions to local responses
Full text linkThe 2006 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was an important and landmark treaty recognizing the human rights of persons with disabilities. In this article we focus on the educational rights of children with disabilities as directed by the Convention, specifically the right to receive an inclusive education. We view inclusive education as a convergence of education and disability rights initiatives within the UN and explain what this means in practice. In the second half of the paper, inclusive education is discussed in the context of the Global South and we observe the interplay between global and local interpretations of this model. We conclude with the argument that international human rights treaties matter; with the understanding that they must be locally and culturally actualized. International institutions can encourage South-South collaboration and local ownership of pragmatic solutions. Such encouragement may decrease accusations of cultural imperialism and facilitate local innovation in inclusive education
Multi-donor trust funds at the United Nations: Transforming development aid or business as usual?
Full text linkMulti-donor trust funds (MDTFs) have become one of the most prominent aid modalities in the past decade (Barakat, 2009). The United Nations alone has raised USD 5.5 billion through MDTFs and, in the process, has placed civil society organizations at the center of efforts to secure human rights around the globe. Through a case study of UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality and a categorical analysis of MDTFs, this study shows that, even at their best, MDTFs are bound by institutional constraints and funding environments.
Amidst mounting claims that human rights and development goals are unattainable without active civil society participation, MDTFs offer a unique vehicle for governments and development agencies to directly strengthen, fund, and engage with civil society organizations. However, MDTFs can offer only limited new horizons of possibility to reach civil society actors and transform development financing
The Developer: Utilizing social types to interrogate the politics of ‘development localities’ and rearticulate individual agency
Full text linkSociologist Georg Simmel wrote short pieces on particular social types as a means of articulating the underlying logics bounded within certain social interactions. Here I have highlighted the creation, participation, and perpetuation of ‘The Developer’ as a Simmelian social type. Given the logics underlying development localities, a complex interaction ensues between the developer and developee—in which a discourse of equality, human rights, and partnership manifests as continued socioeconomic stratification. Rather than reify development globalities as intractable entities by which localities are powerless, I argue that we can better identify and come to understand individual reflexivity and action as a mode for positive change by recognizing the influence of the globality on the logic of development localities through social types. I argue that the possibility for development-as-partnership begins only when one turns a sociological lens onto his/her own role within international development and, by extension, in shaping the experience of the local
Local perspectives of Korean shadow education
Full text linkWhile some scholars view the use of shadow education—supplementary lessons provided by parents outside of school—as a cause for the rapid development of Korea, others raise concerns related to its secondary effects, including educational stress and corruption and reinforced social inequality. In this paper, I analyze interview data with four mothers in order to contribute to the literature on Korean shadow education at the local level. This study illustrates the reasons, particularly social pressures and insecure feelings, behind their choices to pursue shadow education for their children which has not yet surfaced in the discourse development and education
NGOs, politics, and participation: A critical case study of the foreign funded NGO sector and its capacity to empower local communities
Full text linkNon-governmental organizations (NGOs) often employ the rhetoric of local empowerment through ‘participatory’ programming. A critical analysis of such programs, however, suggests that the capacity of NGOs to politically empower local communities is often misconstrued, especially since many of these programs overlook the ways in which foreign funding structures actually restrict local participation and limit local empowerment. This point is illustrated by a critical examination of studies claiming that the World Bank’s 1994 PLANAFLORO program in Rondônia, Brazil did politically mobilize local populations
Development in the era of climate change: How an interdisciplinary perspective illuminates the road ahead
Full text linkI have been asked to speak on the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach to the question of climate change. The way I would like to approach this issue is to first discuss two topics extensively. The first is the role of China in global climate politics. The second is the implication of the current global economic downturn for climate policy. I will then draw out some of the implications of these two related topics for an interdisciplinary approach
Back to its roots: REDD+ via the Copenhagen Accord
Full text linkAlthough it may be easy to forget, forests affect everyone. Forests, particularly in the tropics, provide a home for millions of people, support 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, and drive many of the earth’s local and global climatic and hydrological cycles. Forests also seriously contribute to climate change when they are cut down. In fact, deforestation and forest degradation activities emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the entire global transportation sector. Unfortunately, the increasing demand for agriculture and timber products, among others, requires the land that forests occupy, which in turn drives deforestation. This especially rings true in developing countries, where land-use changes are often associated with economic development. Recognizing the crucial role that trees play in climate change mitigation, in 2009 the international community presented the Copenhagen Accord at the 15th session of the Conference of Parties (the decision-making body of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change). A large portion of the Accord emphasizes Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as a viable climate change mitigation strategy. The concept of REDD+ is simple: developed countries, as the main emitters of greenhouse gases, will provide financial incentives to developing countries to keep their forests standing. REDD+ attempts to give an economic value to the carbon stored within the biomass of trees. This article aims to give an overview of the issues that surround deforestation in developing countries, the history of the REDD+ solution, current initiatives that support it, and a suggestion for a phased-implementation approach that will ensure that REDD+ is financially feasible in the long-term. REDD+ has the potential to be the most rapid and cost-effective solution in the fight to mitigate climate change. If implemented, REDD+ will have impacts that reach beyond reducing carbon dioxide emissions: ultimately, REDD+ provides an economic solution for enhancing the sustainable growth of developing countries
National Park of American Samoa, Polynesia: A case study of virtualizing environmentalism and development
Full text linkMy Ph.D. research examined the establishment of a National Park in American Samoa by the United States, which administrates this Polynesian territory. The research focused on the possible impacts the protected areas may have on the local communities. At the end of my fieldwork in 2006 and 2007, I concluded that the Park is affecting two pillars of this society: the communal land which is intrinsically associated with the Samoan extended family and its internal organization and the chieftainship organization. In this paper, I argue that the original project for this protected area was based on a virtual construction of both nature and indigenous peoples. Virtual constructions, or attempts to make the practical world align with the world of the conceptual, may lead to strong disjunctions between the initial conservation project and its on-site execution, and thus to a project that does not meet all of its intended objectives. Environmentalism itself, as a vision of the world and a discourse, has been used to construct a virtual reality of what biodiversity conservation and sustainable development should be. These are the issues my paper will address in light of the ethnographic research I conducted in American Samoa. Many contemporary social scientists have recently challenged this environmentalist discourse and the imposition of its view on others. I hope this paper will contribute to this debate
Seeing the Communities for the Carbon: Governance Challenges of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Nepal
Full text linkoai:pubs.lib.umn.edu:article/563Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD), an emerging international climate change mitigation mechanism, would compensate developing countries with threatened forests for their conservation and reforestation efforts. The implications of this new scheme for governments, forests, communities and their development are still unclear. The preparation for REDD that is taking place in many countries includes little concern for this mechanism’s potential impacts on the rights and livelihoods of forest-dependent communities who have yet to be consulted. This paper analyzes both precedents and the current process of REDD readiness in Nepal, revealing discrepancies in forest governance that must be addressed before this carbon trading mechanism can successfully meet climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, or development goals. This paper finds that REDD readiness and policy formulation is being driven from the top down, with insufficient involvement and influence by local communities in planning and decision-making processes, and that a more adaptive, bottom-up approach is needed if REDD is to be economically beneficial, socially equitable, and environmentally sustainable in the long term